You must be willing to tell the story you most want to tell in the way you most want to tell it. That is freedom.Bill Kenower

Writing is a great way to practice creating on purpose, rather than accidentally or by default. The blank page asks what we want, and only we can answer that.Bill Kenower

You need to know your character’s motivation to really understand them and tell compelling stories. You also need to be clear about your own motivation when you sit down to write.Bill Kenower

Starting this week, begin practicing how you think when you sit down to write. Practice caring about the story, not what other people think about the story. It’s as important as craft.Bill Kenower

I'll be hosting a Fearless Writing retreat January 26 - 31 in Portland, OR. Space is limited! I'd love to see you there. Retreat: https://www.portlandretreathouse.com/fearless-writing-with-bill-kenower Bill's website: https://www.williamkenower.com/Bill Kenower

We all have a personal aesthetic that’s unique to us. We can’t control it; we can only obey it. In this way, what we create is not dissimilar to the stuff we love that other people created.Bill Kenower

It can be hard to connect to why we publish aside from money and possibly acclaim. It’s important to remember that if you’re sharing something you love, you’re making the world just a little bit better.Bill Kenower

Writing has taught me, and continues to teach me, that the only thing real in life is love. You can’t manufacture it, you can only see it, find it, notice it, and then obey it.Bill Kenower

When we work with an editor, we will inevitably accept most of the changes they make to our story. It’s good preparation for sharing our work with readers, giving up our complete ownership as the reader makes the story their own.Bill Kenower

At some point, every artist must commit to their work before they have evidence of success. Let your love of the work be reason enough to make this commitment.Bill Kenower

Learning your craft is critical, but all the know-how in the world is useless without the right mindset. Unless we wait with an open heart and curious mind, we’ll never invite the ideas to which we will apply that craft.Bill Kenower

When you’re struggling, when you think you’re no good, when you feel like your story stinks – don’t try to fix anything. Do nothing until the feeling passes and you can make a better choice.Bill Kenower

The point of writing is never the outcome. An outcome is just an excuse to focus in a meaningful way, and when we do, we meet ourselves in a way we rarely do otherwise.Bill Kenower

The only real certainty in writing and in life comes when we follow that guidance that tells us what story to write and how best to write it. If you don’t follow that, life will seem random, even though it isn’t.Bill Kenower

Two helpful tips to get over our resistance to marketing: make it fun, and offer a conversation. It’s nearly impossible to do anything well that we don’t enjoy, and we don’t so much sell our books as invite readers to join a conversation.Bill Kenower

When we write, we’re always seeking the effortless way forward. But we often meet resistance. The pain comes when we try to force our way through the resistance rather than find the better, more natural way.Bill Kenower

You’re an artist. You don’t have to stop being an artist just because you’re marketing your work. Keep being creative in everything you do. It’ll be more fun and more productive.Bill Kenower

People deal with death and loss all the time. Yet writing requires us to tap into something eternal within ourselves, something undying that is always seeking expression.Bill Kenower

It shouldn’t be hard to be yourself. What else could you possibly be? Yet writing, and the arts in general, have taught me like nothing else that being myself requires as much trust as anything I’ve ever done.Bill Kenower

Sometimes our stories don’t meet our readers expectations of what a story is supposed to be. That’s okay. Our job is always to meet our own expectation. It’s all we can do anyway.Bill Kenower

Whatever we think about other writers, we think about ourselves. Never call an author whose work you don’t enjoy “bad.” It’s only a matter of time before you look at your own stories and believe they stink and that you have no talent.Bill Kenower

Getting feedback from writing groups, beta readers, agents, and editors is just fine. But once the story or book is finished, it’s okay not to listen to criticism. It’s time to move on, and hopefully hear from the readers who liked what you’ve done.Bill Kenower

Sometimes in life it can feel like our choices don’t matter. But writing teaches us that all our choices matter, the big ones and the small ones. Those decisions we make are the focus for our creative power.Bill Kenower

Writing is all about asking questions and waiting for answers. But we don’t want to ask the wrong questions, the ones to which we only want one answer, like: Am I any good?Bill Kenower

Writing has taught me like nothing else that what matters most in life can’t be given to me or taken from me.Bill Kenower

Stories can help tune us to the good part of life, what always exists beneath the surface. The good part is why life is worth living, though it’s easy to forget as we focus on the dull business of mere survival. It’s always worth it to remind yourself and your readers why we’re really here.Bill Kenower

