A Dreamer's Ambition

I’ve created things in my life in one of two ways. The first is when I do something, enjoy it, and think, “I’d like to do more of that.” Now I start looking for more and different ways to play the game, or write the song, or hang out with friends, or bake bread, or build models. It’s a very low-pressure way of operating. Nothing has to happen. In fact, something is always happening because if I’m alive I’m doing something, even if it’s sitting on a couch. Isn’t it simple and easy when you recognize how you prefer to spend your waking hours? That’s the instant, effortless, continuous way we create the lives we want to live.

The other way is through ambition. I decide that I want something and begin applying my efforts and energy toward it. Most writers are ambitious. We decide we want to write a book and so we get up every day at 6:00 AM to work on it before we head off to our day job. We decide we want to publish our book and so go to writers’ conferences or read articles about how to find an agent. It can take a long time to write book, and it can take a very long time to find that agent and publisher. Meanwhile, we drift through bookstores and think, “I want my book on that shelf. When will it be there? Will it ever be there?”

This is the problem with ambition. It focuses me, which is great, but it also reminds me of what I don’t have. This is never great. Spending my days reminding myself, “I don’t have it. I don’t have it. I still don’t have it. He has it, but I don’t have it,” does not help create anything other than fear and depression. When I’m ambitious, I have to be diligent. I must constantly remind myself: It’s coming. I don’t when or how, but it will.

It would be easy to knock ambition, to advocate only creating in that easy, effortless fashion we all do, except that there’s a third way we make things – unconsciously. We think, “This is how life is, and I can’t expect more, and who am I to think I can have this. I’ll just accept my lot and deal with it and I’ll call the people who have more than me lucky because that’s just how it is.” Things are still happening. We’re still creating, still doing something every waking moment. We’re just growing a garden we’d just as soon see wither and die.

For this reason, I love ambition. It’s our attempt to see beyond what’s right in front of us, to imagine something beyond what we have and what we’ve known. It’s the dreamer’s path, and it can be hard, and it can be disappointing, but it’s still preferable to that prison we can paint ourselves into. What does a writer do, after all, when they sit before a blank page but ask themselves what they want, what could be that isn’t, what dream they’d like to make real?

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