In author Anne Lamott’s classic book on writing, Bird By Bird, there is a clever and hilarious chapter entitled “Radio Station KFKD.” What is station KFKD you ask? Well, it would channel KF**KED, to be exact. A 24-hours-a-day, nonstop, in-stereo radio voice that, out of the right speaker, sweetly sings our gifted special ness as human beings and the brilliance of our own words on paper, while out of the left speaker, raps of our failings as spouses, parents and just human beings in general. Oh, and that every word of our writing is utter crap. It’s a fairly schizophrenic audio experience and no doubt, any writer reading this is nodding their head in zealous agreement. (“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” –E. L. Doctorow)

            My personal station KFKD comes and goes with some level of predictability. For instance, when I first get an idea for a story, an I’m-on-to-something-big-idea, the right speaker is playing, telling me things like, “Good gravy, you’re so freaking smart! How has no one else ever thought of this before? It will be brilliant. It will be GENIUS! The Pulitzer committee won’t be able to get the prize into your hands fast enough!”

            Then I start actually writing on said story. By page 50, the left speaker has taken over, saying things like, “Good gravy, this story is so stupid. You’re already stuck on chapter seven with no idea what to say next. Your characters are sketchy. Your plot is convoluted. Your prose is stale and unoriginal. You write too slowly. You’ll finally be exposed as talent-less. AND your hair looks like crap today.”

            Then I finish the first draft and set it aside for a mandatory breathing period, in which the right speaker returns for the honeymoon, saying things like, “Well, you saved that runaway train before it crashed into the station! Really pulled it altogether in the eleventh hour! Only a writer with true, raw talent could bring this story to fruition. There may have been some rough patches along the way, but true brilliance such as yours ALWAYS TRIUMPHS!”

            Said mandatory breathing period ends. I return to the manuscript to start revisions. Hello, left speaker, the honeymoon is o-v-e-r. “Oh. My. God. THIS is what I just spent the last year and a half of my life writing?!!! Total drivel? Incoherent, inconsequential, coma-inducing garbage? A monkey could’ve wiped his butt, smeared it on the computer screen and come up with something better than this! AND your hair looks like crap today.”

            This would be the point where I’ve learned not only to switch channels, but shut the radio off altogether. A total survival tactic so I don’t give up and quit writing altogether. I often turn to the wise words of much more talented writers than myself. Some of my favorites:

“When asked, ‘How do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘One word at a time.’”

—Stephen King

“For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.”—Ernest Hemingway

“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day’s work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of never finishing.”

–John Steinbeck

If giants like King, Hemingway and Steinbeck have listened to station KFKD, then maybe there’s hope for a peasant like myself. In writing and even in life, I can switch the channel or turn the radio off, bravely face the steaming pile of poo that is my story, and take it one word, one page, then one chapter at a time. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll find some of that Hemingway luck and write better than I actually can.

What I’m reading right now: Homer and Langley by E. L. Doctorow

Words that make me laugh: “It’s a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.” –Erle Stanley Gardner

My favorite Thanksgiving quote: “What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets.  I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?” –Erma Bombeck

Happy Thanksgiving to all!