Inner Kid and Igor Converse About Writing

By Milli Thornton

INNER KID: Good morning! I’m planning to just stretch myself out, relax and enjoy this day. What are your thoughts on the matter? (As if I didn’t already know. . . .)

EGO: Well, it’s a 10K Day. That’s 10,000 words. We’re going to have to be disciplined, organized and work hard to write that many words in a day. The most important thing is to not waste time.

INNER KID: &%$@#&^%#$@#$

EGO: Kindly watch your language. Where is your self-control?

IK: Why do you have such a dumb name? Igor. Igors always live in Russia. Do you live in Russia?

IGOR: You know I don’t live in Russia; I live in Ohio. This is just another childish distraction away from what’s really important, which is making the best use of our time. You’re so talented at creating distractions—why don’t you put some of that energy into something constructive for once?

IK: Hey, why don’t you do something constructible for once besides being a nitpicking old biddy? I see you going back to correct your punctuation. You’re even correcting MY punctuation! Get out of my sentences! What I say and how I write it is none of your business!!

IGOR: Can you speak in a tone a few decibels lower than double exclamation points? I can hear you, really. Louder than I care to, if you must know. And that’s even when you’re sleeping.

IK: When I’m sleeping? What would you know about that?

IGOR: When you’re sleeping is about the only time I can proceed peacefully with my plans and get something done. But even when you’re sleeping, I can still feel you in there tossing around, making waves. A symptom here, a symptom there. I can tell when you’re having another nightmare about time . . . because that’s when I start feeling anxious about how much there is to do and how there are never enough hours in the day to do it all.

IK: Snort! The reason I have nightmares about time is because of YOU. I didn’t even know what “time” was until you grew up and took over my life. Time doesn’t exist where I am. There’s never any limit to what I can do if I want to. The only important thing is that I feel like doing it and I’m in the mood to do it. If I’m not enjoying it anymore, I quit. And I sleep whenever I want to, which is whenever I get sleepy (DUH). Not like you. You have your dumb “schedule” and you think that’s more important than having fun.

IGOR: Having fun and “moods” are fleeting things. Here one minute and gone the next. One cannot derive any lasting value from such whimsy. What really means something in this life is achievement. Having something to show for all your hard work; such as a book or a screenplay, a Web site or a newsletter, if you happen to be a writer. Which I am. But all writers have their challenges . . . and my biggest is being saddled with you.

IK: You’re a writer? YOU’RE a writer?? What a joke!! You’re just the transcriber. You do all the dirty work, like capitalization and punctuation and all that boring crap. I’M the one who uses my imagination to invent stories and generate lots of cool ideas. I’M the writer around here. I’M the one who’s saddled with YOU. A basically happy person who has to ride a stubborn, gnarly old mule because that’s the only transportation available. I have to be partners with you because I’m not good at all that stoopid stuff like computers and writing in a straight line and and sending boring query letters yada yada. I like to write upside down and backwards and do spiraling from giant words all the way down to tiny words—and sometimes I use invisible ink just for fun—and I get to write in crayons if I want to—and I have one of those fancy feather pens they used in the Middle Ages—and if I get blobs of ink all over the parchment it’s considered to be artistic. You know, that romantic Artist at Work look, like a painter with splashes of paint all over his shirt while he works on his masterpiece.

IGOR: Oh, brother. There it goes again, babbling away to itself. I don’t know why I allow that creature to sometimes engage me in discussion. It could only be called “discussion” from my side of the Great Divide. I’m sure Bigfoot or the Abominable Snowman would make more sense if they could speak English. I’m certain they would have better manners. Now, if only I could tune out all that babble and get some work done around here. . . .

IK: SCREAM!! HOLLER!! CHOKE!! I hate it when you ignore me and act like I’m not important enough to bestow your precious communications upon. Of all the things that make me want to kill you, that would have to be RIGHT on top of the list. And the way you just barge in and take over drives me bananas in a blender with yukky soymilk!! There has to be some more better way to say I HATES YOU I DESPISE YOU I LOOOAAATHE YOU—because I’ve already screamed that a million times until my eyeballs are leapfrogging out of my head and my blood vessels are bursting out of my skin—but you never change. You think you know everything—you think you’re some kind of expert—but you don’t know the secret to life. You don’t know how to relax and have fun. All you know how to do is try to run as fast as you can from being a failure. There’s not even any such thing as failure where I live. You brought that disease here. So now I’m suffocating and claustrophobicating and YOU RUIN EVERYTHING. I HATES being this powerless. DOESN’T ANYBODY OUT THERE HEAR ME???

IGOR: Hmm, think I’ll turn on this nice mellow music and read some definitions in the dictionary as a warm-up before I start writing. I wish that rash on my hand wasn’t so distracting. But, oh well. Everything can be overcome with discipline. I’ll just ignore it and focus on what’s really important: doing it right. Yep, that’s my motto in life. Nothing’s worth doing unless you do it right the first time.

Cymbals crash. THE END.

Milli Thornton

Milli Thornton is the author of Fear of Writing: for writers & closet writers. She is owner of the Fear of Writing Online Course, where her mission is to put the fun back into writing. Milli blogs at Screenwriting in the Boonies and Milliver’s Travels and coaches writers individually at Writer’s Muse.