Shows / Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
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.
Episodes
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Write From Love, Not Fear
Send us Fan Mail Fear is always a movement away from, love is a movement toward. Both are creative, but only one creates on purpose.
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
What Really Pleases You?
Send us Fan Mail You would think we wouldn’t need to ask this, but it’s easy sometimes to accept experiences AND stories we don’t really like. Pay close…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
The Problem With “Hard” Work
Send us Fan Mail Writers sometimes romanticize how hard writing can be. It’s important to remember that effortlessness is the essence of our best work.
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Your Inherent Confidence
Send us Fan Mail Your confidence doesn’t come from success. It’s something you’re born with that you have to find every time you write. Jane Friedman interview…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Writing And The Eternal
Send us Fan Mail Your stories may or may not live on forever, but what you tap into to write them is eternal.
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Love Your Stories Unconditionally
Send us Fan Mail Writing teaches us that our focus is everything. Nothing can control our focus but ourselves. The conditions of our life will change, but our…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Write Like There’s Nothing Wrong With You
Send us Fan Mail There’s no such thing as good and bad in a story – just what belongs or what doesn’t. The same is true for you. There’s nothing wrong with you…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
You Don’t Have To Be Original
Send us Fan Mail Every story has already been told – but that’s all right. By telling your specific version, you’ll help us remember why love matters, why life…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
The Power of Creative Questions
Send us Fan Mail A creative question is one to which only you have the answer. These are the most important questions in our lives, and writing is a great way…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Your Book Is A Conversation
Send us Fan Mail You start the conversation, and your reader finishes it. What’s the conversation YOU want to have?
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Listen To This if You’re Blocked
Send us Fan Mail You don’t have to please anyone. You don’t have to care about your results. You don’t have to be good enough. You just have to get into that…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
What Pleases You Most Will Please Others
Send us Fan Mail It’s hard to remember, especially as an artist, but you’re only job is to please yourself. Forget the applause and the reviews. Those only…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
You're Not Alone
Send us Fan Mail Writing is all about connection. I know you’re alone in your workroom, but when you get in that flow, you are connecting to something in all…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Interest Is More Important Than Ability
Send us Fan Mail It’s critical to learn your craft, but all that learning is driven by interest. Interest is the fuel that drives our creative engine, and…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Addicted To Praise
Send us Fan Mail It’s easy for artists to become distracted by and even addicted to praise. It may feel good, but it’s a bottomless need that will never be…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Coming Out
Send us Fan Mail Everyone needs to “come out” in one way or another, to be who they really are rather than who they believe they’re supposed to be. Writing is…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Never Stop Creating
Send us Fan Mail Life is creative and so are you. But when you stop participating deliberately in that creation, life seems random and you feel out of control…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Small Steps
Send us Fan Mail It’s impossible to overstate how important it is to think in small steps. After all, every novel or memoir is written one sentence at a time…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
The Two Rules For Fun
Send us Fan Mail At its core, creativity must be fun. Here are the two rules for having fun that I learned while playing Dungeons & Dragons that apply to…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
The Good We Can’t See
Send us Fan Mail It’s almost impossible to grasp the effect our work has in the world. Most of it happens where we can’t see it. But know that it’s happening…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
What To Do When Doubt Sets In
Send us Fan Mail Here are the three steps I take whenever I start doubting and worrying about my work.
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
You Don’t Need or Want to Know the Future
Send us Fan Mail Writing teaches us every day that the pleasure of creating is discovery. The same can be true of life away from the desk, if we accept that we…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Find Your Balance
Send us Fan Mail Whether you’re walking a balance beam or wondering whether you’re good enough, the goal isn’t perfection but rapid course correction. Balance…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Your Curiosity Is Fearless
Send us Fan Mail It loves the unknown, which is the only place it can exist. It’s only when you doubt it, resist following it, that you suffer. It will never…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
You Always Have Something
Send us Fan Mail If you have an imagination, curiosity, and desire you always have what you need to create anything you want. These can never leave you, but…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Always Ask The Right Questions
Send us Fan Mail The imagination is faithful, but it doesn’t discriminate. It will answer any question you ask it. Make sure you only ask those to which you…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
No Complaints!
Send us Fan Mail Sometimes our most creative moments stem from things that bother us – stories that we wished ended differently, or passages that seem sloggily…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Write Because Your Life Matters
Send us Fan Mail If you’ve spent a lot of time taking care of other people, it’s easy to start believing their lives, their happiness, their safety and…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Your Cabin On The Beach
Send us Fan Mail Writers sit down every day at their desk and summon all kinds of feelings, from joy to grief. When you’re not writing, focus less on the…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Look At The Swans!
Send us Fan Mail A story from my brother that serves as a great reminder of how easy it is to lock our attention onto what we don’t want. Creativity is all…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Craft and Desire
Send us Fan Mail Our craft evolves to match our creative desires. With time, you will always be “good enough” to write the kind of story you most want to write.
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
When Readers Don’t Get It
Send us Fan Mail We can’t let fear of being misunderstood keep us from sharing our work. Not everyone can get everything, and that has to be okay.
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Feeling Disconnected
Send us Fan Mail Sometimes we go a few days or weeks without writing and feel disconnected and dissatisfied. Try not to despair. Your true creative self is…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
The Dream Has Always Been Real
Send us Fan Mail Nothing we dream exists outside of us. Just like our stories, it starts within us and then we dream it forward onto the page and into the…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
How Writing Teaches Us To Be Free
Send us Fan Mail 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.
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Creating on Purpose
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
What’s Your Motivation?
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
A Writer’s Best Practice
Send us Fan Mail Starting this week, begin practicing how you think when you sit down to write. Practice caring about the story, not what other people think…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Big Announcement: Fearless Writing Retreat!
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
You Can’t Control What You Like
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Why I Publish
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Fantasy and Reality
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Accepting All Changes
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Real Commitment
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
What Comes Before Craft
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Sometimes The Best Thing to Do Is Nothing
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Writing As A Way To Meet Yourself
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Ignore the Odds
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
More Fearless Marketing
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Pain-Free Writing
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Always Be Creative
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Writing and The Eternal
Send us Fan Mail People deal with death and loss all the time. Yet writing requires us to tap into something eternal within ourselves, something undying that…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
The Elusive Art of Being Yourself
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Meet Your Own Expectations
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
No Bad Writers
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
You Don’t Have to Listen to Criticism
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Every Choice Matters
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Asking The Right Questions
Send us Fan Mail 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…
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
Writing and What You Can Never Be Taken From You
Send us Fan Mail Writing has taught me like nothing else that what matters most in life can’t be given to me or taken from me.
- Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower
What’s The Good Part?
Send us Fan Mail 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…