Conversations with Monsters

I started going through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron with a few ladies here locally. If you’re not familiar with this book, it’s all about creative recovery.

Julia Cameron calls the inner voices that resist and scream and make us not do things the “Inner Critic.” We call ‘em monsters.

One of the crucial pieces in creative recovery is what’s called Morning Pages. Three pages of longhand writing every single day. It’s supposed to help you get the gunk out of your head so you have room for the amazing creative stuff you know you want to do.

Something Julia Cameron suggests for your Morning Pages is to write out what your inner critic/monster says and try to counter it with an affirmation.

Affirmations are a good thing, but what if the monster is particularly persnickety? What if that monster continues to hack at you and laughs at your puny affirmations?

You have a conversation with it.

And that’s what I’ve done a few times since starting my Morning Pages.

Two monsters have made themselves known so far. The navigator who thought he was the captain, and the scorekeeper.

I’ll get to both conversations later, but what I want to let you know is that by talking to these two monsters, I made them allies.

I found the navigator really liked making sure I’m on the right path (although his map was sorely outdated). So I gave him the updated map and reminded him that I’m the captain and the map may change from time to time.

The scorekeeper came out guns a blazin’ calling me an idiot. Turns out he was keeping score of all the bad things that went on in my life and completely ignored the good things. So I asked if he’d be OK keeping score of the good stuff instead.

Good thing he just likes keeping score. Any score. So that was an easy win on my part.

So when you converse with your monsters, be aware of ways you can redirect their energies.