The Final Draft

When I write personal narratives, I usually choose to return to stories for which I have, in essence, only written a rough draft. I didn’t commit these drafts to paper, but I knew them well. Our hero had a difficult time – he lost, or he was rejected, or he didn’t get what he wanted – and as a consequence he was scared, or lonely, or hopeless. His unhappiness was not the result of what happened, though he would tell you otherwise. Instead, it was the natural ending to the story he told himself about what happened, the first draft he called finished.

Sometimes it’s hard to rewrite these stories. I underestimate how committed I am to the version I’ve known, the same way I will occasionally bristle at my agent or editor’s suggestions. To change something would be to admit that I made a mistake. I maintain a weird belief that I’m never wrong, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, other people are wrong all the time. They’re only human, after all. I, it seems, am somehow an exception to this rule.

In my defense, I’m always “right” in the way everyone is always right. That is, if I say I don’t like something, I’m right. If I say I’m bored, I’m right. If I say I’m lonely, I’m right. And if I tell myself I’m not good enough, or that the world is unfair, then I am certainly right to feel depressed and unmotivated. It would be strange to feel otherwise.

Maybe, like everyone, I get confused sometimes by right and wrong. This is also understandable since life itself, the thing I’m writing about, is always right, is always a perfect, finished story. My job, then, is to find it, and forget the tales I invented to make sense of the world, and return to the scene of my perceived misfortune and tell the truth. I’ll know I’ve found the real story when I like the ending, the one where everyone is innocent, and everyone is doing their best, and the only mistake we made was believing we weren’t enough.

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