This book comprises a series of essays on the author’s thoughts on writing. They’re structured quite informally, being almost conversational in their This book comprises a series of essays on the author’s thoughts on writing. They’re structured quite informally, being almost conversational in their style. Murakami reflects on his writing life and details how he prepares for and executes particular tasks, be they writing a full novel or something smaller. A few things struck me:
1. In an early piece he ventures that regular readers amount to only one in twenty of the general population. That seems very low to me and might be challenged by a small amount of independent research I’ve carried out (i.e. just a basic Google search). It seems that the figure is hard to pin down and is impacted by such matters who to include or exclude, levels of literacy in some parts of the world etc. But if true, does that make us members of a fairly exclusive club?
2. I didn’t realise that he works as a translator (English to Japanese) in addition to producing his own compositions. He fits this in around his other writing tasks, sometimes to give his mind some release (a breaker) from the intense focus he has on whatever else he’s working on.
3. The number of re-writes he goes through when working on a novel makes it seem like a totally exhausting process. When he’s completed around four re-writes he then seeks views from trusted sources (notably his wife) before launching into even more re-writes. Then he gets the text translated from Japanese to English – using a tried and tested (to him) translator – and only then will he provide a copy to an editor. Then the work with the editor begins…
4. He uses a process of filing away useful pieces of information or thoughts into mental cabinets – he doesn’t write this stuff down. When he’s got enough information stored – but not before – he’ll begin writing. For his novels he hoards his most preciously guarded cabinets.
5. He runs every day for about an hour and has done for thirty years. He believes that for him to write successfully he has to take care of his body as well as his mind. Note: his book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running was an inspiration for me to complete my first ultramarathon, something he’s done on a number of occasions.
Overall, a fascinating insight into the mind of this wonderful and, I think, truly original author.
My thanks to Random House UK for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review....more
I’ve read a good deal of Lawrence Block’s output and along the way I’ve learned a reasonable amount about his life – well, in all honesty I’ve really I’ve read a good deal of Lawrence Block’s output and along the way I’ve learned a reasonable amount about his life – well, in all honesty I’ve really only previously learned about his life since he became a successful writer of crime fiction novels. There have been glimpses of how things played out for him prior to this, in some short pieces he’s published and random anecdotes I’ve come across, but really nothing substantial. However, on his 83rd birthday (June 24th, 2021) he self-published this book detailing his formative years as a writer – his ‘apprenticeship’, as he calls it. About half of this book was written in a manic sitting in 1994 and the remainder was completed recently, a quarter of a century later.
Block was born in Buffalo, New York and attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. His ambition to become a self-sustaining writer came early and by the mid-to-late 1950’s he was already churning out sex novels (Block prefers the term classic mid-century erotica) at the rate of a book a month, for a rather paltry fee. These books were printed cheaply, sold in small numbers and Block always penned them under a pseudonym – any one of a few he routinely used or a random name supplied by the publisher. He talks about how he meticulously measured his output in order to produce the minimum number of pages needed to achieve the required quota. These weren’t labours of love, simply a way of earning money by doing what he always wanted to do.
There’s a lot of detail here about the process of producing and selling these books and along the way he describes a few tricks of the trade, such as the fact that inclusion of quite a bit of dialogue not only suited his own reading preference but also filled up space much more economically than extended, uninterrupted prose. LB does talk about life outside of writing, but this only to a fairly limited extent. These, though, are my favourite segments in this book. His good friend and fellow writer Donald Westlake features quite a bit and there are some interesting and sometimes hilarious reminiscences of the times he spent with Don and of others he bumped into along the way.
