{"id":39104,"date":"2021-04-19T06:30:48","date_gmt":"2021-04-18T18:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=39104"},"modified":"2021-04-18T23:16:02","modified_gmt":"2021-04-18T11:16:02","slug":"the-wisdom-of-haruki-murakami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2021\/04\/19\/the-wisdom-of-haruki-murakami\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wisdom of Haruki Murakami"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"In my recent The Chaos Gate<\/em> (WALL #4) update<\/a>, I discussed the current endgame sequence being a little tricky.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on this also put me in mind of a Guardian interview with the great Haruki Murakami, which I first read awa\u2019 back in 2014. I feel the interview is \u201cone out of the box\u201d on so many different levels: the insight into the writer, his work, the process of writing, and writing influences.<\/p>\n

The Guardian: An Interview With Harumi Murakami<\/a><\/h3>\n

\"\"The interview is wide-ranging, but the parts that really resonated for me were when Murakami spoke about the writing process. Here are a few examples:<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to write. I like to choose the right word, I like to write the right sentence\u2026 in the right place. That kind of engineering is exhausting, though: a daily trip to the \u201cbasement of the mind\u201d and back up again. \u2026You have to dedicate yourself to that work. You have no extra space to do something else.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Also:<\/p>\n

\u201cI take time to rewrite,\u201d he explains. \u201cRewriting is my favourite part of writing. The first time is a kind of torture, sometimes. Raymond Carver [whose work Murakami has translated into Japanese] said the same thing. I met him and I talked with him in 1983 or \u201884, and he said: \u2018The first draft is kind of torture, but when you rewrite it\u2019s getting better, so you are happy\u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"And this:<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like deadlines \u2026when it\u2019s finished, it\u2019s finished. But before then, it is not finished.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I believe the reason these quotes resonate so strongly is because they closely reflect my own writing experience.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Haruki Murakami attended the Auckland Writers Festival here in NZ, where another of his quotes resonated strongly with me:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy stories are always unpredictable to myself.\u201d <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Mine definitely work in their own mysterious ways, their wonders to perform. And are not infrequently shapeshifters to boot \u2013 just when you think you\u2019ve got them tied down, there they go, shifting again: not unlike Menelaus and the Old Man of the Sea\u2026<\/p>\n

Or as I wrote the other week: \u201ctricky.\u201d<\/em> \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Yet also magical, and rewarding, no matter how exhausting that daily trip to the basement of the mind and back up again \u2013 and with the good hope, always, that the end result may also prove rewarding for readers.<\/p>\n

Just by the way, too, if you haven\u2019t already read Haruki Murakami, you may like to check out his work. I first read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle<\/em> but he has written many books now, including Norwegian Wood<\/em> and Kafka on the Shore<\/em> among many others.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my recent The Chaos Gate (WALL #4) update, I discussed the current endgame sequence being a little tricky. Reflecting on this also put me in mind of a Guardian interview with the great Haruki Murakami, which I first read awa\u2019 back in 2014. I feel the interview is \u201cone out of the box\u201d on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,10,14,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-writing","category-general","category-other-writers","category-recommended-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39104"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39115,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39104\/revisions\/39115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}