The Plight to Write...Stay in the Fight!

Whether people admit it or not, we all hear voices in our head. Our voice, the voice of our parents, our friends, teachers, critics, etc., etc., etc. Some of them suck, too. Some are just mean. Jealous. Even cruel. Do they have power? Oh yeah. Well, if we allow them to. They don't magically go away either. At least mine don't.

I remember the first time I mentioned the "demons" or voices I fight when I'm writing. The people on the Zoom screen looked perplexed, even a little concerned. I dare say, they looked superior. And "above" what I was admitting to. Look, I'm not talking about mental illness here. I'm talking about embedded negativity. Barrages of thoughts, "that sounds stupid" or "you don't know what you're doing" or "you're not good enough for novel writing."

I wish I could say it's all smiles and sunshine when I write, like the pic below from when I was first starting out as an official freelance writer over 19 years ago...but, it's not. That smile has contorted into an "Oh" face, a frown, a lip biting session, and so on. All because of the judgmental voices.

I'm not the first person to experience this either. Imagine if some of the greats stopped writing because of the voices. I heard the testimonial of an accomplished songwriter on the way to work this morning. He shared how he's been in the middle of a project and the "dark" part set in. The voices in his head piped up and told him his idea was dumb or a bad piece of work.

On the other side, he said every single song that he battled like this was a hit! Hear that???? A hit! He encouraged writers to press through the dark to get to the good part. That's what I do and I will say the more I write the more they silence. I fight through. And oh, by the way, now the other writers on the Zoom call are talking about the inner voices interrupting their plight to write. Hmmmmm, wonder if anyone else ever mentioned that on their call before? Wink, wink.