Stepping Back

I recently wrote a long essay about why I’m always as happy as I can be the few times I’ve attended funerals. Why, you might ask, was I so happy at such an event? Was I glad the person had died, that I was now rid of them? Not at all. Usually, when someone for whom I had no affection (always a public figure) passes away, my only thought is, “They were still alive?” So why, you might still be wondering, was I so happy attending funerals? That’s a good question, and exactly why I wrote the essay.

When I ask authors what writing has taught them, it’s not uncommon for them to talk about how they don’t know what they think until they’ve written it. It’s a strange truism. How can you not know what you think if you’re the one thinking it? The mind is funny that way. It can hold ideas about ourselves and life of which we’re largely unaware. We experience them more like feelings, a kind of perpetual emotional climate in which we live our days, accepting the gloom or doubt as we would rain if we lived in the Amazon.

We’re too close to the ideas in our heads to see them accurately. When an artist paints a flower, they don’t stick their nose in the petals. They stand back from the subject to see the whole, and from the canvass to judge the image’s completeness. The flower, of course, is always complete. It can take some time, however, to capture that. A photograph of a flower can feel flat and unmemorable even though it shows the flower exactly as it is. The artist must express why they wanted to paint it, and they’ll know it when they see it.

Writing is a way of stepping back from our thoughts and beliefs and experiences so that we can see them accurately. When I write, I’m always looking for the truth; it’s the only thing that feels complete. I don’t always find it, but I always know when I do. In this way, I write not to know what I think – because I can think all kinds of crap – but to remember what I know for sure. The truth is always friendly, after all. Life may not seem that way to us, but that is only because we stuck our noses in it to look for reassurance, instead of stepping back noticing how every story’s end comes to rest in peace.

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