Writer’s Block And the Internal Critic

I’ve been contending with a bit of “writer’s block” lately, getting stuck in the minutia of my day-to-day over things I want to work on and accomplish. I then came across this great quote from Dan Harmon (creator of TV shows Community and Rick and Morty) that helped remind me of how perfection can be the enemy of the good.

Warning, NSFW:

My best advice about writer’s block is: the reason you’re having a hard time writing is because of a conflict between the GOAL of writing well and the FEAR of writing badly. By default, our instinct is to conquer the fear, but our feelings are much, much, less within our control than the goals we set, and since it’s the conflict BETWEEN the two forces blocking you, if you simply change your goal from “writing well” to “writing badly,” you will be a veritable fucking fountain of material, because guess what, man, we don’t like to admit it, because we’re raised to think lack of confidence is synonymous with paralysis, but, let’s just be honest with ourselves and each other: we can only hope to be good writers. We can only ever hope and wish that will ever happen, that’s a bird in the bush. The one in the hand is: we suck. We are terrified we suck, and that terror is oppressive and pervasive because we can VERY WELL see the possibility that we suck. We are well acquainted with it. We know how we suck like the backs of our shitty, untalented hands. We could write a fucking book on how bad a book would be if we just wrote one instead of sitting at a desk scratching our dumb heads trying to figure out how, by some miracle, the next thing we type is going to be brilliant. It isn’t going to be brilliant. You stink. Prove it. It will go faster. And then, after you write something incredibly shitty in about six hours, it’s no problem making it better in passes, because in addition to being absolutely untalented, you are also a mean, petty CRITIC. You know how you suck and you know how everything sucks and when you see something that sucks, you know exactly how to fix it, because you’re an asshole. So that is my advice about getting unblocked. Switch from team “I will one day write something good” to team “I have no choice but to write a piece of shit” and then take off your “bad writer” hat and replace it with a “petty critic” hat and go to town on that poor hack’s draft and that’s your second draft. Fifteen drafts later, or whenever someone paying you starts yelling at you, who knows, maybe the piece of shit will be good enough or maybe everyone in the world will turn out to be so hopelessly stupid that they think bad things are good…

It’s pretty easy to read the above and substitute whatever it is you do or want to do with “writing.” Want to make music? Don’t worry about making great music the first time – just make the song. Iterate on it. Chip away until you have something. Same thing with projects at work, sales, the new hobby you want to try, working out – you name it.

When I was stationed in upstate New York, my roommates and friends from work would spend our rotational 4-day weekends (once every month or so) skiing and snowboarding in New Hampshire and Vermont. I never went because I knew myself well-enough at age 23 that I would fall down the first few times, not enjoy it, and be miserable the rest of the weekend. Looking back – what a ridiculous way to think! But I was guarding against the fear of failure, the work of improvement, and my internal critic.

I have read and (inconsistently) adhered to the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Like the Harmon quote, on the surface it is aimed at creative pursuits. However, it is so applicable to confronting and overcoming that internal critic. It takes effort! Cameron prescribes things like a ritual of daily morning writings (by hand!), taking “dates” with yourself, and writing about times in your past where you let the internal critic win. My first reaction to Cameron’s system was – “this seems selfish.” I didn’t like how much time I had to carve out to work on myself.

However, what it did do was get the ideas flowing again. Mental blocks come from internal places of conflict. There is something satisfying and freeing by letting the ideas flow without needing to resolve that conflict. It can be uncomfortable to live holding that conflict internally – but it doesn’t need to debilitate you. Committing to a process where you acknowledge what’s going on internally, remove the fear of criticism, and recenter yourself – it has tremendous value.

I know this sounds hard. So many things can play a role internally – anxiety, depression, etc. – that make getting over the block difficult. And it will take a bit of work. But not a lot. And you can learn to live with the critic inside – and perhaps harness it to reach greater heights.