🖊 WRITE 🖊

Writing, I discovered, is at times a challenging creative process. It activates my toxic parent mode. Sometimes it stirs it up so much that I can’t sleep, like now(around 3:30 a.m) and also last week.

When I cook, dance, or draw, the result can still be looked at more subjectively, depending on taste. But the result of my creative writing process is partly, yes, a matter of taste—such as style, tone, and so on.

Yet it’s also, and to a large degree, quite objective: grammar, spelling, vocabulary. Am I using the words to capture the feeling I’m trying to express?

When I let my child mode spontaneously create a story (something I do because I’ve loved creating stories since I was young, and this is one of my ways to let that inner child grow (up:))), I’m not immediately working from my healthy adult mode, asking myself, “Is this the right word?” or “Does this sentence flow logically?”

But my toxic parent mode jumps in straight away and does exactly that—often in a rather militant way.

This makes it harder and harder to figuratively pick up the pen again and just freely imagine a story.

I start focusing too much on standards/my need for appreciation like “Is this word difficult enough to impress and receive validation?” or on imperfections—while realizing that I actually prioritize the story itself and even my basic physiological needs over polishing every external detail, such as my need for braces.

What could help me is alternating: every now and then, I set aside some time to reflect on my text from my healthy adult mode. With questions such as, “Does this word capture the feeling I’m trying to convey?” or “Are there synonyms I could use to add variation?”

But the creation process itself—the brainstorming, the raw version, and writing it down—is a chaotic process, and learning to embrace that without immediately correcting everything is a challenge. So I’m trying to be patient with myself and let things be for a while.

Yesterday, however, I noticed that the editing process was more active at the same time as the creating process, which made me feel a bit rushed. It leaves me wondering: am I creating mostly under pressure, or am I creating mainly from my inner child?

That’s why I’m trying to adjust my pace. While embracing my structured yet chaotic process, next time I’ll take the time to reflect on what I’ve already written, without losing sight of the text’s core.

Taking time to translate those critical messages in a healthy way sometimes helps me calm this mode down in other areas of my life. So that’s what I’m going to try next week: to reflect on what I’ve written so far.