This post is part of a series for paid subscribers of Signal Strength, A five day writing challenge called Tuning into and Turning the Volume Down on Your Inner Critic. You can access the full series here:
On Monday, I wrote about the six types of inner critic—and promised a five-day challenge to help you turn down the volume. Well, here we are! Day one.
Before we start: your inner critic is a part of you that thinks it’s protecting you. Be gentle with it. It has good intentions.
Writing to Explore, Then to Understand
We write for work, for publication, or to document.
Here, we are writing in two steps: first explore, then understand.
First, we write to explore. Your brain is full of competing voices, child memories, and internalized ideas. Writing to explore slows that soup down and captures a snapshot on the page. It’s inherently messy, and that’s a good thing. Don’t edit. Let the words come out—messy, meandering, meaningful, or just meaning-ish.
Later, we come back to understand. We read through to spot the patterns, themes, and ideas we didn’t notice while writing. We’ll get to that later in the challenge.
The Pact: Set a timer for 15–30 minutes. Use a notebook, typewriter, laptop—whatever works. Four days of exploration, followed by one day of reflection.