Shut Up, Inner Reviewer

Hi friends.

I’m sending this weekend thread out early because I’ll be traveling for the next five days, to Mississippi today and to Florida starting tomorrow. I get to play with Kristen Arnett and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya and Lauren Groff. It’s gonna be a real good time.

The book, which occupies most of my brain space, has been out for just three weeks. Still, somehow, magically, I’ve been getting a little writing done. Getting up early, taking those walks through the neighborhood, and scratching out a few words here there. Feels good to be productive. When I can get out of my own way, that is.

This week I was sitting outside on the back porch, writing in my little notebook, working on this new novel, staying in the moment of the story, when all of a sudden I caught myself judging what I was writing as I wrote it.

I heard myself saying, “This is not as strong as it could be.”

A-ha, the Inner Reviewer had returned. (I picture her with a beret and she vapes and she’s really skinny and lives in like, Berlin, and she learns new foreign languages simply so she can read books in their original tongue.)

Immediately I was pulled out of my narrator’s head and the scene itself, stopped from writing further. I did it to myself. I tricked myself into stopping. I tricked myself into not believing in my own process and work.

Here’s how I found my way back into the writing again just a few minutes later: