Podcast: The All-Day Artist with Bill Kenower
hosted by Anne Hawley
Do you ever feel like your creative life is disconnected from the rest of your existence? Author, editor, and writing coach Bill Kenower introduces the concept of "The All-Day Artist" — not about writing all day, but about bringing the spirit of creativity into every aspect of life.
Bill Kenower is the author of Fearless Writing and hosts two podcasts: Fearless Writing and Author to Author. His weekly essays can be found at Author Magazine. Whether you're struggling to integrate your creative practice with daily life or looking to bring more authenticity to your writing, this episode offers valuable insights for writers at any stage of their journey.
In this illuminating conversation, Bill shares
Why limiting creativity to just writing time holds us back
How to apply the skills we learn as writers to navigate life's uncertainties
A practical approach to overcoming boredom by using creative listening
The importance of following what feels effortless and interesting
Why caring about how you feel is essential to both writing and living
Strategies for developing trust in your creative instincts
The critical difference between writing for yourself versus writing for others
Connect with Bill
Website: williamkenower.com
Podcast: Fearless Writing (available on all platforms)
Magazine: authormagazine.org
Subscribe to the Pages & Platforms newsletter for weekly writing insights.
*Affiliate link — we get a small commission when you purchase, but you don’t pay more.
transcript
Writers, do you ever feel like your writing is completely separate from the rest of your life and you'd like to integrate them better than this one's for you? Hello and welcome to The Write Anyway podcast from pages and platforms and the happily Ever Author Club. In today's episode, author, editor, and coach, Bill Kenower talks to me about integrating the spirit of your creative life into everything you do.
Anne Hawley: Bill Kenower, welcome to the Write Anyway podcast. Lovely to see you.
Bill Kenower: Good to be back. It's good to be back, Anne.
Anne Hawley: You and I have worked together quite a bit. You're a writing coach-- a very helpful one-- and you have done me a world of good in my writing journey. And recently you have talked about this idea that you call The All Day Artist.
Now, for most of us and the people that we work with. It's hard enough to find an hour or two hours to practice our craft in the day.
Say more about All Day Artist. It sounds exhausting. Whatcha talking about?
Bill Kenower: Lemme start by saying, this does not mean that you should get up at 7:00 AM and write until 7:00 PM. I'm not talking about writing or working or painting all day long. I am talking about seeing the whole of life as a creative experience, as opposed to just that hour or two or half an hour, whatever it is you get for your work time.
'Cause this is something I've been thinking about, talking about writing about for 20 years, really, thinking, I want to live the way I write. That's what I kept saying to myself. Writing can be challenging for sure. And Fearless Writing, which is one of the books back there,
and the podcast that I do every week, is all about how to make writing less hard. How to find the natural ease that is supposed to be the creative flow. But really when it's going well, like that's as good as life gets. It really is. And I thought, why do I want to limit that feeling to just when I'm sitting at the blank page? I don't.
In fact, fearless writing began, Anne, because I had good days and bad days, I had days when it was good and day and when it was bad, it was so bad. Like brutally, suicidally bad. Like really I don't wanna be here bad. And I was like, what's going on? I had heard that's how it went. That's creativity.
Sometimes good. The muse, she speaks the muse. She doesn't. And I finally said, I like the good days. I don't like the bad days. I wanna see what my role is in that experience. And that's where Fearless Writing came in. So the same is true of the All Day Artist. I really like it when it's cooking along.
Also one of the seeds for this was this student years ago in this workshop I was teaching. I was doing a fearless writing kind of thing, taking questions At the end, she raised her hand. She says, my problem isn't the writing. It's the rest of life. Compared to writing, it stinks.
And I think that's because as adults, which you and I are, Anne, at least in age. I think so much of our life can be about management, about making money, about dealing, about survival, not about creativity, but just about doing what has to be done, negotiating, managing, selling, taking care of . It's just the daily business of not dying, which is what survival is whereas creativity says, let's talk about writing. The page is blank. Nothing's gonna happen until you say, what is it I would like to see on that page? What is it I most desire? What is the story I most want to tell?
And if you've ever listened to my podcast or even my interviews on Author To Author, another podcast I do, I am all about tell the story you most want to tell. Don't tell what you think is gonna sell. Don't tell what you think that people want to hear you tell the story you want to tell.
