Scan barcode
hrcwon's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
Bought this in an airport. Nothing much said in here that isn't said in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Running", which is the better book. But still, it's good to read practical writing advice, mostly different ways to think about the actual act of writing as opposed to pointers on style or subject material.
The majority of what he says has to do with his concept of stamina, which he elaborates on in the running book. It's been helpful for me in writing.
The takeaways for me on this one were:
- Sometimes his narratives are just "what-ifs". What if he had made a different choice at a particular time, what if his wife left him at this point in his life, etc.
- There are a bunch of memories in cabinets in your brain that you don't realize you remember. Pull those memories out carefully, and don't use too many at one time. You might run out.
Anyways, overall good, and it's a short read. Got it at an airport.
The majority of what he says has to do with his concept of stamina, which he elaborates on in the running book. It's been helpful for me in writing.
The takeaways for me on this one were:
- Sometimes his narratives are just "what-ifs". What if he had made a different choice at a particular time, what if his wife left him at this point in his life, etc.
- There are a bunch of memories in cabinets in your brain that you don't realize you remember. Pull those memories out carefully, and don't use too many at one time. You might run out.
Anyways, overall good, and it's a short read. Got it at an airport.
katyboo52's review against another edition
5.0
An interesting series of essays by Murakami on his career as a novelist and his reasons for and methods of writing. These are, as he keeps reiterating, not advice for everyone, they are about him and his process. In the process we get snippets of his life, his passions and some of his issues with the world of Japanese literature and publishing in general. Some of the essays were previously published in a magazine called Monkey. Others were written solely for the book, so even if some are familiar to you, others will be fresh. I love his writing. I haven't loved every novel of his I've read, but he is always interesting and always pushing the boundaries of what literature can do. It's fascinating to glimpse some of the reasons why he does what he does, and his process and how it is linked to his translation work.
gregz_newdorkreviewofbooks's review against another edition
4.0
It's almost disappointing to learn how mundane a genius like Murakami's creative process is. You expect his novels to shoot like lightning bolt out of his eyeballs,fully formed...or something. But, no. He writes and rewrites and rewrites, just like everyone else.
But this collection of essays about his work, his thoughts on the book industry, on what it takes to be a career writer, and so much more, is really fascinating. It's part autobiography, part "how to" -- though he constantly reminds us that what works for him might not work for other writers (sort of the antithesis of Stephen King's "On Writing," in which he tells you things like "Don't ever use adverbs.")
Nary a mention of cats, though. Which is odd.
But this collection of essays about his work, his thoughts on the book industry, on what it takes to be a career writer, and so much more, is really fascinating. It's part autobiography, part "how to" -- though he constantly reminds us that what works for him might not work for other writers (sort of the antithesis of Stephen King's "On Writing," in which he tells you things like "Don't ever use adverbs.")
Nary a mention of cats, though. Which is odd.
tombuoni's review against another edition
5.0
Murakami describes his understanding of life as a writer in a series of essays. Similar to “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”, he describes how he grew up never being interested in school but had a career pivot in his 30s from being a Jazz Cafe owner to being a novelist. He describes his everyday life as a writer and how he prizes physical exercise as a part of his writing routine, and how his writing has evolved from his simple early first-person novels to his expansive surrealistic multi-layered later works… and all the criticism he’s received along the way. Great insights into his own writing, but also into the creative process in general. Especially loved the essays “On Originality” and “Regarding Schools.”
A few highlights:
“When I was in school my parents and teachers always warned me, “You’ve got to study as hard as you can while you’re in school. Otherwise when you grow up you’ll regret not having studied more when you were young.” But after I left school I never thought that, not even once. For me it was more regret that I hadn’t done more things I enjoyed doing. Being forced to do that kind of rote memorization, I felt, wasted my life.”
“Almost all the classes and lectures were boring. So mind-numbingly boring that when I finished school I thought I’d had a lifetime’s worth of boredom. But no matter how much I might think this, in our lives one boring thing after another flutters down at us from the sky, and wells up from the ground.”
“The reason I didn’t study hard was simple. It was boring. I just wasn’t interested. 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 to all those, studying for school was a total bore. I guess that goes without saying… Deep down, I knew that reading lots of books, listening intently to music—and maybe I should include going out with girls, too—was, for me, a personal form of study that had real significance, a significance greater than studying for any tests for school.”
“One thing I always loved, though, was reading. I doubt any of my peers in junior high and high school read as many books as I did. I was also absorbed in listening to all kinds of music. As a result, I spent little time studying.”
