Sometimes, when I'm teaching, I'll start to talk to my students about the nasty little two-timing frenemy of everyone who struggles to put words down on the page-and, without even realizing I'm doing it, I'll start gesturing to my left shoulder. Never my right, always my left. That's apparently where my censor sits. She has been in residence on my left shoulder for so many years that it's a wonder I'm not completely lopsided.
Here are some of the things she whispers, or shouts, depending on her mood, whenever I'm beginning something new:
This is stupid.
What a waste of time.
(Condescending laugh)
You really think you can pull that off?
So-and-so did it better.
What a dumb idea.
How boring.
Are you ready for a nap?
My inner censor wants to shut me down. She wants me to close up shop, like the man in one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons, who stands in the left frame, staring out a window looking bored, resigned. This frame is titled "Writer's Block: Temporary." The right frame shows him standing in the exact same way; nothing has changed, except now he's in front of a fish store bearing his name. The title? "Writer's Block: Permanent." My censor wants no less than to turn me into a fish salesman. Not that there's anything wrong with selling fish, except that I don't know anything about selling fish and am not particularly fond of the way it smells. What I do know--what I've spent the past couple of decades learning about myself-is that if I'm not writing, I'm not well. If I'm not writing, the world around me is slowly leached of its color. My senses are dulled. I am crabby with my husband, short-tempered with my kid, and more inclined to see small things wrong with my house (the crack in the ceiling, the smudge prints along the staircase wall) than look out the window at the blazing maple tree, the family of geese making its way across our driveway. If I'm not writing, my heart hardens, rather than lifts.
And so I have learned how to live with my censor. It doesn't happen by fighting her. It happens first by recognizing her-oh, hello, it's you again-and accepting our coexistence. Like those bumper stickers most often seen on the backs of Priuses spelling out coexist in the symbols of all the world's religions, the writer and her inner censor need to learn to get along. The I.C., once you're on a nickname basis, should be treated like an annoying, potentially undermining colleague. Try managing her with corporate-speak: Thanks for reaching out, but can I circle back to you later?
The daily discipline of this creates a muscle memory. It becomes ingrained, thereby habit. I try to remember this, each morning, as I make the solitary trek from the kitchen to my desk. My house is quiet. My family is gone. The hours stretch ahead of me. The beds have been made, the dogs have been walked. There is nothing stopping me. Nothing, except for the toxic little troll sitting on my left shoulder. Just when I think I have her beat, she will assume a new disguise. I have to be vigilant, on the ready. She will pretend to be well-intentioned. She's telling me for my own good.
Maybe you should try writing something more commercial.
You know, thrillers are hot. Why not write a thriller? Or at least a mystery?
Sweetheart (I hate it when she calls me sweetheart) no one wants to read a book about a depressed old man. Or a passive-aggressive mother. Why not write a book with a strong female protagonist, for a change? You know, a superheroine. Someone less…I don't know…victimy?
Under the guise of being helpful, or honest, my censor is like a guided missile aiming at every nook and cranny where I am at my weakest and most vulnerable. She will stoop and connive. All she wants to do is stop me from entering that sacred space from which the work springs. She is at her most insidious when I am at the beginning, because she knows that once I have begun, she will lose her power over me. And so I dip my toe into the stream. I feel the rush of words there. Words that are like a thousand silvery minnows, below the surface, rushing by. If I don't capture them, they will be lost.
