Breasts and Eggs

by Mieko Kawakami

But more importantly, I felt awful, even wounded, after hearing myself call my work a “hobby.” The question of whether the thing I was writing qualified as a novel was open for interpretation. That much was true. At the same time, I was sure I was writing a novel. Absolutely sure. Maybe it looked like I was wasting my time. And maybe for everyone but me, that was all it would ever amount to. An enormous waste of time. But I knew that it was wrong to dismiss my work like that. It felt like I had said something that I could never take back. Writing makes me happy. But it goes beyond that. Writing is my life’s work. I am absolutely positive that this is what I’m here to do. Even if it turns out that I don’t have the ability, and no one out there wants to read a single word of it, there’s nothing I can do about this feeling. I can’t make it go away. I recognize that luck, effort, and ability are often indistinguishable. And I know that, in the end, I’m just another human being, who’s born only to die. I know that in reality, it makes no difference whether I write novels, and it makes no difference if anyone cares. With all the countless books already out there, the world won’t notice if I fail to publish even one book with my name on it. That’s no tragedy. I know that. I get that.

Writing as a vocation.