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Craft of Writing

William Bolen

Inner Critics, Fear, and Bathtubs

How do you get along with your Inner Critic?  I know you have one. Every writer does.  They oppressively lurk over our shoulders, jackbooted thugs that dismember our creative urges and pillory our dreams with judgmental disdain.  Occasionally, we may need these soul-munching Hannibal Lecters of the grammarian sect (who delight in nibbling on our creative livers with fava beans and a nice chianti). But the problem does not lie with summoning them.  They are sharks, and you need only split an infinitive—or even wound it—and they eagerly swim to the scent of spilt syntactic blood.

My Inner Critic is the bastard son of Arnold Schwarzenegger (the commando, not the governor) and Martha Stewart (the persnickety hostess, not the ex-convict).  His name is Marnold.  He intimidates me.  Perhaps I'm threatened by his ability to both bench press four hundred pounds and fold cloth napkins into lifelike swans.  He once reduced a decently written 3000-word short story to a pile of tear-stained confetti split at the molecular level.  He thinks all my ideas are corny (he actually says 'cawny'—I wonder if Kate Hepburn participated on the night Arnold and Martha conceived him?).  And he never lets pass the opportunity to inform me that I write 'like a crack-addled illiterate zombie with Alzheimers'.       

However, I'm not just writing this article as a personal lament, even though I do love a good lament now and then.  I'm here to foment a rebellion.  Trying to ignore our Inner Critics is useless.  This is war, and not a Geneva Convention sort of conflict.  Nope, this is guerrilla warfare.  Jungle Conflict.  It's a 'pee in the enemy's canteen and watch them make scrunchy faces after they drink' kind of war.

And I have a secret weapon.  I found a place where my Inner Critic will not go.  A few weeks ago, I was soaking in a scalding hot bath, trying to banish the stresses of the day by turning myself into a pale chunk of el dente pasta.  There I was, brainstorming an ending for a short story, when I realized my head was silent.  Well, not exactly silent; the water wasn't that hot.  I could hear my own voice happily babbling about the story, but where was Marnold? Then I spotted him.  He was standing in the bathroom doorway, fully clothed, staring down his nose at the hot bath as if it were a vanity-press published novel.  He couldn't get in the hot water.  I was free.

I splashed from the tub long enough to retrieve a pencil and notebook while blissfully dripping all over everything.  While I was out of the tub, Marnold prattled on in my ear.  Something about 'stilted prose' and 'overused concept', but I ignored him, and soon I was back in the bath, my pencil and paper in hand, ideas flowing unchecked from my liberated psyche.

Woo-hoo!

I had discovered my safe haven, my asylum (ever since I watched Jack Nicholson trip the thorazine shuffle through Nurse Ratchet's domain, I've always pined for an asylum I could call my own).  Now, whenever Marnold's gleefully inflicted censure becomes too much, I just slip into the tub—my ollee-ollee-in come-free home base—and send Marnold packing. How does this relate to you, fellow soldier in the war against the Marnolds of our world?  No, I'm not saying the tub will work for you (especially not my tub—it might get a little crowded).  Your asylum probably isn't a bathtub, but it does exist; you just have to find it. It might be a bookstore, or a library, or a shady place beneath the elm tree in your backyard.  It might even be a smooth spot on the shingles at the peak of your split level suburban castle, populated by two-point-five needy kids and one-point-five prozac prescriptions. Wherever your asylum is, go there now, and write.  When you come out, your Marnold will be waiting.  And you might need him, to a certain extent.  Someone has to X out all those self-indulgent soliloquies and jarring POV shifts, but you don't have to let him eat the heart (or liver) from your creation.

I'm finishing this piece up—you guessed it—in the bathtub.  Marnold is standing just inside the bathroom doorway, curling a dumbbell with one hand while straightening my 'Dogs Playing Poker' painting with the other.

When he sees this piece, he will either tear it to shreds or mark it up so completely that nothing salvageable remains.

But that's okay.

I've written out a second copy.   

The war has begun…


About the Author
William Bolen lives and writes on the bayou in southern Louisiana. His writing has been published in Chizine, Dawn Sky, Vacant Funhouse, Lullaby Hearse, Black October Magazine, Quietus, Dark Krypt, and Nocturnal Ooze.