This post is part of a series for paid subscribers of Signal Strength, A five day writing challenge called Tuning into and Turning the Volume Down on Your Inner Critic. You can access the full series here:
At this point, you’ve had a week of hanging out and getting intimate with your inner critic.
Remember I said on day one, first we write to explore, then we write to understand.
Today we’re switching to writing to understand
Day Five: Read It Back
You’ve met the critic, found whose voice it borrowed, named what it’s afraid of, and talked back. That’s a lot of pages. Time to go back to read them over.
Reading for Patterns, Not Proof
I know your inner critic is already getting geared up to do their thing with the writing. What if I did it wrong? This is stupid, this writing is lame, etc. Take a deep breath, and invite them along.
Hey girl, c’mere, sit next to me and we can look at this stuff together.
Read it the way you’d read a friend’s journal if she entrusted you with this precious gift and asked her to help her see what is missing.
Two rules in this process:
Rule one: It’s all information.
With my clients, we make an agreement - everything that comes up is just information. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s just something to look at together.
Rule two: Be Curious.
We are not here to judge. Think of yourself as an archeologist examining a text - what can you learn from this? (I hope my archeologist readers will let me know if that’s not what you do, I’m imagining though.)
Now that we have that established, I’m going to give you two prompts. A reading prompt, and then a writing prompt.