Genuine Stories

One of the best short stories I ever wrote was also one of the first. I was nineteen and had written a handful of speculative stories and the first hundred pages of a fantasy novel. I was reading some William Kennedy and Vladimir Nabokov at that time, and liked how they brought each sentence to life. I’d also been thinking about two experiences I’d had that I thought could form at least the emotional foundation for a story.

The first was three days in the middle of a blazing Providence summer. I was sixteen and trying to find my girlfriend. She was a couple years older than I, and we’d been together for a year, but were having some troubles, and one day she’d just taken off. Her mother didn’t know where she was and her friends didn’t know where she was, and I spent those days roaming around the city, sweating, knowing somehow her disappearance meant our relationship was over but hoping otherwise. When she appeared again, she told me she’d been at a No Nukes rally in New York and that she was living with someone.

The second experience was when I was seventeen and the girl I’d fallen in love with moved from Providence to Seattle. I spent five months dating her with a clock ticking down in my head, knowing our time together was limited, knowing what we had would end and there was nothing I could do about it.

These were, obviously, not the happiest experiences of my life, but they were, I understand now, when I felt most alive. Genuine grief can summon you to the moment as immediately as joy, as you realize you must let go of what you had been holding onto. I thought of a story based on those two experiences, and it basically wrote itself.

I did not learn much from writing that story. I believed its success was a result of some of its technical flourishes and an elusive creative magic. But I thought of it often for years afterward. A voice in my head kept telling me to write more stories like that. I didn’t know what that meant. Love stories? Technically showy? It wasn’t until I began these essays that I realized it was the feeling – not specifically of grief, but of any moment when I felt fully alive and present, when I let go of what isn’t and accepted what is.

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