Writers: Stop battling your internal critic
July 4, 2009 – 11:04 amExcerpt from Harness the Business Writing Process, available Fall 2009.
All writers have internal critics harping at us to get our writing right. At the same time, it is just so darn difficult for most of us to remember all the picayune and inconsistent rules of English.
My internal critic is Mr. C, my grade five teacher. Mr. C took his government-appointed 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, hoping to fool the teacher!
Bottom line: I was a poor speller who did not punctuate very well. And my penmanship was abysmal. By the way, if you think that you cannot start a sentence with “and” or any other conjunction, you are wrong. But you probably learned that you could not do so from a grade school English teacher. I don’t want to say they lied to you, but they did.
I would never suggest that you start most sentences with conjunctions such as “and”, “but” or “because”. Because that can make your writing a tad awkward to read. Also, people who believe you cannot start a sentence with a conjunction might think you have made a mistake. However, there could be times when starting a sentence with a conjunction might help you focus on a particular point in the message you are trying to convey. So keep it in mind. But use it sparingly.
Battling Mr. C
I battle Mr. C when I attempt to master the art and craft of writing—even when writing business documents. Today, however, when he rears his fearsome head, I say, “Get thee behind me!” And I keep on writing through typos and grammatical errors. Through incomplete sentences. And incorrect words. I write until I have finished an error-filled first draft, and then I laugh in his face. Because I have learned something about writing: writing is a process.
If you look at the process, you will see that in the first step, you prepare to write. Then you conduct your research—internal and/or external, depending on the scope of the project, your readers’ expectations, and your knowledge or mastery of the topic. Then you get organized. Only then do you write. And while you are writing, you do not revise, edit, or proofread.
In other words, it is okay to make mistakes when you write because the process allows you to correct them when you finish your first draft. After all, your first draft is for your eyes only, so who cares if it contains spelling or grammatical mistakes that you can correct before you send it out for review, approval, or to be read by your audience?
If you do not follow the process, Mr. C. will trip you up every time. He will get you revising and editing when you should be creating. He will cause you to waste time proofreading work that is not even at the first draft stage. He will have you feeling inadequate because you are planning instead of actually writing something—as if it were illegal, immoral, or unethical to think before your write. In short, if you allow your internal critic to dominate you, you will feel frustrated and your writing will suffer.
Paul Lima is a freelance writer, business writing instructor and media interview trainer. He is also the author of several books on business writing and the business of freelance writing. His latest book is How To Write A Non-Fiction Book in 60 Days. Harness the Business Writing Process will be available Fall 2009.