Holy wow, this person inside of me is brutal! Just brutal! She is neurotic, paranoid, and controlling, probably because I am free spirited, impulsive, creative and risk-taking. I don’t do things the way you’re supposed to do them. My inner critic hates that and she puts extra effort into shutting me down.
The crazy thing is that I listen to her sometimes.
For instance, this whole book thing. I’m a complicated person, I admit it. Just write the freaking memoir, Mrs. Gasperson – what’s the hold up? I am a very good writer. I have a story – we all have a story so I know I have a story. I have the desire to do it. Just do it.
What happens is that I write it in my head first and the inner critic tells me why it won’t work. Deflated, I check my email or go in my sewing room and thing of things to make there. And another day, week, month goes by.
I forget to remember that I can write anything I want to and I can put anything I want to in my memoir. It can be whatever I want it to be! My inner critic, who is also the most hard-assed editor you have ever seen, has latched onto this idea that my memoir must be a literary memoir and she thinks that since Cheryl Strayed wrote Wild, my book must be even better than that before I can commit it to paper.
What is “better”? How about just being me?
Residing in the dark corners of my hard drive and various places in the cloud, I have written enough words to publish two memoirs. But hidden they stay because of bossy little miss living in my head. She is trying to stop me from doing this!
Why? And why do I let her?
These are good questions.
