Filling the Cracks with Gold

Writing as kintsugi

Jun 15, 2023

Lately I've been thinking about kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing cracked pottery with seams of gold, silver, or platinum-dusted lacquer.

Sometimes called "the art of precious scars," kintsugi is more than just a practical technique for rendering broken objects serviceable again.

As a philosophy, kintsugi helps us understand that breakage is part of an object's history, not a flaw to be hidden or disguised. As an aesthetic principle, kintsugi teaches us to find beauty in imperfection. And as a creative practice, kintsugi reminds us where new ideas come from:

There is a crack, a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.

(Leonard Cohen, "Anthem")

Recently I invited participants in my WriteSPACE Virtual Writing Studio to freewrite about kintsugi as a metaphor for writing. Here's a sampling of their responses:

Ree (New Zealand): the crack, the way in, the entrance.
Vicky (UK): It reminded me of how I work with my source material – I piece together broken lives in my non-fiction writing.
David (Norway): There are cracks in my English, but I work day after day to put the pieces together.
Jenny (Australia): Cracks are a break in patterns, broken & beautiful, repaired & patched, patched & whole.

Cracks are where the light gets in. They're the place where the waterfall plummets down the mountain in a sculpture carved from an ancient piece of rock:

Every discolouration of the stone,
Every accidental crack or dent
Seems a water-course or an avalanche...

(William Butler Yeats, "Lapis Lazuli")

I invite you to find the cracks in your own writing – and then to fill them with light, with words, with rivers of gold.

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Helen Sword is an international writing expert and founder of the WriteSPACE, an international writing community with members in 30+ countries. Get your free trial membership by clicking the button below and entering the discount code SNEAKPEEK on checkout.

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