The Life You Lead

When they’re interviewed, writers are sometimes asked, “Where do your ideas for stories come from?” It’s kind of a strange question for a person to ask another person, since everyone on earth gets ideas. I understand, however, that some writers’ stories seem so original or unusual that the reader might feel like the author has access to some special repository, the keys to which are perhaps handed out at birth. Thoughts, after all, always grow from other thoughts, and if nothing you’ve ever thought resembles what’s on the page, the ideas seem magical, as if they come literally out of nowhere.

That’s how I feel about my friend Chris who, among other things, is a master carpenter. When I visited him a month ago at his new digs in Rhode Island, he showed me the custom cabinets he’d just made for his workroom as well as the sailboat on which he was putting the finishing touches. That he built a boat, an actual boat, is still astounding to me. Admittedly, I am one of the least handy people in the continental United States. When my wife and I managed to install a new light fixture in our kitchen, I wanted to call all my living relatives to share the news.

Though when we were roommates in Glendale thirty-five years ago, I also marveled at the coffee table Chris made for out living room. He said he learned a lot while building sets for theater and movies. You just figure it out, he told me. He also said he used to watch his dad make things in his shop in their basement. It’s stories like this that would sometimes get me wondering about my own life, how it would have gone if I had bothered to pick up a hammer or saw when I ten instead of the flute, of if I had taken five minutes to learn what a chord was on the piano that sat unplayed in our downstairs hall my entire childhood.

Or, for that matter, if I had kept writing the swords and sorcery stories I so loved when I was fourteen, or if I had tried my hand at standup when I was performing sketch comedy. It’s a fruitless wondering, as I can no more picture any of the lives I could have lived than I could build a boat to carry my loved ones safely to shore. I see most clearly what’s before me, and I dream most vividly where I’m going. This is how the branches of my life spreads, reaching out in stories and songs from roots running deep in the ground.

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