Curios Moments

It’s great when the ideas are coming and you’ve got a story that’s pulling you along across the page, but those moments when the story seems to have gone cold, when you feel like you’ve used up every interesting idea in the world, are just as important and useful. Not that you will enjoy these moments. If you’re like me, you will feel as if your world has gone from full color to black and white, and you’ll be haunted by the notion that all your good days are behind you.

If you want, you can just ride these moments out. Everything changes eventually. When you’re not trying, when you’re not looking, when you’ve stopped lamenting the end of everything good in your life, another idea will appear. It won’t appear while you’re miserable. Misery is a kind of conviction that requires its own dedication. It’s a decision you’ve made about the world when you believe there’s nothing else you can be sure about. If you want to keep your room dark, you cannot lift the shades.

I’ve ridden out these spells countless times. Eventually, I grew tired of the ride. My alternative to waiting, to despairing until I was sick of my despair, was to get curious. Oh, I resisted that curiosity. I reserved my curiosity for all the interesting, beautiful things in life. Nothing else deserved it. Why bring my curiosity to the blackness? Because even those moments, those quiet moments, those moments where the way forward is unknown, where the old roads no longer satisfy, even those moments were there for me. They weren’t punishment, they weren’t a prison cell I’d stumbled into, but simply life trying to get my attention.

How easy it is for me, even a writer who must go within himself every day to find the stories he wants to tell, how easy it is to become transfixed by the lights and sounds of the world around me, the contracts and reviews and praise and applause and think: There, it’s all out there. Everything worth living for is out there. Until the morning where nothing comes, and life says, “Now look around you. See how empty it is. There’s nothing anywhere, is there? Now where do you find what’s worth living for?”

What an interesting question. Interesting, that is, if I’m willing to ask it, if I’m not afraid of the answer. All writing is driven by curiosity, by discovery, and that curiosity will lead you to some doorway you’ve resisted opening. The longer you resist, the more painful it becomes. It will soon become clear there’s only one way forward, and you’ll feel trapped until you open the door to a world you’ve been asking to see.

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