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
68 episodes since 2023
The Elusive Art of Being Yourself
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.
September 13, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 68
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6:10
Meet Your Own Expectations
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.
September 06, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 67
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5:31
No Bad Writers
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.
August 30, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 66
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4:48
You Don’t Have to Listen to Criticism
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 ...
August 23, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 65
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5:24
Every Choice Matters
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.
August 16, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 64
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5:19
Asking The Right Questions
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?
August 09, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 63
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5:03
Writing and What You Can Never Be Taken From You
Writing has taught me like nothing else that what matters most in life can’t be given to me or taken from me.
August 01, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 62
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4:32
What’s The Good Part?
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 y...
July 26, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 61
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5:46
What Writing Taught Me About Being With Other People
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.
July 19, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 60
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5:46
The Best Writing Strategy
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.
July 12, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 59
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5:49
Embrace Your Uniqueness And Others Will Too
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.
July 04, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 58
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5:12
Give It Away
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.
June 28, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 57
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4:51
Success As A Measure Of Interest
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?”
June 21, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 56
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6:57
Forgive Your Mistakes
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...
June 14, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 55
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6:16
The Meaning Is Always In You
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.
June 07, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 54
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5:16
Trust What Comes Easily
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.
May 31, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 53
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4:24
Inviting Inspiration
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.
May 24, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 52
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6:50
Find Your Intellectual Family
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.
May 17, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 51
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6:25
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
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Season 2
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Episode 50
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5:38
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
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Season 2
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Episode 49
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4:52
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.
April 26, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 48
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5:25
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.
April 18, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 47
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5:24
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 p...
April 12, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 46
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5:27
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, pu...
April 05, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 45
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6:30
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 ch...
March 29, 2024
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Season 2
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Episode 44
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6:44