Give your Inner Critic a Vacation

You probably have a harsh inner critic (most writers do). It's part of you, there to protect you from what it wrongly sees as life-threatening, ego-shattering danger. So it tries to keep you from taking any risks and chastises you for making mistakes. 

But your inner critic's judgment is doing you no favors here. It's getting in your way. 

The goal of a first draft is to get your story out of you, on paper or in a file. Not perfect. 

Let the draft be dirty, let it be rough, let it be messy. Let it bulge and bloat, and belch at the dinner table. Let it be indulgent and rude. Let it have shadows where you haven’t yet found the light switch, the cluttered closet with a pile of scenes and characters you haven’t got a place for yet. 

Your ego-driven editor doesn’t have anything to do here. So it might as well enjoy a month-long vacation.

And while you’re giving your critic a vacation in the realm of writing, you might as well dismiss it for a while in other areas of your life, too.

Seriously. 

You don’t need it skulking around giving you sh!t about unfolded laundry. Or about getting delivery, so you can write instead of cooking, for the second time this week. That'll just waste your time and suck your energy away from your book. 

Give yourself kindness, grace, and compassion this novel-writing month. 

Writing can be emotional, frustrating, stressful, scary, therapeutic, triggering, exhilarating, exhausting and so many other things. Juggling a tall task like NaNoWriMo, NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month, where you post every day for 30 days), WNFIN (Write Nonfiction in November) and other writing challenges with a regular life can be a lot. (Plus, we’re in a global pandemic.) 

Protect your writing time and boundaries, but also your inner peace. 

Take it easy on yourself. Writing is vulnerable. That’s the beautiful and scary thing about it. So, give yourself goodness in every area of your life. Nurture + nourish yourself.

And if the critic comes around, acknowledge and gently thank it for checking in, for being so committed to the job. Then let it know that you’re ok.

Want more tip and structure for your NaNoWriMo21 journey?

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