The Mean Little Businessman
I hate this little guy. He wears a little tailored suit, is so cruel and greedy, and lives in my head.
This is a separate entity from my inner editor. Me and my inner editor are besties. My inner editor helps me seek out clarity and precise word choice. She helps me avoid embarrassment and evaluate my work honestly. She comes in and out of the writing process and knows when to step back and when to get involved.
The mean little businessman? He works 24/7. He believes in the grind. He loves productivity. He’s a perfectionist. He’s always talking.
He says stuff like:
You should be writing more. In every free second.
Don’t write that poem unless you’re going to submit it to the magazine that closes next week
Edit that short story so that it fits the style of that prestigious literary magazine
Don’t open a new doc with a new novel idea! You need to submit the one you have. Right now. Make it perfect.
Are you feeling discouraged about the writing industry? Do something that makes more money.
If you’re going to be a full time writer, then you need to write for 8 hours a day.
This frickin guy. Seriously.
Everything he wants from me is measurable and actionable and could be found in the business/mindset section of Barnes and Noble. He wants numbers. Progress. Increased profits. He wants everything to be optimized to the highest quality to yield the best results.
Good for him. But art isn’t a business.
Money might flow through art, but that’s not art’s purpose. When I realized this businessman was not guiding my art, but my anxiety, I learned how to separate his voice from my true ally, my inner editor.
To find out if your inner voice is the Mean Little Businessman, you only have to ask yourself two questions:
Does this make me feel like it needs to be perfect, or it’s not worth doing at all?
Does this make me feel like I need to spend money to feel better?
So what does an inner editor sound like? She’s ruthless, analytical, practical, and knowledgeable. But what she says feels right and is in my best interest. She might say:
It’s not quite time to submit that story yet. Let’s try something new with it, like a different POV.
What if we took this character out? Does that make the book feel freer?
Let’s simplify this poem to its core emotions.
If you’re feeling stuck, maybe it’s time to ask someone else to read this.
Ok, lots of readers were confused at this part. Do you know what you’re trying to say?
Nice, you wrote 20 pages. You don’t have to do anything with it until it’s time. Just don’t forget about them.
Are you writing this because you think you have to, or because you want to?
Maybe the best way to improve this page is to take a break.
Do you think readers will be able to sniff out this attempt to sneak them some worldbuilding knowledge? Why not just focus on the story?
At the end of the day, it’s about feeling empowered or disempowered. Empowerment means you can do something right now — even if that thing is resting and stepping away. Disempowerment places your power and success in a hypothetical future state; “When I’m a better writer. After I get this certification. After I get my first acceptance. After I write 20 pages.”
The mean little businessman loves disempowerment. It makes him more money, because then we’re always seeking something. It makes us desperate to perfect every word so that we can get the maximum return on our time and effort.
He doesn’t like it when we take the risk that our joy, curiosity, exploration, silliness, and creativity might be worth far more than anything that’s measurable or controllable. Because that ruins all of his neat little charts and graphs that can accurately predict success based on effort.
Art is unpredictable. It’s the place where we can finally escape the endless calculations that guide our survival in the real world.
You can gently (or angrily) take down the Mean Little Businessman’s graphs that he’s hung up on your writing space wall showing you how writing x amount each day will lead to you finishing your book and getting x amount of money and acclaim. You don’t have to follow his business plan.
But we need to get our work done, right? So who do we listen to? Our muse & our inner editor. We go towards what’s interesting and where we can apply our skills. We go towards what we know & what’s new. We can hang up half-blank maps and fill them in as we go. Hang up pictures of your characters and color palettes for the costumes for your future HBO adaptation (the Mean Little Businessman doesn’t like when you dream big without a clear plan, so he would hate that).
Make your inner space inspiring instead of calculating. There is no way to predict reader response, or how long a book will take. We can only show up each day and listen to our little voices.
