It’s Day Four of the Inner Critic Investigation series I’m collaborating on with writing coach Deb Norton! We’re hoping these prompts can give you all some insight into what your little jerks are thinking and feeling as they go about trying to stop you from making creative work.
The rules are as follows:
- Get a pen and a sheet of paper.
- Set a timer for six minutes.
- WRITE. Ask your inner critic the question and find out what they have to say. Keep your pen moving, even if you’re writing lies or “Blah blah blah” over and over.
Here’s today’s prompt:
The Inner Critic loves to tell us about all the other things in the world that it believes are more important than working on our creative projects, from taking naps to volunteering at the local food bank. Whether it’s trying to tempt you or shame you, write it all out in a list. What does it think you should be doing instead?
There will be a new prompt once per day for the rest of the week. This is a great exercise to do as a warmup before you sit down to tackle your daily NaNoWriMo goal, or just launch into creative work of any nature. There are no wrong answers. Go wild.
If you want to listen in to a whole conversation about this Creative Resistance stuff, check out this talk I just recorded with Deb.
NOW GET WRITING!
Oh, and maybe they could IM them to you if they want them posted anonymously?
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I’ve been getting good feedback from folks! I don’t have numbers on how many people are completing them vs just contemplating them vs posting them publicly, aside from Maria Stanislav who bravely went STRAIGHT FOR IT, but I’ll start soliciting for an anonymous round-up post at the end of all this.