Lower Your Standards

or how to keep writing when the inner critic is raging

The poet William Stafford wrote a poem a day for almost fifty years. When asked how he did this, or more specifically how he dealt with writer’s block, he answered, “I just lower my standards and carry on.”

During the days when writing feels like driving through fog in the dark, I have taken Stafford’s words as my mantra for getting through the first dra…