Mark McGuinness - Resilience: Facing Down Rejection (15 page)

3. You may find it helpful to visualize the Critic as a parrot sitting on your shoulder, jabbering into your ear. Look at it preening itself, puffed up with its own importance. Listen to its squawking voice and notice how hard it is to take the parrot seriously.

4. Each time the Inner Critic pipes up, stop and ask yourself: “Okay, that’s what my worst enemy would say about me. What would my best friend say?”

No, your best friend doesn’t always tell you the ultimate truth about yourself either. But calling him or her to mind in response to the Critic will help you maintain a healthier balance.

31. Why your Inner Critic is (potentially) your best friend

The Inner Critic gets a lot of bad press, especially among blocked writers and artists who wish the nagging critical voice at the back of their mind would disappear. No wonder there’s so much advice on how to banish, silence, or obliterate the Inner Critic. By the time the personal development gurus are done, the Critic’s had a tougher pounding than an extra from
Kill Bill
.

(OK, I got you to dress the Critic up in a parrot suit in the last chapter, but notice I didn’t tell you to try to get rid of it. Because I know that would be doomed to failure.)

Do you ever wonder why the Critic keeps coming back for more? Could it be that the Critic is actually a very important part of you? One that might even—whisper it—
turn out to be a valuable friend and ally
?

If you think about it, you’d be in big trouble without an Inner Critic. Without some kind of internal quality filter, you’d be happy to churn out any old rubbish and join the ranks of mediocrities. A finely honed critical faculty is one of the things that separates a successful professional from the legions of amateurs.

In the words of musician Mike Monday:

“A good producer and a great producer have the same number of ideas—some good, some great. But a great producer will know the difference.”

http://www.mikemonday.com/blog/the-difference-between-good-and-great.html

And the great producer’s Inner Critic is the difference that makes the difference. Because the great producer has listened more keenly and thought more sharply about music, he or she has a more powerful and useful Inner Critic.

So stop looking at the Inner Critic as the enemy. Try to see it as an over-zealous friend who is delivering criticism too forcefully and without considering your feelings. We all have friends who do that from time to time.

The trick is to get the Critic back ‘onside,’ delivering genuinely constructive criticism. Like the inspiring mentor who urged you to do your best and didn’t accept anything less, but with a supportive and encouraging tone of voice.

Criticism and creation are not mutually exclusive

One of the sacred cows of the creative thinking industry is that we should separate idea generation and evaluation, so that they don’t interfere with each other. But my experience as a writer and a coach for hundreds of artists suggests that this isn’t how many creative professionals work.

When I’m writing, I’m reading, evaluating, and tweaking as I go. I’ll write a few sentences then pause and go back to read them through. Sometimes it’s immediately obvious I haven’t quite captured the thought or image, so I’ll make a few changes before I go on. If I get stuck, I’ll stop and read through the whole piece, trying to pick up the thread of inspiration where I lost it. Once I see where I got tangled up, it’s a relief to untangle it and get going again.

For all of this, I have my Inner Critic to thank. And I hear a similar story from many of my coaching clients, who include musicians, designers, filmmakers, fine artists, and all kinds of other creative disciplines—so I’m pretty sure it’s not just a writer’s thing.

Yes, it’s helpful to have designated times when you’re
mostly
focused on dreaming up ideas, or tinkering with a prototype, or getting the first draft down as quickly as possible. But the next time you’re doing this, you may well notice that you’re bringing your sharp critical intelligence into play even at this stage—so you’re improving the work even as you create it.

It’s also helpful to have dedicated time to review your work, especially toward the end of a project. But even as you critique your work, you’ll probably find yourself itching to do some hands-on remodeling or redrafting—calling your freewheeling imagination into play as well. Once again, creation and criticism work hand in hand.

The Inner Critic is on your side (really)

So why does the Inner Critic work so hard to tell you the worst possible thing that an audience could say about you and your work?

Partly it’s for your own satisfaction—by holding you to high standards, it wants you to achieve the best you can. And believe it or not, it’s also trying to
protect
you. By warning you of the potential critiques and humiliations you could experience if you expose your work to the world, it gives you the chance to correct any mistakes.

Or at least to brace yourself for the worst.

No, it’s probably not doing it very tactfully or effectively. But the tips below will help you nudge it in the right direction, and help you begin a different kind of relationship with your Inner Critic.

Your next steps:

Here are some suggestions for making better use of your Inner Critic. Experiment with one or two of them at a time, to see what works best for you.

1. Take a few moments to reflect on the advantages of having a finely honed critical faculty, such as understanding what makes a good piece of work, knowing how to assess your own work and improve it. Sometimes this kind of appreciation is all it takes to get the Critic to quieten down.

2. You may find it helpful to use one workspace for drafting/sketching/experimenting/

rehearsing, and another for reviewing your work.

3. When you’re working, if the Critic starts telling you what’s wrong with the piece, ask yourself, “So what does the work need
instead
?” or, “So what do I need to do to make it better?”

4. If the Critic keeps interfering, promise yourself that you’ll do a critical review at the end of this stage of the project—this way you can afford to ignore it for now and keep your momentum going. And make sure you keep your promise! Otherwise the Critic will feel the need to keep interrupting.

5. Make time to review your work. Get into the habit of doing this before you hit ‘publish’ or send off your work, or step onto the stage or games pitch. The more consistently and effectively you do this, the more the Critic will relax and let you get on with things in the early stages.

6. Imagine sitting down for a coffee with your Inner Critic. Thank it for its good intentions—holding you to high standards, and warning you about potential criticisms from others. Then gently but firmly let it know that the way it’s delivering its criticism isn’t very helpful.

