A Little Help

I was close to writing an essay about how my cat Henry has discovered he likes licking the brim of my coffee mug while I stare at the screen and wait for inspiration to arrive. You can get a little desperate when that inspiration doesn’t come as quickly as you’d like it, and so you start convincing yourself there might be something there in a cat sort of liking coffee. I want to write, you see, but I have to push his nose away because I’m not sure I want to share my mug with him, cute as it seems in theory. I’ve seen where that tongue has been.

As I said, this is what can happen if you would like to start an essay but don’t have an actual idea. An actual idea feels ripe with potential. You want to write that story; you don’t want to write just any story. Though, if I’m honest, sometimes I start with the smallest fragment of an idea, thinking, “Let’s see where this is headed.” Some of my favorite pieces have begun that way. You might, for instance, see your cat nosing your coffee mug, and convince yourself this image is at least writing adjacent, and in you go.

You must be a little discriminating. Surely there are some starting points that lead nowhere. I’ve headed nowhere before and I don’t like it. Or maybe I’ve been somewhere and called it nowhere. My friend Greg just shared a lovely old clip of Robert Frost reciting Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening. I like that poem, but what’s really happening there? The title says it all. Except it doesn’t because nothing anywhere ever is just about what’s happening. No one actually cares about what’s happening. That’s never the story, and where you are will always be somewhere when you ask yourself why you’re there.

That’s how you write a story, or at least the only way I know how. You can tell yourself whatever you want, but you’re always starting wherever and learning where it’s headed. And sometimes, you get a little help along the way, help from the Muse and we call it inspiration, or from your friends though they don’t know they’re helping you, or even your cat, who maybe knows more than you anyway.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com