When My Inner Critic Almost Destroyed Reading and Writing for me

Somewhere between reading out of love and curiosity, I began reading to tear books apart, and it almost cost me my love for reading and writing.

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How I Began Hating Things

Reactions are a big part of how our social framework today interact. The newer the reaction, the catchier and more attractive it is. Or so we’re led to believe. These cycles are hard to identify, especially in young people like myself. This is how my critical nature made me loose the two true passions I have.

As a child my mom introduced me to books like Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Fin. This was where I fell in love into reading, and as I grew she transitioned me to Wuthering Heights, 1984, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Secret Garden and so on. For a south Asian perfectionist, the introduction to such literature made me into a downright snob.

Bookstagram did not help. I was a competitive person, and in a space that thrived on made-up discourse at times. I’ll admit I usually tried to be more critical to be a newer, better person at catching the bad things in books within the book community when I was on there. Especially when I started taking writing more seriously and trying to learn how to write to produce a book. It gave me validation, I had such a keen eye, and I was so perceptive (LOL).

This snobby teen, exploring writing more seriously, had a new perspective for everything. Every new book was an opportunity to learn, and that learning came from a perfectionist workaholic that needed to produce the best book with the best elements. It bred a critic of critics that could not be satiated by any book she read. Everything had something wrong, and nothing was great anymore.

I would barely get 20 pages into a book and it was already bad. Normal People was so repetitive, Red, White and Royal Blue was so unrealistic, The Midnight Library was so preachy, and House of Earth and Blood was so poorly designed.

Eventually, I stopped reading altogether despite making goals to read a hundred books a year (ironic, since I’m a highly sensitive reader who goes haywire if I over-consume). This parting, or burnout, whatever you could call it, was terrifying to me. I had always read, I couldn't remember a time when I didn't read. How could I just stop? Why did I just give up on something I love- or was that now hate?

When I couldn't read, I couldn't write. The criticism extended everywhere and to everything.

Reviving My Love, and Finding a Book that Saved My Life

It was when I lost someone really dear to me that I was thrown back into reading. It was something I shared with this certain someone, even if the over criticism was enabled through this relationship. I had the sudden urge to just want to enjoy reading again, because I couldn’t loose both. It is then that I came across On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong.

This is one of the books that I don’t think I could have survived that year without. It was a companion. I read it, reread it, and then read it again. Over and over and over. It was the book that made me realise again why I wanted to write, and why others write.

It Begins with:

Let me begin again.

Dear Ma,

I am writing to reach you — even if each word I put down is one word further from where you are.

If you’ve read the book, he ‘begins again’ even towards the end of the book. He says:

Dear Ma——

Let me begin again.

I am writing because it’s late.

This outlook was something I needed to understand so bad, I don’t even think I realised it back then. I was a reader and a writer, because I had to understand, I had to tell something — and this need did not depend on getting it right, it depended on doing both whether it affirmed me or not, because that was its purpose. To show me, what I didn't show myself. The loss of my love for both, and losing a few months to this loss felt like an eternity in which I should have read and written something. It is why, ‘I am writing because it’s late’, became my own mantra when I began reconnecting with both.

I obviously didn't automatically turn the perfectionist and in turn critic in me off. I probably still haven’t entirely and that isn’t necessarily destructive. With the right lens critically analysing things is necessary. This helped me read again, never as much as I used to be able to, but it was enough to console me that I wasn’t giving up on the two most important things to me.

When I find myself slipping into old habits, I pick up On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous again, and I tell myself ‘I am writing because it’s late’, that I can begin again. It’s why I found some of the most out of character books for me that I love today, including The Shades of Magic trilogy by VE Schwab, and Heartless by Marissa Meyers. Nowhere near perfect books, but charming and fun regardless.

Today, I’m in a much better place with both reading and writing. It’s a journey that has its ups and downs, and I’m here for it.

Were you ever an overly critical reader? How would you advise other people from falling into the critical cycle?

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This post is from Musings from a Reader, a series of posts that reflects on the books I read. One of my other series includes The Reader-scape, where I evaluate what it means to be a reader. Here’s a post from there that you might find interesting about whether reading is political or not:

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