Step Aside, Inner Critic

Turn down the volume of your negative inner voice and create a nurturing inner voice to take it’s place. When you make a mistake, forgive yourself, learn from it, and move on instead of obsessing about it. Equally important, don’t allow anyone else to dwell on your mistakes or shortcomings or to expect perfection from you.
― Beverly Engel

Your inner critic is simply a part of you that needs more self-love.
― Amy Leigh Mercree

When we direct a lot of hostile energy toward the inner critic, we enter into a losing battle.
― Sharon Salzberg

One of the nice things about going away for a retreat is that I don’t have to wrack my brain trying to figure out what to write here for a few weeks. Unfortunately though, some of the workshops I wasn’t able to take a lot of notes, so I won’t be able to share all of them, and as I’m finding out today, some of my notes are . . . well, let’s just say my note-taking leaves much to be desired.

As I mentioned last week, I missed the first workshop on memoir writing, so the first one I actually got to was called, Step Aside, Inner Critic, presented by Adrian Michael Kelly.

He began by talking about resistance. Resistance never stops. When you sit down to write, it will change you. It’s an engine of destruction – implacable, intractable, indefatigable. You need to reduce it to a single cell and destroy it.

This resistance attacks by flooding your inner world with feelings of failure, negativity, and self-doubt. If you don’t fight back, resistance creates a vision of a bleak future stripped of all possibility. On bad days it does feel like a battle. If you’re saying yes to the writing life, you’re saying yes to resistance.

At its best, writing will bewilder you. It’s easier to accomplish it with a better mood. Practice self-care. Upper most in accomplishing this is to maintain a regular sleep schedule. Lack of sleep will reduce your energy levels.

Befriend your unconscious. Train your body and your mind to work together. A healthier life style leads to better, and more productive, writing. Exercise before sitting down to write, it will energize you. Do the most strenuous exercise you can.

Adopt a healthy eating plan. Healthy eating will compliment your sleep and exercise and maintain your vitality. Avoid alcohol or other chemical substances while writing, an altered mental state is not beneficial to the writer.

Regular meditation is also beneficial. It will center you and make you calmer. It enables you to face difficult situations easier. If your thoughts tend to run rampant, meditation, practiced on a daily basis can help calm your mind. It also helps bring awareness of your body.

We can’t think our way around resistance, we have to work at it.

Recommended reading: The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield, and The Tools by Dr. Philip Stutz

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

THE WEEK IN REVIEW
Sadly, I do not have all that much to review for the past week. I was still feeling a little under the weather from whatever bug I had while I was at the retreat, and when I saw my doctor early in the week she put me on a new medication (for an ongoing problem) that really knocked me on my ass.

I don’t know if it just exacerbated the stomach bug I already had, or if the side effects were just really bad on their own, but I spent the bulk of my week headachy, nauseated, and super tired, among other things.

Anyway, I ultimately decided to go off of it temporarily to let my body get back to normal. Then I’m going to seriously consider the benefits versus the drawbacks of this medication. I was assured that the side effects would only last four weeks, tops, but I’ve heard that before with other drugs that didn’t work for me. And given the severity of my reaction to it after just a few days . . .

NEW WORDS:
1506+638+340+734=3,218
UP – 20 words from last week

Let’s just say the spirit was willing but the body was really tired and sick last week, shall we? I had big plans, and not a whole lot going on for the week, but the stupid side effects took care of that for me.

While I didn’t get all my blogs up on time, I at least got them up, which is saying something. I even got my serial installment done. Of course I’d like to go back and rewrite it, but it is what it is, and the story is just a draft version. It’s starting to wind down, I think, which is a good thing.

Goals For Next Week:
Get some words written besides my blog posts.

EDITING:
0 hours
It’s really hard to think about editing when you’re feeling sick and tired.

Goal For Next Week:
Start work on An Elemental Spirit.

TECH & TRAINING:
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. I bought myself a laminator, but I haven’t tried it out yet. That’s as good as it got.

Goal For Next Week:
Learn something new. Figure out Dropbox.

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
Poetry has once again saved me from being a compete and utter fraud as a writer. I shared the Echo verse as my form for the week. It’s different, but I don’t see me writing an abundance of them. And I wrote a poem about superstition for the poetry group. It turned out okay, but it wasn’t the poem I wanted it to be. *shrugs* It happens sometimes.

Goal For Next Week:
Find another new poetry form to share.

CRAFTING:
*Hangs head in shame* You’d think with all that time I spent feeling crappy where I sat literally doing nothing, I could have been working on the afghan, but I didn’t. A few of the ladies from the stitchery group have been meeting at the library on alternate weeks to our regular meeting, and I did drop in for a bit, but we were so busy chatting I didn’t even pull my afghan out of its bag.

Goal For Next Week:
Push to get the afghan done so I’m free to work on other stuff with a clear conscience.

WHAT I’M READING:
I did a little better, reading wise. I finished Hex Appeal, by Kate Johnson, and also The Witching Well, by Shelley Dorey. It’s the first of a trilogy, and I’ve started book 2, Spellbound. I’ve also started reading The Knockoff Eclipse by Melissa Bull, which was a book included in my goody bag from the retreat.

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up the slow and steady ready pace.

THE WEEK AHEAD:

I’m really hesitant to make too many plans for this week, just in case I go back on that medication and it knocks me on my butt again. On the other hand, I don’t want another week to go by where I don’t get anything done.

I actually did find a few extra minutes before going to the gym one morning to get my morning pages done, but thanks to feeling so tired and crappy, I only made it to the gym twice last week. Of course I suppose I could have done them on the days I didn’t go, but I never thought of it.

I would definitely like to make a bigger effort to start working in my office this week, and getting my writing done during the day so I can be working on the afghan during the evenings. I also want to learn how to use my laminator. This should be interesting, with my two very nosy sidekicks around.

And I really need to start typing out the notes I took while at the retreat. There are a couple of stories I have the bare bones for that I’d like to pursue as well.

Looks like I’ve got lots to do, now all I need is to find the get-up-and-go to do it.