Waiting at the Window

Imagine you’re facing a wall with two large windows several feet apart from one another. They are positioned such that you can only look out of one at a time. These are not ordinary windows. A scene is being played out beyond each one. Outside the window on the right is the story you’re writing. Through it, you can see the characters come and go, argue and rejoice, strive and struggle, as well as the rooms and cityscapes and fields they inhabit.

Often there is nothing happening outside this window. The characters are stationary, or the rooms are empty. You’ve learned that if you wait long enough, the scene eventually comes back to life. Sometimes the action resumes in a flurry, a villain begins chasing your hero with a machete or a husband breaks down and pleads with his wife, and sometimes a bird simply arrives on a tree branch. Regardless, your job remains to wait, to keep looking out that window until the world beyond it is filled with something so interesting you can’t take your attention from it.

However, this waiting is not always easy. You want something to just happen, and you want to be curious about it, to be carried along on the current of what will come next and next and next. And so, you get a little impatient, and you turn your attention to the window on the left. There’s always something happening there. Outside that window there are crowds of people talking about your story. It’s hard to tell precisely what they’re saying, but if think that if you focus, you can make it out. Some of them like your story and some of them do not like it at all. Everyone there has lots of opinions, and they just keep talking and talking and talking about what you’re writing. It never stops. In fact, the longer you watch it, the more they talk.

It's compelling in its own way. There’s something addictive about the immediacy of it. You never have to wait. Those people are always there and they’re always yapping about your story. You know you should turn away, but you also want to hear them come to some kind of conclusion, to reach a final verdict. They never do. You can stare out that window your whole life, and they’ll never all agree. And so, you’re still waiting, only for something that will never come, for an answer you alone can ever give.

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