Novelist as a Vocation(35)
And what you need to faithfully, sincerely verbalize this is a quiet ability to focus, a staying power that doesn’t get discouraged, and a consciousness that is, up to a point, firm and systematic. And what you need to consistently maintain these qualities is physical strength. This might be seen as a boring, literally prosaic conclusion, but that’s my fundamental way of thinking as a novelist. Whether I’m criticized, praised, have rotten tomatoes thrown at me, or beautiful flowers tossed my way, that’s the only way I know how to write—and to live.
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I love the activity of writing novels. Which is why I’m really grateful to be able to make a living doing just that, why I feel it’s a blessing I’ve been able to live this kind of life. At a certain point in my life, if I hadn’t had an exceptional stroke of good fortune, I never would have been able to achieve this. I honestly feel this way. You might label it a miracle more than good fortune.
Even if I had some inborn talent for writing novels, it would have remained there, like with oil fields or mines, if I hadn’t unearthed it: undisturbed, deep underground. Some people insist that if you’re truly talented at something, your talent will definitely blossom someday. But based on my own gut feelings—and I trust my gut—that won’t necessarily happen. If that talent lies buried in a relatively shallow place, it’s very possible it will emerge on its own. But if it’s buried deep down, you can’t discover it that easily. It can be the most abundant talent, but as long as there’s no one to actually pick up a shovel, say “Let’s dig here,” and start digging, it may remain forever unknown, buried in the earth. When I look back on my own life, I really feel this is true. There’s a right time for things, and if you miss that opportunity, most of the time you’ll never get a second chance. Life is often capricious, unfair, and sometimes cruel. I was able, by chance, to grab a golden opportunity. Thinking back on it now, I feel it was nothing less than a stroke of good fortune.
But good luck is, so to speak, simply an admission ticket. In that sense it’s different from an oil field or a mine. Just getting that admission ticket is no guarantee that everything will be okay after that, that you can then live a life of ease and luxury. The admission ticket allows you into the performance—but that’s all. You hand over your admission ticket at the entrance, enter the site, but then what you do there, what you discover, what you gain, what you lose, how you overcome the many obstacles that crop up there, is all a question of individual talent, gifts, and competence, of the person’s abilities and outlook. And sometimes it’s simply a matter of physical strength. At any rate, you can’t make do with just good fortune.
As you might expect, just like there are all kinds of people there are all kinds of novelists. All kinds of lifestyles and ways of writing. Different viewpoints and styles of writing. So they can’t all be covered in one blanket statement. All I’m able to do is talk about the type of writer I am, so of course you need to qualify what I’m saying. At the same time, though—as far as being a professional writer is concerned—there should be something that goes beyond individual difference and connects us at a fundamental level. In a word, I think this is mental toughness. I’m talking about a firm, strong will that allows you to keep on writing novels despite all sorts of difficulties you encounter along the way—the confusion you go through, severe criticism, betrayal by good friends, unexpected failures, the occasional loss of confidence, or overconfidence that makes you slip up.
And if you want to sustain that willpower over the long haul, then your quality of life becomes an issue. First of all, you need to live to the full. And my basic idea is that “living fully” means, to some extent, building up the framework that contains the soul, the physical body, and pushing it forward step by step. 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. Life isn’t that easy. If you tilt toward one direction or the other, sooner or later the opposite side will have its revenge. The scales tilting toward one side will inescapably return to where they were. Physical strength and spiritual strength are like the two pairs of wheels of a car. When they’re in balance and are functioning well, then the car operates most efficiently and moves in the optimal direction.
To give a simple example, if you have a cavity and your tooth is aching, you can’t sit down and take your time working on a novel. No matter what sort of amazing plot you have in mind, or strong desire to write the novel, and no matter how much talent you might possess to spin out a rich, beautiful story, if you’re hit by a constant, sharp physical pain, there’s no way you can concentrate on writing. First you have to go to the dentist and get your tooth taken care of—get your body ready to go, in other words—and only then can you sit down to write. Put simply, that’s what I’m trying to say.
It’s a very simple theory, but it’s something I’ve learned personally through experience. You have to manage physical strength and spiritual strength so they’re in balance, so they effectively reinforce each other. The more protracted the fight, the more significance this theory takes on.
Naturally, if you’re a rare genius and think that, like Mozart or Schubert, Pushkin or Rimbaud or van Gogh, it’s okay to bloom beautifully for a very short time and produce beautiful, sublime works that move people’s hearts, make a lasting name for yourself in history, and then burn out, then my theory doesn’t apply. Go ahead and totally forget everything I’ve said up till now. And just do what you want to do, however you want to do it. It goes without saying that that is an admirable way of living. And genius artists like Mozart, Schubert, Pushkin, Rimbaud, and van Gogh are indispensable, in any age.