Acceptable Writers

Several months ago, I wrote a piece about the importance of recognizing our unique aesthetic. Everyone, whether they write or not, has one. Every time you pick up a book and can’t put it down, or every time you start a book and stop reading after five pages, you’re acknowledging it. Something interested or didn’t interest you, satisfied or didn’t satisfy. These are the twin experiences we have again and again when we read or watch or listen to stories and songs and poems. What do we want? We often know it best when we see it or don’t see it.

The same, of course, is true for the stories we tell. We are always trying to satisfy our unique aesthetic with every sentence we write. The problem, as always, is that we also want other people to like what we’ve written. This is not the case with the stories we read. What other people think of the stuff we’re reading while we’re reading it is irrelevant. If a hundred people liked it or a million people liked it can’t alter whether you like it. It’s a cleaner experience in this way.

Writing can be just as clean, but it requires discipline. At some point, I will write something, whether a sentence or a scene or a whole story, that doesn’t satisfy me. The experience is inevitable; how I respond to it is not. Reading something unsatisfying is mildly uncomfortable; that’s how I know it’s unsatisfying. I don’t like to be uncomfortable. No one does. I must remember, however, that the only reason I’m uncomfortable is because what I’ve written doesn’t please me. It’s not because I’m a boring writer or an unoriginal writer or I can’t find the story. It’s not because I’ve written something that no one else will enjoy. It's because I’ve written something that I’m not enjoying. Fortunately, I can change it. In fact, I like changing it.

So much of a writer’s pain comes from this very common experience. Particularly when we reread our work, when it’s in a form we could conceivably give to another person, we call our dissatisfaction, our unmet expectations, other people’s dissatisfaction. We leap into the minds of editors or reviewers or readers whom we are disappointing, and who are therefore rejecting us. Now, we’ve already failed. And yet the natural discomfort that caused all this is actually a consequence of us successfully identifying what we would like to improve.

In this way, when I’m a disciplined writer, when I remember that it’s only my aesthetic I’m trying to satisfy, then everything is success – the stuff I keep and the stuff I cut. If I’m disciplined, there’s a pleasure in recognizing what I want to change, like seeing a part of myself I’ve not acknowledged. Now, there’s nothing to be afraid of, no sin I can commit, just me accepting and accepting and accepting myself.

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