Novelist as a Vocation

by Haruki Murakami

The novel I produce may be praised by people (if it turns out well), but no one seems to appreciate the process itself that led to it. That’s a burden the writer must carry alone.

you have to become physically fit. You need to become robust and physically strong. And make your body your ally.

Most people think that since the work of a novelist just involves sitting at a desk and writing, it has nothing to do with physical stamina.

However, if you try writing yourself, you’ll no doubt understand that sitting at a desk in front of a computer screen (or even at an empty orange crate with manuscript paper on top, there’s no difference) every day for five or six hours, focused solely on creating a story, requires an extraordinary amount of physical strength.

I began running once I became a full-time writer

And as I’ve followed this lifestyle, I get the feeling every day that my ability as a writer is gradually improving, and my creativity is becoming more secure and steady.

I’m only saying this as it applies to me—but practicing physical moderation is indispensable in order to keep on being a novelist.

If that talent lies buried in a relatively shallow place, it’s very possible it will emerge on its own. But if it’s buried deep down, you can’t discover it that easily.

There’s a right time for things, and if you miss that opportunity, most of the time you’ll never get a second chance. Life is often capricious, unfair, and sometimes cruel.

Physical strength and spiritual strength are like the two pairs of wheels of a car. When they’re in balance and are functioning well, then the car operates most efficiently and moves in the optimal direction.

There were so many other things in life more fun than studying for school. Reading books, listening to music, going to movies, swimming in the sea, playing baseball, playing around with cats, and when I got a bit older, staying up all night playing mah-jongg with my friends and going on dates with girls…Compared

Lol.... typical man? Isn't he?

From about the middle of my time in high school, I started reading English books in the original. My English wasn’t great, but I wanted to read the novels in the original, or books that hadn’t yet been translated into Japanese,

At first it was more out of curiosity, but then reading in English started to feel more familiar, I suppose, and I could read through books in English pretty smoothly.

when I look back to when I was in school, the biggest saving grace for me was having some close friends, and reading tons of books.

When it came to books, I greedily devoured a wide range, like I was busily shoveling coal into a blazing furnace.

I was so busy every day enjoying one book after another, digesting them (in many cases not properly digesting them), that I didn’t have any ...

Also, reading so widely helped to relativize my point of view, and I think that was very significant for me back when I was a teenager.

I experienced all the emotions depicted in books almost as if they were my own; in my imagination I traveled freely through time and space, saw all kinds of amazing sights, and let all kinds of words pass right through my very body.

Through all this, my perspective on life became a mor...

If there hadn’t been any books, or if I hadn’t read so many, I think my life would have been far drearier.

What I hope for from schools is simply that they do not suppress the imagination of children who are naturally imaginative.

I want them to provide an environment in which each person’s individuality can thrive. Do that, and schools will become fuller, freer places.

I’ve written a lot of novels, but only two or three times have I intentionally, from the start, had a real person in mind when I created a character.

if the only people you put in your novels are the kind you like, ones you’re interested in or can easily understand, then your novels, ultimately, will lack a certain expansiveness.

personality-wise I’m not that adaptable, and changing my novelistic standpoint involves making a major structural change to my novels.

The novelist has to put characters in his novel that have a sense of reality, yet are interesting and speak and act in ways that are a bit unpredictable, and make them a central, or close to central, part of it.

A novel with predictable characters who only say and do predictable things isn’t going to attract many readers.

In the future, I want my novels to bring to life all kinds of weird, eccentric, and colorful characters.

Interviewers sometimes ask me, “What sort of readers do you have in mind when you write your novels?” And I’m always sort of stuck for an answer.

The reason being that I’ve never had the sense that I’m writing for someone else. And I don’t particularly have that feeling even now.

It’s true in a sense to say that I wri...

I wrote it was that writing made me feel good. Taking some images I had inside me, choosing words that satisfied me, putting those words together into sentences—that’s all I had in my mind at the time.

I wanted to write a novel that made me feel good writing it, a novel that had the power to break down the front door.

I wanted to do more than just take images inside me and express them in words in a fragmentary, instinctive way;

wanted to come to grips with the ideas and awareness inside me and in a more comprehensive, three-dimensiona...

no matter what or how I write, somebody’s going to say something bad about it.

So I’ve concluded, “Whatever. If people are going to say terrible things, then I’m just going to write what I want to write, in the way I want to write it.”

It’s impossible to please everyone, and all you end up doing is spinning your wheels and wearing yourself out.

it’s better to stand up for yourself and do what makes you happy, what you really want to do, the way you want to do it.

Forgetting about the existence of readers—if you wanted to—is impossible, and is also not a healthy thing to do.

The thing that made me happiest when I published my books abroad was how many people (both readers and critics) said my books were really “original,” unlike anything by any other novelists.

Abraham Lincoln’s famous saying “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time”

For a writer wanting to be read abroad, a translator is the most important partner of all.

abroad, especially in the West, the individual is paramount. You can’t act the way you do in Japan, and just let somebody else handle things and tell them “Thanks for taking care of everything.”

Temperamentally I’m not good at being in front of other people, but abroad I have done interviews, and when I win an award I attend the ceremony and give a speech. I also have accepted a few opportunities to give readings and speeches.

I escape from the land of Japan, from the rigid framework of its society, and live abroad as an expatriate, only to find myself compelled to return to a relationship with that very land.

To clarify, it’s not a return to the land itself but a return to a relationship with that land.

Even now I’m still developing as a writer, with the scope, maybe, or potential, for growth still (nearly) unlimited.

First, I established myself as a writer within Japan, then turned my attention abroad, and widened the scope of my readership.