Novelist as a Vocation(31)
When I first started writing Norwegian Wood, I wrote at cafés in various places in Greece, on board ferry boats, in the waiting lobbies of airports, in shady spots in parks, and at desks in cheap hotels. Hauling around oversized, four-hundred-character-per-page Japanese manuscript paper was too much, so in Rome I bought a cheap notebook (the kind we used to call college-ruled notebooks) and wrote the novel down in tiny writing with a disposable Bic pen. I still had to contend with noisy cafés, wobbly tables that made writing difficult, coffee spilling on the pages, and at night in my hotel room when I’d go over what I’d written, sometimes there would be couples getting all hot and heavy beyond the paper-thin walls separating my room from the room next door. Things weren’t easy, in other words. I can smile at these memories now, but at the time it was all pretty discouraging. I had trouble finding a decent place to live, and moved all over Europe, all the while continuing to work on my novel. And I still have that thick old notebook, with its coffee stains (or whatever they are; I’m not really sure about some of them).
Wherever a person is when he writes a novel, it’s a closed room, a portable study. That’s what I’m trying to say.
* * *
—
Essentially, I believe people don’t write novels because someone asks them to. They write because they have a personal desire to write. And it’s this strong inner motivation that drives them to write, and to endure all their own struggles as they do.
Naturally, some writers write novels because they’ve been asked to do so. This might be true for the majority of professional writers. My own personal policy for many years has been not to write novels because I’ve been contracted to or requested to, but I might be a rare case. For most writers, editors will ask them to write a short story, for instance, for their company’s magazine, or a novel exclusively for their publishing company, and they’ll go from there. In these cases it’s usual to have a deadline, and depending on the situation, to receive a payment up front as a kind of advance.
But the fact remains that novels are written on the novelist’s own initiative, out of an inner motivation. Perhaps there are people who can’t get started writing without those conditions—a specific request from a publisher and a deadline. But even so, deadlines and piles of money and pleas from publishers still aren’t enough to get someone to write a novel unless he’s motivated from inside to write. I think that goes without saying.
But no matter what triggers the writing, once a novelist sits down to write a novel he’s utterly alone with the task. No one is there to help him (or her). Some novelists might have help from researchers, but all they do is gather materials helpful to the novelists. No one else orders all those materials in his or her mind, and no one else finds the right words for him to use. Once you begin, you have to forge ahead by yourself, and complete the novel on your own. It’s not like baseball these days, where if a pitcher can get through seven innings he can then hand things over to a relief pitcher and take a break on the bench. For a novelist there’s no bullpen, and no relief pitchers in sight. So even if the game goes into extra innings—fifteen innings, even eighteen—you have to keep on pitching until it’s decided.
For example—and this is based on my own case—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.
It’s kind of a cliché to say it’s a lonely process, but writing a novel—especially a really long one—is exactly that: extremely lonely work. Sometimes I feel like I’m sitting all alone at the bottom of a well. Nobody will help me, and nobody’s there to pat me on the back and tell me I’ve done a great job. 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.
I’m a very patient type of person, I think, when it comes to that kind of process. Still, at times I do get fed up with it and hate it. But as I work away, persevering day after day—like a bricklayer carefully laying one brick on top of another—I reach a certain point where I get the definite feeling that when all is said and done, a writer is exactly what I am. And I accept that feeling as something good, something to be celebrated. The slogan of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) in the US is “One day at a time,” and that’s exactly what this is like. Maintaining a set rhythm, steadily hauling in one day after the other and sending them on their way. Silently continue to do this and at a certain point something happens inside you. But it takes time to reach this point. And until then you have to be very patient. One day is just one day. You can’t take care of two or three days’ worth all at once.
What do you need in order to patiently keep on going?
Needless to say, it’s stamina.
If you can only manage to sit at your desk and focus for three days, you’ll never be a novelist. I’m sure someone will say if you can do that for three days you should be able to write a short story. True enough. If you work three days you might be able to manage one short story. But completing a short story over three days, then going back to square one, and getting yourself up for another three days to write the next short story, is not a cycle anyone could keep up for long. If a writer tried to maintain that kind of compartmentalized process for long, I think his health would fail. Even those who specialize in short stories have to have a certain continuity in their life as professional writers. Whether you write novels or short stories, to maintain creativity over a long period of time you need the kind of staying power that makes this continual process possible.