After many years of writing, I’ve learned to recognize my internal critic. It’s a faceless voice that borrows my identity, intrudes in the most casual fashion, to convince me by slow, relentless repetition that I have absolutely no business doing what I’m doing. My critic, whom I’ve never named or made in any way cute, cannot be ignored or banished, only endured. But this is okay, we know our roles: I am the writer, it is The Invalidator who appears mostly when I’m creating fiction, rarely otherwise (such as when I’m producing eight pages of exposition for work.)

Imagine my surprise then when my critic appeared over my shoulder with a megaphone shortly after I created Librarytour. With that inaugural blog, the critic, who enjoys exposing me for a fraud, threw itself into the task. Here, I’d like to return the favor (with teeth) and share with you its claims:

• You are not a librarian
• You don’t work in a library, and haven’t since 1996 (even then you were just a page)
• You are not an architect and therefore have no business critiquing a library’s structure, design, or lay-out
• By the way, you have zero credentials
• Your camera and photos are sub-par
• You are not clever
• Your tone is inconsistent
• You really should be posting more often
• You really should be putting your full attention on your middle-grade novel (which, by the way, sucks)

Librarytour, spindly from the start, wilted beneath this assault. Which is why I had to rethink my desire to blog –consider the focus, my goals, and intended audience (beyond myself and my mother)- and salvage the energy and creativity to re-assign them to Whole Heart Local.

Again, the internal critic, expertly mic’ed:

• And you’re the authority on what, exactly?
• This blog lacks focus
• You should have stuck with Librarytour, that idea was at least original
• You’re going to be really embarrassed when Brené Brown discovers you stole her whole hearted idea
• It’s not safe to use words like “whole hearted”
• There are billions of blogs in the world, what makes you think people will read yours?
• Notice how few people are visiting daily
• Soon enough, you’re going to receive hate email
• You spelled that word wrong
• You’ll never be able to keep this up

Should I take this to indicate that my internal critic is threatened by my attempts and growing devotion to the blogging process? Perhaps I’m on to something.

Does your internal writing critic enter the blogosphere, or even attempt to muck up the flow of your emails? If so, join me! Expose your critic in the comments.