Image copyright Amy Crook, Antemortem Arts, used with permission
Note: Gremlins (aka monsters, Inner Critic, etc) are the voices in our heads that keep us from doing things. They are usually trying to help, but they don’t do it in a very helpful way.
Your gremlins don’t want you to make a fool of yourself and they tend to think that bullying is a motivational technique. They might have voices that sound remarkably like real people in your life.
Like other bullies, ignoring them often just results in them trying even harder to get your attention. Telling them they are stupid is even less helpful.
However, sometimes talking to them helps. If you can get them to calm down, they often have useful things to tell you. And many of them are open to rational discussion, or at least bargaining. Sometimes they will let you experiment with something even though they are convinced it’s a Really Bad Idea.
The following letter is addressed to your gremlin.
Dear gremlin,
I know that your person is a really smart person who gets a lot done. I know they’ve tried to schedule time for writing before.
If that hasn’t worked it’s not because your person is some lazy so-and-so that has no will power. Your person has a lot of demands on their time. And it’s really hard to prioritize something that feels so personal over the demands of students and colleagues. It is especially hard during those phases of the writing project that don’t have really concrete outcomes like 1000s of words per session or a publishable piece at the end.
In the same way that some people find it easier to maintain an exercise program if they take classes, your person might find that a group writing session like this one helps them maintain a writing program in the face of all those other demands.
Would you let your person try it? $95 isn’t a lot of money for 12 sessions. In fact, your person could miss 3 sessions for really hard to say no to requests and it would still be just $10 a week. If they only came every second week, it would come out to $16 a session. That still seems like a pretty reasonable price.
Call it an experiment. If it’s really not working in January, they can ask for a full refund. I won’t be insulted. If they stick with it through to March, you can evaluate the experiment together and decide whether it’s worth doing again or not.
Thanks for listening,
JoVE
P.S. you don’t have to send your person back to that other page, they can pay right here.