Different Lenses

One of the fundamental challenges writers face when we sit in front of a blank page is having nothing for us to react to or interact with. The rest of the day, all we do is react and interact – with other people, with what we watch and read, with the furniture, our cars, our pets. We’re five sensory beings, and touching and seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting is how we get around the world. But not when we write. Our stories exist entirely within us, in a realm that no one else can see or hear until we translate it to the page.

However, if you’ve ever published or shared anything you’ve written, you may have noticed something odd about the people who read it. They all react differently to the exact same story. They all have their own favorite scenes, their own interpretations, their own gripes. The novelist Yann Martel, author of The Life of Pi, which is about a young man trapped on a boat with a tiger, told me one reader was grateful that he’d written such a great book about marriage. “About marriage?” he said. “Yes,” she replied. “I’ve been married, and that tiger is marriage.”

Martel wasn’t about to disagree with her. Was he thinking about marriage when imagined the novel? No, he was not. But he understood that everyone brings their own histories and desires and beliefs to every story we read. Our beliefs in particular are like lenses through which we see the entire world, including the world described in a book. The lenses color and warp what we see. Some lenses are so powerful, as with Martel’s insistent reader, that all we’re ever really interacting with are the projected images of those beliefs.

The more I share my work, the more I’ve accepted this is true. Every story a person reads is about them. For this reason, I’ve come to see my page not so much as blank but mirror-like. When I face it, I’m sitting with my beliefs, my perspectives, fears and desires. Sometimes, I do not like what is reflected there. It seems small, or petty, or wounded. Fortunately, writing allows me to shift my perspectives, trading lenses until I see a world in which I would most like to live.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com