“Work with the puppy that is your brain”
By Celeste Ng
It’s easy to be hard on yourself when you’re a writer. But does beating yourself up really help? For 99.9% of us, the answer is no.
How do you learn to go easier on yourself? The Rejectionist is here to help:
So imagine you have a new puppy, and your new puppy does the things that new puppies do, which are: pee on the floor, eat your favorite shoes, poop in your laundry hamper, chew on your plants, chase the cat. Right? Bad things. Now, how do you deal effectively with the misbehaviors of the new puppy, which does not know any better, and is only doing the things that puppies have done since the dawn of puppy-time, when new puppies chewed up their cave-person’s best bow and arrow or whatever? Do you shout BAD DOG BAD DOG BAD DOG at the new puppy over and over again? Do you kick the puppy? Smack the puppy on its little puppy-nose with a rolled-up newspaper? No! Because YOU, Author-friend, are not an asshole, or else you would not be our Author-friend! You speak GENTLY BUT FIRMLY to the puppy. You work with the puppy where the puppy is at. You reward appropriate puppy behaviors with treats and happy noises! You pet the puppy! You explain the rules to the puppy in a clear and intelligible fashion!
Do you see where she’s going here? Head on over to the full post at The Rejectionist for a helpful list of “brain management routines” to help you train your puppy-brain into better behavior. Do it because it’s Friday. Do it because you, like all writers, deserve a little self-forgiveness.
Anne Lamott recommends imagining the negative voices in your head as a mice, then picking them up by their tails and sealing them in a jar, where you can “watch the frantic mice lunge at the glass, trying to get at you.”
This is an issue I struggle with constantly. The Rejectionist makes a good point with this analogy, but I never find these visualization exercises very helpful. I can imagine mice and puppies till the cows come home, but it doesn’t make a bad sentence better, or help me understand what’s at a character’s core. Maybe I’m just a pessimist at heart.
Does anyone else have this problem? Have you found methods that work for you?
(Here’s the rest of Lamott’s wonderful essay, “Shitty First Drafts”: http://buddha-rat.squarespace.com/shitty-first-drafts/)
I do understand that “mice” is plural of “mouse,” though you wouldn’t know it from that first sentence.
Also, the link doesn’t seem to work with that closing-parenthesis. Try this: http://buddha-rat.squarespace.com/shitty-first-drafts/
Hmmmm…One thing I have learned is to recognize when I’m in the “my work is shit” mode. And I have learned not to trust my judgments in that mode. It’s not that hard to recognize the SHITMODE because it’s so blatantly negative. But how accurate is it, really?
Maybe your sentences aren’t that bad, JT. Remember, the better the artist, the higher the standard.
Visualization doesn’t work for everyone. To me it feels kind of like trying to force myself to sing and dance wearing glitter. Not so natural. But skepticism can be my friend. I’m learning to hold all judgments lightly and to simply do the work.