Haruki Murakami & Self-Expression
This is purely my opinion, but if you want to express yourself as freely as you can, it’s probably best not to start out by asking “What am I seeking?” Rather, it’s better to ask, “Who would I be if I weren’t seeking anything?” and then try to visualize that aspect of yourself.
Novelist as a vocation
by Haruki Murakami
There’s a lot of talk in writing communities about finding your “voice”. The thing that makes your writing uniquely your own, that makes it stand apart from all the other pieces written by everyone else. Practice is often prescribed for those writers who are still in search of their voice, the idea being that the more you write the more you are likely to find that style of words, phrases, punctuation, theme, setting, etc. that sings to your soul. In his book Novelist as a Vocation, author Haruki Murakami offers us an alternative method of finding that originality.
Stop trying to damn hard.
Who would you be if you weren’t seeking anything is a great question. The idea being what would you choose to express if you were free from want, from pressure, from need. It’s that deeper, freer self that we attempt to access when writing. That’s where our “voice” rings from.
LESSON LEARNED: STOP TYPING. CLOSE YOUR EYES. TAKE A DEEP BREATH. AND LET YOUR TRUE SELF SHINE THROUGH.