That's you at your best. And a lot of us don't live our life saying, what is the life I most wanna lead? How do I most wanna spend my time? And there's so many examples of where what we learn, writing specifically, but you could be painting, I write music too. And it's all the same sort of creativity. It's all the same stuff where what we learn doing our work, we'll call it, our creative work, is applicable to the rest of your life. And I am not talking about sentence structure and language and the sort of craft of your work, which I love.
I'm a devotee of it. But what you do every day, Anne, every day we sit down, we deliberately face the unknown. I don't care if you outline or not. You don't know what the next sentence is until you write it right. And you don't really know where your story's going, I hope,. Until you write it. You can outline. I don't . The outline is a kind of guesstimate of what's happening. And so we are deliberately facing the unknown.
And for most adults, the unknown is the primary source of our anxiety. What's gonna happen? Right now, we're living through some times where we probably find ourselves wondering about things we never wondered about before.
Anne Hawley: Yeah.
Bill Kenower: And it's unsettling. And yet as artists I say we have so many tools that we build, whether we're ever published or not, or we find a lot of success or not it, and I hope we all do, but the simple act of facing that page builds so many skills around trusting your instincts, what we call listening to the muse, which is really listening to your guidance, listening to your curiosity, blocking out what other people might think of what you do, trusting in your own interest, all of which are applicable to the whole of life.
I'm gonna give one example of something I, when I first began to apply this in the most practical way, was around the issue of boredom. When I would suffer it was with boredom, which is really not finding anything around me that looks interesting. Because I always wanna be engaged. But sometimes the things that engaged me yesterday don't engage me today. And so it was always a thing of mine my whole life. My first poem I ever wrote was called Boredom. So this was back, I was a kid, so this has been on my mind, right?
And so one day I was feeling that restlessness, that dissatisfaction, and I sat down and of course boredom-- you wanna do something, you wanna do something, there's nothing you can do. Looks interesting, right? That's what, how, I think it was boredom, but what I did was I did nothing. I said, I'm gonna do nothing.
I'm gonna sit in this chair because I think I am not tuned in with myself to find out what I really want to do. So in other words, I wasn't going into myself and asking, Bill, what do you actually wanna do? I was just looking outside of myself for something I could do.
Now, I had to get still to listen to myself, and as I was sitting there saying what do you actually want to do, Bill?
I realized, oh my God, this is exactly what I do when I reach the end of a sentence and I don't know what comes next. I get quiet and I wait. And an idea comes and it's not the right one. I go, it's okay. I don't panic. I don't freak out. I don't say I'm bored. I let ideas come and I let ideas come until, ah, there's the one, and I go to the next sentence.
Anne Hawley: How do you know which one is
Bill Kenower: the one that feels the most effortless, the most interesting, the most exciting. You know what's interesting about that, Anne? Or the most satisfying, how do you know what color to paint your room? How do you know who to be with in a relationship?
It's the one that's the most interesting, the most satisfying, the most effortless. I would say effortless is one of the key things for writing. The effortless way forward. There should be no force to it. It should draw you. It excites you. Sometimes when I'm writing on a writing level, I can put some ideas down and I can say that idea, I can just tell there's no juice in it.
I don't want it. I don't want the story to go that way.
Anne Hawley: Okay.
Bill Kenower: Give it to me. Give it to me.
Anne Hawley: I have experimented with this and it has done wonders for me. It has worked well for me. However, it has led me into areas of writing that I had no intention of going into, genres of writing that I wasn't planning on writing this kind of thing.
So I followed along and waited, sometimes as I think you once told me, even up to 20 minutes, just wait and see if something comes. And something starts to come and I get interested in, and it is the best feeling in the world to just be really interested and engaged in that creative flow. But then I end up working on a form that I don't know how to work with, and that's not easy.
I'm talking about like writing serious essays, which I've never done before. There's gonna be some hard work in there. It's not all gonna be just interesting and easy.
Bill Kenower: So he so let's talk about the word hard and easy. Actually, I got a podcast coming up talking about the word hard.
Anne Hawley: Okay.
Bill Kenower: And I don't like the word. Now only because it implies force. Now that's not actually what it is. But usually when we talk about something being hard, it means we haven't learned it well enough yet to do it without thinking or it is challenging enough compared to other things that we do that we might be tempted to quit.
We have to learn it. So you have a background in music. I've been learning music and there's always things I'm playing where like my fingers have not yet learned. I haven't gotten the muscle memory to play certain things, and it requires me slowing down in a way I don't want to, I want to just play, but if I wanna play this piece, I have to slow down.
