This bird had flown

When I was going to university a good decade ago now, I was a book worm. I was obsessed and constantly reading anything I could get my hands on. These days I still do, but something happened along the way: for the most part, I no longer read fiction. In the last couple years, the only fiction books that spring to mind are Cory Doctorow’s Makers, and Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policeman’s Detective Union. Both are brilliant; where Doctorow’s work is edged out in pure prose it claws its way back by being wildly entertaining and an entirely plausible vision of the near future. if you haven’t read one or both of them, I suggest you do so.

One of the books I read, I think at the behest of my friend Ruth, was Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. It is the only book I’ve ever read where I find myself so incapable of talking about it. Understand I’m not being dramatic, it just kind of left me nowhere. I could never tell whether it was the translation or simply Murakami’s style, but the whole book just felt cold. Cold and distant, like there was a solid pane of glass between you and the world in which the story was unfolding. I definitely read the book, but I didn’t manage to experience any of it.

Maybe with the benefit of a few more years, the brief but eye-opening trip to to Japan I would take, even perhaps just picking up another of his books, maybe then I would have found something new in his work. But I don’t go back. I never go back. High Fidelity remains the only book I’ve read more than once. That is a book I liked so much I bought a second copy just to lend people; last I heard it was making its way around the backlots of Warners Brothers Studios near where I grew up while they were filming Scooby Doo. High Fidelity is, as far as I’m concerned, as true a perspective on relationships from the male point of view as anyone is likely to find or write at any time ever. Women, read this book. You will understand your men better.

Also: you will feel even more sorry for them.

All this was triggered by reading a piece on The 99 Percent; Murakami talking about perseverance in writing. He says the most important thing you can have is talent, although:

in most cases the person involved can’t control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn’t enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal and make it last longer, but in neither case do things work out that easily.

He goes on to say focus and endurance are the next two most important things, and unlike talent, they can be worked on. Improved. We can find more of it if we try.

You have to continually transmit the object of your focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day and concentrate on the work at hand. And gradually you’ll expand the limits of what you’re able to do. Almost imperceptibly you’ll make the bar rise. This involves the same process as jogging every day to strengthen your muscles and develop a runner’s physique. Add a stimulus and keep it up. And repeat. Patience is a must in this process, but I guarantee results will come.

I’ve been thinking about this as I’ve written less and less. I used to write every day, but that is hard to do. It’s not impossible though, and it’s not like I have good reasons not to. After a while the blank page and the blinking cursor become so overwhelming you just never open up whatever it is you write in and make a start.

That is of course the other thing I used to be: fearless.

Fearless, and not desperately scrambling to make sure I was somehow bettering myself at every moment. Somehow reading fiction got sat alongside the list of activities that did not involve bettering myself. That is of course, horse shit at its finest.

My friend Matt has a book coming out shortly. I told him recently I was so impressed by his ability to just sit down, write, and get the thing done. He shrugged at the time and looked at me and said “If a publisher came to you and said ‘Here’s an advance, what do you reckon you write about something like this?’, you’d probably find you were able to sit down and write as much as you needed to.” He may be right, he may not be. He also then referenced a quote I’d posted from Tina Fey, which seemed to sum up everything we had been talking about: Tina Fey on writing