Everyone Has What It Takes by William Kenower

Author:William Kenower [Kenower, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Getting in the Mood

I’ve been writing six days a week for nearly thirty years. I’ve always written first thing in the morning, arriving at my desk with trainlike punctuality. I never skip a day, and I always produce something. Often, it goes pretty well. I get in The Flow and lose track of time and my stories end up taking surprising and satisfying turns. If it starts going really well, I have to jump out of my chair and pace around my workroom muttering to myself. The ideas are so interesting to me I can’t wait to tell other people about them, even if those other people are imaginary. By the end I feel both calm and motivated, eager to do something else but content if I can’t think of what that something else will be.

If it sounds pretty good to you, that’s because it is. Yet as nice as it is, as inspiring and life-affirming as it is, I am never in the mood to write when I sit down to begin. Never. I’m usually stone cold.

In fact, because I write a lot of essays or books like this that are essentially comprised of a bunch of long essays, I often begin without the luxury of being able to read what I wrote the day before. Often, I’m staring at a blank page wondering what the hell I’m going to write about today, sometimes feeling as if I’ve said absolutely all there is to say about those things that interest me most. It’s not a great feeling. It’s the sort of feeling that, if I didn’t encounter it as often as I did, might lead me to believe I wasn’t cut out for this writing thing. Writers, after all, like to write. Writers have ideas. Most mornings I start by thinking, I’ve got nothing.

It took me many years to understand why it often begins this way for me and for many other people as well. In fact, the more I came to understand about this first moment, this sitting in the same chair every morning and feeling like writing happens somewhere miles away from me, the more I understood that this moment of temporary emptiness is what frightens so many beginning authors away from pursuing writing as deeply as they would like. After all, if everyone indeed has what it takes, if everyone has a natural curiosity and is naturally connected to the very source of all the inspiration and ideas they’ll ever need, why then do we so often sit and feel like we have no ideas, no inspiration, no interest in this thing we were very interested in yesterday? If, as I sometimes complain, “I’ve got nothing,” then I certainly don’t have what it takes. You have to have something if you’re going to have what it takes.

Part of the challenge has to do with the unique nature of writing. Unlike every other art form, writing does not employ any of the five senses. Writers try

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