Just as we can’t worry what people think of our stuff while we’re writing, so too the best way to be with others in social situations is to not try to please them.Bill Kenower

Very simple: show up, be curious, be interested, be open, and the details necessary to tell your story will come to you. Do your job and let the rest take care of itself.Bill Kenower

It’s not anyone else job to accept what is unique about you or your work. That’s your job. Once you have, however, others will have to agree with you.Bill Kenower

Our readers' lives and preferences influence how they receive our story. We can’t control that. So, we must give it away, metaphorically, and trust the right people will find it.Bill Kenower

If we’re not sincerely, authentically, personally interested in what we’re writing, we won’t succeed. As creative people, we must constantly ask ourselves, “What am I actually interested in? What do I care about?”Bill Kenower

The only way to learn is from experience, and everyone has to experience something to learn not to do it. As creative people, we will make mistakes, and plenty of them. The only way not to be afraid of those mistakes is to forgive them in yourself and everyone.Bill Kenower

The page is blank. You may be writing about the world you’ve experienced, but the meaning you find for your stories always starts in you – nowhere else.Bill Kenower

Artists can start believing too much in struggle and in what they find difficult. However, what comes most easily to us is usually the expression of our natural genius, where our interest wants to go.Bill Kenower

Writing requires inspired ideas. But we can’t demand them, can’t use our craft to manufacture them. But we can practice putting ourselves into the frame of mind that allows and invites them.Bill Kenower

As Richard Bach pointed out: writers aren’t looking for an editor or a publisher, but a member of their intellectual family. They’re out there, but you have to believe they exist to find them.Bill Kenower

We need our readers to fill in what we leave out; it’s what really finishes a story. This means we have to trust them, even though sometimes they don’t make the connections we hope.Bill Kenower

As Beethoven no doubt knew – there’s nothing better than joy, and creativity teaches us again and again it’s always inside of us, never outside of us.Bill Kenower

The time I learned why being an author is so valuable, and how we can use this authority to allow people to believe the stories they actually want to believe.Bill Kenower

A true story about how physical pain and suffering taught me a lot about all suffering. If I’m honest, most of it wasn’t real, wasn’t necessary.Bill Kenower

If you’re like me, you prefer to be alone while you write. But you’re also never lonely, at least not when it’s going well. That’s because loneliness is feeling disconnected from that to which you always want connection. Writing is one way to practice that connection.Bill Kenower

Just like you can’t know every sentence in a paragraph before you write it, so too you can’t know how your career or life will unfold. As creative people, we must be more interested in what interests us most, and less on how we will sell it, publish it, or monetize it.Bill Kenower

Sometimes editing is hard because all those passages we reread and don’t like remind us of the parts of our life that seem to have happened to us but we know on some level we created ourselves. Writing is a chance to practice making choices on purpose, to choose what we actually want, to always be the author of our lives.…

Every story has three arcs: The Physical, The Emotional, and The Intentional. The last is the most important – why you’re telling the story, the gift you’re giving the reader. Until you know it, you don’t know what the story is really about.Bill Kenower

It’s easy for writers to put all their attention on results – the finished book, the contract, the sales – and start believing that the experience of writing, what we’re actually doing, doesn’t really matter. Not only does your experience matter, it’s the only thing that matters.Bill Kenower

Writing can be like a performance since we never really know what’s going to happen when sit down at the desk. We must trust we’ll know what to write when our attention meets the story, when we’re actually present with our creative desire.Bill Kenower

It’s not for the money, though that’s always nice. And it’s not for the recognition or praise. No, it’s always so we can receive what we want to give. That’s the real creative transaction we all crave.Bill Kenower

This one of the most common hard parts for writers is taking that messy first draft and turning into something we’d actually like to share with others. The key is asking the right questions while we rewrite, the ones that keep us in the seat of our creativity.Bill Kenower

Our voice is not an expression of some discovered style, or of talent, or intelligence, but rather our unique interest. Let your work express that, what you actually care about in a story, in a scene, in a sentence, and your authentic voice will come through naturally.Bill Kenower

The big successes – the completed book, the published novel, the good sales – are always an accumulation of little successes. Yet writers often don’t appreciate those small successes because they don’t think they really count until the big ones have been met.Bill Kenower