Crafted Reminders

Like a lot of people, I watched some of the NFL draft this past weekend. And when I say a lot, I mean more than have ever watched the draft before. What started years ago as a small gathering of NFL executives and coaches in a hotel conference room, has, with the advent of 24-hour sports networks, grown into a major media event. Last year, about 100,000 people turned out in Nashville for the all-important first round, when the top 32 college prospects are selected. Journalists interviewed the athletes live on stage, analysts broke down film, and fans screamed and hugged and booed and drank.

This year, viewers were treated to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell standing woodenly in his home office before a monitor where whooping fans from the around country beamed in from their man-caves and kitchens. Analysts Zoomed their opinions, and the athletes were interviewed through their iPhones. It was clumsy, awkward, amateurish at times, and, apparently, no one cared. Hungry for sports of any kind, football fans did not need the multi-million-dollar production values of network television to once again begin dreaming about how that new defensive end will be the missing piece to turn their team’s fortunes around.

I’m sure the producers and directors and lighting technicians and sound engineers care as much about what makes slick TV as writers do about what makes a good sentence. And while it’s true that sloppy writing and garbled sound can interfere with our appreciation of a story or a show, the best sentences and finest studios cannot manufacture what actually stirs someone’s heart. Craft, at its best, lets the beauty or the excitement through. It never creates it.

It may seem like a subtle difference, but as an artist it easy to get so obsessed with the craft that we lose sight of its purpose. It’s an understandable mistake. Craft is what we learn, what we get better at, what we might even master. It’s a tool, and like other tools, it belongs to us. The ideas that come to us that need crafting, however, do not belong to us anymore the than draft day hopes belong to camera operators. The reason people love stories is because hope and fear and love and adventure have always belonged to all of us; we storytellers just remind them of what they already have.

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