The Hardest Easiest Thing

My old friend Chris finally wrote a novel. It seemed inevitable to me, though he spent most of his life acting and writing plays and then screenplays. We were roommates for a time when I was in Los Angeles, and we’d often sit around drinking wine at the end of the day, telling each other stories. He’d always been a great storyteller. He knew how to take his time, to pick the one vivid detail. He’d just discovered James Joyce and would periodically emerge from his bedroom and read me a passage he’d fallen in love with. I’d never read anything by J. D. Salinger, nor had he, but he found Raise High the Roofbeams Carpenters, and read the whole thing aloud to me one night.

He left Los Angeles after living there thirty years, and headed back to our native Rhode Island. He was halfway through his novel at that point, and feeling more or less done with Hollywood. I told him I had nothing but confidence in him, but that he had to make sure to write like Chris, and not to try to write like Salinger or Joyce or Hemingway. That should be easy for a natural storyteller like him, but I knew how people could get in their own way.

He sent me the novel last week. I was to be his last reader before he began looking for a publisher. I loved it, and I was so glad to see that he hadn’t, in fact, tried to tell it like anyone but himself. Perhaps he had experimented with that kind of imitation in some earlier drafts without realizing what he was doing. You do so, and then reread it and can’t figure out why it’s not working. Maybe the middle needs more tension? Maybe the protagonist’s motivation isn’t clear enough?

Or maybe you can’t quite believe people would really want to hear your story, and since you’ve read and enjoyed these other writers, and since so many people have also read an enjoyed these same writers, maybe you’ll try to slip into their clothes and not risk the everyday rejection of some stranger picking up your book and then putting it down because it’s not for them. Maybe you want some guarantee. Maybe you’re just afraid that everything you want actually comes from you and you alone and has always been so and all you have to do is listen to what’s been whispering to you all your life.

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