Stop Stopping Yourself

Look to Plato for advice on how to contain your inner self-critic

Wake Up and Write is a regular advice column from Moms Don’t Have Time to Write. Today, we have Maya Shanbhag Lang — author of What We Carry: A Memoir — who shared writing advice on the podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, hosted by Zibby Owens.

“We find so many reasons and so many ways to not write because we tell ourselves that we are not good enough.”

“I imagine writing as a chariot with two horses in front — Plato had this whole theory about the human soul being a chariot with two horses. There’s the horse that should be the weaker horse but it’s actually the stronger one, which is self-criticism. Then there’s the other horse which should be the stronger one but it’s the weaker one, which is our instinct as writers.

I think if you can find ways to recalibrate the horses to tame the self-critic so that it doesn’t take over and to feed your instincts to bring them more to the forefront, that’s how the writing moves forward.

I think when you hear that voice pop up that says, ‘Who do you think you are to be trying to write?’ or ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ However that voice speaks to you, just recognize it and say, ‘Oh, that’s that horse taking over when it doesn’t deserve to,’ and to sort of put it in its place.

Then when the little voice speaks up inside that says, ‘I wonder if I could write about that,’ really give that all of the carrots and feed it and yield to that. I think that’s how the writing actually comes out onto the page.”

Listen to the episode:

https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/mayashanbhaglang?rq=Maya%20Shanbhag%20Lang

Buy the book:

https://www.amazon.com/What-Carry-Maya-Shanbhag-Lang/dp/052551239X