An Elusive Practice

I’ve never been an outliner, though I have always had some kind of idea where my stories are headed when I begin them. I had an idea for this very essay when I started it. I need to have something, however vague, I’m aiming for – an idea I want to explore or an experience I want to share. If I’m writing something longer than 450 words, I might have a general idea of a beginning, middle, and an end, which in my mind I’ll describe as, “I’ll do that, that, and that.”

However, I also begin each story with this added stipulation: I’ll see what happens when I get there. “There,” in this case, is literally anywhere in the story, from the first sentence to the last. I mustn’t presume to know what I’m going to write until I begin to write it. After all, a sentence should be a natural continuation of the thought expressed in the sentence immediately preceding it, and I cannot know what might follow one idea until I have completed it to my satisfaction. In this way, a satisfying sentence, for me, is both whole and connected to something larger I am interested in exploring. A sentence can be perfectly well-crafted but nonetheless a dead-end, leading me nowhere beyond itself.

One of the most elusive qualities I’ve had to develop and practice over my creative lifetime is this state of perpetual discovery. It doesn’t matter how exciting it is when I find the gold at the heart of a story for the first time, or how alive I feel when I’ve sniffed a new trail I’m eager to pursue, I have to continually remind myself that not knowing, that axiomatic prerequisite for discovery, is not a cause for insecurity. I have not arrived to class having forgotten to study for a test; this is not a job I’ve lied my way into and must now negotiate my lack of qualifications.

This is how you write. I don’t know any other way to do it. I must practice trusting that while I don’t know where I’m going, I’ll always know when I’ve chosen the next right path. Or, if I choose the wrong one, I’ll know that too. God knows I’ve chosen plenty of wrong paths, and none of them actually led me to ruin. Only dead ends. That can feel like ruin, that ghost town, that fallow field, but if I can resist the drama of despair and simply turn back, there’s always another path leading somewhere, and that somewhere always connects to everything.

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