Chapter 3 - Shut Up!

When I was a kid, I didn't want to be a writer...in my spare time I painted and drew. But if a painting I began wasn't suitable for framing in the first fifteen minutes--and it rarely was--I'd start hearing chatter in my head that would go something like this: "That's lousy. You don't know what you're doing. You're no kind of painter. You stink."

So begins this chapter where Levine addresses the inner critic in all of us. She talks about how our critical beliefs, can and will halt our creativity if we don't learn how to tell them to "shut up." Recently, I finished a college class in which the assignments included quite a few essays about this very subject. For my final, I wrote an essay about how I am learning to quiet my inner critic and develop my own voice as a writer.

Levine goes on to say that we who continue to be creative and battle against that inner critic are heroes. I like the sound of that. I've always wanted to be heroic.

Writing prompt: Turn someone you dislike (or like) into an animal. It can be a camel or a caterpillar or any kind of animal. Describe the animal. Tell what happens to it in a story. 

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Sunny.  She was very sweet, and a little mischievous.  One day she went out to feed her bay-colored horse, Dreamer.  As she was filling up the watering trough, she looked at her own reflection and started imagining what she would do if she were a horse. Just then, she felt a tickle of a breeze on her neck.  She turned in the direction of the breeze, slipped on the wet grass, and fell into the trough.  As she picked herself up, she was startled to realize that she had indeed turned into a horse.  She had four legs ending in hoofs, two large ears, and a long mane and tail.  She was slightly shorter than Dreamer and had a blaze patch of white hair on her forehead. Her left back foot had a stocking, which means that it was white up to the hock.

She stamped around for a moment trying to get her barrings.  She was still standing next to the watering trough on the outside of the fence, and Dreamer was watching her with suspicious eyes. She looked around wondering how this could happen to her.  Her thoughts were still her own, but her body was defiantly the body of a horse.  Would she ever be human again?  Was there anyone that could help her?  She tried to talk but neighed instead.  Oh dear, she thought.  No one will know what happened to me.  What do I do now?

Thinking like her old self, she went to sit down on the ground, only to find that she didn't know how to settle herself down into a sitting position with four legs.  She finally gave up and laid down on her side instead. However, by this time she was feeling quite panicky and decided that she would rather be standing and struggled to get her four feet under her again.