Creating Worlds

I work in my office in our house, and my wife works in our studio, a converted, detached two-car garage. She spends about six hours in the studio every day, and I know not all of that time is spent writing and drawing. Sometimes I’ll poke my head in to ask a question or share some news, and I’ll find her watching a video on her big computer. Whenever this is the case, she spins around in her chair looking glad for the surprise company. Maybe she’ll pause the video, or maybe she’ll just let it run. 

Other times, however, I crack the door open and I spot a Word document on her monitor. I apologize for interrupting and she turns her head slowly from her work, her eyes not quite focusing on me. If I have news, I tell her it can wait, and if I have a question, I ask it quickly. Her response seems to come from far away: there’s the world she’s still mostly in, and the world I need her opinion on, then one I’m living in, the one we share. At that moment, I know which world interests her more.

I’m glad I’m also a writer. I’ve known other writers whose partners and spouses are less familiar with these two worlds. Sometimes there are hurt feelings and jealousy. The world that grabs and holds a writer’s attention can be known only in the reading of her work, and even that is only like a letter sent from a foreign land. If it’s a good letter, you might feel like you visited that land too. But you didn’t. The world you dreamed in your reading was yours ultimately, the same as your memories of Paris or Moscow or your elementary school are yours alone, though you shared those places with many others. 

Yet we feel a connection to the writer when we read something we love, and it’s this connection that reminds me why I married the woman I did. Where she goes when she works is more her than anything she’ll ever write or draw, though her pictures and stories are a beautiful reflection of that inner world. To be with someone you love is to meet halfway between your inner world and theirs, and just as the reader reimagines the author’s story and in so doing creates something new, so too you and the person you love create something new together. 

It’s the creating I love. After all, I’m going to create something with every single person I meet, even if we exchange nothing more than a hello. Those hellos did not exist until we offered them. The creating never, ever stops, so better to find the people with whom you can create a world you’d most want to live in, just as you would write a book you most want to read.

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