My Inner Critic? Or Maybe An Over Analyzing Idiot?

You could take a wild guess that I would like to talk about my so-called inner critic. Well, I'm sure "so-called" is an aggressive term, because it definitely exists, and I definitely have one. However, contrary to how some other people may view it, I view my inner critic in a very nice light. To me, my inner critic is what helps make me great. I don't think I have gotten to the level of a great writer yet. I am an aspiring writer. Whoops, sorry...One who aspires to write things. But, again, aspiring but not yet great. I will get there. My inner critic is one who challenges my work, not challenging me on the basis that it is wrong, but on the basis of what exactly could be done to make it even better. It challenges me to bring out even more creativity than I already have in my work. My inner critic tells me to think about what other greats have done and tells me not to try to be like them, no, but to think about how they thought. What were their strategies to get to the points that they did? My inner critic is something that tells me to look back at my work and say, "You should have done this."

Now, if you have read the article that was assigned to my Intro to Essay class, you may catch wind of what i was doing in the first paragraph. If you haven't, here it is: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/banishing-your-inner-critic/
Anyways, after reading the article that this idiot scrounged together at some attempt to look like a new and creative thinker, you can see that I spent the first paragraph of this post speaking very highly of all the things that Denise Jacobs says are evil and hurtful for the writer; the things that are holding me back...? Jacobs thinks it makes sense to compare the thing about me that could potentially make my writing great to a troll under a bridge. According to Jacobs, improvement is holding me back. The should's and could's of my critiquing are much less my inner critic as much as they are an outer critic. It's this crazy thing called critiquing my work. Crazy, I know. Vince Lombardi once said, "perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." now, doesn't that just make sense? There's not really much to it. I almost feel dumber writing this post because I am trying to explain why it does not make sense for Jacobs to be arguing that constructively trying to improve in your writing is this troll under a bridge just trying to hold you back.

Then Jacobs takes a big turn for the worst. With all of her wisdom, she tells us how the key to conquering this evil aspect of our mind is to make partnership with it so that we can, yes, you guessed it, be constructive with our inner critic. I feel like hypocrisy is too mild of a term for the end of this article. Congratulations Denise Jacobs, you made me dumber today. That being said, I think I can honestly say that I think Denise spent less time in her article that I do on these blog posts...