Persisently Friendly

If you want to be a writer, you have to be persistent. Of course, persistent people can be annoying. They won’t give up when you wish they would, when you’ve told them no three times. If you’re like me, you don’t want to be annoying. In fact, you want to be just the opposite. I have long been mired by an unquenchable need for people to like me, which made the ceaseless rejection of my early writing career particularly uncomfortable.

Yet, I persisted. I persisted despite all the times I was told, “No, thank you,” and despite all the torments of midnight doubt to which I subjected myself. I did not, however, consider myself persistent. I just didn’t know what else to do. Nor do I look back on those years with admiration for the younger man who wouldn’t give up. He was rather dense in a way, not wanting to hear what that rejection was trying to tell him.

He didn’t want to hear that success would solve nothing, that achievement would solve nothing, that he was fine the way he was. He didn’t want to hear that you really should be interested in reading the kind of stuff you’re writing. He didn’t want to hear that he should stop trying so hard, that he should take it easy, that he had nothing whatsoever to prove. He didn’t want to hear that he was already free.

All of that sounded like an invitation to give up to him. Which of course it was, though not to give up writing. Despite all that he didn’t want to hear or know or believe, he knew that to give up writing would be to give up not on some professional dream, but on the very idea of happiness itself. For when he wasn’t pushing himself or doubting himself, when he simply went to that place within him where writing occurred, he’d always think the same thing: It doesn’t get better than this.

So, he persisted. If it felt that good to him, if there was no place he’d rather be, then that was where he belonged. Life became gradually less annoying when he accepted what he knew to be true and let that dictate what he was writing about. How much friendlier the world seemed when he did not ask it to make him happy, but when he shared with it the happiness he had always known.

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