I began my writing journey as a fiction writer. I liked to make stuff up—or so I thought. In truth, I liked to tell stories, and I was clear that the goal of the fictional stories I told was to entertain, move, and inspire the reader. I did not realize the importance of that goal until I sat down for the first time to write a story in which I, William Kenower, was the protagonist. I had told many such stories in my life, but always in conversation with friends, relatives, and coworkers. I certainly wanted those stories to entertain, but I took for granted that I had in these folks a friendly audience, people who, if nothing else, were interested in me and my life because they knew me and cared about me.
The audience for the piece I was writing, however, didn’t know me and would probably never meet me. They didn’t care about me and my life at all. Why then, I found myself asking, would they care about something that happened to me? What was in it for them? This is the sort of question that, if asked incorrectly, can keep a writer from sharing their own story. How easy to see your life as unworthy of the printed page if you haven’t cured a disease or climbed a mountain or been captured by pirates. What makes you so special?
What makes everyone special is that their lives are inescapably unique. What has happened to you has never happened before
