In Leslie Keenan’s clarifying and inspiring, You Can Complete That Book, she offers five danger signs that the critic is in charge. She is speaking here to writers who are fairly far along in their process and are beginning to look ahead to having a completed work. In her words:
…let’s investigate how you can tell whether this voice is the critic or your editing self. How can you recognize which voice it is?
Danger signs of the Critic:
- You keep thinking you need to edit more, but you realize that you are starting to change things back to how they were when you started.
- You keep thinking you need a huge block of time to do some more research.
- You think it really makes sense to ditch everything you have and start over.
- You doubt decisions you already made about what stays and what goes, or what order to put things in.
- You find yourself saying things like “It’s all crap,” or I’ll never finish.
(c) You Can Complete Your Book.
Related posts