The Best Part

What’s the best part of writing? You might be tempted to think of finishing, the exhalation that comes when the long climb up the hill is finally over. Perhaps you quietly doubted throughout the entire journey, waiting for the only evidence that proves you have the will and patience and endurance to find your way through questions that seemed to have no answer, with stubborn characters, and that tangled knot of a story. You could have given up, but you didn’t.

You will carry the memory of not giving up for a long time if the temptation to do so was great. You will remember that moment you sat at your desk and heard the whisper, “Just dump it. It’s not worth it.” You’d listened to that whisper before. It seemed there was no pleasure in this anymore. What’s the point if there isn’t? But you ignored the voice, ignored it when it was loudest, when listening to it seemed to be the only relief you’d ever know. You ignored it, and it wasn’t long that day before you were enjoying writing again.

That moment was a triumph. You saw the lie behind the doubt, and its lure began to fade. And so finishing truly meant something to you. Except the only reason you ever finished a book was not because of will alone. It only seems so because our minds are always drawn to suffering and suffering’s end. Conflict and resolution, as any writer knows, are easiest to remember. But these aren’t the best part of life. The best part of life, which is also the best part of writing, is pleasure.

Pleasure will always come when we forget. Forget to worry, forget to care what anyone else will think about our story, forget to think we aren’t good enough, forget about our bills and our troubles, about the past and all our mistakes, forget about the very world we inhabit and fall into the dream. And in that fall, we remember why we do anything, that the joy of creation, of dreaming into reality, is the only fuel that will sustain a journey worth taking.

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