Disciplined Dreaming

I sometimes feel as if I’ve spent my entire life pursuing happiness. I did this thing or that thing or this other thing once and I was happy while I did them and now I want to do them again. Or I think if I can just get this or have that or achieve some goal, I will surely be happy then. There are worse things to pursue than happiness. It’s why I became a writer. I noticed when I was young how it felt when I wrote, and I thought: I would be happy if this were my job.

The problem with pursuing something all the time is that you never really have it. You can’t have it or there’d be no reason to pursue it. There is a kind of romance to pursuit that always appealed to me. I was a very romantic young man. Oh, to be in love, I often thought. How happy I’d be then. So many hours were spent imagining such an experience, that when I finally met a young woman I sincerely loved, I could not bring myself to kiss her for some time. That would end the yearning, the dreaming, and then there would only be the living. I feared I was a better dreamer than liver.

Having now spent so many years both dreaming and living, I’m increasingly convinced there’s not much difference between the two. What is writing if not professional dreaming? There is, however, a necessary discipline required to write every day. It’s not putting your butt in the chair, though you certainly must do so. And it’s not learning your craft, though that’s also a very good idea. Rather, every time I sit at my desk, I must remember that happiness is always something I have, not something I pursue.

How can it be otherwise? The page is blank. However, happiness only feels like pursuit because to tell a story on that page I must find again and again what interests and pleases me that day. It’s not always front of mind. So easy to become distracted by routine and dull tasks, by what I see and hear that displeases me, or by boredom and fear. The more distracted I become, the more the only thing I have ever desired feels further and further away. Such is the consequence of looking and looking for something where it isn’t. And so I sit at the desk, before the blank page, away from the distractions, quieting myself until I fall into kind of slumber and begin to dream again.

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