How To Deal With A Writer’s Inner Critic

Every writer questions their ability to write. In this post, we give you three easy steps to help you deal with your writer’s inner critic.

Everybody has an inner critic. It’s that negative voice that tells you that you’re useless, that you don’t know what you’re doing, and that you’ll never write that book.

Some writers are able to still the voice, but others become paralysed by it.

In this post, I will give you three steps to help you deal with your writer’s inner critic.

How To Deal With A Writer’s Inner Critic

1. Make Friends With Your Inner Critic

Name your critic. Create them as you would a character. How old are they? Where do they come from? How do they dress? What do they look like? This turns them into a manageable entity and not a secret, nebulous presence.

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, calls her inner critic Nigel. The poet, Molly Spencer calls her inner critic Spiteful Gillian. Author, Julia Crouch has two. Their names are Nigel and June.

Acknowledge them. Introduce yourself to them and tell them that you will be meeting on a regular basis to discuss your writing progress.

2. Give Your Inner Critic A Backstory

What has happened in their life that they need to stop you from succeeding? Who has hurt them? What do they fear? What do they enjoy? Let them tell you their story and write it down as they talk.

Use one of character questionnaires to interview them if you need to: 9 Useful Character Questionnaires For Writers

This is obviously your baggage coming out, but creating it as a writer will help you to put it into perspective.

3. Write A Letter To Your Inner Critic

Now that we know who we’re dealing with, we can take steps to get them under control.

In the Writers Write Course, we always ask delegates to write a letter or email or text dismissing the negativity of their inner critic. Tell them you would prefer their constructive criticism instead. Tell them how much you love your writing and that you will continue to do it.

It’s amazing how effective this has been over the years. It allows writers to deal with them using the very tools they’ve been mocking, namely their written words.

Some Writers On Their Inner Critics

1. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. ~Maya Angelou
2. Love your material. Nothing frightens the inner critic more than the writer who loves her work. The writer who is enamored of her material forgets all about censoring herself. She doesn’t stop to wonder if her book is any good, or who will publish it, or what people will think. She writes in a trance, losing track of time, hearing only her characters in her head. ~Allegra Goodman
3. What you say to your critic is, ‘Ah, thank you for sharing.’ and you turn your critic from a voice of doom and gloom into a little cartoon character. And the cartoon character can be as negative as it wants and you can step past it. ~ Julia Cameron
4. If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write. ~W. Somerset Maugham
5. It’s easier to complain about the outside critics, but the biggest critic in your life usually lives between your own two ears. ~James Clear
6. Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. ~Anne Lamott
7. If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you. ~Natalie Goldberg
8. When someone else reads my books for the first time, it’s absolutely terrifying, every single time. Every time, you think: I’ve done something horribly wrong, or they’re going to see through me this time. ~Richard Osman

The Last Word

This is a simple way to deal with a writer’s inner critic. Don’t let them stop you writing. Why not try it and see if it works for you?

Additional reading: Impostor Syndrome – What It Is And How To Get Over It

by Amanda Patterson
© Amanda Patterson

If you liked this blogger’s writing, you may enjoy:

1. What Is Exposition In A Story?
2. The Death Trap – A Plot Device
3. Why You Don’t Need To Put Everything In Your Book
4. How To Write Hardboiled Fiction
5. 12 Types Of Memoirs – Which One Is Yours?
6. How Many Suspects Do You Need In A Crime Novel?
7. Writing Is An Act Of Courage
8. A Quick Start Guide To Writing An Inciting Incident
9. A Quick Start Guide To Foreshadowing
10. Writing Through The Pain – Tips For Memoirists

Top Tip: Find out more about our workbooks and online courses in our shop.