Trust Your Reader
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.
May 10, 2024•6 min•Season 2Ep. 50
Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Weekly inspiration and advice on writing and creativity from the author of Fearless Writing and Everyone Has What It Takes.
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Episodes
Nothing Better Than Joy
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.
May 03, 2024•5 min•Season 2Ep. 49
The Real Value of Being an Author
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.
Apr 26, 2024•5 min•Season 2Ep. 48
When Our Pain Isn’t Real
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.
Apr 18, 2024•5 min•Season 2Ep. 47
Writing As A Cure for Loneliness
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.
Apr 12, 2024•5 min•Season 2Ep. 46
When The Best Plan Is No Plan
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.
Apr 05, 2024•7 min•Season 2Ep. 45
You’re the Author of Your Life
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.
Mar 29, 2024•7 min•Season 2Ep. 44
The Intentional Arc
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.
Mar 22, 2024•7 min•Season 2Ep. 43
Experience, Not Results
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.
Mar 15, 2024•6 min•Season 2Ep. 42
Writing and Stage Fright
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.
Mar 08, 2024•7 min•Season 2Ep. 41
Why Do We Write?
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.
Mar 01, 2024•6 min•Season 2Ep. 40
The Hard Part: Rewriting
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.
Feb 24, 2024•6 min•Season 2Ep. 39
Finding Your Voice
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.
Feb 16, 2024•7 min
The Importance Of Small Successes
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.
Feb 09, 2024•8 min•Season 2Ep. 37
Finding Your Readers
Sometimes writers feel like beggars asking for handouts as they submit their work. But we’re not. We’re not asking for anything, we’re giving something. We just need to remember the value of what it is we’re offering.
Feb 02, 2024•7 min•Season 2Ep. 36
Getting Out of Your Own Way
Whether you use this language or not, you know what it feels like when you get out of your own way. But how do we do that? The key is getting curious, asking questions in which we’re sincerely interested, and then accepting any answer that comes.
Jan 26, 2024•7 min•Season 2Ep. 35
Failure And The Blank Page
Sometimes sitting down and having no ideas, no inspiration, can feel like the kind of nothingness we picture when we imagine failure. Except there is no such thing as nothing. We just can’t yet see what is there.
Jan 19, 2024•6 min•Season 2Ep. 34
Writing As Self-Acceptance
All rejection starts at home. First, the writer rejects herself by worrying what someone will think of her work, then the public rejects the book because it doesn’t feel authentic. Our job is to satisfy no one but ourselves. Success will naturally follow.
Jan 12, 2024•7 min•Season 2Ep. 33
How To Follow Your Story
A listener wanted to know how to get her story to “settle down” so she could tell it. The real discipline of writing is learning how to tell the difference between forcing and allowing, to know whether we’re following an idea that belongs in the story we’re telling, or simply starting a new one.
Jan 05, 2024•8 min•Season 2Ep. 32
The Success Already Within You
Just like your stories are within you as they’re being written, so too the success you so desire. Don’t look for it in the world around you. You won’t really see it. Go inside, and find it where it lives.
Dec 29, 2023•6 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Finding Time To Write
Can’t find the time to write? Your life too busy, what with the job and the kids and just being tired at the end of the day? The question probably isn’t, “Where do I find the time to write?” But, “Is writing a waste of time?” It’s not, but sometimes it can seem that way.
Dec 22, 2023•7 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Focus on Success, Never on Failure
In which I answer a question from a listener who wants to follow his muse but sees so much failure around him. Does it really work. What if it leads you astray?
Dec 15, 2023•7 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Writing As A Cure For Boredom
If you’re ever feeling uninterested in life or yourself or your work, remember you’re just looking in the wrong place for what you want.
Dec 08, 2023•6 min•Season 1Ep. 28
What Falling In Love Taught Me About Writing
The story of how I reconnected with the woman is who is now my wife is also the story about how I learned where all stories come from. Everything authentic begins and ends with an alive stillness that requires nothing, but is always creating.
Dec 01, 2023•6 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Emotional Mastery
It’s not enough to learn our craft, we also have to practice emotional mastery – finding our inherent confidence every single time we sit down to write. It’s always there, finding it anew every day requires practice. Episode 7: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2204720/episodes/13084129
Nov 24, 2023•7 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Know Your Job
The biggest difference between most beginning and more seasoned writers, is the experienced author understands how little they actually need to know to start writing. Don’t try to do the Muse’s job. Instead, collaborate with her to tell your story.
Nov 17, 2023•7 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Your Jealousy Is Dishonest
You may see the success other people have had, and think you want it – but you don’t. You’ve only ever wanted your success, the same as you’ve only ever wanted to live your life.
Nov 10, 2023•7 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Your Interest Is Enough
You don’t really need to know how to do it, or where to go, or what should come next. All you really need to know is that you’re interested – in the book, the career, in the relationship. Trust that your interest is enough and you’ll be guided by it.
Nov 03, 2023•7 min•Season 1Ep. 23
The Scary Power of the Imagination
A true story of how my imagination invented a nightmare and just a quickly dispelled it. A reminder to only pay attention to what inspires and soothes us.
Oct 27, 2023•7 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Your Passion is Practical
Doing what love is always the most practical choice, even if you don’t know where you’re going or how you’ll succeed. Forcing anything is guaranteed failure.
Oct 20, 2023•6 min•Season 1Ep. 21
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