First Notebook Entry
Sunday, October 5th, 2008
Hello, and welcome to my new website. We’ve made several changes to the look as well as adding quite a bit of new content for this new release, so feel free to have a look around.
I guess the main new addition is this space which I will devote to whatever I’ve been thinking about, or whatever I’ve found inspiring, of late. I’ve done a lot of writing over the years, and this is a great chance for me to put everything together in one place.
Most recently I was quite inspired by a little autobiographical piece written by the fascinating Japanese novelist Haruki Murikami in the New Yorker. Ostensibly about Murikami’s experiences as a runner, the piece offers quite a few interesting tidbits about Murikami’s earlier life—for example, the fact that he ran a successful jazz club in Tokyo in his twenties. I wonder if any of my friends played there? It was called “Peter Cat”…
Anyway Murikami’s story offers quite a bit of wisdom useful to anyone, and to the creative artist in particular. Here are some quotations that I found inspiring:
ON RISING EARLY
Once I began my life as a novelist, my wife and I decided we’d go to bed soon after it got dark and wake up with the sun. To our minds this was a more natural respectable way to live.
ON SOCIAL SACRIFICES
People are offended when you repeatedly turn down their invitations. But, at that point, I felt that the indispensable relationship I should build in my life was not with a specific person but with an unspecified number of readers. My readers would welcome whatever lifestyle I chose, as long as I made sure that each new work was an improvement over the last. And shouldn’t that be my duty—and my top priority—as a novelist? … In other words, you can’t please everybody.
ON STICKING TO YOUR GUNS
Even when I ran the club, I understood this: A lot of customers came to the club. If one out of ten enjoyed the place and decided to come again… then the business would survive. To put it another way, it didn’t matter if nine out of ten people didn’t like the club. Realizing this lifted a weight off my shoulders. Still, I had to make sure that the one person who did like the place really liked it. In order to do that, I had to make my philosophy absolutely clear, and patiently maintain that philosophy no matter what…
ON DISCIPLINE
No matter how much long-distance running might suit me, of course there are days when I feel lethargic and don’t want to do it. On days like that, I try to come up with all kinds of plausible excuses not to run… now, whenever I feel like I don’t want to run, I always ask myself the same thing: You’re able to make your living as a novelist, working at home, setting your own hours. You don’t have to commute on a packed train or sit through boring meetings. Don’t you realize how fortunate you are? Compared with that running an hour around the neighborhood is nothing, right? Then I lace up my running shoes and set off without hesitating.
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