“Of course, if the schoolwork involved a topic that interested me, I’d study it on my own initiative.”
“One day, however, it hit me that I was pushing thirty. What I thought of as my youth was coming to a close. I remember how weird that feeling was. “So this is how it is,” I thought. “Time just slips away.””
“In my opinion, using your willpower to control time is what makes it your ally. You mustn’t let it go on controlling you. That just makes you passive. “Time and tide wait for no man,” they say, so if time isn’t going to wait for you, you have no choice but to take it to heart and actively construct your schedule on that principle. In other words, assume command of the situation and stop being passive!”
“An intrinsic, internal drive compelling them to write. A tenacious, persevering temperament that equips them to work long and lonely hours. It is my belief that these are the qualifications required of a professional novelist.”
“I wanted to make the novel itself as deep and profound as I could without making my style any heavier, or harming the good feelings (or, to put it another way, without incorporating it into the system of pure literature). That was my basic idea.”
“The first time I sat down to write a novel, nothing came to mind—I was completely stumped. I hadn’t been through a war like my parents, or endured the postwar chaos and hunger of the generation directly above me. I had no experience of revolution (I had experienced a kind of ersatz revolution but didn’t want to write about that), nor had I undergone any form of brutal abuse or discrimination that I could remember. Instead I had grown up in a typical middle-class home in a peaceful suburban community, where I suffered no particular want, and although my life had been far from perfect, neither was it steeped in misfortune (in relative terms I was fortunate). In other words, I had spent a mundane and nondescript youth.”
“Speaking from experience, it seems that I discovered my “original” voice and style, at the outset, not adding to what I already knew but subtracting from it. Think how many—far too many—things we pick up in the course of living. Whether we choose to call it information overload or excess baggage, we have that multitude of options to choose from, so that when we try to express ourselves creatively, all those choices collide with each other and we shut down, like a stalled engine. We become paralyzed. Our best recourse is to clear out our information system by chucking all that is unnecessary into the garbage bin, allowing our mind to move freely again.”
“One rule of thumb is to ask yourself, “Am I having a good time doing this?” If you’re not enjoying yourself when you’re engaged in what seems important to you, if you can’t find spontaneous pleasure and joy in it, if your heart doesn’t leap with excitement, then there’s likely something wrong. When that happens, you have to go back to the beginning and start discarding any extraneous parts or unnatural elements. That can be a lot harder than it sounds.”
“I wake early each morning, brew a fresh pot of coffee, and work for four or five hours straight. Ten pages a day means three hundred pages a month.”
“My makeup is that of a long-distance runner, which means I need considerable time and distance to pull things together in a full and comprehensive way… It strikes me that, at the risk of exaggeration, long novels are my lifeblood, while short stories and novellas are more like practice pieces, important and useful steps toward the construction of longer works. You could compare this to the way long-distance runners think—we may keep track of our records in the five-thousand-and ten-thousand-meter races, but our true standard is our time in the marathon.”
“On days where I want to write more, I still stop after ten pages; when I don’t feel like writing, I force myself to somehow fulfill my quota. Why do I do it this way? Because it is especially important to maintain a steady pace when tackling a big project. That can’t work if you write a lot one day and nothing at all the next.”
“Writing a novel means sitting alone in my study for over a year (sometimes two or even three years), diligently writing away. I get up early and focus solely on writing for five to six hours every single day. Thinking that hard and long about things, your brain gets overheated (with my scalp literally getting hot at times), so after that I need to give my head a rest. That’s why I spend my afternoons napping, enjoying music, reading innocuous books. That kind of life, though, gets you out of shape physically, so every day I spend about an hour outdoors exercising. That sets me up for the next day’s work. Day after day, without exception, I repeat this cycle.”
“Once when I was interviewed by a young writer I declared that “once a writer puts on fat, it’s all over.” This was a bit hyperbolic, and of course there are exceptions, but I do believe that for the most part it’s true. Whether it is actual physical fat or metaphoric fat… the everyday combination of physical exercise and the intellectual process provides an ideal influence on the type of creative work the writer is engaged in.”
“For a long time I myself wasn’t exactly sure what it meant to me to run every day. If you run every day, then of course it’ll make you healthy. You lose fat and are able to have well-balanced muscles, and can control your weight. But as I run, I feel that’s not all there is to it. There’s something more important deeper down in running. But it’s not at all clear to me what that something is, and if I don’t understand it myself, then I can’t explain it to others.”
