<a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1440349835/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1440349835&linkCode=as2&tag=burtecgrollc-20&linkId=8491d0b79ee4f897c83afd745fd9ecff"><img class="float-start" style="margin-right:20px" src="https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/codyburleson.com/images/books/book_feareless-writing_thumb.jpg" /></a><img src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=burtecgrollc-20&l=am2&o=1&a=1440349835" width="1" height="1" alt="" />I discovered William Kenower by stumbling upon his podcast, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/author2author/id512532891" target="_blank">Author2Author</a>, where he talks to writers of all genres about the books writers write and the lives they lead, and how these two are one in the same. I was initially intrigued by this line or motto that he delivers at the beginning of each episode:
<figure class="text-center">
 <blockquote class="blockquote">
 &quot;What it takes to write the book you want to write is what it takes to lead the life you want to lead.&quot;
 </blockquote>
 <figcaption class="blockquote-footer">
 William Kenower
 </figcaption>
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I wasn't quite sure how to interpret that statement, but something about it intrigued me - especially since I had just recently &quot;retired&quot; from twenty-two years in software to persue my life-long dream of being a writer. I had just made a big, scary, audacious, and possibly stupid change in my life because I'd finally gotten to the point where I could no longer stand NOT living the creative life of an artist. I had decided that I was willing to do whatever it takes to lead the life I wanted to lead, no matter what. Damn the world, because I'd be no good for it anyway if I were dead and the status quo was sure as hell killing me. But how do you write the book you want to write, exactly? I'd risked everything to find out and yet, one year into my new life as &quot;a writer&quot; my results were pitiful. I had gotten nowhere near the consistent daily output that I knew was necessary to finish my first book and become a published author in reasonable time. I knew in my gut that my problems were primarily psychological and probably had a lot, if not everything, to do with fear. So, when I saw that Kenower had published the book called Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write with Confidence, I figured it could help me.

Just fourteen pages into the book, I felt compelled to dig an old yellow highlighter out of my junk drawer so that I could start spotlighting sentences. I could already tell that I would be keeping the book for life - referring back to it when I needed reminders and inspiration. Only halfway through the book, my first highlighter had been exhausted and I had to find another.

As far as I am concerned, this book belongs in the pantheon of great books about writing. It belongs right up there with Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, and On Writing: A Memoire of the Craft by Steven King. It is deeply meaningful like those books, but unique in its own way. It's much more philosophical and a lot less technical than I expected, which was refreshing. In fact, as far as where I had been in my journey when I read it, I would go so far as to say that it was even spiritual.


Kenower begins with the problem and the solution: fear and love. He begins by discussing love in terms of &quot;the flow&quot; - that hallowed state of effortless productivity that creative people always want to return to. It's a blissful place to be, not just because it's where time disappears and writing actually gets done, but because it is the experience of love - made of a very personal and profound curiosity. In simple, but eloquent words, Kenower suggests that love is what draws us toward a thing while fear is what propels us away from it. With its early start exploring the yin/yang duality of fear and love, I was very quickly impressed with a sense the book was not just about the craft of writing, but also life itself. And yet, then again, that it could only be true about writing precisely because it was about life itself. Suddenly, the motto from his podcast started to make sense.

Oh, and you know how they say that when the student is ready, the teacher(s) will appear? Well, wouldn't you know if I didn't just then hear the best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love, echo the sentiment. She said:

<figure class="text-center">
 <blockquote class="blockquote">
 &quot;Creative living is any life that you live where your decisions are based more strongly on your curiosity than your fear.&quot;
 </blockquote>
 <figcaption class="blockquote-footer">
 Elizabeth Gilbert
 </figcaption>
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Anyway, after providing some concrete tips on how to get into the state of flow, Kenower then goes on to talk about feelings and how, as writers, they are ultimately what we're delivering when we are doing our job well. &quot;This is what I'm selling in my stories," he writes. "I am a feelings merchant.&quot; He teaches us how to &quot;feel first and write second&quot; because &quot;art is about sharing feelings, and you cannot share what you don't have.&quot; This was helpful in reminding me to get in tune with my feelings about a topic as a prerequisite to the writing or to reconsider the angle or the topic when I can't quite find &quot;the feeling&quot;.

Kenower goes on to discuss a great variety of topics with relevant examples from his own experience as a writer, from what he's learned from the many writers he has interviewed, and even from what he has learned from an autistic son who becomes a sort of charming little hero in the book with his own lessons to teach about life, the inner world of the imagination, fear, and love.

The book is full of great advise, inspiration, and quotable quotes. It's totally worth the price of a paperback (and a couple of yellow highlighters). While Kenower touches on many of the things you've heard before about the craft, things like &quot;Show, Don't Tell,&quot; the way he does it brings a deeper meaning: deeper feelings about the craft, and really good ones at that. Overall, for me, it is the feeling of empowerment for having learned some secrets that are beyond the technical surface of things; secrets closer to the heart of life itself, of creativity and curiosity. Thus, I have troubled to share my own feelings about this book with you because I think you might feel it too - you know, that feeling you have felt for only a few other writing books? The ones you love?
Shop now: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1440349835/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1440349835&linkCode=as2&tag=burtecgrollc-20&linkId=8491d0b79ee4f897c83afd745fd9ecff">Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write with Confidence | Amazon</a>
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A unique book for writers that belongs in the pantheon of great books about the craft.

