Note to Your Inner Critic

Prompt: Take two minutes. Brainstorm a name for your inner critic. Circle one of the names. Set your timer for 10 minutes. Write a letter to this inner critic.

Dear Double Nobel Prize Winner,

I remember the day the college newspaper interviewed me when my first play got produced as a junior. And they asked me my ambition. And I said, in full delusional, please look at me, listen-to-me-bloom, that I intended to win the Nobel Prize in Literature...twice. I hate to tell you pal but it didn’t work out exactly like that. Didn’t win it once. It took until I was 40 to become comfortable with that. And you crazy mixed-up, dynamite making, Alfred Nobel, I had to begin a journey of introspection about why I wanted that level of recognition for my writing. Could it be that I raised myself, no parents around? Ah no, that’s too easy. Could it be all the celebrities coked out on my mother’s couch and Orson Wells calling me on my birthday when I was a kid. We share the same birthday and nothing else. Good try. I don’t think it’s that one either. Could it be that I revered the Nobel Prize because they gave it to Camus before he died. Come on, they didn’t give it to Philip Roth. So no. No no. It’s because I took my eye off the ball. Yes, looked to fame rather than why I wanted to be a writer in the first place, readers or no readers, it turns out just a few. Welcome to the Theater, welcome to Hollywood, welcome to Publishing. I would pace in my mother’s apartment at 13 dreaming up stories. I loved sentences. They were my religion. It’s always been that writing them every day is the dike that holds back the flood. Not good sentences. Any sentences. Things I can work on. I can’t do very much with my hands. Not a woodworker. So be a carpenter of words. And doing that I am happy.

Dear Chopped Liver,

“Do I belong here?” my inner dialogue always doubting my validity as a member.

‘What am I, chopped liver?’

what I often remember my grandmother saying at almost all our family gatherings.

She wasn’t ‘chopped liver’, my seven-year-old self would opine. But truly, where did grandma fit in?

My 65-year-old current self, continuously fights the chopped liver voice. “No, you have something to say,’ but chopped liver can easily take over and overpower the fearful writer in me that wants to share my story.

Chopped liver, I beg of you, to let my voice, as tentative and unsure as it may be in writing, it has a deep inner need to get these written words out, without that diminishment of hearing you tell me, in that admonishing tone- you don’t belong here.

You’re just chopped liver.

-Anonymous

Dear Lazy Bitch,

You’ve served me well all these years keeping me in a constant state of anxiety guilt terror and adrenaline addiction. You’ve been a worthy inner drug dealer, because stress hormones are not easy to get and not even MedMen sells them.

True adrenaline cannot be duplicated.

But here’s the thing – you’re gone too much! I write things and with no inner critic to review every syllable I sometimes write things you don’t like and I don’t know it until I read it! That’s just inefficient.

If you would operate in the background, like a lot of computer programs do -- I mean when does an iPhone falter at changing the word anvil to advil or lesbian to Lebononese.

Lazy bitch know it all, I don’t want to get rid of you. I want you to operate efficiently!! Because OF COURSE you’re not about stupid emotions getting in my way. You are about perfecting my writing. So c’mere silly girl. You’ve got an important job. Let ME be the lazy bitch. You’re going to have a place of honor in the background, making every syllable I write come out perfect the first time, so I never have the pain of reading something I wrote and saying yeeeech.

Okay? We’ll negotiate your salary of course but I promise it’ll be sweet.

Xoxo

JO

To the good girl who needs to be perfect so she can be loved,

What strikes me is how little you are tohave such a commanding presence.

You have roaches in your house. You wash your hair with a bar of ivory soap. When the food stamps are delayed, your mother makes white rice with an egg over it. She serves it extra cheerfully but it makes you scared. You go with her to Bohacks when teh food stamps come and help her pick peaches and tomatoes adn put them in the basket. This soothes you. You keep people out because there are secrets in your house. What goes on in the family stays in the family your mother tells you.

So you build a fortress adn you paint a mural on the outer wall. Your version of normal. Teh only normal you can afford. No shag rugs or swimming pools. You put all your stock in education to ge on the train and get awy from secrets and roaches.

But no, dear girl, you won’[t let anyone through the wall. You stand guard at the gate and make sure you project normal, good, okay, smart. And I feel you sit beside me as I write. I feel the surety in your soul that there is something so broken abou you. Things (especially bad things) happen for a reason. Not knowing towat toe expect from people or how the world really works. Damn well you better shine up your shoes, polish your face, dot your I’s and cross your t’s before you go out in the world.

You sign up as judge on my shoulder to keep me safe from shame. Wait that dress is not good enough. Wait that stsory lacks metaphor or humor or a driving plot. Put that back in the close young lady. I’m only saving you from humiliation.

I want to say to y ou, how will I learn if I don’t step outside the door. How will I grow? Have faith in me that if I practice, that if I keep showing up, I will get better. I will delight myself and maybe even a few other people.

Remember that story we wrote about our mother and the flood in her house? Remember that durable joy we felt. Bulletproof. Something no one could take away from us, Good Girl Who Needs to Be Perfect.

So let’s let it rip my friend. Let’s throw some shit at the wall.

