Seeing Yourself

In my most recent interview, debut novelist Joe Milan Jr. described the transformative experience of reading the short story Greasy Lake by the American writer T. C. Boyle. It begins with a group of young men looking for something to do on a summer’s evening. They’re bored, and so pile into a car and drive around until . . . well, that’s where the trouble starts. He loved much about this story, but what he found most inspiring was that it depicted young men who seemed very much like him, doing and saying the sorts of thing he would do and say at that age. He’d never read anything like that, and it began him on his fiction-writing journey.

I’ve heard many a writer’s origin story, but this was unique. I’m surprised, in retrospect, that I haven’t heard it more often. Even if we write about elves and dwarves, or bourbon-soaked detectives, or Regency era Lords and Ladies, we must be able see some of ourselves in those characters. I saw a bit of myself in Frodo Baggins, once upon a time, and so it began for me. But I think Joe’s experience speaks to the question that nags at many of us: Which lives are worthy of a story? Are some simply too plain to hold a reader’s sustained attention? Maybe there’s a good reason you haven’t seen someone who looks and sounds like you in a book.

One of the happier discoveries I’ve made writing these little essays for the last fifteen years is that everything potentially deserves a reader’s attention if I can find its value. That’s a good thing, since not a lot ever happens to me – which, I admit, is largely how I like it. It’s an arrangement that gives me more time to meander through my thoughts. Sometimes that’s the only way to uncover what it is I actually care about, what is worthy of my sustained attention.

I have spent plenty of time paying attention to things I would just as happily ignored, and yet I paid and paid and paid out of habit, or the beggarly notion that there’s nothing better out there, so this will do. It’s a way of putting yourself into a box, of being someone you aren’t. How nice to read a story about someone who seems like you and to notice how you care about them, that you want the best for them. Maybe you’ll care enough to let yourself out of your box and tell a story you want to tell.

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