“Living is (in most cases) a tiresome, lackadaisical, protracted battle. If you don’t make the effort to persist in pushing the body forward, then keeping a firm, positive hold over your will and soul becomes, in my opinion, realistically next to impossible.”
“Our world is constructed in a multilayered way, so that the realm of the roundabout and the inefficient is in fact the flip side of that which is clever and efficient. If one or the other is missing (or if one is dominated by the other), then the world is distorted as a result.”
“When nuclear-power facilities that have the capacity to produce lethal damage, when a dangerous system that could destroy a country (and it’s true that the Chernobyl accident was one factor in the fall of the Soviet Union) is managed by commercial corporations that prioritize numbers and efficiency over everything else, and when this is all led and supervised by a bureaucracy built on rote memorization and top-down decision making, one that lacks any sympathy toward humanity, then you can be sure that very serious risks will arise. And the consequences may pollute the land, destroy nature, damage people’s health, forfeit the nation’s trust, and destroy the environment people live in. And it’s not just “may,” since these very things have all actually happened in Fukushima.”
“No matter what you have written, it can be made better. We may feel that what we have turned out is excellent, even perfect, but the fact remains there is always room for improvement.”
“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. Do that, and even if your reputation isn’t so great, if your books don’t sell well, you can tell yourself, “It’s okay. At least I enjoyed myself.” You’ll be convinced it was all worthwhile.”
“Enjoying yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll produce an outstanding work of art. A process of rigorous self-examination is a crucial element. Also, as a professional, of course you need a minimum number of readers. But clear that hurdle and I think that your goal should be to enjoy yourself and write works that satisfy you.”
— Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami
https://a.co/4R5CgiY
A few highlights:
“When I was in school my parents and teachers always warned me, “You’ve got to study as hard as you can while you’re in school. Otherwise when you grow up you’ll regret not having studied more when you were young.” But after I left school I never thought that, not even once. For me it was more regret that I hadn’t done more things I enjoyed doing. Being forced to do that kind of rote memorization, I felt, wasted my life.”
“Almost all the classes and lectures were boring. So mind-numbingly boring that when I finished school I thought I’d had a lifetime’s worth of boredom. But no matter how much I might think this, in our lives one boring thing after another flutters down at us from the sky, and wells up from the ground.”
“The reason I didn’t study hard was simple. It was boring. I just wasn’t interested. 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 to all those, studying for school was a total bore. I guess that goes without saying… Deep down, I knew that reading lots of books, listening intently to music—and maybe I should include going out with girls, too—was, for me, a personal form of study that had real significance, a significance greater than studying for any tests for school.”
“One thing I always loved, though, was reading. I doubt any of my peers in junior high and high school read as many books as I did. I was also absorbed in listening to all kinds of music. As a result, I spent little time studying.”
“Of course, if the schoolwork involved a topic that interested me, I’d study it on my own initiative.”
“One day, however, it hit me that I was pushing thirty. What I thought of as my youth was coming to a close. I remember how weird that feeling was. “So this is how it is,” I thought. “Time just slips away.””
“In my opinion, using your willpower to control time is what makes it your ally. You mustn’t let it go on controlling you. That just makes you passive. “Time and tide wait for no man,” they say, so if time isn’t going to wait for you, you have no choice but to take it to heart and actively construct your schedule on that principle. In other words, assume command of the situation and stop being passive!”
“An intrinsic, internal drive compelling them to write. A tenacious, persevering temperament that equips them to work long and lonely hours. It is my belief that these are the qualifications required of a professional novelist.”
“I wanted to make the novel itself as deep and profound as I could without making my style any heavier, or harming the good feelings (or, to put it another way, without incorporating it into the system of pure literature). That was my basic idea.”
“The first time I sat down to write a novel, nothing came to mind—I was completely stumped. I hadn’t been through a war like my parents, or endured the postwar chaos and hunger of the generation directly above me. I had no experience of revolution (I had experienced a kind of ersatz revolution but didn’t want to write about that), nor had I undergone any form of brutal abuse or discrimination that I could remember. Instead I had grown up in a typical middle-class home in a peaceful suburban community, where I suffered no particular want, and although my life had been far from perfect, neither was it steeped in misfortune (in relative terms I was fortunate). In other words, I had spent a mundane and nondescript youth.”
