When I was a teen in South Bend, Indiana, I enrolled in a Taekwondo class. I was enthusiastic and took on Taekwondo obsessively for the summer and then dropped it. I was always getting obsessed with something for short spurts in my teens. Not only Taekwondo, but chess, and then organic farming, and then furniture refinishing and then Russian and then stamp collecting, coin collecting, comic collecting. And Persian cats. There’s no rhyme or reason, so don’t try to look for one. But the reason I dropped Taekwondo had less to do with my flightiness than with circumstances beyond my control. My teacher, Mr. Kim, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and it developed rapidly. I remember him as a powerful man, taciturn but dedicated to his students, and maybe in his late thirties. My mother told me one day that Mr. Kim was ill, and then his dojang closed and then he died. The last class I ever took with him was on the weekend, an extra class that he gave us perhaps because he knew he wouldn’t be able to teach much longer. The class was on pressure points, those spots on your body that are innocent enough until you press on them and feel the pain. They’re most often associated with acupuncture/pressure and healing, but they can also be used to amplify a punch or kick.
I’ve often thought about that weekend class and pressure points. There’s likely nothing that I took away from my time in the dojang that has had more staying power than that lesson. At some point, I started thinking about pressure points in relation to writing. Sometimes you need to put a little pressure on them, knowing that there’s going to be a little pain, but that it’s ultimately best for the piece you’re working on.
I want to back up here and state that there’s no rule that says you must give yourself a little extra pain. If you don’t want to write about something, then don’t. But the reader can sometimes tell when you are avoiding something in your writing. Or maybe it’s not even avoidance of something painful. Sometimes it’s laziness. You just don’t want to get into all that mess, whatever that mess is. You can’t fault your reader for wanting more, so you have a choice – get rid of the pressure point or roll up your sleeves and get into that mess.
This happens to me all the time and not only in writing, but I’ve become wary of my own ploys. In certain, circumstances, from writing to going to the gym, I do the opposite of what my inner voice tells me. “Should I add twenty pounds to the weights?” my trainer asks me, and I think no and say yes. I try to train myself to do the same in my writing.
I write in a number of forms, but this happens to me most often in memoir and personal essays. If I go too far in exploring a pressure point – if my writing turns maudlin or I go off on a tangent – I have readers who will let me know. Sometimes I don’t want to hear what they have to say, but at those moments, I check myself, knowing that I have to listen keenly.
I’m sorry I didn’t continue with Taekwondo, but that lesson on pressure points has taught me so much over time. I suppose a lot of my early flightiness, going from one obsession to another, unable to commit, can be attributed to my resistance to the hard part of any obsession, the moment when you have to ask yourself, “Am I going to be serious about this and press on, or give up?” I can’t say that I always pressed on after my weekend workshop with Mr. Kim, but I think the lesson worked its way into the fibers of who I am, and more often than not, I press on.
Next week, I’ll be announcing the topic of a special 90 minute workshop for paid subscribers to be held Saturday April 7th at 3pm Eastern (I’m still mulling over some ideas!). I’ll be giving these workshops four times a year. This will be the first.
Also, I’m holding a writing retreat/workshop with author Xu Xi this June in Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon. All subscribers to this newsletter will receive a 5% discount if you use the link below.