The Normal Magic

You love the stories, but it’s not about the stories. It seems like it must be because you spend so much time thinking about them and writing them, and that time can’t have been spent for nothing. And maybe you think, “I know it hasn’t been time wasted because I’ve written that story and there it is. I can see it, and it’s a thing that didn’t exist before, and I am why it’s here.” But the story you can see has nothing to do with why the time was well spent.

It has nothing to do with it even though you have despaired it might not be written, or that it might not be loved when it is written. Sleepless nights were spent in doubt and despair over that story, relationships were strained, children ignored. As much as you wanted to write it, there were days it seemed it was ruining your life, that writing it was like opening a window into what was lacking within you. You might think you could have been happier doing anything else, but you don’t want to do anything else the way you want to do this.

And that story has nothing to do with why the time was well spent even when it’s published and you get paid actual money for what you’d have happily done for free. It has nothing to do with it even when you learn that other people, people you’ve never met, people from far corners of the world—these people are glad you wrote your story. This thing you dreamed in the supreme privacy of workplace has reached a stranger and moved them in ways that is both surprising and understandable to you. That’s magical, and surely something magical wasn’t a wasn’t of time.

But the money and the magic, the suffering and the relief, were not why the time was well spent. Eventually you grow accustomed to it all. Eventually you accept the cycle of creation, accept that without the unknown there is no pleasure of discovery, accept that money can flow from love, that the magic of the writer and reader can be found every day between two strangers on the street. Eventually you accept that this is just life, and that discovery and love and magic are normal, and now you know why you do it.

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