Outwitting the Inner Critic

If you’ve been around here for a while, you’ll know that the Inner Critic is my worst enemy as a writer. That’s the little voice in your head that says “This story is so derivative, the dialogue is wooden, your characters have no personality, and you don’t write enough to be a Real Writer anyway.” (Your mileage may vary.)

Periodically I find a way to fight it. Then I forget what I did that worked. So here’s my latest attempt to write down what worked in hopes of cementing it into my brain (or at least referring to it next time I need it). And if it helps you too, so much the better…

Some context: Last month, I went off on a week-long writing retreat and took some short stories that I wanted to revise. Normally, for me, revising is a great way to get the Inner Critic to come out and play, I mean stomp all over me. (Ironic for someone whose day job is actually editing, but there you go.) I can write first drafts (sometimes) and I can tinker with line edits (usually). But if a story needs anything bigger, I just…freeze up and have no idea where to start, or else write endless brainstorming notes and never get any closer to having a reshaped story that I’m happy with.

This time, neither of those things happened. Here’s what I did.

1. Start sessions with handwriting. I brought along a book of writing exercises/prompts and had them double as morning pages, so I handwrote 2–3 pages first thing every day to get the words flowing before settling down to do Real Writing.
2. Set a goal AND a time limit. At last year’s retreat, I spent all week struggling with the same short story edit and not getting any closer, because as I mentioned above, I can brainstorm for pages and pages and still not have a draft. This year I brought along four short stories for editing and set a goal of one day per story. It didn’t quite work – I edited three stories over six days, and didn’t touch the fourth one – but it did remind me to stop obsessing and call it good enough.
3. Use printouts. I started my edits by scribbling on printouts, which is something I don’t do much anymore, but it was helpful. I was able to start by tweaking some of the little stuff and then see some of the bigger stuff once I’d gotten into the story. When entirely new sections were needed, I either handwrote them or went back to the keyboard.
4. Wait for distance. Most of the stories I brought were a couple years old. They’d all gone through my critique group and then I’d never done anything with the critiques (except for last year’s story where I got so stuck). I brought the latest draft but did NOT bring the critiques, mostly because I ran out of time to find them, but I think not having them was probably for the best. I had sufficient distance to see what I’d wanted to accomplish with the stories and where that wasn’t happening on the page. (Often, that also aligned with what I remembered from the critiques.) Ideally that wouldn’t take years, but, well, it worked.
5. Start with the easiest parts. This worked in micro, with the tweaks, and also in macro – I started with the story that I felt needed the least revision (ironically, it was last year’s story). That one needed a new scene in the middle, a fresh angle on the ending, some research, and otherwise just tweaks. The second story needed different secondary characters, a new wrinkle in the first scene, a new middle, and an adjusted ending. The third story, as it turned out, had all the right pieces but they were in the wrong order…but I wasn’t sure of that until I got them into the right order, and after that it was surprisingly easy.

And there you have it, Siri’s easy guide to beating writer’s block…this time!

Do you struggle with revising? What are your best tips and tricks?