Dependable Magic

I know how to use so many things, but I don’t actually know how most of them work. For instance, I spend a fair amount of time on the Internet. I know how to get onto the Internet, how to navigate it, and sometimes even find what I’m looking for on it. But I don’t know how works. If a budding scientist from 1821 time traveled 200 years forward to my workroom, and I opened a browser and guided him through Google and YouTube and Facebook and Twitter, and he asked me how all this information arrived in the glowing box on my desktop, I would have virtually no answer for him. Computers, I’d say. Fiber optics. Microprocessors. Electricity.

It might as well be magic to me. Though, it’s dependable magic. I may not know how most of the stuff I use actually works, but I do want it to work. I want it to work the exact same way every time I use it. When something I use all the time stops working, I can get very upset. If this thing doesn’t work, I can’t do what I want to do. Damn this thing. I need it and I hate it. I hate that I need it. The mysteriousness of its inner workings is now an impediment to my well-being.

The one thing I really know how to do is write. I have a relatively technical understanding of how sentences and essays work. I can usually spot a problem in a sentence or paragraph of mine and fix it in the same way my mechanic can fix my car. However, I can’t begin writing until I have an idea, something to write about. All my years of experience and know-how are absolutely useless without an idea. They are the seeds from which all stories grow.

I have no clue where ideas really come from. I know what to do once an idea has arrived, but it always comes to me by an unknowable conveyance. There is no button I can push, no slot I can drop a coin into that will deliver one to me. All I know is what I must do in order for those ideas to arrive. I know I must be curious and relaxed. I know I must be patient and trusting and make no demands of myself. That is my job, and if I do it faithfully, ideas arrive.

The means by which the ideas come cannot break, though there are times when I feel it has. After all, they aren’t coming. They came yesterday, why not today? Is it magic? I hate this kind of magic. I can’t do what I want to do without an idea. I need them, and I hate that I need them, and I hate myself when I don’t have them. This, by the way, is how you don’t get an idea. It’s as dependable as how you do. It’s as dependable for me and you as it was for Dante and Shakespeare. It never changes, it never needs fixing, it just keeps running, whether I’ve forgotten how to use it or not.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com