Run through the characteristics of destructive criticism, and ask it to stop using this approach:

• Lack of perspective
  —the Critic speaks as though he or she is the ultimate authority.
  
• Vague
  —the work is dismissed in general terms (‘awful,’ ‘terrible,’ ‘no good’) without specifying what criteria the judgment is based on.
  
• No examples
  —the Critic fails to back up their judgment with specific examples.
  
• Irrelevant
  —the Critic introduces irrelevant criteria, or focuses on an irrelevant aspect of the work.
  
• Exaggerated
  —sweeping, black-and-white judgments, with no acknowledgment of fine grades of quality, or alternative points of view.
  
• Disrespectful
  —the Critic is rude, aggressive, or otherwise insensitive to your feelings.
  

And start using the principles of constructive criticism instead:

• Perspective
  —the Critic makes his or her viewpoint clear, without claiming to be all knowing.
  
• Specific
  —the criticism is detailed enough to make it clear
  exactly
  what the Critic is talking about, and what criteria they are using for judgment.
  
• Examples
  —the Critic backs up their judgment with specific examples.
  
• Relevant
  —the Critic focuses on the most pertinent aspects of the work.
  
• Nuanced
  —the Critic recognizes that performance can be measured in fine gradations, and that there may be alternative ways of evaluating it.
  
• Respectful
  —the criticism is not personal and there is no implication that you are a bad performer. The Critic talks about you in a way that implies you have the ability to make any necessary improvements.
  

Note:

A version of this chapter was first published online at
http://99u.com

32. Eight ways to sharpen your critical thinking skills

Supposing you had never learned to ice skate or to play hockey. You would be taking your life in your hands if you took part in an ice hockey match between two teams of hardened professionals. It’s the same with criticism: if you’ve never developed your own critical thinking skills, you are likely to emerge bruised and battered from a clash with a professional critic or internet troll.

But if you spend a bit of time beefing up your own critical faculty, you will be a lot more confident of handling yourself in a fight. When you learn to recognize excellence, and understand why you prefer one type of excellence over another, you will become more discerning about your own work and more confident in your tastes.

Here are eight different approaches to sharpening your critical thinking, and having some fun in the process.

1. Get to know your field inside-out

This isn’t about knowing everything it’s possible to know about your industry, art form, sport, or whatever. That’s unnecessary as well as impossible. What you need is to first decide on the boundaries of your field of expertise, and then to make yourself an expert on everything
inside
those boundaries.

I remember the day I gave up trying to be ‘well read’ in the conventional sense. Having studied for an English degree, I felt a familiar twinge of anxiety when somebody mentioned a classic work of literature that I had never read. Given how many classic works of literature have been written over the centuries, and the time it would take to read them all, the odds of freeing myself from this anxiety in this lifetime felt depressingly slim.

So I gave up.

I resolved never to be anxious or embarrassed to tell anyone—including you—that I have never read a novel by Jane Austen, or come to think of it, by Thackeray, Dickens, Balzac, or Dostoevsky. I’m sure they are all wonderful writers, and one day I may get round to reading some of them, but only if I really want to. Life’s too short to spend it working through someone else’s reading list.

But poetry is a different matter. I love reading poetry and I want to get better at writing it, so I intend to read as much of it as possible for the rest of my life. At the moment, I’m filling in some of the gaps in my knowledge of 20th-century American poetry, not out of a misguided sense of completeness, but because it’s wonderful stuff and life’s too short to miss it. I’ll never read all the great poetry that has ever been written, but that’s a good thing, as it means there will always be more for me to discover.

You can do the same. Decide on your desired field of expertise—make it wide enough to be inexhaustible, but narrow enough to be manageable.

Now make a list of the major players/works within your chosen field, and start working your way through it—reading the books, watching/listening to the recordings, and so on. Don’t skip the ones you don’t like! Get to know them, and understand why others like them even if you don’t.

2. Read reviews with a critical eye

Reviews in mainstream publications are often treated with reverence, as if they represented the gospel truth about a new piece of work. But have you ever noticed how badly written some of them are? How poorly constructed the argument is? How obvious their biases are? And how little evidence they produce to back up their assertions?

One of my pet hates is seeing a poetry review in which the reviewer hasn’t bothered to quote a single line of verse. It’s hard to take someone seriously who does this, yet I’ve seen it happen in respected journals.

Never take reviews at face value. Read them with a critical eye, asking yourself:

• What do you agree with?
  
• What do you disagree with?
  
• What is questionable (even if you agree)?
  
• What is the critic’s bias?
  
• What did the critic leave out?
  

Sharpen your skills further by writing an alternative review, with a different take on the work. You earn bonus points for publishing it on your blog or placing it in a magazine!

3. Read critics and practitioners

I’m not wild about academic poetry criticism, with a few exceptions. I’m much more interested in essays, criticism, and interviews by practicing poets. Until you’ve tried to do something yourself, you never really appreciate how difficult it is, so insights from people who have done it at the highest level are like gold dust.

Get to know the main critics in your field, and familiarize yourself with their opinions. And find out everything you can about what the outstanding practitioners have said about their work. Read their books, articles, and interviews, watch documentaries about them, and read their (auto)biographies. Compile a collection of particularly inspiring quotations.

4. Debate with friends

Spend time with friends who share your passion, even if—especially if—they strongly disagree with you on some topics. Debate with them. Challenge each other’s assumptions, and make each other justify every statement, backing it up with solid evidence and a coherent argument. Just don’t take anything too seriously after the second drink!