It’s clear that LB was something of a workaholic through his period, he muses that all he had to hear was that somebody needed something as fast as possible “and I’ve have the sucker half written before he could hang up the phone”. He’s also evident that he’s always had a compulsive, and potentially addictive nature – if he got a taste for something (coin collecting and alcohol are examples he talks about) then he’d quickly become obsessed with it. In fact, it’s evident that he’s long since attended AA meetings in order to address the latter. He’s also honest about his fear of failure at this early point in his career: he’d found an agent who was able to place his material with willing publishers but he was reluctant to step outside of this arrangement even though it might provide greater reward and potentially increase his opportunity to broaden his horizons.
Eventually, though, he gathered together a few bits of input he’d garnered from conversations and the Encyclopaedia Britannica (his go to reference tool) and wrote what turned out to be his game changing book: The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep. The hero of this novel – Evan Tanner, a man who never slept – would re-appear in five subsequent books. Block would go on to write successful series featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr (bookseller by day and burglar by night), troubled New York PI matt Scudder and a stamp collecting hit man called Keller, to name but a few. But this particular account terminates at the publication of the first Tanner book, in 1966.
This is clearly a very personal book, LB having chosen not to employ an editor who might ‘filter’ his words. This decision also helped him to bring the book to market quite a bit earlier than might otherwise have been the case – not a bad idea, he reflects, for someone of his age. But it’s also always been his inclination to do things at speed. It’s possible that we may not see another fictional novel from this prolific writer, he uses up his final few pages reflecting on his own mortality as he sits in his Greenwich Village abode whilst New York, the city he always gravitated to, continues to battle the coronavirus outbreak that has impacted us all. If that's to be the case the case then at least I have the comfort of knowing that there are in excess of a hundred titles he’s penned that I’ve yet to catch up with (I've read a number of his early books and some of them are really pretty good).
Lawrence Block is one of my favourite writers of crime fiction - for information the others include James Lee Burke, Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly, John Sandford and Donna Leon (and I could easily add half a dozen more). Amongst all of these Block is the writer most willing and able to vary his mood and style: Rhodenbarr is funny, Scudder is complex and dour and Keller is something of an enigma. There are other examples too of this flexibility of in his wider catalogue. In my view he truly is a master of his craft and this memoire provides a valuable insight in describing how he started out on his writing journey....more
Lee Child’s latest Reacher novel is Make Me (Jack Reacher 20). It was released in September and I enjoyed it – maybe not as much as I had some in theLee Child’s latest Reacher novel is Make Me (Jack Reacher 20). It was released in September and I enjoyed it – maybe not as much as I had some in the series, but I’ve always admired the way these stories flow and I love the idiosyncratic hero. As a long-term fan of the series I’m on it like a dog on a turkey dinner as soon as each new episode is released. So the opportunity to retrospectively observe the author writing the book – of being a fly on the wall - was something I was not going to miss!
Andy Martin is an academic and an author: he lectures in French at Cambridge University and has written a number of books on such heavyweight subjects as the lives and writings of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. He too is a long time fan of the Jack Reacher books and so having convinced Child of the merits of recording the metadata of the book’s creation he sets off to New York, where Child is based.
It seems that Child commences the writing of each new book on 1st September, the same date he started writing the first book in the series, Killing Floor. It’s fascinating to see how he lays down a sentence or two and gradually develops the story. At commencement, he has no idea what will happen in the rest of the tale – it will develop organically in the coming days, weeks and months. It’s hard to believe that there’s no starting structure, no sketched out plot, but it seems this is how he always does it.
Like Reacher, the author drinks a lot of coffee (up to twenty or so cups a day) and he smokes a good deal too – something Reacher gave up because he didn’t like carrying things around. There’s quite a bit of banter between author and shadow author, they seem to get on well. There’s also a good deal of discussion between the two on writing craft and grammar. In fact, I was surprised how technical the whole process was and just how much thought and care went into the detailed construction of the text. As an example of the level of discourse, the following is a response supplied by Martin to Child after the latter read out a short sentence he was particularly pleased with:
Nice parataxis, no subordination and the simile, of course. Oh yeah, and the sibilance… it was plain and simple yet it had an onomatopoeic feel to it.
