The Zen of Writing

Can we write with emptiness? Is it helpful? Let’s say emptiness is clearing your mind by bringing your attention to a single point and returning to it again when it leaves. Then maybe after a while (could be years) there are times when your mind is clear. There are no wants from outside, no “gaining” ideas. Would it be beneficial to have this kind of mind when you write? What would that look like? Let’s say you are on a cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean. And you are doing so with emptiness. You see the dark blue of the water and the light blue of the sky. The horizon that separates what you can see from what you cannot. The white crest of the waves and the single white cloud. The gray seagull floating. You are there. In emptiness. So too when you come home and write, the scene in your mind, the character, her words and gestures, are all there is. There is no gaining idea, no thought of publication, of what would sell, of starred reviews. The scene before you is all there is. And before the scene appears, there is the dark sky and a kind of watching without wishing, without worry. You are open for the flash of lightning to appear. You have made a space for it. A space that is empty of the past and the future. There’s a world waiting there to reveal itself if only you are able to rest that part of you that wants so badly to be special, to be in control, to shout I exist. I think that what Zen calls emptiness and what other religions call humility are states of being that I have found helpful to the process of writing fiction. It links the contents of the novel to the honesty of the writer and it prevents the production of a kind of rhetoric where the focus is on structuring the content to produce a desired effect on the reader. Which is not to say that the attitude of emptiness precludes craft – creating something of beauty. What the practice of writing with emptiness does is to erase any separation between beauty and truth. Will you try it? Will you have faith in the worth and necessity of the effort and clear your mind of reaching for results. It is impossible, you say. Yes. But it is still a worthy effort.