Techniques and Tricks
But that’s not to say that I haven’t at least, developed some strategies. My usual one is the Distraction Technique, aka Lying to Myself. I pull out my phone, and, assuming I don’t go down the Facebook reels rabbit hole for the next hour, I open an email and write the first line of a poem. I find that using email as a writing tool can successfully distract my inner critic by saying, look, I’m only starting an email, it’s not real writing. I’m just putting words into the screen. This is sometimes so effective that I truly forget I have written something, and later wonder why I’ve inboxed myself. This strategy is surprisingly effective and I’m wondering, as I write this, why I don’t just do this every time. Out of my remaining techniques for Getting Started With The Writing, this next one is the hardest. I write anyway. I don’t do this enough. But when I do, something strange happens. The critical voice that lives inside my head. You know the one, if you’re still reading this it’s probably because you have it too. The voice. The cacophonic blend of the unexpectedly low grade on your 9th-grade essay, the disparaging teacher from 1998, the condescending sibling who told you at ten years old that everything you do is crap. That voice. It is a legion in its onslaught.
(Above: the author on a fighting–I mean, writing day)
Creating Magic
But when I write–and I write not because the voice isn’t there but despite its presence–it shrinks. Not by a lot, but it ever so slightly recedes in size. And my voice, my words, the ones that I’m writing now, increase in weight, in confidence, and sometimes, if I’m really lucky, in joy. Every word is a step forward, every paragraph is a battle won. When I write, the path starts mountainous and rocky, but with each successive sentence, it yields and flattens. And I try to remind myself, that this is what I am here for. I am a writer. Because I write. And my writing, our writing, shapes our ideas, our identities. You can try this out yourself. Think of a topic, any topic, and start writing about it. At th
e end of the page, read it back to yourself. Did you know exactly what you were going to write before you wrote it down? I’ll bet that the majority of you did not. That somehow, there was a flow of seemingly disconnected thoughts and ideas that span around your brain and through your fingertips to become words on a screen or page. I like to think of this as a kind of transformation, a kind of magic.
Sure, I could get over the inner critic so easily, now, I have options. For one, I could simply not write the poems, the meanderings, the essays, no-one is forcing me to do this MA. Or I could prompt generative AI, doesn’t everyone, now? But what is missing then is the discipline of getting over myself. I would experience absence instead acts of connections between touch and feelings, and ideas and thoughts, and scents, and sounds, and memories. And if I use AI then I would be selling this all at a loss. Giving away myself in exchange for other people’s half-shadows, regurgitated in perfectly even syntax. Mistake-free. Probably. But where’s the magic in that?
Own Your Voice
I’m on a leave of absence from the classroom right now, completing my MA in, yes, writing. But if I was in the classroom I would, and did, tell my students. Don’t give up on yourselves. Don’t hand over your wonderful, ingenious thoughts and ideas, gains and losses, hurts and fears. Fight with them, by all means, argue and struggle and wrestle with your gel pen, your pencil, your keyboard, and yourself. Don’t give this experience over in favor of ease, don’t quit becoming. Find ways to overcome, distract, ignore The Voice, until your own is loud enough to compete.
I realize I need to put posters up around my home to remind myself when the clamoring of self-deprecation becomes too loud. It’s a simple message, but I need it nonetheless. My posters will say: Write Anyway.