And there’s lots of discussion like this.
Child himself has a phenomenal memory and he seems to store information, mostly trivia, that Reacher may or may not regurgitate at some point. He comes across as an open and charming guy, and the process of writing the book is as surprising and interesting as I hoped it’d be.
Whether you’re a Reacher fan or just interested in the craft of writing, there’s loads here to float your boat. I can’t wait for the next Reacher book and now I have knowledge of its rough path to completion I'm sure I’ll appreciate all the more!...more
This is very much a book of three parts. In the first section, King provides a series of anecdotes that seem somewhat fractured and random. They looseThis is very much a book of three parts. In the first section, King provides a series of anecdotes that seem somewhat fractured and random. They loosely cover his early years, the time before he became a successful writer. Some of the tales are a little spooky, to be honest. Others clearly portray what it was like for him, his wife and his children when he was spending long hours writing whilst also holding down a day job. He had a number of jobs, some pretty menial, but he eventually settled into the role of teaching students how to write. His wife, it is evident, was a huge supporting influence: not only did she allow him the uninterrupted time to ‘do his stuff’, she also served (and still does) as the primary reader of his second drafts - nobody reads his first drafts, except him.
The second section is where he talks about – or maybe lectures on – the art of writing. He first covers the basics of vocabulary, grammar, sentence and paragraph construction. He doesn’t linger over the fine detail, but he makes valid points regarding the importance of getting these elements right. He then takes the reader (and maybe prospective writer) through dialogue, character development and the need to focus on situation rather than plot. I found this last bit really interesting. He provides useful examples to illustrate his points and even an exercise for the reader with a prompt to ‘let him know’ how it went! This was the meatiest part of the book and his mantra seemed to be: read a lot and write a lot. He’s a big believer in putting in the effort and the hours – you can’t beat hard work and perseverance (that’s my paraphrasing of what seemed to be one of his key messages). He closes this section down with quite a lengthy piece on why it’s important for writers to find an agent and how to set about achieving this.
The final part of the book is back to memoir, but is focused entirely on a serious road accident that almost took his life. It’s pretty harrowing and told in some detail. It’s clear that though he was seriously injured, he was actually very lucky to survive. I’m not quite sure why this was told as a stand-alone piece at the end. Maybe because the first section was all about early events that helped make him the writer he became and the accident just didn’t fit the chronology? Either way, it highlights the fact that the book does feel like a collection of bits and pieces.
I listened to the audio version, read by King. He’s not the most engaging reader in the world, but there is something compelling about hearing the material read by the man himself. I enjoyed this book in audio format.
In summary, it’s a book that’ll be of interest to fans of the author, who just want to know more about him, his life and his influences. It’s also something that will interest people who write or plan to write. I’ve read a few books from or about writers where some insight into their working methodology was discussed – Lawrence Block, Lee Child and Haruki Murakami amongst them – and this one stands up pretty well against the rest....more
I've long been a fan of Lawrence Block. I've read about 40 of his books and I'm still buying more on virtually a daily basis to top up my new Kindle. I've long been a fan of Lawrence Block. I've read about 40 of his books and I'm still buying more on virtually a daily basis to top up my new Kindle. He's a prolific writer and has written well over 100 books. I've long admired the infinite variation in his work and his skill as a wordsmith. This aid for those wishing to turn out a tome of their own was written about 30 years ago, way before he wrote much of the material I've since spent long nights absorbing. It's a humorous but hugely informing 'bible' on how to write a novel. I am totally gobsmacked (not a word, I sense, you'll find in one of LB's books) at how much there is to know. Naively, I thought you just banged away on your laptop until you had sixty thousand words and Bob's your uncle. Not a chance. But this book tells you all you need to know, even if the amount you need to know is likely to put most people off the idea of writing a novel completely. Hugely recommended for those who want to learn how to read a book better as well as those seeking wisdom to enable them to have a go themselves....more
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