Wabi-Sabi Writing

Forget your perfect offering.

It’s Wabi-Sabi Not Wasabi

I’ll give you a moment to roll this word around on your tongue—waah-bee saah-bee. Not to be confused with wasabi, a condiment eaten with sushi, wabi-sabi is an ancient Japanese aesthetic of imperfection and impermanence, simplicity and emptiness. Wabi-sabi embraces what is broken and cracked and decayed, and evokes emotions such as longing and melancholy.

Wabi is the focus on the beauty in simplicity and imperfection, while sabi adds the element of time and therefore decay. Nothing lasts and nothing is perfect. Isn’t that freeing? You can drop your preconceived ideas about what is and should be and allow the present to be whatever it is.

If you haven’t read my Create a Writer Alter Ego and Become a Midnight Writer posts, check those out. In them I’ve shared ways you can do this by playing around with another persona or create a symbolic environment where the self is removed, seemingly erased.

Yeah, it’s a tall order but don’t panic! We’re not attaining enlightenment here, we’re exploring the wabi-sabi worldview as part of our creative practice. Anything that helps you get out of your own way as a writer is a good thing.

Examples of Wabi-Sabi

It’s the broken vase that was glued back together. The old sweater with holes (maybe holes sewn closed). A favorite chipped mug. Faded wallpaper. The childhood doll missing an eye. The old abandoned house with peeling paint and broken windows that has that air of mystery and magic. Flower petals in a street gutter.

We are wabi-sabi. We wrinkle and our hair turns gray and our bodies break down. And these imperfections convey how we’ve lived and what we’ve learned.

Wabi-sabi originated with Buddhist monks and then was integrated by masters of the tea ceremony in the 15th century. The focus is on appreciation, slowing down, using the senses—no expectations, no judgment. This kind of philosophy can help you escape the clutches of the ego, bringing out a clarity and beauty in your writing you didn’t know you were capable of.

Beauty is not something you can seek or force or make happen. Part of what creates a sense of beauty (which is subjective), is transience—a flower, a sunset, fresh snow, a table set for a holiday dinner, a new outfit—these will not last (especially that outfit—it’ll be stained by the end of the day if you’re anything like me. I am a magnet for food accidents when wearing something new).

In appreciating these transient things, we also feel a sense of longing, already projecting their eventual imperfection or loss, even as we enjoy their presence. Later, in memory (which can feel real), we experience the presence of absence. It is the uniqueness of the object or moment—that it’s one of a kind—that deepens the experience.

Good writing, like life, is perfect in the mind and imperfect on the page. At the start of a project there is the vision of something to the writer that changed as it was created—in unexpected ways. As a writer you have to make compromises. There are detours and unexpected challenges that force the vision to change. Or, the vision isn’t as great as you pictured it and you have to change direction.

Follow the detours, let the storms have their way, make the most of whatever breaks—whether it’s your heart or your character’s heart. There is suffering in life. There is wreckage. All of these things create the worn places, the holes, the cracks, the debris. Do your best to reflect that through your writing.

Be sensitive to and translate the nuances, the light and the shadows, writing only what is necessary.

What do I mean by necessary? I mean: inevitable. Unavoidable. Vital. Required. Imperative. Destined. You’ll know it when you know it and your knowing is different from someone else’s. Trust that. It’s what makes you unique.

Leonard Koren (Wabi Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers) says wabi-sabi poetry is characterized by “a state of grace arrived at by a sober, modest, heartfelt intelligence. The main strategy of this intelligence is an economy of means. Pare down the essence, but don’t remove the poetry.” Substitute ‘prose’ if that’s your form.

How to Apply Wabi-Sabi to Your Writing

You start by being in the moment.

Don’t think about the whole writing project. Not even the chapter or the line of poetry or song. Don’t think about how you only have an hour to write today or analyze the quality as you go.

What isn’t working in the piece you’re writing?

Ask yourself what it is rather than what you want it to be (emptiness, remember?). Maybe it’s telling you something and you aren’t seeing/hearing it because it’s not what you want or you think it’s not good enough.

Look deeply into the piece, for its essence, and allow yourself to write that. It may not be what you keep but it will lead you there if you let it.

You don’t have to have the answer.

Readers aren’t reading your work for the answer. You can’t have the right answer for all of your possible readers out there. Readers read for the journey, the transformation, the discovery, the hope. If you feel these and you infuse your writing with them, readers will feel it. What you write will resonate because it’s real, true, messy, authentic. This allows your readers to feel and embrace these things and in doing so they will find their own answer.

Exercises to Get You Started

1) Find an object that you think embodies wabi-sabi. Your grandmother’s broken tea cup. An aged copper planter. A piece of furniture with its paint wearing off. A favorite frayed sweater, shiny from wearing and coming apart at the seams. Faded flowers or photographs.

Study the object. Touch it with your eyes closed. Feel its weight and texture. Focus on the worn, broken places. Tune into its silence, presence.

Why this shape? From what materials? What function does it have? Does its shape resonate with a shape in the body? In nature? What emotion comes up for you as you sit with it? How does the chip/scratch/faded place contribute to the presence of the object? Why do you keep it?

Turn these notes into poetry or prose. First give a clear sense of the object. Is there a metaphor or allusion you could then use? What does the object convey about itself and its owner? Change, shuffle words, but leave your clearest, earliest version. This is the wabi-sabi version.

2)  On behalf of yourself or a character, answer these questions: what is being held on to that should be released (people, things, habits, beliefs)? What is ending? What is beginning? Is there a memory or image that symbolizes one of these ideas, including imperfection? How is your life or your character’s already good enough? How can your/their imperfection be a strength?

Leonard Cohen’s Advice

Another Leonard, Cohen this time, in his song "Anthem" sings:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

So forget your perfect offering. Perfect is bland. It’s slippery and glossy, with nowhere to grab hold. Find and appreciate the flaws. As in the ancient art form of kintsugi, where broken things are mended with liquid gold—the flaws are literally where the gold is.

Wired science writer Jonah Lehrer wrote a fascinating article called "Why Does Beauty Exist" at the end of which he gives his version of the answer to that question, and the answer is wabi-sabi, “Like curiosity, beauty is a motivational force, an emotional reaction not to the perfect or the complete, but to the imperfect and incomplete. We know just enough to know that we want to know more; there is something here, we just don’t know what. That’s why we call it beautiful.”

Incorporating this aesthetic into your work will have you seeing things in a new light. Through the cracks, of course.

Happy wabi-sabi writing,

Chris

In the next post, we’ll consult the stars.

Flowers: © Can Stock Photo / josef_hajda
House: © Can Stock Photo / Sheba
Door: © Can Stock Photo / dashark