Real Dreamers

When I started Author, I knew I wanted the magazine to feature interviews with writers, and I knew I wanted those interviews to be on video rather than in print. I believed that it was important for aspiring writers, who I assumed would be the bulk of our readers, to see the authors as live, full, human beings, not just names on a page. This desire was based on my own experience. I had been reading and writing all my life, but until I started doing those interviews, I had met only a handful of published writers. Even though I wanted to be one myself, “an author” sometimes seemed more like a mythic figure than regular person.

That was what I wanted to offer the readers and viewers, but I came to understand later that all those interviews served an additional purpose for me. I was not having any success as a writer at that time, which confused me a little. I was certain that I had all the necessary tools to succeed: I wrote every day, I loved stories, I was a devotee of craft. All that was true, and yet, here I was.

My conversations often included advice from the interviewees. I was not personally looking for advice, however. All I wanted was to sit in the same room with someone who was thriving doing what I wanted to do. I didn’t need them to tell me how they came to see their work published, I just wanted to be around them, to practice seeing success itself as normal. It didn’t matter what the authors wrote, whether I liked their work or not. Everyone, I soon realized, came to rest in more or less the same place when they talked about a book they’d dreamt and then made real.

Of course, everything we dream is real as soon as we dream it. It doesn’t matter if the dream becomes a book on the shelf or not – it is immediately real within me. My conversations with the authors have changed as I’ve come to accept this. I did not need to wait until I’d published something to live where stories come from. It’s where we all belong, and where we immediately return when we’re done waiting for someone else to believe in our dreams.

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