And when I'm writing a piece, even though I'm working in a form now that I've begun to really learn, which is the personal essay, the creative non-fiction, it wasn't so at first. When I would reach certain kinds of scenes that I'd never written in creative nonfiction before, I had to slow way down to say, how do you do this?
And I have to decide that I'm interested in learning, and that's gonna be the fun part now. But it's only not fun if you think you won't learn it. So you've got some new form and it's hardest because if somewhere in your mind you think, I can't. And you overcame the hurdle of fiction and decided you could, and so you weren't having to overcome the thought, I can't.
And now some part of you may be saying, what if I can't do this? 'cause it's all new. Like I haven't approached this before. I haven't approached this before. If you can approach it pure learning, it won't be hard, but if there's a little thought of I can't, now, it becomes hard.
Does that resonate?
Anne Hawley: Yeah. And the pure learning part does feel different to me from the waiting and then writing the ideas that come, as opposed to, I'm gonna have to read a book about this. I'm gonna have to study on this.
Bill Kenower: Okay, but yes. And you can also just say to yourself, what do I want it to sound like? Not what it should it be. I'm an inveterate, self-taught person. Even though I love teaching, I don't wanna learn in a traditional sense. I always just learn by doing. But the only way to learn by doing is to say, do I like this? Do I not like this? Does this feel right?
You can read a book on how to write creative nonfiction, but at some point you have to say, but how do I do it? It might be like those things, but there's a million ways to write a novel.
I'm working with a very creative guy. He's a very successful standup comedian who wanted to write prose, and he took this creative writing class that just got into his head because he is so intuitive and so good at storytelling. But the guy said, you gotta do it this way.
And he tried to do it this way and it just screwed him up. And I was like, you don't need any of that. In his case, just follow your instincts. There are other people who need to be told there should be a beginning, middle, and an end. He doesn't need to know that. But there are people who do, who haven't understood that.
So you have to get interested in what is the essay that Anne Hawley likes writing? And discovering what that is. If you're thinking, how am I supposed to do it? I think you're screwed because there is no right answer to that.
But how do I want to do it? Does that make sense?
Anne Hawley: Yeah, it does. And there's a certain amount of the thing, what I'm discovering that I am interested in writing is fairly controversial, and I have some concerns about how will it be received. What will happen to me when I say this?
Bill Kenower: I totally get that. And I think the only answer to that is say, look. I can't think about the reader in this way.
When I go into the zone of just what do I really mean? What is it I'm trying to say? What pleases me? What doesn't? Oh, that's when I'm at my creative best. That's when I feel the most solid. And to me, prose also doesn't have judgment in it. A lot of the time, at least the stuff I was trying to write was trying to just say, here's life.
And so the cardinal rule for me for writing is I cannot be thinking about what the audience might think. The moment you start pushing against what you think the reader believes, even a little bit, that's when you can trigger something in them. But if it's all just about what you believe and what you have experienced. 'cause if you're expressing a point of view that you think is controversial, it is no doubt based on an experience you have had and a conclusion you have reached because of that experience.
And it is so hard to argue with an experience like, I did this thing, this is what I saw, and this is what I took to be the truth because of it. That's where the most powerful arguments always are, because you're simply describing your response to an experience. Does that make sense?
Anne Hawley: Yeah. Any tips on developing that trust of yourself, of self of the ideas that come of my own interest
Bill Kenower: The advice I would give is care about how you feel. All writing, even the kind of creative nonfiction you're talking about, which is similar to the stuff I do, it's still feeling- based.
It's still based on what does it feel like to be a human? That is our true currency. I always say to writers of all stripes, you're selling a feeling, that's all you're selling. The feeling of love, of inspiration, of fearlessness, of unconditional love, of perspective, of communion, of anger, whatever it is, you're selling feelings, really.
So on a creative level, even when you're talking about life and writing essays, you're still talking about how it feels to be human while you're going through all this. So how you feel is everything in writing.
But the other thing is this. When you are writing and the only thing you're asking yourself is what am I most interested in? And do the words on the page match that interest? Have I satisfied what I'm trying to express? It will feel good. There'll be no insecurity. 'cause you're asking a question only you can answer.
And so what if you really ask it in a way that only you can answer? Does that please me? You know the answer's going to be right no matter what you give. You can't give a wrong answer to that 'cause only you know the answer. No, I don't like it. Yes I do. But what you're really asking is, but would someone else like it?
You will feel it and you will feel the difference. And the key is paying attention to the difference. Here's where I learned this in the clearest way possible, I still write once a week an essay for Author Magazine, authormagazine.org, and you can read these essays once a week, just posted one a day.
