Old Comfort

My computer crashed over the weekend, and in the course of resuscitating it I wound up losing the last five months of work. Some of that work was recoverable by certain tricks, but some, like eleven chapters of a memoir I was working on, were not. Had I printed out those chapters? No, I had not. They lived entirely in a digital ether that was my hard drives until their 1s and 0s were wiped into nothingness.

I was fortunate in a way. Though I had reached the point in the memoir where I was certain it was a least worthy of a whole first draft, I was not clear what I would do with it thereafter. I was enjoying writing it, but I had hadn’t made up my mind as to whether it had enough meat on its bones to be an actual book. In fact, I had been deliberately non-committal about the project’s potential, which is very unusual for me. Usually, once I’m a couple chapters into something, it grows in my imagination into the Next Great Thing. But with this book, the most I could give it was, “Let’s see what happens.”

I was quite happy with this relationship to the story. I was putting no pressure on it to answer any questions I had about my career’s direction. Which is why, I think, when the reality of what had been lost sank in, I was stunned but not devastated. The first question I found myself asking was, “Do I want to write those chapters again?” I didn’t know. After all, rewriting a chapter is one thing, writing it again from scratch in this way is another. I’ll be tempted to try to recreate what I’ve already written, which is impossible.

As of this moment, I still don’t know what I’ll do with that story. I do know that while I love to make things, to write stories and songs, they are all just things in the end. I sometimes want my creations to be more than things, to be like loved ones to comfort me in my dark hours. The comfort I always seek comes not from those creations but their source – which, I am happy to report, is as functioning and intact as a hard drive straight out of the box.

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