Everyone faces the Inner Critic, no matter how experienced they are. Professional writers, even those who have published widely and won awards, might give it names. Sue Grafton calls hers "the ego," the part that's always concerned with "how are we doing?" I think of mine as an elderly, worried aunt, trying to keep me safe. Some Inner Critics are funny, joking with you inside your head as they mess with your mind--maybe teasing you about taking writing so seriously. Most are discouraging, even menacing.
But rarely is this inner voice truthful--its job is to sabotage all efforts to create art, to do anything with our writing that takes us out of the known and acceptable.
So why is such an obstacle there, in the first place? Is there a chance we, ourselves, create that critical voice? And is there any way to make friends with it, silence it enough so we can keep on writing?