WOMS: Everyone Has What It Takes

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If I had been browsing through the shelves at a bookstore, I’m not sure I would have chosen William Kenower’s Everyone Has What It Takes to purchase and take home, to curl up with later by the fire. For my usual readers, you know how I favour fiction. It’s been a while since I sunk my teeth into any non-fiction (the exception being this one cosmology/kabbalah book my rabbi gave me like…three years ago which I still haven’t finished because it is that dense). After reading strictly non-fiction for years during college, I’ve steered away from it ever since.

Give me swords and dragons and epic adventures over philosophy and theological discourse any day.

Not this day, though. This day, I had to select a non-fiction book, but I had quite the compelling reason: I’m graduating this December.

Now, before you start wondering when you missed the post where I wrote about going back to school (you may be confusing me with my sister, the physicist), let me remind you that I am instead enrolled in a Written Storytelling Certificate Program at KC’s local Woodneath Story Center. It is this certificate which I will be earning come this December, and a part of my curriculum was to read and then write a report on a non-fiction book within their special collection.

On that special day when I drove North to their campus, and perused their selections, I had no idea what I would find, which I think is usually the best way to stumble upon something life-changing. Little did I know it would be this book. To its credit, they did have it displayed on their recommended reads, but I think in that moment when I noticed the catchphrase, “A writer’s guide to the end of self-doubt,” across the cover, something in me leapt at the sight knowing I needed to read whatever wisdom might be enclosed in its pages.

Later that evening, as I sat in bed reading through the first chapter, I leaned over to my husband and asked if I could buy the book instead. Within a few minutes, I had purchased my own copy from Thriftbooks.

If an author writes words like,

When the writing went well, I didn’t so much make something as find it and describe it.

Everyone Has What It Takes, p. 4

You buy the book.

Why? What could be so compelling in one sentence that I would spend the money on this?

Because I had never before read, heard, someone describe nor put into words the phenomenon that was writing for me, and here this man was telling me the precise sensation I frequently experience which I thought made me a freak of nature.

I couldn’t care less what his solutions, philosophies, or experiences with writing were, nor how he would relay them as options for me to curb my own self-doubt and fretting over my possible lack of any skill or talent for this craft I longed to pursue. I knew he knew what it meant to be a writer from that simple, single description alone, but more importantly, I knew that I knew that I must be a writer because if he experienced the same sensations I did when putting thought to words, pen to paper, then that meant I was actually a writer too.

Of course, as I continued reading this mind-altering concept that everyone has what it takes to be a writer, there were definite times I disagreed with his proposals or wrestled with my own preconceived notions of what success or talent looked like. After all, while I wasn’t [am not] convinced of my ability as a writer, I once had a successful, budding career as a singer (vocalist, as my father would call me). I knew not everyone had that same skill set nor inherent talent because of the various requirements it takes be a singer. Holding a tune is not taught in a classroom as much as perfected.

My skills were a proven talent time and time again in music and performance. You either won the contest, earned the role, or bombed an audition so horribly you never dared to show your face to that casting director again. Why then could I not prove my skills as a writer through publishing, this industry I have seemingly failed and failed again and again to break into? How could I just know that I am a writer? That I have what it takes to succeed as one?

Well, apparently, it is because I do. William Kenower said so.

I think writing as a skill is so much more elusive and ethereal than music, than singing. If you hear a bad singer, you just know instantly. Everyone does, even if they aren’t a trained musician. With writing, you might not realise it is bad until it’s far too late. You’re too devoted to the derailed sitcom or TV drama to leave it behind once you’ve come to your senses that the conflict stopped making sense three episodes ago, or to set down the ill-executed romance your realised has no plot at all and the main characters are two-dimensional since you’ve already read to the halfway point; might as well keep going.

That may be why Kenower never really defines what it takes to be a writer because everyone already possesses that je nais se quois to be a storyteller because, and here’s where I would argue, we all are storytellers in our own way.

His main argument is that he began looking at the world from the perspective that everyone isn’t as broken, in need of repairing, as we think they are. If we saw everyone as whole, as complete, then we would realise that our self-doubt is based on a lie we tell ourselves when in fact we already possess the capability to create our own Middle Earths and live in them.

Here’s where I would differ from Kenower’s proposed ontology, and this is due entirely to my own: the world is broken, but that’s a good thing. Without diving so deep into the mysticism of a kabbalistic legend I lose you, let me just say that in our ontology, the brokenness of the world invites us to repair it and take part in creation itself, to bring forth the light hidden within each individual. I think that a better perspective, one which I regularly find myself trying to recall in moments of despair and darkness. I prefer this perspective not only because it’s one I’m familiar with, but it also allows the coexistence of brokenness and wholeness. It is a proleptic existence, and I think this is what Kenower tried to convey through he rather esoteric and abstract ideas.

That said, I still found his work to be exceptionally beneficial because it felt as if, despite our differences, I was reading the inner workings and musings of a like-minded individual who has gone through the same battles, struggles, I have endured now for over fifteen years, and has come out on the other side a winner. Not because he was published, or has made a living off of his writing, but instead he found the contentment he desperately needed in his own abilities and skills before any of that “success” came. This is something I have long wrestled with in myself, to be satisfied with what I have, with what I have been given. I am by no means very good at it. It is a struggle I still battle with almost daily. Even today, I pondered it more, but then again, that is why I think we live in a proleptic state.

So while I might not be published, while I may have no professional writing credentials to my name, other than this self-created blog—I know I’m a writer (because William Kenower says so). And that’s not anything anyone can ever take away from me.