What Writers can Learn from Bruce Lee.

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one— Bruce Lee

What can writers learn from Bruce Lee? He defied the odds. He adapted to his environment. He set high standards for himself. He was a creative force, inventing his own style of fighting, Jeet Kune Do,  based on traditional Wing Chun. He was a philosopher and communicator who changed the way the West thinks about Martial Arts.

What did Bruce Lee think was important?  He once said, “Training is one of the most neglected phases of athletics. Too much time is given to the development of skill and too little to the development of the individual for participation. … Jeet Kune Do, ultimately is not a matter of petty techniques but of highly developed spirituality and physique.”

As a teacher, Bruce Lee advised his students to “Be like Water.”

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”

How do writer’s train? If you work as a journalist, you learn the five w’s— who, what, where, when and why. You learn to write a lead and to tell a story without bias. As novelists, we learn to plot, to create characters, to hear and reproduce dialogue, write complex sentences and orchestrate the dance of exposition vs action in order to create pacing and tension. When we train as writers, we read and play with words, work though the barren stretches, cram on grammar and spelling and turn sentences until they shine.

But these are just techniques.

What makes great writing is not just the quality of prose but the depth of the writer’s humanity. The “highly developed spirituality and physique” of writing is the development of the writer’s character. Are we compassionate? Do we adapt. Can we hold space in our minds as easily as we create ornaments of thought? Do we have a moral compass and empathy for all of life? Are we strong enough to face our own shadow? And finally, are we brave enough to write it down?

To do that, be water, my friend.