Overcome your internal critic!
August 26, 2009 – 9:02 amIf you want to write, you have to overcome your internal critic…
My internal critic is Mr. C, my grade five teacher. Mr. C took his task of teaching me perfect spelling and grammar seriously by wielding his red marker like the sword of Zorro, forcefully cutting huge red gashes across my mistakes. He never once commented on content or creativity. There was no room for art or craft. To him, writing was all about correct spelling and grammar, as well as neatness or penmanship.
In grade five, students were supposed to graduate from pencil to pen during the year—as their spelling, grammar, and penmanship improved. But Mr. C made me use a pencil all year because I could not spell well or write neatly. I only received my pen on the last day of class. Mr. C tossed it at me and said, “Here, Lima, you’ll need this next year. Good luck!”
But look at the language I was trying to master! Is it i before e (or e before i) except after, or before, c? How do you spell weird? That word is just, well, plain weird. In other words, even if you got the rules right, there were exceptions to almost every rule.
Of course, Mr. C was right. My writing was messy. For whatever reason, I could not remember most of the rules, and when I did manage to remember some of them, I could not remember the exceptions. When you can’t spell well, you learn how to hide the fact, which is why my penmanship was so poor. When you don’t know if it’s i before e, you make a chubby i and a skinny e and put the dot right in the middle. You hope to fool the teacher!
Bottom line, I was a poor speller who did not punctuate very well. And my penmanship was abysmal.
Allow me to conclude with a final comment: I have been a professional writer for over 25 years. The above story is an excerpt from my new book: Harness the Business Writing Process. I think it is fair to say that I have overcome my internal critic. If you are struggling to overcome your internal critic, Harness the Business Writing Process can help.
