Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami

Author:Haruki Murakami [Murakami, Haruki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2022-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

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How many times do I rewrite? There is no specific number. There are countless rewrites at the manuscript stage, and I ask for new galleys many times during the proofreading process, much to my editor’s dismay. I mark the galleys up in pencil until each page is covered in black and send them off, then mark them up again when the clean copy is returned. Over and over again. As I said before, writing is a profession that requires stamina, and in truth, I don’t mind. The fact is, I have a deep-rooted love for tinkering, so I have no problem reading a passage multiple times to check its rhythm, or fiddling with its word order, or making tiny adjustments to its expression. I like looking at the galleys being covered in black, and the ten or so No. 2 pencils wearing down to stubs on my desk. I don’t know why, but I can’t get enough of it. I could go on like that forever and not get tired.

Raymond Carver, a writer I love and respect, also enjoyed tinkering. He wrote, about another writer, that “he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting commas back in the same places.” I know that feeling exactly, for I have had the same experience many times. You reach the limit. If you tinker any more you will only damage what you have written. It’s a subtle point, easy to miss. The bit about replacing commas hits it right on the head.

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