One Day I Will Find the Right Words, And They Will Be Simple

The Heart Needs Different Stories - Some Thoughts on Writing

There’s these old notebooks, string stitch bound, filled with these phrases - inked out thoughts.

Ideas like cave drawings.

Hieroglyphs of my heart.

There’s no rhyme, there’s no reason; just concepts carved onto paper.

Just a chronicle of misshapen phrases.

They’re not pretty.

They’re not ready to share.

They’re ragged, they’re loose.

Less like ingredients and more like a disorganized pantry.

But eventually, after some time in the subconscious, these ideas coalesce.

They come together.

They find a form.

They become something more than the sum of their parts.

I lift them, up from the page, and I transcribe them, hopefully, onto human hearts - first of which is mine.

The words do work on me.

The craft of writing is simple in its goal :

Communication.

Even that sounds too scientific; all “ation” words do.

Let me try again.

Writing is about connection; still a “tion” word.

One more time.

Writing is finding language for the deepest human experiences and then giving that language a voice and a pedestal.

Sometimes we think we hone our craft when that language is flowery and melodic; when it’s complex or symbolic; when it assumes our readers are well versed in medieval poetry, Russian fiction, and dictionaries.

I disagree.

We hone our craft when our readers say yes.

Not just with their mouths, not just with their heads, but with their hearts and souls.

Jack Kerouac is the one who said:

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”

And Hemingway once said:

“Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”

He said that to Faulkner, who mocked Hemingway for his word choices.

And I agree with Kerouac and Hemingway.

That the right words, the words that feed our souls, are often small and they are often simple.

They are almost childlike.

But it isn’t easy to write simple.

And the magnitude of human experience is difficult to express with small words and short phrases.

And that is why craft matters.

It’s why style matters.

Style is how we construct a sentence, it’s the ingredients. It’s the bricks, the mortar.

Style is the pathway words take into our readers.

It’s the rhythm, the cadence, the tone.

It’s the grammar, the literary devices, the diction.

The right phrases plucked up off their shelves ( my string stitched notebooks ), measured out with style, combined and mixed together, and placed in the oven.

And in time, there is something worth saying.

In time, something new is born.

It’s easy to hide behind big words and complexities.

It’s easy to pretend we have something worth saying when our phrases are vague, ambiguous, academic, and use Latin.

And I think our modern time is awash in people pretending to have something to say, hiding behind the idea of artistry.

Plucking up random ingredients, unmeasured, unmixed, barely cooked - and then telling others it’s a delicacy from some far off land they haven’t heard of.

Poetic gaslighting.

I think often of Saint John and the shortest phrase in the bible :

Jesus wept.

And I think about the potency of that phrase in his narrative.

You cannot run from it, you cannot hide from it.

It stands there as uniquely human in a narrative soaked with Divinity.

Nothing can be cut from the phrase.

But you could dress it up, garnish it with metaphors and adjectives.

It would be easy to add complexity to the phrase, telling John that et lacrimatus est Iesus has a bit more of a ring to it.¹

But you know what is hard?

Finding the two words, the only two words, that speak directly to our hearts.

The two words that let us know Jesus has felt just like us.

That the Incarnate Logos, the one who created the tempest, felt it within Him.

And the water of heaven dripped from His eyes.

And that’s why it makes sense to us, innately, that Jesus will wipe away our tears, because He had to wipe away His own.

Saint John found the right words, and they were simple.

Complexity doesn’t necessarily mean we have honed our craft; it just means we know big words.

And likewise, simplicity doesn’t necessarily mean we speak directly to the heart, it might just mean we need to read more.

Craft matters.

Style matters.

Maybe all of this is a defense of my own style, my own craft, and all the ingredients I want to cook with.

Maybe in a world saturated in the verbose and eloquent, in a time soggy with the oratorical, in a time water-logged with indulgent - I don’t fit in.

And maybe I want to.

Maybe every once and a while I want to write something easier, something pontifical, something with a bit of rhetorical flourish.

Maybe sometimes I don’t want to find the right words, the simple and small words, maybe I want to hide all the things I don’t know behind a kind of periphrastic snobbery.

But it is in those moments I remember writing isn’t about me.

Writing is about the language of the soul.

And my soul is still so childlike.

My soul still struggles to string words together.

It still struggles to give voice to its deepest feelings, so it often cries or rages or laughs or dances.

And I think all of us, even the most learnéd, have simple souls.

And so I think all of us need simple words.

And that’s why I have these notebooks, these crude phrases, like folky cave drawings. Because maybe, I’ll find some of those simple words for you, and for me.

---

My friends.

I have a book of simple words - about how the purpose of life is to become a Saint.

It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I think it is also the best thing I have ever created ( other than two sons, but I had help from Aislinn, on that one ).

I would be honoured if you grabbed it and supported my little family.

Those simple words were a revolution for me, they changed everything.

And I trust, they will be for you too.

So you can say yes, not with your head, but with your soul.

All is gift.

1. Yes, I know that John wrote in Greek - edákrusen ho Iēsoûs - just roll with me for a second.