Showing Up

For several years I used to run something called The Author’s Roundtable at a local bookstore. Every week I’d show up, sit at a table in the middle of the store, and wait to see who would join me for a couple hours of conversation about the emotional challenges of writing. It was the beginning of what would become Fearless Writing. I knew I needed to learn how to talk to people about why they felt stuck, why they felt like they had no talent, like everything had been said before. I had been writing about these challenges for a while, but that’s different than talking to people. So, I’d show up, and see who wanted to talk.

Sometimes it would be a couple people, sometimes a half-dozen, sometimes just one. I liked it better with more people. There was more energy at the table, more opportunities for new questions, but also, frankly, I felt more successful when more people showed up. I had an entertainer’s instinctual relationship to crowd-size, feeling more valued, more wanted and appreciated the more people there were who came to see and hear me.

I’d been doing it for about six months, and I’d learned that sometimes people signed up ahead of time for The Roundtable, and sometimes they simply arrived when it was scheduled to start. One night, no one had signed up, and so I sat at the table, facing a bunch of empty chairs, watching the minute hand on the bookstore’s big clock tick down to the appointed hour. I could feel something nearly as old as I was stirring me, that hollowed-out feeling of failure. Normally, I felt powerless when it came on strong, and I suppose I would have that night except that the very reason I was there was to talk to other people about failure’s illusory threat.

So, I talked to myself instead. I reminded myself that what I had to offer was valuable whether anyone showed up or not, and that I only truly knew its value because it had helped me. I had found it because I needed to find it, and I could not go looking for it again in those empty chairs. When it was quarter past the hour, and the chairs were still empty, I grabbed my bag and told the folks at the store that I’d see them next month.

Getting into my car, I still wished people had come. I liked talking to them. They inspired me, taught me, and always gave me new ideas for essays. But as I headed home, I had already begun composing a story in my mind about the time no one came to The Roundtable. It’ll be a good story someday, I thought, one I would never have found it if I hadn’t shown up.

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