I hold conversations with other people in my head. I'm pretty certain that other people do this too. Do you? But here's the thing: I do it a lot. And I really only do it when I'm feeling angry or upset or hurt. I don't rehearse impending conversations about good things, but I find myself repeatedly holding full conversations about bad things up in this brain of mine.
I need to stop and think about why I do this, and I need to come up with a mechanism to catch myself in the act and let it go.
Oh yeah, and for those of you who are wondering, today's post is inspired by Brene Brown, an amazingly intuitive woman who puts a lot of things into words that I wish I had the eloquence to say myself.
Here's what she said this morning:
I know I'm putting on my vulnerability armor
when I start rehearsing the really mean things I'd like to say to
someone. Those pretend conversations are my red flag.
Brene wrote an eye-opening book called "The Gifts of Imperfection" which I'm about halfway through. I read a ton of books each year but only a handful fall into the self-help genre. When I find an author who blows me away, however, I'll gladly pick up one or two of their books and see what sorts of insights are ready to speak to me.
"The Gifts of Imperfection" is all about allowing yourself to be authentic, and knowing that that's good enough and indeed, is the only thing that is good enough. I personally don't struggle with the pefectionism aspect of finding your authentic self (I instead practice good-enoughism), but there are other places in my life where I struggle to show my authentic self and understand that it's enough, it's powerful, and it's the only thing that will really help me to connect with other people.
But I digress.
So these conversations I hold in my head, I can rule out a lot of reasons for holding them.
- I don't think its social anxiety. It's not like I'm scared to talk to people and practicing puts me at ease.
- I don't think its Monday morning quarterbacking. I'm not replaying conversations from the past and trying to make them come out better.
- It's not even my biggest suspect - rehearsing an awkward or difficult conversation that I want to have with a friend or loved one. That would at least make sense -- the need to practice something I intend to say. "Hey friend, we've been drifting apart and I don't like it. What can we do to fix it? I miss you."
So what is it, then? Have any of you out there thought of WHY we do this?
Here's what I think: I use these conversations as a mechanism to feel my anger, work through it, get it out, and at the same time, not take it out on the other person.
Note that this really only works when you recognize you're upset about something that's within your power to address and solve yourself. So it's usually something I've blown out of proportion (shocking!) and, in holding the conversation with the other person in my head, I can work through some things I'd like to say and .... after saying them, then saying other things, then running through various scenarios in my head ... come to realize the real-life conversation probably doesn't need to take place. Instead, my perspective needs to shift.
And that's a good thing.
So maybe these conversations are just another mechanism for working on my own issues. It still doesn't mean that I like them -- I don't really. Because the conversations in my head make me feel bad, defensive, accusatory, and that's just not the type of person I want to be. I want to be the person who gives the benefit of the doubt, who sees the best in others, who others see as a giving person, who is slow to anger and quick to laugh.
This may sound like a silly or trite analogy, but I want to treat everyone the way I treat the oldest members of my family. Both my grandparents passed a few years ago, but I have memories I'll take with me to my own dying day. And I gave them the love, the patience, and the acceptance that was in me to give. And giving it was SO easy. There was no judgment, no scoffing, no I'm-right-you're-wrong. It was just pure pleasure, pure love, and no expectations.
I want to be that way with everyone in my life.
Last night, I was talking on the phone with my sister, catching up on the news of the day and filling each other in what's been going on in our worlds. We do this pretty regularly, since both of us have a lot going on these days. She's been apartment hunting while I've been job hunting, and we've come to find the two hunts are surprisingly similar in their ups and downs and in how we approach things.
The conversation falls to the side project I've been working on, which is editing a novel. My mom has been retired for a few years now and one of her passions has always been writing. She wrote a lot of children's stories when we were small, but didn't have a lot of time to write longer stories during her career as a teacher. Since retiring, she's taken up writing again and has finished her first full-length novel. She passed it over to me to edit it and get it ready for publication, so I've been working on that on and off for the past few months.
I was explaining the process I've been following while editing, and my sister asked "so how did you come up with that process in the first place?" And it seems like such a simple question, but it really made me stop and think.
Because in a nutshell, what she was really asking was "how did you learn to do what you are doing?" And I don't have a good answer for that. Not all writers are editors, not all editors are writers, but some of us really like both. Writing is fun because it's creative and it's a great outlet for an introvert like me. Editing is fun because you get to slash and burn the works of others. (Sorry Mom, but it's true.)
If I had to tell you how I learned to edit or if there are finite steps involved, however, I'd be at a loss.
So my general answer is, "it depends."
In a business environment I'm mostly tasked with editing small articles and documents. Because of that, I can edit for content and for grammar at the same time.
Novels throw most of those rules out the window. I've never edited a novel before, so I had to figure out the best way to do it on my own.
So here's what I did: it may seem simple, but the first thing I did was read it cover to cover. No red pen in hand, no desire to wordsmith, no nothing but an avid reader picking up a book and reading it.
The first step is to know what you're dealing with.
The second step is the high-level edit. I'm not going to spend time adding commas or removing apostrophes if there are plot points that need work or entire chapters that need to be moved around. So step two left the red pen at home as well, and involved writing up a few pages of "here's where your book needs work." I handed these pages back to Mom, who got to work on a new draft.
Step three is to get the novel back and read it again, this time with an eye toward the changes I suggested and how the overall story flows. I'm not surprised to find the story has a wonderful feel to it and is almost there.
Step four, where I'm at now, is nuts-and-bolts editing of this draft into a final draft. Which means, huzzah, red pen time!
Most of the stuff I know how to do is because somebody taught me how to do it. A few things I know how to do are because I just had to get it done and didn't have a model to follow. Business writing and editing don't really equate to works of fiction, but in the end it's a good thing because it's a new skill I'm developing and I'm having fun learning along the way.
And, I love red pens.
