Master storyteller and long-distance runner Haruki Murakami is probably the best-known Japanese novelist in the world today, thanks to quirky bestsellers Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (a collection of 24 short stories), Kafka On The Shore (a full-length novel) — both of which I have read — and many more.
In Japan Murakami's popularity is such that the publication last month of his first novel in five years, 1Q84, set off a frenzy among his fans, forcing his publisher to increase the print run.
He also writes non-fiction: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running was published in July 2008 and immediately became a bestseller. I chanced upon it at the Just Books library in JP Nagar a few months ago and, because I have been training to run at least five times a week at the gym, I was able to benefit from many of the insights Murakami offers.
But this is what really struck me. There are many people, most of them youngsters, whose dream it is to write a novel. It is to them that Haruki Murakami really addresses these excerpts I have chosen from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Look at the three traits he lists as a must: talent, focus, and endurance. And see how he elaborates on each of these traits below:
IN EVERY INTERVIEW I'M ASKED what's the most important quality a novelist has to have. It's pretty obvious: talent. No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don't have any fuel, even the best car won't run.
The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person involved can't control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn't enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal to make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out that easily. Talent has a mind of its own and wells up when it wants to, and once it dries up, that's it. Of course certain poets and rock singers whose genius went out in a blaze of glory — people like Schubert and Mozart, whose dramatic early deaths turned them into legends — have a certain appeal, but for the vast majority of us this isn't the model we follow.
If I'm asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that's easy too: focus — the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever's critical at the moment. Without that you can't accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you'll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it. I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I'm writing. I don't see anything else, I don't think about anything else. Even a novelist who has a lot of talent and a mind full of great new ideas probably can't write a thing if, for instance, he's suffering a lot of pain from a cavity. The pain blocks concentration. That's what I mean when I say that without focus you can't accomplish anything.
After focus, the next most important thing for a novelist is, hands down, endurance. If you concentrate on writing three or four hours a day and feel tired after a week of this, you're not going to be able to write a long work. What's needed for a writer of fiction -- at least one who hopes to write a novel — is the energy to focus every day for half a year, or a year, two years. You can compare it to breathing. If concentration is the process of just holding your breath, endurance is the art of slowly, quietly breathing at the same time you're storing air in your lungs. Unless you can find a balance between both, it'll be difficult to write novels professionally over a long time. Continuing to breathe while you hold your breath.
Fortunately, these two disciplines — focus and endurance — are different from talent, since they can be acquired and sharpened though training. You'll naturally learn both concentration and endurance when you sit down every day at your desk and train yourself to focus on one point. This is a lot like the training of muscles I wrote of a moment ago. You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you'll expand the limits of what you're able to do. Almost imperceptibly you'll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner's physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee the results will come.
In private correspondence, the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler once confessed that even if he didn't write anything, he made sure he sat down at his desk every single day and concentrated. I understand the purpose behind his doing this. This is the way Chandler gave himself the physical stamina a professional writer needs, quietly strengthening his willpower. This sort of daily training was indispensable to him.
Writing novels, to me, is basically a kind of manual labour. Writing itself is mental labour, but finishing an entire book is closer to manual labour. It doesn't involve heavy lifting, running fast, or leaping high. Most people, though, only see the surface reality of writing and think of writers as involved in quiet, intellectual work done in their study. If you have the strength to lift a coffee cup, they figure, you can write a novel. But once you try your hand at it, you soon find that it isn't as peaceful a job as it seems. The whole process -- sitting at your desk, focusing your mind like a laser beam, imagining something out of a blank horizon, creating a story, selecting the right words, one by one, keeping the whole flow of the story on track -- requires far more energy, over a long period, than most people ever imagine. You might not move your body around, but there's gruelling, dynamic labour going on inside you. Everybody uses their mind when they think. But a writer puts on an outfit called narrative and thinks with his entire being; and for the novelist that process requires putting into play all your physical reserve, often to the point of overexertion.
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MOST OF WHAT I KNOW about writing I've learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate — and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself? I know that if I hadn't become a long-distance runner when I became a novelist, my work would have been vastly different. How different? Hard to say. But something would have definitely been different.
In any event, I'm happy I haven't stopped running all these years. The reason is, I like the novels I've written. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of novel I'll produce next. Since I'm a writer with limits — an imperfect person living an imperfect, limited life — the fact that I can still feel this way is a real accomplishment. Calling it a miracle might be an exaggeration, but I really do feel this way. And if running every day helps me accomplish this, then I'm very grateful to running.
People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they'll go to any length to live longer. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life — and for me, for writing as well. I believe many runners would agree.
It is to your advantage to go out and buy (and read) this book. Here are the relevant details: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami; translated by Philip Gabriel; published by Vintage 2009; 192 pages.
- Commits alumna Sanaa Aesha (Class of 2008) comments: Writemonkey took me back to the good ol' feel of pencil against paper. Nothing shiny in between. Just better handwriting. So I guess this takes care of focus. Endurance, however, will take more than a monkey to achieve.
- NOVEMBER 1, 2011 — ALSO READ: Can a translation improve on the original? Find out in this interview with Philip Gabriel — How Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 Was Translated Into English. And here's a comprehensive review from the New York Times of 1Q84: "Murakami's Mega-Opus".
