No Question

As I have mentioned earlier, I’ve been learning to play the guitar since Christmas. There is nothing in the normal human experience that really prepares you for the physical act of guitar playing; even my knowledge of music theory from writing songs on the piano was only tangentially helpful. You cannot really understand what is required of your mind and fingers to play a satisfying F chord until you attempted to do so, to say nothing of switching from an F to a G chord smoothly and in rhythm.

This natural, organic inexperience is very helpful when learning something new. When I picked up the guitar for the first time, I had no illusions about how much practice was going to be required just to be able to happily strum a few songs. Which is to say, the first and most important question I asked myself as I began this little journey was, “Do I want to take it? Is this interesting and satisfying enough to me to spend the kind of time I know I’ll have to spend to be able to play music in a way that pleases me?” This is a question only I could possibly answer, and I had to practice for a while to discover the answer.

The question I did not ask myself was, “Do I have any talent for this? Am I any good at it?” Unfortunately, writers, especially beginning writers, sometimes ask themselves this. Unlike playing the guitar, everyone already knows more or less how to write. There is a belief that your “natural talent” for it should have already expressed itself. The problem is that if you want to write, if you enjoy it and would like to share what you have written, then you are not actually interested in learning the answer to these questions about your talent because you only want there to be one answer, and that is “Yes!”

Writers ask themselves many questions in the course of a day’s work: “What does my protagonist do for a living? Where is my story set? What should happen next?” Only the author can answer these; in truth, only the author wants to answer these. If you are a writer, do not ask a question unless you are curious about the answer. Don’t ask if you have talent, if you have what it takes, if anyone would care about your story, if you’re just wasting your time. If you would want the answer to be yes, let it be yes, and turn your attention to the questions you were meant to ask.

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