Writing Prompt: Honesty & the Internal Critic
Posted by David Duhr in Uncategorized 
My internal critic is a huge A-hole. He/she (yes) starts barking at me as soon as I pick up a pen and laughs in my ear until I put the pen down. He/she is brutal when I reread my work, and when I decide whether or not something is worth revising, he/she always, always votes no.
Awhile back I did a video on how to silence your internal critic. Both thumbs-down votes? Yeah, those are from my internal critic.
(Make sure to check out all of WriteByNight’s vidoes.)
But is the internal critic always the harshest critic? Does all criticism sting equally?
Here’s what Franklin P. Jones (who?! According to Wiki answers, he “wrote quips and quotes”) has to say about criticism:
“Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.”
What a good quip/quote he wrote!
Today, let’s dig down deep and access that pain. First, recall a time when someone–a relative, friend, acquaintance or stranger–slapped you with some honest criticism. Think about what he/she said, and try to remember it as close to word-for-word as you can remember. Next, choose the portion of the criticism that made you feel the worstest, and write about how/why it made you feel so crummy.
Once you’ve finished that, take a red pen and cross out everything that sounds like it was written in your internal critic’s voice.
What is left? And what does what is left tell you about yourself, about your project, about your internal critic?
Good luck, writers! Feel free to email us your experience, and if you want to share with the whole group, leave your results in the comments section below.