“Speaking from experience, it seems that I discovered my “original” voice and style, at the outset, not adding to what I already knew but subtracting from it. Think how many—far too many—things we pick up in the course of living. Whether we choose to call it information overload or excess baggage, we have that multitude of options to choose from, so that when we try to express ourselves creatively, all those choices collide with each other and we shut down, like a stalled engine. We become paralyzed. Our best recourse is to clear out our information system by chucking all that is unnecessary into the garbage bin, allowing our mind to move freely again.”
“One rule of thumb is to ask yourself, “Am I having a good time doing this?” If you’re not enjoying yourself when you’re engaged in what seems important to you, if you can’t find spontaneous pleasure and joy in it, if your heart doesn’t leap with excitement, then there’s likely something wrong. When that happens, you have to go back to the beginning and start discarding any extraneous parts or unnatural elements. That can be a lot harder than it sounds.”
“I wake early each morning, brew a fresh pot of coffee, and work for four or five hours straight. Ten pages a day means three hundred pages a month.”
“My makeup is that of a long-distance runner, which means I need considerable time and distance to pull things together in a full and comprehensive way… It strikes me that, at the risk of exaggeration, long novels are my lifeblood, while short stories and novellas are more like practice pieces, important and useful steps toward the construction of longer works. You could compare this to the way long-distance runners think—we may keep track of our records in the five-thousand-and ten-thousand-meter races, but our true standard is our time in the marathon.”
“On days where I want to write more, I still stop after ten pages; when I don’t feel like writing, I force myself to somehow fulfill my quota. Why do I do it this way? Because it is especially important to maintain a steady pace when tackling a big project. That can’t work if you write a lot one day and nothing at all the next.”
“Writing a novel means sitting alone in my study for over a year (sometimes two or even three years), diligently writing away. I get up early and focus solely on writing for five to six hours every single day. Thinking that hard and long about things, your brain gets overheated (with my scalp literally getting hot at times), so after that I need to give my head a rest. That’s why I spend my afternoons napping, enjoying music, reading innocuous books. That kind of life, though, gets you out of shape physically, so every day I spend about an hour outdoors exercising. That sets me up for the next day’s work. Day after day, without exception, I repeat this cycle.”
“Once when I was interviewed by a young writer I declared that “once a writer puts on fat, it’s all over.” This was a bit hyperbolic, and of course there are exceptions, but I do believe that for the most part it’s true. Whether it is actual physical fat or metaphoric fat… the everyday combination of physical exercise and the intellectual process provides an ideal influence on the type of creative work the writer is engaged in.”
“For a long time I myself wasn’t exactly sure what it meant to me to run every day. If you run every day, then of course it’ll make you healthy. You lose fat and are able to have well-balanced muscles, and can control your weight. But as I run, I feel that’s not all there is to it. There’s something more important deeper down in running. But it’s not at all clear to me what that something is, and if I don’t understand it myself, then I can’t explain it to others.”
“Living is (in most cases) a tiresome, lackadaisical, protracted battle. If you don’t make the effort to persist in pushing the body forward, then keeping a firm, positive hold over your will and soul becomes, in my opinion, realistically next to impossible.”
“Our world is constructed in a multilayered way, so that the realm of the roundabout and the inefficient is in fact the flip side of that which is clever and efficient. If one or the other is missing (or if one is dominated by the other), then the world is distorted as a result.”
“When nuclear-power facilities that have the capacity to produce lethal damage, when a dangerous system that could destroy a country (and it’s true that the Chernobyl accident was one factor in the fall of the Soviet Union) is managed by commercial corporations that prioritize numbers and efficiency over everything else, and when this is all led and supervised by a bureaucracy built on rote memorization and top-down decision making, one that lacks any sympathy toward humanity, then you can be sure that very serious risks will arise. And the consequences may pollute the land, destroy nature, damage people’s health, forfeit the nation’s trust, and destroy the environment people live in. And it’s not just “may,” since these very things have all actually happened in Fukushima.”
“No matter what you have written, it can be made better. We may feel that what we have turned out is excellent, even perfect, but the fact remains there is always room for improvement.”
“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. Do that, and even if your reputation isn’t so great, if your books don’t sell well, you can tell yourself, “It’s okay. At least I enjoyed myself.” You’ll be convinced it was all worthwhile.”
“Enjoying yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll produce an outstanding work of art. A process of rigorous self-examination is a crucial element. Also, as a professional, of course you need a minimum number of readers. But clear that hurdle and I think that your goal should be to enjoy yourself and write works that satisfy you.”
— Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami
https://a.co/4R5CgiY