Book Review - Fearless Writing by William Kenower

<a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316055441/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0316055441&linkCode=as2&tag=burtecgrollc-20&linkId=44c0d508a6b8b1e675867b973a449108"><img class="float-start" style="margin-right:20px" src="https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/codyburleson.com/images/books/book_goldfinch_thumb.jpg" /></a><img src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=burtecgrollc-20&l=am2&o=1&a=0316055441" width="1" height="1" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important" />I have a kind of love-hate relationship with this book. It won the Pulitzer Prize. It’s a national bestseller. The Washington Post called it &quot;a soaring masterpiece&quot; and Steven King said it was &quot;a triump.&quot; Now, as a wanna-be writer myself, I can say that any book of eight-hundred-plus pages is a triumph. But Steven King also advises writers that you must be willing to &quot;kill your darlings&quot;. This book has such poetic, eloquent, and visceral writing within it that I found myself compelled to complete it, but it was a little like an archeological dig. Sometimes, it felt like work and I found myself skimming a lot.
I am of the school that says that every single little thing in the story needs to serve a purpose to the plot. To me, the level of detail and the amount of scenes in this book are questionable to that end. Too much, at times, I felt. So much, in fact, that I could honestly often ask, &quot;what is the central promise of this story? What’s it really about?&quot; I expect the high-stakes and high-conflict that makes for good drama. This story has that in it’s bones, but it also has a lot of fat.
Now, all that being said, I just know this is the kind of book that others will love as a lifetime favorite. I purposely took the reading as an exercise in the healthy practice of immersion (something better and more attentive to do other than social media). But I kept asking myself, &quot;Am I just spoiled by instant gratification now? Do I lack patience?&quot; Maybe. Or maybe 25% of this book could have been removed with nothing essential lost.
Shop now: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316055441/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0316055441&linkCode=as2&tag=burtecgrollc-20&linkId=44c0d508a6b8b1e675867b973a449108">The Goldfinch | Amazon</a>
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A unique story with amazing prose, but a little too much fat.

Book Review - The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

<a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BJMV23M/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00BJMV23M&linkCode=as2&tag=burtecgrollc-20&linkId=aa3ce7b2ab207d2e31ef02ef533a1054"><img class="float-start" style="margin-right:20px" src="https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/codyburleson.com/images/books/book_more-than-everything_thumb.jpg" /></a><img src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=burtecgrollc-20&l=am2&o=1&a=B00BJMV23M" width="1" height="1" alt="" />Vanessa Foster’s account of a misguided youth, fleeing the FBI from Texas all the way to Alaska, is everything a great memoir should be. It’s a love-crazed and drug-twisted adventure where one mishap after another unravels her world until little remains, but a helpless wish for grace and a humbled reliance on the aid of culinary angels. It’s also a poetic search through the colorful, but frayed and fading pieces of a once hopeful reality. She gropes desperately for a thread of meaning while fumbling with her exhilarating lover in his schizophrenic downward spiral. With all hopes, dreams, family, and innocence seemingly lost, she is finally relented with a gift of grace, illuminated with spiritual truth, and crowned a woman. In losing almost everything, she gains something that is more.

 Vanessa Foster delivers all the things we seek from a good story – escape, adventure, entertainment, spiritual retreat and self-discovery. And it’s all true.

 As a wanna-be writer, I have to envy her. The book reminded me of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307387895/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0307387895&linkCode=as2&tag=burtecgrollc-20&linkId=f01b8288279b70d6edeb18d8b097172f">The Road</a><img src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=burtecgrollc-20&l=am2&o=1&a=0307387895" width="1" height="1" alt="" /> by Cormac McCarthy. It’s not a similar story, but she’s similar in her ability to break all the rules of writing in eloquent service of honesty and poetic truth. Like McCarthy, she dismisses quotation marks from dialog in a way that makes the words of others somehow also her own – a technically challenging feat that paints every external scene with vivid emotions from her own mind – her own experience of each moment. In this, she enables us to feel what she felt and to see things as she saw them. We become her. We become who she was, and then we become with her as she changes into something new. Ultimately, we are left with the memory of an experience that might as well have been our own – complete with its hard-earned rewards, and yet all under the safety of our bedside reading lamp.

 Today, finding a good book, much less a great one, is a difficult task; they are few and far between. But if you’re anything like me, I think you’ll find that Vanessa Foster’s More Than Everything is at least more than many.

 Shop now: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BJMV23M/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00BJMV23M&linkCode=as2&tag=burtecgrollc-20&linkId=aa3ce7b2ab207d2e31ef02ef533a1054">More Than Everything | Amazon</a>
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Lost, Broken, and on the Run From the FBI; a gripping memoir of resilience and liberation.

Topic: Book Reviews