I spent the last week of October out on the island again, and had myself a glorious time in the company of my dear old novel-in-progress – such a strange, embarrassing gal I can’t help hanging out with even though she dresses so bad and doesn’t know how to act in public. Hopefully I’ll teach her one day, but until then, she’s lovely for one-on-one hangs from time to time.

Anyway. Something I’ve learned a quadrillion times but learned all over again during this retreat: alter egos are where it’s at.

As always when I’m writing hard and heavy, I listened to a shit-ton of Beyoncé. This time around, I kept being drawn to “This is…Sasha Fierce” even though sometimes I think it’s my least favourite album of hers. But Sasha Fierce – invented for when Beyonce wanted to get sexy and brave – was on my mind.

The same week, Grimes released her new video and it was the only reason I was bummed I’d left my computer’s wireless card at home. I had to crouch in the one corner of my bedroom where my phone worked and inhale the video from the tiny screen. There she was being Grimes – already, of course, an alter ego for Claire Boucher – but also inhabiting these new ones too, like Screechy Bat (the metal one) who I guess is this blood-thirsty angel but I could be wrong?

I also listened to a lot of Carly Rae Jepson and Chvrches and the new Newsom and lots of Drake and Sia and a little bit of Tay and Kanye between bouts of basically going at this novel with a hacksaw and a belt-sander and I danced and I danced and I danced.

The retreat centre is a very old school converted into studio space. Clearly we’ve devalued education for a long, long time, so a lot of the rooms have nothing but these awful fluorescent strip lights. To compensate, the management has very kindly outfitted each with a motley assortment of table- and clamp-lamps, too. I usually had these on exclusively at night, which meant that when I danced, my shadow danced with me, lanky and blurry and huge. And though our moves were dramatic and quite possibly the worst, these dances felt special, like there were two of us, and one of us was me, and the other was, well. Little Bravery? Sure.

Sometimes she and I got low.

All of this also made me think of some, like, “inner work” I did when I was younger and trying to claw my way out of hating the way I write. I can’t even remember what hippie hooey I was reading at the time, but I do know I needed it because the voice in my head was tearing myself to bloody shreds on the reg (I remember clearly waking up some mornings and already on my bleary way to my desk my brain-voice was declaring me a “useless sack of shit.” Rude.)

So one of the more important hints I gleaned from my reading was to name your inner critic. I named mine Leslie (no offense to any great Leslies out there, respect). The idea is that when you hear her talking, you just be like, “Okay Leslie, shut up.” Or nicer than that, just like, “I don’t need you around right now, Les, honey, I’m working on some stuff, you know?”

Another good one comes from, I’m pretty sure, Anne Lamott’s very charming (except the cringe-inducing Special Olympics chapter, but nobody’s perfect) Bird by Bird.  What you do is imagine there’s this creature that lives inside you who types and types all day long and hands you the pages for you to use or reject. They’re the one who does the sweating and toil, and you can just let them pass you the stuff for polishing and refinement. I like it.

My guy (I guess I wanted a beleaguered male in my tyrannical employ?) is square-headed, yellow-furred, spindle-legged and looks awfully stressed as he puffs away over his manual typewriter in the imagined hollow of my body, just churning out rough drafts for me. I really appreciate him. Lately, he can barely keep up with my demands, but man, he just keeps clacking.

So when I give it some thought, I’ve got a decent-sized team working on my relatively meager enterprise. Right this minute, for example, Little Bravery’s pushing herself hard to reign in square-head’s ramblings so this can go up tonight, even though I (Julia) woke up so sleepy because November rain and darkness, whining that this post was pointless and it would be better to take the afternoon off and read the free recipe calendar I got from the grocery store. I got outvoted.

Interestingly, before the album “Beyoncé” came out, Beyoncé said she killed Sasha Fierce. She didn’t need her any more. Do I aspire to kill Little Bravery? I don’t know, man. She helps me out, she’s such an earnest, tenacious thing, her blurry body loping around on my studio wall – I think I’d really miss her. I guess if she goes away and I release a perfect record with a face-melting video to go with every track, I’d be cool with that, too. But for now, she and I are gonna just keep at it – belt-sanding and getting low.

Bonus: just in case you haven’t already watched this your requisite 15 times today, here’s Grimes and her whole coterie (the girl group!) just having the best damn blood-soaked time: