Creative Waiting

Be patient. Sometimes the word doesn’t come right away. Sometimes you have to wait a minute or two or even thirty. You can force it a little and just start typing, and maybe something will come out you like. More likely you’ll end up in a corner you’ll then have to write your way out of. Better to wait, if only for the practice. It’s not so bad, if you don’t judge it, if you don’t think a better writer would have already found the word, or worry that you won’t reach your word count, or that you aren’t getting any younger.

Real waiting is just accepting where you are in your scene, in your story, in your life. Accepting doesn’t mean complacency or stasis. Quite the opposite. Accepting is, you could say, the step before you take a step. It means having your eyes open and acknowledging where you are, observing the options, as a chess player must scan the whole board before making their next move. Stepping blindly is a crapshoot, and if you do it often enough, and bang into enough walls, or end up in enough bad jobs and relationships, you can start forming a hostile view of the world. Maybe you think you have bad luck or that nothing works out or that life is a pie of which there are only so many slices and if you don’t hurry, you’ll miss yours.

For most of my life I was quite impatient. I wanted what I wanted and I wanted it now. Mostly, what I wanted didn’t come at the pace I preferred. Sometimes it did. I could get in the zone, and then away I’d go. But when I wasn’t going, when nothing seemed to be happening, oh, how miserable I could get. This was before I began practicing creative waiting, allowing the necessary stillness into which a new idea could come. Or perhaps, the idea was right next to me, but I had to get quiet enough to notice it.

Either way, I get what I want. It’s practical, you see, but more than that it makes the world a friendlier place. People sometimes ask writers where their ideas come from. For me, the answer is the here-and-now. Ideas, like opportunity, like roads in city, are all about me if I can allow myself to perceive them. It’s not luck or privilege or talent, it’s my willingness to accept life for the friendly companion that it always is.

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