All the Voices in My Head

Every single day, I deal with the voices in my head. The ones that say, "God, there's been a million books about that" or "That sentence? Sure didn't look that way in your head" or "You got a long way to go before you're gonna be a real writer" or "This is just plain boring." I could go on and on, I assure you.

I just block them out. That's all there is to it. If I didn't, I couldn't continue writing. I'd be stuck at the first paragraph forever. There's not a specific way to do this; I just have to do it. There's no other choice; if I want to finish something, I have to tune them out. Wait them out, until they realize I'm not listening and they're only wasting their voices. Usually the constant tapping of keys with no regard to their complaints speeds up the process.

I also constantly imagine what someone else would say if they saw the drivel I'm writing right now (as far as the voices inside my head are concerned). Solution: no one sees what I'm writing now. Tempted as I am to send some glittering piece of writing on to someone, I know this isn't the time.

This is First Draft stage. And in this draft, I listen to no one but myself. Period.