You Are Your Work. AKA My father who stopped working in his 40’s.

Dear Dad,

At the very end, you told me your biggest mistake in life was that you hadn’t thought enough about money. That, in fact, it was OK to do a job for money, something as meaningless as what Joel’s father did, manufacturing carpet tacks. You said that your disdain for people who worked just for the money was a mistake.

But as early as I can remember you said to me, you better find something meaningful to do to make a living cause that will be the center of your life. What you do is your life. What you do is who you are. You are your job. You told me that when you made those educational films about science you were doing no less that explaining the meaning of the world.

And so I guess you were also saying, not so subtly, about my Stay at Home Mom, that my mom was worthless because she had no job. Maybe that’s why she went quietly, and then not so quietly mad.

But there came that day when that part of my mom changed. I would come home from college and every one of us would trot out our work, our projects; we would watch an educational film, my sister would present her latest neurobiological paper, and my mother started making old photos into wearable art. She developed a way to print photos on fabric without leaving home. These purses, these quilts, these wallets, these jackets were all covered with old photos of her relatives, and our childhood. She sold a few at craft fairs. Eventually she wrote a book about how to do it, called Fabric Photos. In the preface, she thanked my father, my sister, but not me. Even though it was explained to me that my father and sister had actually helped her and deserved the acknowledgement, and I hadn’t been speaking to her much lately, if you are your work, and this book was her identity, and I wasn’t thanked...then I felt like I wasn’t really part of the fabric of her life. Even if my childhood face appeared on an oven mitt. (oh god, I could never imagine putting my kid’s face on an oven mitt that I would then use to pick up burning things.)

So that was what was expected, when you came home to my parents house, to sit down at the diningroom table and show your work, your wares. Show and Tell. Open that carrying case, that film canister, that file and show who you were, what you should be valued for, why you mattered.

And I was all set to go to law school, was working at Legal Aid in Berkeley, had been accepted to law school, and then instead instead I drove down to LA because I wanted to make documentary films instead, about social justice...Was it because, dad, my inner critic, that you had just gotten fired, you had put the baton down - and I felt compelled to pick it up and keep running the race? To have something to show when we sat around the table? Cause maybe you wouldn’t? I could fill in? Or had I been inspired by all the ideas you had…Where do you stop and where do I begin.

You are your work. My parents didn’t help me out with money. Ever. I started working when I was 14, as a file clerk...I worked through college, I got a scholarship to film school, built up huge student loans, worked making educational films in the summers. I actually lived on millet in film school cause it had the highest protein per dollar content. That is true. I was determined to make it, and to survive doing so.

Otherwise I was nobody. And yet when I had my first movie in a theater, dad, you said to me, ‘well that film came and left pretty fast.’

So inner critic, the thing is, you aren’t your work. Dad, I wish you had learned that earlier in your life. And experienced all the life and joy and awe and love that has nothing to do with your work. You got some of that, the days we spent fishing off the cliffs in Mendocino, the gardens you grew, how you could fix anything, the long conversations around the dinner table, that was the main activity of our family, after we showed our work. But Dad, you missed out on what really matters. And for a time, so did I.

KC

To the Honorable All-Knowing King of Righteousness,

I want to thank you for your persistent attention to my lacking abilities these past years. I don’t know what I would have done without you reminding me of what a talentless loser I am. So thank you. I want to take this time to let you know that I won’t be as available to you in the future as I have taken a new path forward and will no longer be needing your services. Granted I’m sure that I will be checking in from time to time, but hopefully my stays will be shorter. We have traveled a long road together and I am unsure of what it's going to be like without your voice in my head, encouraging me to give up, and your constant insistence of my lack of worth, but I am willing to give it a try. I’m sure that you will be lurking in the shadows of my mind waiting to jump in at the first sign of doubt, but please take no offense if I ignore your sordid offerings. I’m sure that with your skills you will have no problem moving closer and closer to the hell you belong in.

Sincerely,

A. S.

'My Sour Sibling'

I would normally start this off with "Dear Sour Sibling", but there isn't anything "dear" left for us. Just a box of sour pills. I take one pill - thinking it's the last, only to discover, oh no, you have a cornucopia of sour pills to come! Some expected, some unexpected. Like the latest swallow. We have become "those people". Inside my brain the most pernicious thoughts. The space you inhabit. Today, I witness you as my first thought. I heat the kettle, and I pray you away - oh mustard green thick and gooey - I'm coming out from the years of delusion. The hope, remember that? Some of your favorite things to squash? Faith. There's another. Faith in others, faith in self, faith in something greater, more beautiful, benevolent. Mustard, I'll assign you. A most unpleasant dark and gooey green. Once on Sierra Bonita, I painted my wall mustard, by mistake of course, and then quickly painted over you. The sour inner critic sees no light. No joy on the horizon. Poor me. Whoa is me - can I cut your cord, please Can I remove you from my psyche? Once and for all? All the moaning and complaining went with you...making space for bright blues, lemon yellows, orange - the kind that warms and holds you like my favorite sun symbol blanket. Thick and soothing, I am wrapped in love. Can it be, that I'm letting you go? There's so much space in here now. I can breathe. I can dream. I can…

-Anonymous

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