Arii's Writing Column -- Issue 1

On Inner Editors and How To Make Them Die (Temporarily)

by Ariaste (lady_of_water)



The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. - Robert Cormier



Inner Editors. Those two words make most writers freeze in terror, or at least twitch amusingly. Widely hailed as the bane of every writer's existence, Inner Editors are those inexplicable phenomena that cause more suicides of career than lack-of-finances, starvation, and writer's block combined.

Okay, so maybe not, but it certainly sounds plausible, doesn't it? But what is an Inner Editor, when we get right down to it? After all, lack-of-finances may only inhibit your ability to practice your art; starvation, the same. Writer's block is closer to the Inner Editor syndromes, but usually (at least in my case) writer's block means that I vehemently don't KNOW what to write, not that I don't want to. In my own experience, that's the signature of an Inner Editor. Resentment. Sulking. Loud declarations that yes, this time you mean it, you're going to give up writing forever and become a Public Accountant. In definition, Inner Editors are those critical self-voices we use to remind ourselves that we haven't a whit of talent, a smattering of style, or an atom of ability. Would we lie? The human brain is designed to believe what it tells itself, and this is why so many of we writers toss down our pens and huff away to Accounting School. However, some of us are just stupid enough to stick with it, and to those writers, the Inner Editors are, unfortunately, afflictions that they must conquer by themselves. And unlike bad grammatical habits, Inner Editors keep coming back. So how does one vanquish these persistant foes?

The most obvious course of action is to ignore the shrieks of self-ridicule. Not everyone can manage this, I realize, but if you grew up with irritating younger siblings, you should already have an advantage if you decide that this is your favorite method of dealing. Just tell yourself that you don't know what you're talking about. On the other hand, I know a lot of people who can't manage to make this method fly. I think it takes a certain mindset, the right balance of ego to insecurity. Beginning writers will especially have trouble with this-- if their work hasn't gotten much praise from their friends, they won't have anything to fall back on ("Remember that other day when Grace told you that you rocked? She wouldn't say something like that if she didn't mean it.")

One of my two favorite methods is to chant mantras while I'm writing, as a form of self-hypnosis. "I can do this, it's good, it's fine, just keep writing," has gotten me through more than one instance of self-doubt. While it does require you to either slow your typing down or to multi-think, mantras help you convince yourself that you ARE a competent writer, no matter what your Inner Editor is claiming. It doesn't matter what you write as long as you write something. Anything. All words are good words.

On the same principle is my second favorite method-- 'speed writing', also known as 'stream-of-conciousness'. When I 'stream' for the Inner Editor, I find myself typing out the mantras instead of thinking them. I talk to myself on the page instead of in my head, frequently writing things such as "I am a mad awesome writer," and "Hah! Look at that line! That's a GOOD LINE" right in the middle of the work. People are always more attentive to the bad than to the good, so you should keep in mind to make an impression on yourself when you do a really fantastic piece of description or line of dialogue -- good morale is the way to a quiet Inner Editor.

One of the most unlikely-at-first-glance methods I've ever heard of came from one of my dearest wifeys, known here as Shi. She recommended that to get rid of the Inner Editor, all one has to do is to write well. Okay, I know, that's a big idea to swallow all at once, so let's break it down. So say your Editor is acting up again. Focus on a single image. A rose. A snow-covered mountain. A dragon in flight above, the sun lighting its wings into stained glass. Your brother snorting orange juice out his nose. So you come up with a couple really genius phrases to describe the scene and then you chase the Inner Editor, waving your words about lewdly and shrieking "Look, you utter bastard, you're wrong, you're wrong!" Or, you know, whatever. Perhaps I've watched too much Eddie Izzard tonight.

To wrap it up: Inner Editors -- fact of life. Deal with it, kick 'em in the shin and move on. Just write the effing novel, would you? Get ON with it already, why are you sitting around here reading this crap? Ignoring the I.E. -- plausible, possible, needs practice to make it work. Mantras -- easy, fun, requires a dual-track mind. Stream-of-conciousness -- excellent for bumping up wordcounts, but that's a concept for another column.

See you next week!