Word After Word

The parts of this book I thought I was going to love so much – writing about running, writing about writing—weren’t the parts that interested me the most.

It was Murakami describing how hard it is to think well, and put thoughts into speech (especially when you are a writer). He describes a feeling I have had a lot; I bet it’s really common. “…when I have to speak seriously about something in Japanese I’m overcome with the feeling of being swallowed up in a sea of words. There’s an infinite number of choices for me, infinite possibilities. As a writer, Japanese and I have a tight relationship. So if I’m going to speak in front of an undefined large group of people, I grow confused and frustrated when facing that teeming ocean of words.”

At his desk, he can catch the words he wants, and pin them down. But when he speaks, he feels “very keenly that something—something very important –has spilled out and escaped. And I just can’t accept that sort of disorienting estrangement.”

He prefers to put together a talk in a foreign language, because his linguistic choices are limited. He has to pick words easy for him to pronounce.

This is just like writing a sonnet or setting up some very specific structure to work within, right? Without restrictions, an ocean of choices rushes in, and we’re swamped, inarticulate.

I was so happy to read that this gross inarticulate happens to this bright successful wordy man. It makes me feel so much better about this awful drowning that happens when I’m trying to think without a pencil in my hand. He goes on to say:

“….as I write I think about all sorts of things. I don’t necessarily write down what I am thinking; it’s just that as I write I think about things. As I write, I arrange my thoughts. And rewriting and revising takes my thinking down even deeper paths. No matter how much I write though I never reach a conclusion. And no matter how much I rewrite, I never reach the destination.”

The best his thinking gets? “An analogy between the structure of the problem and something else.”