On Being Failure as a Writer
Murakami wrote:
I can pinpoint the exact moment when I first thought I could write a novel. It was around one thirty in the afternoon of April 1, 1978. I was at Jingu Stadium that day, alone in the outfield drinking beer and watching the game. Jingu Stadium was within walking distance of my apartment at the time, and I was a fairly big Yakult Swallows fan. It was a perfectly beautiful spring day, not a cloud in the sky, with a warm breeze blowing. There weren’t any benches in the outfield seating back then, just a grassy slope. I was lying on the grass, sipping cold beer, gazing up occasionally at the sky, and leisurely enjoying the game. As usual for the Swallows, the stadium wasn’t very crowded. It was the season opener, and they were taking on the Hiroshima Carp at home... And it was at that exact moment that a thought struck me: You know what? I could try writing a novel. I still can remember the wide open sky, the feel of the new grass, the satisfying crack of the bat. Something flew down from the sky at that instant, and whatever it was, I accepted it.
I'm jealous. I've always wanted to be a writer, but I do not have a definite moment in time where I was like "I want to be a writer." I did, however, have moments where I was like "I cannot write for shit." A lot of those. A lot of doubt, a lot of introspection that ends with dropping the pen altogether.
Murakami wrote his first novel Hear the Wind Sing when he was 30. King, Carrie, when he was 27. Zusak, The Messenger, also 27. Hanging on to the hope with Emily St John Mandel, who wrote Station Eleven when she was 35. Perhaps I am comparing myself to my favorites too harshly (and you can point to others, like Adams, Watership Down, 40s) but still - time zips by and I have nothing to show for it.
Perhaps the secret really is to just keep writing. As King said:
When I got the rejection slip from AHMM, I pounded a nail into the wall above the Webcor, wrote “Happy Stamps” on the rejection slip, and poked it onto the nail. Then I sat on my bed and listened to Fats sing “I’m Ready.” I felt pretty good, actually. When you’re still too young to shave, optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.
By the time I was fourteen (and shaving twice a week whether I needed to or not) the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing. By the time I was sixteen I’d begun to get rejection slips with handwritten notes a little more encouraging than the advice to stop using staples and start using paperclips. The first of these hopeful notes was from Algis Budrys, then the editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction, who read a story of mine called “The Night of the Tiger” (the inspiration was, I think, an episode of The Fugitive in which Dr. Richard Kimble worked as an attendant cleaning out cages in a zoo or a circus) and wrote: “This is good. Not for us, but good. You have talent. Submit again."
I've never been a faithful writer - bursts like this one (making a website, writing down prose, poems and short stories) are few and far between. I am also very critical of form more than substance - always trying to find the perfect app to write on, the perfect font, the perfect margins. If I am going to be a writer, I have to start taking writing seriously. I know I can write good - it's just a matter of discipline.