When Your Fearful Inner Critic Tells You to Quit

Or…What’s The Answer to Resistance?

Ah, your story. It happens almost every time. You love it so much, the idea. You think you have this thing nailed, from the spark to the finish. Maybe you even have a very rough draft, or maybe you’ve been working on it for years, when suddenly…

…everything about it feels WRONG.

I’ve been there. Especially in the middle of a story, and in the middle of the night. When it feels very dark and lonely, and you think everything you’ve written so far is dreck, or worse yet, you thought you were writing one kind of story and now it feels like it’s gone off the rails.

Yes, I certainly have been there, and if you haven’t, I’d be kind of shocked.

So let’s pull this apart, shall we? Let’s see if there’s something we can do.

Your Pain Comes From Your Heart

I’m a fan of Stephen Pressfield’s blog posts. He’s a master at distilling ideas about story crafting down to understandable essences. One of my favorite tropes of his is his message about doubt. He calls it “self-sabotage”, and says that it comes in the form of “resistance”, and he’s formed his First Law of Resistance:

The more important a project is to the evolution of our soul, the more Resistance we will feel to it.

In other words, it gets harder to write the story of our heart the closer we get to the heart of the story.

Whoa. Because that’s what we want, right? To dig deep? To find out why we’re writing this story at the most personal of levels? To create emotional resonance with the reader?

What the heck do we do?

Resistance Is Futile

First, let go of Resistance.

This means a bit of deep psychological work, and a huge amount of letting yourself be supported. Because to let go of Resistance means leaning into the power of a story that may feel like it will overwhelm you.

If you’re ready to go there, there is no getting around your need to do two things:

• Let the emotions you are feeling open you up.

• Lean on those around you that you trust.

The emotions that are deeply packed into your story are what will, in the end, connect you to your readers. And that means coming face to face with difficult memories, stuff you may have buried, things that maybe you’ve only shared with your spouse or therapist if you’ve ever shared them at all.

Which brings me to the leaning part. If you want to do this work, this deep work, you definitely need a support system of people you trust to help you talk it through, brainstorm it out, be silent when needed, be a soft shoulder. Both my son and my husband have served those functions. That’s what I try to do for my clients, every day, in my coaching work and what every good book coach will do for you.

And I’ve been there and I know both how hard that emotional work can be, and how rewarding once done.

The Heart Will Out

When I lost my mother at what felt like a very young age – ahem, not much older than I am now – and when my longed-for son and her longed-for grandchild was only three, I fell into a deep dark hole.

I pulled out of that hole, and I sure didn’t want to go back in.

But I did go back in, when I realized that to write the book of my heart only a few years later, the book that became my debut novel, I needed to feel my main character’s loss as keenly as I’d felt my own.

Resistance became my friend until it became my foe because it wouldn’t let me be the best writer I could be. Until I shook its hand, and said, “I see you. Now let me be.”

So, when it gets harder to write the story of your heart, the closer you are to the heart of the story. Show Resistance the door so you can give your true story to the world.

And then, my friend, you will, indeed, be able to write that story, and the result will be joy.