I don’t know how things are at present, but back in the old days there were quite a few Japanese writers who went around bragging that they couldn’t complete a novel unless a deadline was hanging over their heads. This was considered cool in the literati tradition of that era, I guess, but there is a limit to how far that kind of helter-skelter, seat-of-the-pants approach to writing can carry you. You may be able to get away with it when you are young, even turn out some fine work, but it is my impression that a writer’s style becomes strangely impoverished if he carries on like that over the
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