The Artist’s Way Assignment: The Censor

Assignment: “Think of your Censor as a cartoon serpent, slithering around your creative Eden, hissing vile things to keep you off guard. If a serpent doesn’t appeal to you, you might want to find a good cartoon image of your Censor, maybe the shark from Jaws, and put an X through it. Post it where you tend to write or on the inside cover of your notebook. Just making the Censor into the nasty, clever little character that it is begins to pry loose some of its power over you and your creativity.”

I chose to sketch (and paint) my inner censor, then use its description as a writing prompt. 

My rough draft (because I’m working on getting okay with sharing them): 

I imagined my Censor as a many armed thing. It wears my wedding ring on one tentacle, a watch on another. In the grip of one flange is a bottle of bubbles and in that bottle the mom I’m supposed...the mom I want to be.Perhaps there is a mop in one tentacle and a set of car keys in another. Two weigh the difference between a teacher’s Apple and a stack of textbooks, they fail to find a balance. The last one is empty and placed across my mouth. I have named my critic Samctimony. 

And another- not necessarily final- draft: 

MANY-FLANGED SANCTIMONY

Around one tentacle, stretching long 

Sings a ticking timepiece song 

To another feebly clings 

A pocked and tarnished wedding ring 

In the next, child's bubble wand

And four children of whom I’m fond 

Mop in one flange, unstick the floors

When that’s finished, chores galore 

Tossing car keys to and fro

This one bellows, “Time to go!” 

One long tentacle dials my phone

“Call them all before they’re gone!” 

One is measuring when I look 

the gap ‘twixt reading and teaching books

One last tentacle holds a key

Placed to my lips, it shushes me 

The critic inside, no one trick pony 

I will call her Sanctimony