Friendly Lessons

These essays, as well as the last two books I published, are essentially forms of teaching. I certainly want them to be as entertaining as possible, and funny where needed, and hopefully inspiring – but they are above all meant to teach. I didn’t know I had any interest whatsoever in this until I was in my forties. I was an artist. This is still true today, but I always sensed something unacknowledged in me that did not belong in the novels I was writing. Once I started this column and eventually found myself in a classroom, that part of me found its natural expression.

Not that long ago I was driving with my wife and I was talking about something and getting pretty excited about it, when she put her hand on my arm and said, “I’m right here, Bill. You’re not behind a podium.” I had to laugh. She was right; it was a conversation, not a keynote address. I understood then I had often tried teach without realizing what I was doing. A classroom is one thing, a dinner table is another. What is appropriate in one is likely unwanted in the other.

How frustrated and rejected I often felt as a young man. I enjoyed the easy intimacy of one-on-one conversation, but found groups confusing, the teacher in me perceiving his friends as students. Why didn’t they want what I was offering? Yet it was as if I had walked onto a busy soccer pitch with a baseball bat and glove, found no willing playmates, and returned home feeling friendless.

Every story, every expression, has its place and time, its audience and its author. Writing has taught me that rejection, in an odd way, is a form of agreement between both parties. People frequently want different things. Sometimes one wants to discuss politics and the other wants to explore the relationship between creativity and spirituality. The one who feels rejected is merely the one who recognizes the incompatibility of these two desires last.

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