Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As a writer myself, I just love reading how others tackle their craft. I must admit this borders on voyeuristic, like thumbing through a personal diary. For me, writing is done in private, in my own time and space. In my studio, when I get together with my imaginary friends, we do all kinds of wondrous things. And the best part is we never know what might happen next.
What struck a chord in this book is that my ‘go with the flow’ method is similar to Murakami’s. He writes: ‘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, of course, is written about the first draft. Then come the rewrites: first, second, third, and possibly fourth. This is where the novelist tidies up the narrative, the timeline, the characters and fixes inconsistencies so that ‘the story flows smoothly and naturally’.
The other revelation is that Murakami does not write for a specific audience. He states: ‘I have no clear mental image of my readership’. Some people enjoy what he writes and become followers, while others are less kind. In Murakami’s words: ‘no matter what or how I write, somebody’s going to say something bad about it’. You can’t please everyone but you can please yourself, he concludes.
‘Novelist as a Vocation’ is neither a story nor a how-to manual, but rather a series of essays about the writing of novels, as experienced by one of Japan’s best-known contemporary writers. Written with humility (apologetic even), the book is a collection of insights, tips, and anecdotes about life and writing. The English version was published in 2022.



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