But I used to do five a week, one a day, every day. But I didn't think anyone was reading them. I knew they were, but I told myself no one was. They were 400 words. And I decided I love how I feel at the end of every one, every time I write one of these.
And so because I told myself, no one was really reading them, I wasn't thinking about the reader. I was just trying to bring myself to this inspired place at the end of the essays. That's always where I wanted to end. It's okay everybody. It's okay. That's where I always end. And so I did that for six months, a year, and then I interviewed this writer who had just published her first novel and the paper back had come out and she was local. So we went to interview her at her house and she'd had a lot of success with that first book, and she turned to me in the middle of the interview and said, oh, I really love those essays of yours. Those are really different.
And I was stunned because I assumed that my readership was just up and coming, striving, developing, first time, but not established authors. So I was pleased with that, needless to say. And then, a week later, I post this essay that goes up on Facebook and she comments, oh, that last line was just gold.
Now my little writer ego was doing a few back flips. But it was very satisfying, very nice to hear. And the next time I sat down to write, I had the thought, I wonder if so and so will like this. Because I had not been thinking that for essay, after essay, and I'd gotten used to the feeling of not thinking that while I write. Now, I used to think it, used to think it all the time, but I started training myself. This is what it feels like. As soon as I did think that even though she had been flattering, even though she had told me she liked my stuff, as soon as I thought, will she like it, I couldn't write.
Because suddenly I felt the block that thought, even though she was flattering, even though she told me she liked my stuff. I suddenly couldn't do it 'cause I recognized the block that I used to not recognize. And so if you care about how you feel and say I should feel a certain way when I write and I know what it is to write and when you write in your journal, do you think what people are gonna care about, you're gonna care what people are think about? Probably not because you're just writing privately. It doesn't have to be appreciably different when you write for people.
The same way when you write a sentence you like, 'cause of how it feels 'cause you like it, you gotta pay attention. And notice the first time your mind goes to the thought of what people will think about it, your inner guidance it will tell you immediately. It will feel bad. You will feel insecure every single time, not sometimes, every single time.
You think, is this any good? Will they hate me? You will feel that insecurity 'cause you can't answer it. And that's really the only way through it.
Anne Hawley: I have to tell you that once I understood that it, that feeling bad is not a good thing for writing, that if I notice that struggling, blocked feeling of not this, I can't feeling, which is how it manifests for me.
Bill Kenower: Yep. Oh yeah.
Anne Hawley: I thought, okay, that's the thing. That's the feeling I don't wanna have, it doesn't feel good. Back to what felt good, I am turning out a great deal more writing that I have in a long time. It's been extremely valuable to me.
Bill Wil, where can folks find you online?
Bill Kenower: Okay. First, the hub of my internet empire is williamkenower.com. If you wanna go to Author Magazine, that's where articles and my interviews, but williamkenower.com has links to my podcast.
The podcast is Fearless Writing. You can find it wherever podcasts are. Also Author To Author Also where all podcasts if you wanna listen to my conversations with fabulous authors. I coach people. I coach Anne. I've done a little work with Anne. It's been a lot of fun. If you wanna work one-on-one with me, you can find me at williamkenower.com under my coaching link. I'm a writing coach. I'm gonna be teaching at the Red Pen Writers Conference, which is a conference just for editors. Because they want me to teach them what a writing coach is. I don't know how I'm gonna do that, but I'm gonna do it.
And so we'll see. I'm gonna see if I can turn some of these editors into coaches
Anne Hawley: red pen, huh?
Bill Kenower: Yeah. That's right. That's right.
Anne Hawley: Thank you Bill. This has been great. And I'm sure that our listeners will find that delightful knowledge that it should feel good,
Bill Kenower: People, it's supposed to feel good. I know you're a grownup and I know you've learned to deal with some stuff, but you're supposed to have fun. You really are. That's how you know you're doing it right.
Anne Hawley: I love it. Thanks, Bill.
Bill Kenower: You're welcome.
Anne Hawley: Bye.
Check out Bill's Fearless Writing podcast every Friday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find his books on the Writing Life, his coaching services, and links to his work on Author Magazine at williamkenower.com.
And if you'd like a weekly dose of writing, insight and mindset and marketing tips in your inbox, subscribe to the Write Anyway Newsletter at pagesandplatforms.com/subscribe.
And that's it for this episode of the Write Anyway Podcaset. thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.