Novelist as a Vocation(27)

Unlike baseball, however, no sooner has one season (the first draft) ended than a new one begins: that of rewriting. No time is better spent than the time I spend rewriting, and nothing is more fun.

First, though, I take a short break (it depends on the situation, but usually about one week) before undertaking the first rewrite. Then I start at the beginning and plow straight through to the end. At this stage, I make sweeping changes, leaving nothing untouched. No matter how long the novel is, or how complex its structure, I will have composed it without any fixed outline, not knowing how it will unfold or end, letting things take their course and improvising as I go along. This is by far the most fun way to write. As a result, though, the story is riddled with all sorts of contradictions and inconsistencies. Characters may radically change partway through. The timeline may become tangled. These glitches must be fixed if the novel is to flow smoothly in a comprehensible manner. In the process, some lengthy sections may have to be cut back, while other sections may have to be expanded. Entirely new episodes may have to be added.

In the case of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I decided that a large chunk of what I had written didn’t fit into the whole, so I excised it and used it as the base for a subsequent novel, South of the Border, West of the Sun. That’s an extreme example, though—in most cases, the sections I cut out are gone forever.

This rewrite usually takes a month or two. When I finish, I break for another week or so and then begin the second rewrite. As with the first rewrite, I start at the head and work my way through. The difference is that now I focus on the details of the manuscript, fine-tuning passages of natural description, for example, and adjusting the tone of the dialogues. I check to ensure that nothing in the plot is out of place, that hard-to-read sections are made easier, and that the story flows smoothly and naturally. No major surgery takes place during this stage, just lots of nips and tucks. Once I have finished, I take another break and then plunge into the third rewrite. This time no cutting is involved. Instead, I tweak the novel, tightening a screw here, loosening a screw there, making sure that all is in place.

Novels are, by definition, longer works, which means the reader can be stifled if the screws are too tight. Correspondingly, there are spots where I leave them loose, to allow the reader room to breathe. There must also be a balance between the novel as a whole and its parts. All these things require careful adjustment. Some critics like to extract one section of text and castigate the writer for its sloppiness, a practice that strikes me as quite unfair. After all, a novel—like a living, breathing human being—needs to have its loose and sloppy parts. Only that way can the tightly constructed sections achieve their full effect.

At this stage of the game, I take a longer break. For two weeks to a month, if possible, I stick the manuscript in my desk drawer and forget it. At least I try to. In the interim I may take a trip, or concentrate on my translating. The time spent working on a long novel is important, to be sure, but time spent doing nothing is no less so. The same principle applies to a factory or a construction site: manufactured goods are left to settle before being shipped, and concrete is cured in the open air before being built upon. It is through this process that materials are allowed to set or dry out. The same thing holds true with novels. If you fail to let a novel sit for a certain length of time, the parts won’t adhere, or will fail to dry and therefore be weakened.

Once the novel has fully settled, it is time for another detailed and exhaustive run-through. Thanks to my time away, my impressions of the work will have changed quite a lot. Weaknesses I haven’t noticed before jump out at me. I can sense what has depth and what doesn’t. Just as the work has settled, so too has my state of mind.



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Once the settling period is over and the subsequent rewrite completed, I move on to the next step. By this point, the novel has assumed what will be more or less its final form, so I can show it to a first reader—namely, my wife. This is a natural extension of the writing process, a station on the line that leads from inception to completion. My wife’s opinions are something like standard tuning in music. They are similar to the old speakers I have at home (sorry, dear!). I have listened to all my records on those speakers. They aren’t especially good, part of a JBL system I bought back in the 1970s. Big and bulky, their tonal range is more limited than the fancy new speakers available nowadays. The clarity of the sound isn’t as good, either. One could even call them antiques. Yet I have been listening to so many kinds of music on them for so long that they have become my standard of comparison. They are like a part of me.

This may make some people angry, but although literary editors in Japan are specialists, in the end they are company employees who can be reassigned at any time. Of course there are exceptions, but by and large they are appointed by upper management to “look after” you, which means there is no telling how long the relationship may last. For better or for worse, however, my wife is unlikely to be reassigned. She is thus the “fixed point” in my editing process, the one who knows best how I write. We have been together for a long time, so that for the most part I understand the nuances of her thoughts and opinions and where they are coming from. (I have to say “for the most part”—understanding one’s wife completely is fundamentally impossible.)

This doesn’t mean that I accept her comments easily. After all, I have just finished a novel that took a long time to write, and though the settling process may enable me to look at it more coolly, I am still emotionally wrapped up in the project, so it is very hard for me if someone says anything at all critical about it. I can become quite passionate. Harsh words are sometimes exchanged. I could never be so direct and honest with an editor—that’s the advantage, I guess, of getting feedback from someone close to you. I’m a pretty even-tempered guy most of the time, but at this stage in the process I can’t help flaring up. I guess it’s a necessary outlet, a way for me to release all those pent-up feelings.