Thanks, E.! And you’re right, it takes practice and patience to learn when we should or shouldn’t listen to our inner editor. Sometimes it can take us years to figure it out, like you mentioned. But once we know the difference, we can determine what changes we need to make to our writing process so we know how to handle that “conflict” in the future. I’m glad you found a method of managing your inner editor that works for you! 🙂

Haha! Sorry about the pink elephant… he helps me back on track when I start planning to fight off my thoughts. 🙂

^^ These are all excellent insights, Erik. Even if we note down the inner editor’s comment regardless of what it is, the act of writing it down will help us figure out whether we’re criticizing ourselves / worrying too much about something or discovering a valid way of improving our work. So thank you for sharing your experience and adding to the discussion. 😉

And yeah, I’ve had a hard time getting the pink elephant out of my head after you mentioned it. *lol* So, again, valid point!

Thanks, Tori! 🙂

Trying to silence a thought isn’t really going to work. (Just try not to think of a pink elephant… I said NOT to think of it… yeah, you see…)

It’ll likely be much faster to just make that note than to fight that voice for the rest of the afternoon.

I find trying to note down what the problem is ends in two ways: either it’s general worry and no real problem actually exists, or there’s a genuine problem that I might have to deal with later when editing. And I’m thankful for having noticed it.

It usually turns out that clarifying what’s up brings a lot of stress out of the situation. Instead of having the shadow of a monster running around in my head (horror movies do this very successfully – only hinting the monster until the very end), I’ve put a spotlight on the problem, know what it’s about and have a much better chance to solve it.

*lol* Exactly, Becca. And you’re very welcome!