Station KFKD: Turning Off Your Inner Critic And Tuning Into Your Intuition

Towards the end of 2025, I finally finished reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

I say "finally" because although I've had my copy of it since Intro to Creative Writing in my freshman year of college, I'd never actually read it cover to cover. In class, we'd read selected passages from Lamott's book, alongside some from other quintessential reads, including On Writing by Stephen King and Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, many of which were photocopied and accompanied by additional documents, but we didn't do any extensive deep dives.

Nearly a decade later (somehow), I happened upon that copy of Bird by Bird while going through some things and committed to reading it all the way through, annotating it as I went.

My greatest takeaway was simply this: why did I wait so long?

Bird by Bird is the perfect blend of advice and anecdotes (which, honestly, is the vibe I want to bring to the blog more often), with plenty to learn from. Even though not every single entry resonated with me, one in particular was one of those "right thing at the right time" kind of things: Station KFKD.

Here, Lamott discusses the inner critic, comparing it to a radio station she calls KFKD, or K-Fucked, playing in stereo 24/7 if left unchecked.

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, of 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.

- Anne Lamott

In other words, it's self-confidence and self-doubt taking over the airwaves, with imposter syndrome getting a guest DJ spot. Not exactly easy listening.

Over the past year, writing has felt harder. Different. It's not a bad thing, per se. I've noticed some shifts in my writing that I want to lean into more. But for every one thing I'm certain about, there are at least a dozen I'm not so sure about.

I've fallen into a weird limbo of wanting validation and making sure I'm doing things right, but also feeling like I should wait until everything is more or less presentable. I'm fortunate to be involved with a fantastic writing group, but this vascilation has been paralyzing. I haven't dropped anything into our shared drive for feedback in months, even though I know it would be a massive confidence and motivation booster.

This fear of getting my writing "wrong" isn't anything new. When I began taking it more seriously as a teen and started working on my first novel, I sought out every how-to guide I could get my hands on (while simultaneously being snared by the I-know-everything-there-is-to-know-about-writing-MY-book-mindset, a major hindrance). And pretty much every one of those guides emphasized the importance of outlining and sticking to that outline. This was back in the day when you'd hear things like, "If you don't write with an outline, your readers will know," implying that writing without an outline would result in a badly written book.

I eventually figured out that I am (and that I am allowed to be) a Plantser, a writer who does their share of outlining but is also chasing inspiration as they go and just seeing where the story takes them. I'd say it's probably a 60:40 ratio, more on the Pantser side, and I didn't question it until NaNoWriMo 2023.

Having never attempted NaNoWriMo in any official capacity before, I did what I often do before jumping into uncharted creative territory and over-researched the heck out of it. The thing I saw over and over again? Outline. Outline as if your story's life depends on it. Because it does. The preceding month, known as Preptober, is all about outlining and laying the groundwork for the frenzy of November.

When it comes to NaNoWriMo (or its various offshoots), planning ahead can make a difference. When you've only got thirty days to write 50K, every second is precious. You don't want to get stuck and lose time breaking through those blocks. Having that outline can solidify your plans because you know what happens next. What needs to be written.

Theoretically...

It was only a couple of chapters into A Tided Love that the outline I had spent so much time piecing together during Preptober unraveled. One small change—for the better, IMHO—impacted everything else down the line. That outline no longer worked.

Because I had done three times the planning I usually do for a new story, I was starting to feel tinges of mental burnout. Those plans falling through was the last nail in a coffin built from technical difficulties and overestimating the limitations of my chronic illness. That's where the volume of self-doubt started to creep in.

With my intuition, there's been so much static.

Combine that with my need to get my writing "right." I finally moved past the idea of writing the book that will be perfect for every reader, but I feel like I am still trying to find that sense of self in my writing again.

For me, Station KFKD doesn't play the endless stream of self-aggrandizement Lamott describes. Instead, it sounds like those dollar-store earbuds. The ones that never fit in your ears quite right and broke in a week, so you'd have to twist the cord in all sorts of entanglements around your iPod if you had any hope of hearing your music as anything but a garbled, distant mumble. And when you are able to get the signal again, it only ever plays the same corrupted file of doubts.

That's the essence of what I meant when I said one of my main goals for 2026 was learning to tune into my intuition again. Finding who I want to be as a writer and figuring out what that means for my stories.

Giving myself the power to turn off Station KFKD. Or at least, turn down the volume for a minute.