Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower

Our voice is not an expression of some discovered style, or of talent, or intelligence, but rather our unique interest. Let your work express that , what you actually care about in a story, in a scene, in a sentence, and your authentic voice will come through naturally.

The big successes – the completed book, the published novel, the good sales – are always an accumulation of little successes. Yet writers often don’t appreciate those small successes because they don’t think they really count until the big ones have been met.  

Sometimes writers feel like beggars asking for handouts as they submit their work. But we’re not. We’re not asking for anything, we’re giving something. We just need to remember the value of what it is we’re offering.

Whether you use this language or not, you know what it feels like when you get out of your own way. But how do we do that? The key is getting curious, asking questions in which we’re sincerely interested, and then accepting any answer that comes.

Sometimes sitting down and having no ideas, no inspiration, can feel like the kind of nothingness we picture when we imagine failure. Except there is no such thing as nothing. We just can’t yet see what is there. 

All rejection starts at home. First, the writer rejects herself by worrying what someone will think of her work, then the public rejects the book because it doesn’t feel authentic. Our job is to satisfy no one but ourselves. Success will naturally follow.

A listener wanted to know how to get her story to “settle down” so she could tell it. The real discipline of writing is learning how to tell the difference between forcing and allowing, to know whether we’re following an idea that belongs in the story we’re telling, or simply starting a new one.

Just like your stories are within you as they’re being written, so too the success you so desire. Don’t look for it in the world around you. You won’t really see it. Go inside, and find it where it lives.

Can’t find the time to write? Your life too busy, what with the job and the kids and just being tired at the end of the day? The question probably isn’t, “Where do I find the time to write?” But, “Is writing a waste of time?” It’s not, but sometimes it can seem that way. 

In which I answer a question from a listener who wants to follow his muse but sees so much failure around him. Does it really work. What if it leads you astray? 

If you’re ever feeling uninterested in life or yourself or your work, remember you’re just looking in the wrong place for what you want.

The story of how I reconnected with the woman is who is now my wife is also the story about how I learned where all stories come from. Everything authentic begins and ends with an alive stillness that requires nothing, but is always creating.

It’s not enough to learn our craft, we also have to practice emotional mastery – finding our inherent confidence every single time we sit down to write. It’s always there, finding it anew every day requires practice.  Episode 7: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2204720/episodes/13084129

The biggest difference between most beginning and more seasoned writers, is the experienced author understands how little they actually need to know to start writing. Don’t try to do the Muse’s job. Instead, collaborate with her to tell your story.

You may see the success other people have had, and think you want it – but you don’t. You’ve only ever wanted your success, the same as you’ve only ever wanted to live your life.

You don’t really need to know how to do it, or where to go, or what should come next. All you really need to know is that you’re interested – in the book, the career, in the relationship. Trust that your interest is enough and you’ll be guided by it.

A true story of how my imagination invented a nightmare and just a quickly dispelled it. A reminder to only pay attention to what inspires and soothes us. 

Doing what love is always the most practical choice, even if you don’t know where you’re going or how you’ll succeed. Forcing anything is guaranteed failure.

Entertaining our readers is not about spoon-feeding “what they want,” but offering them what we value, what we want to share, in a way that best allows them to receive it. 

When we make an excuse for why we don’t have the time to write or why can’t get published, we’re describing a reality we don’t want to live in. When we stop making these excuses, we give ourselves a chance to see a different, and better, reality. 

Humility isn’t saying you’re not a good writer, or that someone is better than you. It’s about learning how to be grateful for what provides inspiration, and what answers the questions that keep us up at night. 

Care about how you feel while you write. You always want to feel good and you never want to feel bad. Thinking some result out in the future is more important than how you feel in the present is a recipe for procrastination and failure.

Every story has three arcs: the Physical Arc, the Emotional Arc, and the Intentional Arc. The Intentional, why the story is being told, is the most important, but often the hardest to find. Yet without it, the story has no meaning or center. 

We spend our lives trying to satisfy it, in the books we read and the books we write. The only reason you don’t like something you’ve written is because it doesn’t satisfy that aesthetic. Our trouble starts when we forget that.

It’s not thinking. Our job is to have questions we’re interested in, ask them of our imagination, and then trust that the answer will come.