n Prompt: Have a heart-to-heart talk with your inner critic. On paper. As you speak to him/her remember to speak as you would like to be spoken to.


"I wonder if you're getting a bit sneaky on me."

"Me? Sneaky? In what way?"

"Well, we've come a long way. You don't hinder my work like you used to. Oh ocassionally you stomp and storm or whine and moan (who doesn't) but I think we've achieved a good partnership for the most part."

"That's what I was thinking, too. But you're hedging. Why do you think I'm getting sneaky?"

"Well, there are still some times when I avoid writing, and I wonder if you're using a quieter way to distract or deter me."

"A quieter way?"

"Yes. You're not telling me that the work is outrageously bad anymore. Not even on the first draft when it is--"

"That's because you acknowlegde it, you know. If you ever go back to thinking that the first time the words hit the page their perfect, I'll become unbearable."

"I have no doubt! At any rate, the thing that seems to plague me now is that I still procrastinate. Are you the one disguising the unnecessary as critical?"

"Give me an example."

"Well, fifteen minutes out of an entire day is nothing. But sometimes, that fifteen minutes seems more precious than gold and better spent elsewhere."

"You don't want people mad at you, do you?"

"No."

"And when you say you'll start supper at 4:30 and it gets to be 4:31--and I haven't been managing your time, you have!--what do you expect me to do? Let you get yourself in a tizzy because you're late?"

"Why not?"

"Why????? You know you hate the stress. Why not leave the writing till later?"

"Because later never comes! You know what I wanted to accomplish this month and thanks to 'later' not much of it is getting done."

"Are you trying to do too much?"

"Oh, I don't know! It's so hard to decide sometimes. The writing is important though because I get so horribly cranky when I don't get the time to do it."

"Don't make the time to do it, you mean."

"Right, you're right. So what's the deal?"

"As I see it, it's all a matter of choices. Life is always like that. And on some days the urgent is going to crowd out the less urgent until the less urgent becomes urgent--"

"STOP! You're making me dizzy."

"You're making me laugh! You know all this stuff. I've told you over and over and over."

"Yes, but are you telling me right? If I'd listened to you 8 minutes ago, we wouldn't have come this far."

"This far? Where have we gotten? I'm not sure it's anywhere."

"Oh, we've gotten somewhere. The writing has moved us along. We're not standing in the same old place we were when we started. Someday I'll be re-reading this and something will click."

"Like 'do the writing first and then the e-mail'?"

"Come on, that was workshop stuff. It needed to go out today."

"Like workshop stuff was all the e-mail you did!"

"Okay, you win that one. The writing should come first."

"The rocks go in the jar, then the pebbles."

"I know, I know! There are rocks in my life other than writing, you know."

"Maybe we should start us a rock collection."

"Really?"

"Why not? You already have some pebbles back there, don't you? You should have a jar. And rocks. And you should empty the jar every day, and then start with the large rocks. It sounds kinda fun, doesn't it?"

"Like playing with blocks."

"Remember when I used to have a problem with you playing?"

"Boy do I! We have come a long way together, haven't we?"

"Yes, but you're fifteen minutes into cooking supper time now and you've done your writing, haven't you?"

"Okay, I'm outta here!"