Silence Speaks

I like to say that writing is thinking on purpose, which it is eventually, but first writing is always not thinking on purpose. Being able to not think is a far more important skill to develop if you want to be a writer than is thinking. Actually, it’s a great skill no matter what you do – particularly if you want to be happy every once in a while – but it’s essential for writing. You simply can’t start following the thoughts you want to follow – which is to say thinking – until you stop following the ones you don’t want follow. And usually, between the end of the thoughts you don’t want and before the arrival of thoughts you do want, there’s a moment of empty, quiet, unthinking stillness.

Writing is often associated with thinking, and thinking is always associated with intelligence. Most thinking, however, is useless. It’s circular, repetitive, worrisome, or argumentative. Nothing is created or learned or discovered from it, yet the thoughts keep flowing in, and sometimes we start sharing them with others who can be excused for finding a reason to get up and leave the room. The historical novelist Margaret George pointed out to me that a writer’s first job is to, “Not bore people.”

I suppose it would eventually be boring to sit with someone not saying anything at all, but I think I’d prefer it to spending ten minutes with someone who has not yet discovered their own off switch. As writers we don’t want our readers to get up and leave the room, which means we must recognize and love our off switch. It is the portal to our true intelligence, allowing as it does the essential, fertile, calm, loving silence into which all the best have ideas ever flowed.

In fact, I’m not much into identity, but if I had to label myself it would be that stillness, which doesn’t really have a name. Or, actually, it has many, but I won’t use any of them here because I don’t know what you call it. All I know is that perfect empty space doesn’t have size or shape or color, but it is always there, for me and you and everyone, and everything shared, everything given and received, passes through it.

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