After gathering this list of craft books from my writing friends, I decided to revisit some of my favorites to see which bits of advice have had the greatest impact on my writing habits.
This passage from Annie Lamott’s Bird by Bird
If you are not careful, station KFKD (K-Fucked) will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo. Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on. You might as well have heavy-metal music piped in through headphones while you’re trying to get work done.
We all have an editor in our ears while we’re writing. How do you silence yours?
[...] your inner radio from KFKD (K-F*cked)* to YOU and get going. Now is a great time. Or now. Or even [...]
[...] just in their mind. And if you’ve read Anne Lamott’s wonderful Bird by Bird, she talked about Radio KFKD, which is in your ear. One side you’re hearing the siren song of self-aggrandizement, and on the [...]