Dear Mary,
How do I get beyond the editor/critic who says nobody wants to hear my truth?
- Jenny
Jackson, MS
Dear Jenny,
I am thirty years and ten records into my songwriting career, and I still hear the voice of an internal critic every time I bring a new song into the world. A voice appears (disguised as me) and says things like, “you are a fraud, you are a terrible singer, you are an awful guitar player, all your songs sound alike, and you are… OLD and FAT!”
Yes, the critic is an age and fat shamer, which has a grand total of nothing to do with songwriting. No matter. The critic criticizes, punching wildly till it lands a blow. This mean-spirited voice pops up like a clown out of a jack in the box and asks with an evil grin, “Who in the hell do you think you are?”
Then I remember, oh yeah, you: the neighbourhood bully. You never really leave, do you?
The critic’s voice is different from the editor’s voice. The editor is a useful voice that helps improve my songwriting. The critic is not interested in betterment. It wants to silence me.
It claims to want to protect me from being hurt, rejected, abandoned, or banished. When the inner critic warns that my work will get me thrown out of the group, it strikes fear in my very being. Forget that this is a lie and I know it, humans believe things because they are true, and because they will help us maintain membership in groups of people we care about. In this arena, expulsion feels like a mortal threat - Writing/performing this song will kill me. This feeling is innate, and goes back to a primal fear that we still carry from the very real days (millennia ago) of death by banishment - Lions and tigers will kill and eat me!
The inner critic is an expert at amplifying feelings of inferiority and thrives on comparison (the thief of joy). It ultimately aims to scare us into silence. Humans need connection, we need to belong. Whether or not we like it, we are herd animals. We all want to earn the respect and approval of our peers. The inner critic uses these primal needs to scare the bejesus out of us.
If I let the critic convince me that the cost of belonging is perfection, I’d enter the land of “the hell with it. I quit.” Fear of imperfection will shut down my songwriting. I will end up divorced from my connection to purpose, and meaninglessness will creep in. As a sober addict, this is a dangerous place to lounge. Relapse is a regular customer at that sad little bar. Truth is, the new song in front of me is not, and cannot be, a mortal threat. If there is a mortal threat here, it is the critic, trying to scare me into abandoning songwriting!
What to do?
Shouting down the critic or telling it to go to hell does not work. It discounts all rejection, laughs, and grows louder. Ignore it? Impossible. The critic is here for the long haul. It will never fully leave, so I have to work with it. This work always requires courage. Songwriting, all writing, is an act of courage. Courage is one of the most important qualities creative people are asked to embrace. That’s true at any age, but writing songs later in life, well, that may require even more bravery due to the music industry’s emphasis on youth. Songwriting is not just for the young, of course - It is for all who are called. The creative fire burns in committed artists of all ages, if we can work through the fear.
Here’s what I know: Fear will rise when I allow myself to write my truth. I must feel it, understand it as a part of the creative process. Fear of not being good enough, fear of having nothing important to say, fear of not being as good as other songwriters, fear of not being as good as... Myself! At this stage of my songwriting, my inner critic will point to some of my own songs and tell me I am not ever going to be able to write that well again. Of course, when I was writing those songs, the critic was telling me they sucked. The voice would be laughable, if it wasn’t so convincing.
In the end, I show up and do the work in spite of fear. I have developed a few strategies. I will talk back to it, calmly. “I hear you, and I know you think you are protecting me. I thank you for that, but I must proceed. Can you give me a couple hours to work on this project, and I will let you have a look at it before I call it done?” This seems to calm the beast, for a little while, anyway.
I also will convert overly pessimistic thoughts into realistic statements. “I am not the worst guitar player in the world and being the best guitar player in the world was never my goal. My heroes write their truths, and their courage is applauded - If I write mine, why do I think I will be laughed at?”
The worst-case scenario really isn’t ever as bad as the critic imagines. When it predicts that I’m going to embarrass myself, I tell myself, “Embarrassment is not going to kill me. We all embarrass ourselves from one time to another. It's just part of being human.”
My job is not to be perfect. My job is to show up, do my work to the best of my ability, and always remember the truth. The mortal threat is not writing/performing new songs, the mortal threat is allowing the critic to silence me. Some people will like my songs, some people will not. I have no control over it, and focusing on applause does not serve me. What serves me is focusing on my songwriting, and getting off of the result committee.
When cellist Yo-Yo Ma makes a mistake while performing, he often thinks about how Julia Child would react when she erred in the kitchen. "Oh my, the chicken’s fallen on the floor! Yes. Oh, well, I shall pick it up and put it right back in the pot."
Jenny, like Julia, we all must pick up the chicken sometimes. It’s just a part of the process.
- Mary