by Meg Hayertz, MFA ‘16
How many times has a critique left you thinking: How the hell am I going to make these changes? I’m not good enough. Could I contort myself into being good enough? I should quit. But I don’t want to quit. I’ll force good writing out of me like toothpaste out of an empty tube. Or maybe I can think my way to an easy solution. I need chocolate. Or a beer? A chocolate stout. That will solve this.
I hope you’ve spared yourself inner monologues like this one, but if this feels familiar, I can relate. I received my first harsh critique as a writer seventeen years ago, when I was fourteen. Since then, I have spent so much time with my inner critic that I have learned how to collaborate with it.
When I was a kid, my mother would sometimes hide an object in our living room and lead my friends and I in a game: Caliente, Frío. She taught us Spanish by affirming, “Caliente, hot,” when we got close to the hidden Beanie Baby or spaghetti spoon. If we wandered away, she’d warn, “Frío.”
In writing and art-making, we play a similar game. Like children, we explore the room of the page or canvas or stage, searching dark corners and lifting unaired couch cushions, hunting the heart of the story.
Only, in this game as adults, our inner critic provides the cautionary voice, and it does not want us to find the meaning we seek. It gives us false direction, steers us away from discovery and back towards facts we already know and stories we’ve heard before. It yells, ¡Caliente! when we’re cold, and ¡Frío! when we’re getting close.
Collaborating with our inner critic means recognizing its cries of Guilt! Shame! Get away! as warnings that guard our most vulnerable and precious truths.
What happens when we gently, gently, with utmost kindness, listen to the reasons for our inner critic’s distress?
We usually begin to articulate vivid, relatable tensions between fragmented parts of ourselves.
The poet Kwame Dawes expressed in an interview with LitHub, “Poetry is my companion through the world. I want to be the author of good companions for people.” Sitting with our vulnerabilities is a foundation of writing and art-making. Our fears, hidden desires, memories, dashed expectations and outright failures reveal to us the texture of our lives and our questions about our lives. Even if the circumstances we portray in our art bear no resemblance to our own lives, our inner critic can nevertheless help us pinpoint our work’s core emotional truths. If a story feels unspeakable, how many readers or audience members must also be silently carrying a similar story, wishing to feel accompanied and understood? Our audience is waiting for our secret stories for precisely the same reasons that we’re afraid to tell them.
How might you befriend your inner critic? For the sake of your art, your spirit, and your audience, I invite you to give it a try. You might even find that your creative community benefits from your evolving relationship with your inner critic; as we accept ourselves, we naturally offer more supportive, thoughtful feedback in which we help one other discover the messages that long to be expressed through us.
Source Cited:
Daddona, Matthew, and Kwame Dawes. “Kwame Dawes on Rhythm, Diaspora, and Political Poetry.” Literary Hub, 25 Mar. 2016, lithub.com/kwame-dawes-on-rhythm-diaspora-and-political-poetry/. Accessed 13 Apr. 2021.
Bio:
Meg Hayertz, author of Tarot for Beginners (Althea Press), believes creating is an act of listening. As the founder of Creative Momentum, she offers tarot readings and workshops to help writers, artists, performers and academics unlock creative blocks, deepen their inspiration and finish their project. She holds an MFA in Writing and Consciousness from California Institute of Integral Studies, and she is grateful to her mentors and friends at CIIS who encouraged her interdisciplinary writing-and-tarot practice. For free guided meditations, visit Meg on YouTube @MakeItMeanIt or at www.CreativeMomentum.art.
Art by Alan Saint Clark (IG@alan_t_clark) from our tarot deck in progress.
