Sometimes the inner critic is right, but that doesn't mean I have to listen to her.
the historical voices I study have been ignored, imprisoned, and ridiculed for their words; is today different?
I write compulsively when I have time and space. And I am currently making said time and space. It’s my self care.
Keys tapping or the gentle pen scratch sooths my heart and mind. Writing is medicine, and while life sometimes gets in the way, I never talk myself out of the act of writing and flow—the creative stream weaves its way around any block … eventually.
But I have, and continue to, talk myself out of talking about my writing or representing myself as a writer. I have a mean case of promotion block. I just don’t do it wholeheartedly.
In part, I dislike promotion because I find people who constantly promote themselves annoying, and I don’t want to be annoying (especially to myself). To be authentic, I need to stay aligned with the curious nature of the thing I love. Conversely, I am also afraid of doing my best work and being ignored. And my muses are those whose stories I feel the need to excavate.
Being ignored or minimized or copied and shouted over by positionally powerful people is what erasure looks like, and my current aim is to unearth the stories of women whose lives have been buried in this way.
The inner critic that says don’t be seen, due to fear of being annoying or fear of being erased, is fed by experience.
I’ve always written here that the beauty of art was in the making, the production. The sharing part is where the artist lets go and Capitalism takes over. We release.
In theory, the work is the lifeblood and the representation of the work is theater. Sartre turned down the Nobel Prize and Bob Dylan was too busy to attend his Nobel awards ceremony. But the work of the philosopher and the music reached out nonetheless. This is the spirit of the freethinker and artist, right?
Or did such acts just offer a different type of publicity?
The truth is, I want people to read my Vicky Woodhull book. I just participated in my first of many podcast interviews for Radicals. It won’t air for a while, and the interview itself was fun. But I realized halfway through the conversation, when the interviewer asked me about some of my older work, that I was tired of talking about myself. I was there to speak about a historical figure who’d been erased.
I do recognize the dissonance here. I want to unearth a woman’s story, but I fear the annoyance of my own.
Based on a coaching certification program I completed during the pandemic, we all have an inner critic and an inner mentor. This philosophy is similar to the psychology-based “parts work,” in which you assign a part to each emotion. I learned about this over ten years ago from a therapist, and I loved the symbolism. But sometimes those little parts are screaming in harmony, and they are screaming truths.
Minimizing or ignoring the inner critic is lovely, but it won’t work if we truly want to realize our potential.
After all, the inner critic has a good track record of keeping us safe and being, well, right.
With pursed lips, arms akimbo, it says: “No one will care.”
Arguably, fewer and fewer people are reading books, so maybe fewer people want to hear podcasts about books being written.
It nags: “You are not as confident/intelligent/attractive as XYZ.”
Maybe, maybe not. But that person does seem to be more articulate and camera friendly in interviews.
It whispers: “People will attack me for writing the truth.”
There are many, many records to support the idea that dissent is attacked, that hard truths are attacked, that the vulnerable are attacked, and that sometimes authors are attacked simply for being ahead of their time or reflecting societal truths that expose injustice.
The more I look into historical figures, like Woodhull and Sand and Hurston and others, the more I see the marginalization, the ridicule, the erasure, the imprisonment, and the scorn they’ve faced.
These are facts, not unwarranted fears.
So what do we do?
“Your silence will not protect you.” ― Audre Lorde
Neuroscience tells us that the brain will not believe the lies we tell it. I see people reframing bad news all the time for no sustainably good outcome. But there is a difference between anxiety/fear that is helpful and the anxiety/fear that is harmful.
For those who just want to put some ideas out in the world or share our truths, we need to think about which truths to pay attention.
There are truths about what our value is and truths about marketability and they don’t always add up. But the truth is, your voice matters. Mine does too. A podcast can be what I make it. If I am done talking about older work, I can pivot. This, my friends, freed me to continue to enjoy the conversation. We changed directions and began speaking about process, the art, the live and beating heart of the work beneath its marketability. So when people listen to that podcast, that’s what I hope they hear.
Maybe not everyone will, but so be it.
The only truths we can afford to focus on is the value of our personal perspective in the world. The value of that perspective finding who it needs to find.
We cannot read a positive thinking script or trick ourselves into believing lies. But we can focus on what delights us and bring that joy to every possible moment. We might not like every part of the process, but we can infuse anything with light if we focus it in the right direction.
Prompt: How can you be creatively courageous when the stakes are high and the potential to be ignored or ridiculed is possible?
Inner critic meditation:
"I dislike promotion because I find people who constantly promote themselves annoying" — I read that line three times.
I've been writing publicly for seven weeks. The writing part feels authentic. The promotion part feels like I'm putting on a costume that doesn't quite fit. And yet without it, the writing just sits there, unread, which defeats the whole point.
What I'm slowly working out: there might be a difference between promoting yourself and simply making yourself findable. I haven't fully resolved it yet. But I'm less willing to use the discomfort as a reason to stay invisible.
I love this so much, Jen. Thank you for shining a light on the cognitive dissonance of promotion/annoyance. In the end, as you say, "the only truth we can afford to focus on is the value of our personal perspective in the world. The value of that perspective finding who it needs to find." Thank you, and write on, sister!