☕📱Let's Chat on Zoom; Talent vs. Endurance: Haruki Murakami and Leonard Cohen
"Writing novels, to me, is basically a kind of manual labor. Writing itself is mental labor, but finishing an entire book is closer to manual labor." - Haruki Murakami
Hello everyone,
Earlier this year, I offered readers a chance to get together over coffee. I took a break from all meetings over the summer but now feels like the right time to get back into conversations. I’ve dedicated a weekly time slot to these zoom calls. The process is straightforward: I’m adding a link at the end of this email to a simple form (name, email, and some questions to ponder). I will check the responses every week and send respondents an email with a Calendly link.
I look forward to chatting with you all!
There are several reasons why Leonard Cohen’s story touched and inspired me. My natural tendency in the face of problems is to retreat and isolate. Cohen’s story reminded me that sharing is a better response. Each time he faced money issues, he stepped up his game.
Cohen also was also considered too old when he began to make music and he sustained a long creative career. I wrestle with the idea of age all the time. I don’t feel like I’m in my late thirties. In some ways, I feel younger and more curious than in my twenties. But I don’t kid myself either. It’s difficult to learn new skills and explore new paths later in life. One reason is simply that our energy declines. Haruki Murakami wrote about this in his wonderful little meditation What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
To Murakami, the three key qualities of a good novelist were talent, focus, and endurance. Talent is unevenly distributed meaning that “life is basically unfair.” He also observed that many writers, even very talented ones, experienced a painful creative burnout and decline as they aged. At first talent would carry them. But eventually, the well would be dry and they had not learned how to dig for new sources of water. “To deal with something unhealthy,” he wrote about writing and making art, “a person needs to be as healthy as possible. That’s my motto. In other words, an unhealthy soul requires a healthy body.”
Murakami felt he didn’t have as much talent as others and his response was to “seek out a kind of fairness” by doubling down on process. He would excel with endurance and focus — and his career would be long. Running became his source of energy. The persistence and practice required for marathons would be the foundation of his writing.
Writing novels, to me, is basically a kind of manual labor. Writing itself is mental labor, but finishing an entire book is closer to manual labor. … The whole process—sitting at your desk, focusing your mind like a laser beam, imagining something out of a blank horizon, creating a story, selecting the right words, one by one, keeping the whole flow of the story on track—requires far more energy, over a long period, than most people ever imagine. … for the novelist that process requires putting into play all your physical reserve, often to the point of overexertion.
I’ve been thinking about Murakami’s words a lot.