Writing and Aikido (or The Pen is Mightier than the Tegatana)
by Jonathan Beaudin
- I wrote this about three years ago, while working in a night security job in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This passage picks up at the point where I was talking about a scene I had written earlier that day and about how it could lead to bigger and better things, as long as I allowed the story to tell itself without me getting in the way.
Thinking on it, I don't think the scene must necessarily be the beginning, but that question is for later delving — I am having enough problems writing as it is. But (I love using conjunctions at the beginning of sentences, it's a rebellious feeling), I have discovered the way to real writing: just as with aikido, though practice and constant, hard training, skill and enlightenment will come. I wonder whether the great novelists and writers had the same epiphany as O-Sensei after his inconclusive struggle "against" his opponent. Instead of fighting the writing, should I just accept it and try to guide it to wherever it wants to go? Does aiki apply to writing as well?
The more I think about it, the more sense it makes. As an aikidoka cannot muscle his way through a technique, a writer cannot force words — he merely guides them where the words themselves lead. A great writer does not just write words, he takes them into himself and, if he has the ability, brings them together in harmony. Words, like a punch, have their own power, and when we are in harmony with them, we cannot help but create strong, powerful prose.
Even to me, this sounds mostly hocus-pocus ("Feel the power of the words, Luke, let them guide your actions..." and so on), but for the most part, I think it is true. All the great writers say that every word they choose is there for a purpose. I believe they are there because without them there would be discord, a lack of harmony, in the sentence.
I do not think harmonizing with words is easy. It is at least as difficult as harmonizing with physical energy — maybe even more so. So far, I have achieved neither, but through the study of aiki and writing, I hope to reach at least one of these goals, and that, I believe, will help me attain the other.
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