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.
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Haruki Murakami
Novelist, short-story writer and translator
Japan · b. 1949
Arts and letters
About
Japanese novelist whose books include Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. He ran a Tokyo jazz club called Peter Cat before publishing his first novel, and has translated Raymond Carver, Tim O'Brien and F. Scott Fitzgerald into Japanese.
4 answers
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