Patient Movement

If you want to write, you have to get comfortable with how much time you will spend sitting and doing nothing. And by doing nothing, I mean staring ahead at a blank page or a spot on the wall, waiting for an idea worth following to emerge. Though even to say I’m waiting isn’t entirely accurate. If I’m at my desk and I’ve settled into a good long stare, particularly when I’m searching for a new essay, I’m actually doing a kind of mental reconnaissance.

An idea will arrive, and before I put one word of it on the page, I’ll begin composing what might be its first sentence in my mind. I love writing a sentence, finding its rhythm and intention, looking for the shortest, most elegant path from its first word to its last. This is not what I’m doing as I’m composing in my mind, however. I’m simply testing, in a sketch of a sentence, my level of interest in the idea. Do I feel pulled along by it? Do I want to know where it’s headed, what might come next? Or is the idea headed somewhere I feel I’ve been before?

I must admit, I don’t fully understand why one idea is more appealing and alive to me than another, I just know it’s my job to recognize the difference between what lights up and what does not. This is where I must be patient. I’d always rather be writing than not writing if writing is what I sat down to do. If I’m impatient, I’ll tell myself I’m interested in something simply because I have come to associate movement with meaning and passion and success and happiness and money and approval and everything I think I’ve ever wanted.

Yet

it was never the movement that brought me where I wanted to be, just as it wasn’t typing that wrote my stories.

I have run in circles, fueled by vanity and fear, only to end up where I started, exhausted and frustrated, complaining of the pointlessness of it all. Fortunately, I have also followed an interesting idea, followed it so naturally I hardly notice I’m moving, so fixed is my attention on a path as clear to me as my own reflection.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence.
You can find William at: williamkenower.com