Give Muscle to Your Inner Writer
Getting up-close and personal with your Inner Writer
Ask her or him to write you a letter. Seriously. I suggest you do this using pen andpaper.
Simply ask you Inner Writer to write to you and tell you what she thinks about you and your writing.Actually write that down.
Dear Inner Writer, What do you think of my writing?
Then, let her take control of the pen and write! You'll be amazed at what your Inner Writer has to say.
Hint: if you hear judgment or criticism you know that your Inner Critic has taken over. Tell her/him in not uncertain terms to go away and invite your Inner Writer to keep writing.
If you like, please post your letter to the blog!
Dear Emily,
ReplyDeleteThanks for this post. In writing to myself as my Inner Writer I have come up with a new idea for the story I've been working on. I hope it will work.
Adelaide
Dear Inner Writer.
What do you think of my writing?
Dear Adelaide,
I think you have written some good stories, but they are not ground breaking. They follow a comfortable pattern. You write about relationships, but in this modern 21 century there are many types of relationships which you haven't explored. You've written about mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, lovers, friends. The relationships you usually describe are known by many, obvious attractions, obvious disagreements, obvious problems. You need to explore more subtle relationships, dig deeper into the lives of your characters. Your characters are too simple in their needs and wants. Your characters need to be more complicated, not to the point of being obscure, but less obvious in their own understanding of themselves.
Take for example the story you're working on now. Sixty-five year old Germaine, the maitre'd at Yvonne's Brasserie, is sour on Romance for the obvious reason–his wife left him. That's not anything new. Maybe Germaine needs a stronger reason for his distrust of Romance; maybe his runaway wife is just his excuse he conveniently uses to explain to others why he thinks the romantic atmosphere dished out at Yvonne's Brasserie along with the gourmet food is excessive and not real life. Maybe you need to reveal a flaw in Germaine, a flaw which he is reluctant to admit even to himself.
Think about this as you work on the story.
Sincerely,
Your Inner Writer
Dear Adelaide,
ReplyDeleteI see you have gotten some information in your response from the one you presume is you Inner Writer, but I don't believe you have accessed the Inner Writer here. Although there is good info, the Inner Writer would never use such a negative tone to point out what she thinks would be helpful. Phases like "not groundbreaking" ... the relationships being "obvious" and so on is not the way and Inner Writer usually speaks. What you have here has some interesting insights. It might come more from an editorial voice.
Try again to access the Inner Writer!