Haruki Murakami is the most experimental and popular postmodern novelist in Japan. He was born in Japan’s ancient capital Kyoto in 1949 to a middle-class family with a vested interest in the national culture: his father was a teacher of Japanese literature, his grandfather a Buddhist monk.
As a student in Tokyo in the late sixties, Haruki Murakami developed a taste for postmodern fiction. At twenty-three he married and spent the next several years of his life running a jazz club in Tokyo, Peter Cat. In the meantime, he tried his hand at writing.
At one point, he was convinced that he could write. So he closed down the Jazz business and began to write his first novel, ‘Hear the Wind Sing’, which was published in 1979. The novel won him the coveted Gunzo Literature Prize and the beginnings of a readership.
Then, with each book that followed, his acclaim and popularity grew, until the publication in 1987 of his first realistic novel, Norwegian Wood, transformed him into a literary megastar and the de facto “voice of his generation” — eighties’ Japan’s version of J. D. Salinger. The book has sold more than two million copies in Japan alone, the equivalent of one for every household in Tokyo.
His writing tips are best revealed in a Paris Review interview which was conducted by John Wray. So, following tips of his writing were caught from the Paris Review interview.
1. I borrowed everything
Murakami never thought he would be a writer some day. Then, how did he become a writer?
“When I was twenty-nine, I just started to write a novel out of the blue. I wanted to write something, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to write in Japanese—I’d read almost nothing of the works of Japanese writers — so I borrowed the style, structure, everything, from the books I had read — American books or Western books. As a result, I made my own original style. So it was a beginning.”
2. I don’t have a plan
Most of the writers have a plan before starting a story, but Murakami rejects the plan.
“When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come. I don’t choose what kind of story it is or what’s going to happen. I just wait. Norwegian Wood is a different thing, because I decided to write in a realistic style. But basically, I cannot choose.”
3. I explain the story line
But after starting the story like above, what will happen next?
“I get some images and I connect one piece to another. That’s the story line. Then I explain the storyline to the reader. You should be very kind when you explain something. If you think, It’s okay; I know that, it’s a very arrogant thing. Easy words and good metaphors; good allegory. So that’s what I do. I explain very carefully and clearly.”
But does that come naturally for him?
4. I should be very humble
“I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made cocktails and I made sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer — it just happened. It’s a kind of gift, you know, from the heavens. So I think I should be very humble.”
5. I don’t know the end
Murakami is a writer who was influenced by crime writers such as Raymond Chandler. But when reading Chandler, Murakami never cared about who the killer was in the story:
“I myself, as I’m writing, don’t know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don’t know the conclusion at all and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don’t know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there’s no purpose in writing the story.”
6. Dream while you are awake
“The good thing about writing books is that you can dream while you are awake. If it’s a real dream, you cannot control it. When writing the book, you are awake; you can choose the time, the length, everything. I write for four or five hours in the morning and when the time comes, I stop. I can continue the next day. If it’s a real dream, you can’t do that.”
7. Concentrate on the work very hard
How many drafts do Murakami generally go through?
“Four or five. I spent six months writing the first draft and then spent seven or eight months rewriting.”
But that’s pretty fast. He had this fact to say about that: “I’m a hard worker. I concentrate on my work very hard. So, you know, it’s easy. And I don’t do anything but write my fiction when I write.”
8. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity
“When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.”
9. I observe the real people
How does Murakami make up characters?
“When I make up the characters in my books, I like to observe the real people in my life. I don’t like to talk much; I like to listen to other people’s stories. I don’t decide what kind of people they are; I just try to think about what they feel, where they are going. I gathered some factors from him, some factors from her. I don’t know if this is “realistic” or “unrealistic,” but for me, my characters are more real than real people. In those six or seven months that I’m writing, those people are inside me. It’s a kind of cosmos.”
10. My protagonist is my ‘twin brother’
How does he create his protagonists?
“Please think about it this way: I have a twin brother. And when I was two years old, one of us — the other one — was kidnapped. He was brought to a faraway place and we haven’t seen each other since. I think my protagonist is him. A part of myself, but not me, and we haven’t seen each other for a long time. It’s a kind of alternative form of myself. In terms of DNA, we are the same, but our environment has been different. So our way of thinking would be different. Every time I write a book I put my feet in different shoes. Because sometimes I am tired of being myself. This way I can escape. It’s a fantasy. If you can’t have a fantasy, what’s the point of writing a book?”