Finding Excitement

I sometimes think of writing a book like being in a marriage. There’s always a lot of excitement at first as you meet the new idea. There’s so much to explore and so much potential, and it feels so good to be excited about something. Eventually, the idea is not new anymore and you are likely, around draft two or three, to start getting in arguments with it. The idea can only be what it is, after all. If you’re writing about magical pirates you can’t also write about transgender soccer players. You may become frustrated with your story’s limitations and its singular direction. You may even begin looking around at other ideas so you can feel excited again.

Writing stories I love and being married to a woman I love has taught me much about excitement. I’ve learned that I can become tired of anything if I start believing that a person or a story is responsible for my excitement, my engagement, my very interest in being on the planet. The world and all its people and all its ideas will always disappoint me in this way.

Which is why every time I sit down to write I must go within myself to find my interest in what I found interesting yesterday. For instance, I wrote a note to myself yesterday about this blog idea. It was so interesting at the time that I would have started writing it then and there if I hadn’t already been writing something else. However, this morning, when I read the note, I couldn’t remember why writing it seemed like such a good idea. Until, that is, I sat with it for a bit and found that interest again.

I don’t believe every marriage is meant to last a lifetime, and I know not every book is meant to be finished. Sometimes people marry for the same wrong reasons they start books, loving not so much the person or the idea but the safety they hope will be provided to them—the safety of success or money or company. I dated women simply because I didn’t want to be alone and I wrote books because I wanted them to be published. The results were predictable.

But interest itself does last a lifetime. There is not a more deadly thought than the belief that nothing is interesting anymore, that nothing can hold my attention, that my curiosity has nowhere to go. I have only ever found my safety from the threat of suffocating boredom in one place, and it wasn’t the bedroom or my writing desk. I have to find it again and again even though it’s always with me, no further from my life than my own heart.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence.
You can find William at: williamkenower.com