Take My Word — Author

I like to teach. I like to teach people how to tell stories, and I like to teach people how to write with confidence, how to face a blank page knowing that something will come if we let it. When I teach, I usually sit on a table at the front of the classroom and talk. Sometimes I tell stories about my creative life, about how I used to deal with rejection and how I deal with it now, or what I used to think it meant when nothing was coming and what I know it means now.

If it’s a class on storytelling, I talk about why we think certain approaches will work and why they never do. I talk about what seems to always work, about how important physical detail is even though the stories are always about something we can’t touch or see. In a workshop, I’ll read stories the students submitted aloud and then we’ll all talk about it, about where it lit up and where it seemed vague. Some students are shy and I have to ask them to talk; others speak right up as soon as I finish a story. In the end, though, everyone talks.

I love to talk as much as I love to teach. Yet my words don’t actually teach anything. The only thing that teaches is experience. I can say, “Next time you tell a story, try relying less on adjectives and adverbs to make a scene come to life.” That’s good advice, but the students won’t actually begin learning about the true power of nouns and verbs until they have the experience of building a scene that isn’t heaped with descriptors. Until the writer has made the choice to leave adjectives out and seen for themselves how the writing comes to life, they are only taking my word for it. I’m a pretty trustworthy guy, but no one should just take my word for anything.

This is why when I teach, I like to tell stories. The best stories leave room for the student or reader to make up their own mind about what is real and what is not, about what was valuable and what can be discarded. The best stories leave enough room for the reader’s imagination that they are like experiences themselves, and when they finish it, they feel like they’ve done something more than read. When this happens, they’ve taken my words and made them their own, and they don’t have to trust me, just themselves.

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