Discovering Friends

Artists are sometimes encouraged to give the audience “what they want.” There’s a lot wrong with this belief, though I suppose it’s true that you shouldn’t give anyone anything they don’t want – assuming you can figure out what that is. This is the biggest problem with trying to give people what they want. A lot of times they – or, I should say, we – don’t even know what we want or don’t want.

My own life is a prime example of this. I certainly believed I knew what I wanted. I knew I wanted to write and I knew I wanted to be successful and I knew I wanted to be free of stress and have enough money. But if you had told me then what I’d be doing now, writing these kinds of essays and books, teaching workshops on creativity, and, perhaps most surprising of all, coaching people, I would have thought you were describing someone else’s life. This was not the plan, the vision, what I wanted.

Yet here I am. I don’t mean to infer that we have absolutely no idea what we want. If you’ve recognized that you like to read thrillers, then you wander over to the thriller section of the bookstore and aren’t disappointed. But everything I have come to like was a discovery. When I read The Hobbit for the first time at age twelve, I discovered I liked fantasy literature. Until that moment, I didn’t even know it existed.

What everyone wants is to be interested and excited and satisfied with what they read or see or eat. The whole journey of life is to find what that is. So don’t worry what they, we, or anyone wants. Care only about what interests you, what question has your full attention. Somewhere there’s a reader who does not yet know you are their favorite author. They will follow their own curiosity and one day discover your book, your story, your poem, and then it will be as if they just met an old friend for the first time.

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