Silencing the inner critic

Anyone who's a writer knows what I'm talking about. Once you've learned to edit your own work, it's hard to turn that part of your brain off when you pick up someone else's. There's hardly been a time in the past few years that I haven't had the urge to take my red pen to the paperback in my hand. Not necessarily because I found a glaring error (though there have been more than a few of those) but because I would have written it differently. For a long time it took the fun out of reading for me, until I learned to stuff that inner critic into a mental box and enjoy reading like I used to before I started writing. The same thing can hold true for our own writing--if we let it, that critic can lead to slowed progress, self-doubt, and the dreaded writer's block. We have to learn to turn off the critical thinking and do what we set out to do from the beginning. Just write. The first draft doesn't have to be perfect. Neither does the second draft, or the third, or however many come in between the conception and the finished product. The only one that needs to be spit-shined and polished is the one that's being submitted to editors and agents. You have to give yourself permission to write less-than-perfect paragraphs the first time around. The draft is just a roadmap. When you revise, you follow the course you set for yourself, and this is where your ideas become a story. Lis:)