Anne Lamott, writing about self-doubt and imposter syndrome in Bird by Bird, says she deals with these issues every morning when she is ready to write. She says, “So I sit for a moment and then say a small prayer—please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written.”

Those words were quite enlightening to me. Once again, Lamott speaks my feelings better than I am able to. I encounter this obstacle frequently when I am trying to create something. I have done a lot of work when it comes to self-doubt and self-loathing in my personal life, but in my writer persona—and a persona it is, for now—I am still haunted by voices telling me that I am a fraud. Lamott calls this “the radio station KFKD (or K-Fucked).” Basically, she describes it as two channels going to each ear. One channel tells you that you are a wonderful person and writer, and the other channel lists every fault, every failure and every unrealistic expectation, real or imagined that you might have as you strive toward creating good works. Of course, the negative channel is always louder than the positive one. Lamott talks about daydreaming disastrous visions instead of working. One my worst days, this is exactly what will happen. I will have a scene in my head, and my characters want to talk but are unable to because of the chatter in my head. I used to talk daily with a friend who had three young children. She would call me up and ask me about what I was writing, or how I felt about a movie, or event, or some philosophical idea, and I would have a lot of things to say, but whenever I really started to warm up to the subject, there would be an interruption. The toddler climbed out of the play pen; the middle schooler needed to find the scissors; his twin was hungry but didn’t want anything in the fridge. And so the conversation would occur in fragmented sections where we would forget the particular tangent we had gone down and have to start over. Now, of course, a mother with children has a legitimate excuse to be scattered and have a short attention span for your literary musings, but when you are sitting alone, and your subconscious is acting like you have three toddlers in your brain it might be time to take a few deep breaths and try to focus on the task at hand. We need to get out of our own way and let the characters speak uninterrupted.  It is easier said than done, at least for me.