Knausgaard on Writing
“For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops”.
Before I purchase a book, I open it and read the first line. When I read this one, I knew I was in for something special.
Most of us move through the world barely paying attention. Karl Ove Knausgaard, on the other hand, wrote 3,600 pages about the banalities of his life. It sold over half a million copies.
His writing is a magnifying glass exposing every particle of our existence down to the most uncomfortable atom.
How does he write like that?
In his short essay “Inadvertent”, the Norwegian author takes us for a tour of his creative process. Here’s Karl’s contrarian guide to writing.
Write before you think
Think about what you want to say. Put together an outline. Get feedback from others. All common sense writing advice, right? Too late, says Knausgaard, you’ve left overthinking and the opinion of others corrupt the authenticity of your writing.
In his own words:
“Thoughts are the enemy of the inadvertent, for if one thinks about how something will seem to others, if one thinks of whether something is important or good enough, if one begins to calculate or to pretend, then it is no longer inadvertent and accessible as itself but only as we have made it into.”
I’ve been keeping a diary for seven years now. I’ve noticed that I never think before I write in it. I let my fingers lead the way. When I write something I’ll publish on the other hand, I’m quickly drowning in my own thoughts. Somehow, Knausgaard has managed to erase that frontier between the personal diary and the public word.
Not everyone wants to expose the entrails of their life for everyone to peer through. But perhaps it’s worth asking, what would I say if no one was watching?
Meander your way to the point
Sometimes I find that it takes a whole piece to come up with one good sentence. Karl Ove says it’s ok. He describes the act of writing as “creating the space in which something can be said.”
In an interview with the Atlantic he shared that it sometimes takes him 400 pages to say something significant. “I need space to express simple, banal truths”, he says.
Remember that next time you feel bad about the low idea-to-word ratio in your piece.
Pick topics you know nothing about
Should we write about things that we know a lot about? Not according to Karl Ove.
“It is one thing to know something, it is another to write about it, and often knowing stands in the way of writing.”
Granted he writes autobiographical novels, not astrophysics textbooks. But how many times do we feel like we just don’t know enough about a topic to dig in?