Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower

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. 

Writing and sharing our work can be as normal as breathing. Unless, that is, we hold breath as we wonder if other people will like it. 

This isn’t school. This isn’t a math class. When you write fearlessly, there’s only one correct answer, and only you will ever know it.

As writers we have to care as much about the words we use when we describe our own life and experiences, as we do when we describe a scene in our stories.

Rejection, saying no to something, is a part of the creative process, not just what happens sometimes when people don’t like our stuff.

You can’t read anyone’s mind, you can’t make anyone buy anything – and you don’t have to. Just share what is so awesome about your story. 

Writing is all about questions. We ask them, and something else answers. Ask the wrong question, and we’ll only get into trouble.

It’s rare to be in the mood when you start. Your first and most important job is to get into that relaxed, curious, receptive state of mind, and then start writing.

The inner critic isn’t going to help you. He or she is only the voice of fear.

When we can learn to see fear as guidance, we can use the experience to help us stay in the moment, where all stories are actually told. 

There’s no book or author you have to read. You find what you need to read just like you’ll find the story you’re meant to tell.