Radio CBZY Plays all the insecurities all the time.

Another update from class-land. It does feel a bit like being away from other things, in a foreign country even. I have been looking both closely at my work and from a distance, trying to get that objective distance, which can be difficult when you go deeper into your work.

Reading and still loving Bird by Bird, which it turns out is a good compliment to the things I am learning in the fiction class. Lamott nails the writer's mind so well, or mine at least. She writes about the radio station that blares away in your head, filling you full of self-doubt and insecurity (this blasts away in the left speaker) and self-aggrandizement blasts out the right, the recitation of one's specialness. The goal is to shut that station off and become quiet so you can listen your characters speak in a still small voice.

Her station she calls KFKD, or K-Fucked. This is an example of the great cranky stream of humour that runs throughout the book. For me the insecurity channel blares a bit louder than the other, though I am sure it is there. I am thinking of a name for my own channel, and all the anxieties and mental demands of life that encroach when I sit down to write. Probably CBZY - C because it's a Canadian station and the rest because I can have a hard time settling my busy mind. There's always things to think about, taxes to do, phone calls to make and meetings to arrange. But I am working at flipping the switch on that station, or putting it on time-delay. I can always listen to it later.