Still The Same

You have to be patient if you want to write. For years I thought this was perhaps not the case; or, at least I hoped it wasn’t. I was not a patient person. I wanted what I wanted and I wanted it now rather than later. I’d had a few experiences where a story or poem or scene came out in one thrilling rush. That’s the way I want to write, I thought. In fact, that’s all I trusted. The rest, it seemed, was grinding and worry. I’d heard it said that real writing was rewriting, but I suspected this was espoused by people who didn’t know how to tap into that well from which the gold flowed easily.

The problem is that if I wanted to write anything longer than a sonnet – like, say, a book – then I was going to have face the page when there was no great creative urgency boiling in me. I needed to sit down when I was just my ordinary self. Sit down and wait. At first, I avoided the waiting by diving straight in, hoping by writing quickly regardless of the value of what came through I would jumpstart my genuine creative engine. It did not. Writing without any inspiration at all was deadening and left me doubting myself. It was better, I decided after much trial and error, to give myself the time to sift through the ideas that came until one sparked something in me.

I remembered then how as a very young man I’d become obsessed with time. It seemed both a commodity of which I had a conspicuously limited supply, as well as an endless spool that would roll on with or without me. Tempting to see writing as a way of overcoming it, that if I authored something special enough I could one day rest happily in my grave knowing that story was living on. This view, however, only created a ticking clock in my mind that grew steadily louder with every passing year.

Too much pressure: Write, or else. When you sit with the ideas that come and go, you will eventually notice the part of you that chooses what to pursue and what to ignore is as still as sleep. It’s the only state in which the dreams can come, and where time is irrelevant. Nothing actually changes in that stillness. There are no seasons, no night and day. There is only that which gives expression, and which will remain the same forever, too vast for a single song, but recognizable just the same in every note.

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