Identifying your inner selves…

Five aspects of my personality…

It will soon be November, and November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), so for a change from my usual content I’d like to share this random writing exercise with you, as I found it very interesting when I tried it a decade ago.

I’ll say more about the source of the exercise later, but this is it:

All of us contain multiple inner voices. You may have a Censor, an Inner Explorer, perhaps an Inner Romantic, a Wonderer, a Pragmatist, a Bully, an Intellectual, maybe even a rock-and-roll Drummer. Take a blank sheet of paper, number from one to five, and list, name and describe your secret inner selves.

In naming your secret selves, try to maintain some humour and affection for the cast you carry within you. Each of these multiple yous has a role and a value.

So anyway, here are mine:

1) Ed the Mission Controller

Ed Harris as mission controller Gene Kranz in the film Apollo 13…

This is the calm organiser and leader. This part of me is usually in charge when I am troubleshooting computer problems – or trying to unblock a drain. I imagine Ed as the Mission Controller in the Apollo 13 film (played by Ed Harris). The trouble is that as I am female, when I am in Ed mode, I may be considered bossy.

Ed is also an apt name as it is short for Editor, and that is what I am in my day job as a journalist.

2) Gloria the Magpie

Gloria loves sparklies – click on the image to find out more about this glorious stained glass window by Karl Parsons in St Laurence’s church, Ansley. The picture is by Aidan McRae Thomson on Flickr…

Gloria is the collector in me, and the one with a sense of wonder. This part of me is in charge when I look at a flower or a rainbow or a stained glass window or hear wonderful choral music (like Vivaldi’s Gloria) or go “ooooh” at sparkly jewellery or fireworks.

Ed is always trying to get Gloria to declutter.

3) Daniel the Explorer

Michael Shanks as Dr Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1

Daniel is the intellectual, the mental explorer, the scientist, the archaeologist. He is always seeking out new ideas and knowledge and is the one who has been with me in all my studies and remains with me now when I research a blog post and find something interesting.

I chose the name Daniel before I linked it to the clever one in Stargate SG-1, but he is my kind of thinker. Daniel and Gloria both love fossils and coins.

4) Fanny Fearful

This is Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter films, but I hope you see what kind of person I mean…

Oh dear, I am also tempted to call her Patty Pants-down, as I think of my first day at infants school, where the elastic in my knickers went and I ran all the way home with them hanging around my knees, crying for my mummy.

This is me when I have no confidence or I am miserable or talk too fast or get impatient or worry about work.

5) Mr Angry

Don’t make me angry!

These days Mr Angry only comes out when I have a misunderstanding with someone at work, or just miss a bus, or when the self-checkout in the supermarket doesn’t recognise an item. It’s frustration more than anything.

He used to team up with Fanny Fearful to shout “It’s not fair!” a lot. Life still isn’t fair, but we are all older and wiser now…

I often find myself noticing which of my inner voices is speaking. But I have only just realised there is no one in there to do all the people-loving (perhaps that’s Gloria, or perhaps all five of them) – and who does the washing up? It will have to be Ed…

This post is not intended to make light of the very real problems some people experience with multiple personality disorders, but I think the fact is that for most of us the “self” is maybe not an “individual” anyway, but a team, usually working in harmony, we hope!

The Artist’s Way at Work

The exercise comes from a very good book called The Artist’s Way at Work, Twelve Weeks to Creative Freedom, by Mark Bryan with Julia Cameron and Catherine Allen. I picked it up from the free pile for review in the office in 1998.

I picked it up because I had already borrowed from the library an earlier book, simply called The Artist’s Way, by Mark Bryan and Julia Cameron. The “at work” book was not quite as interesting to me as the first, since it was more about business and working life than writing novels, which is what I was hoping to do at the time. But I still found the exercises (or “tools”) fun.

I don’t think I will ever write a novel now. I did have a stab at NaNoWriMo unofficially one year (without making it public), but I found I am no good at plots and anyway I don’t have the time… or is that Fanny Fearful talking?

So, I’ve told you MY inner selves. But who are YOURS?

I hope I have given you a little food for thought and good luck to everyone taking part in NaNoWriMo!