Hearing the Writer Call - Novelist as a Vocation Book Review

Book review on Haruki Murakami's writing memoir, Novelist as a Vocation

May 11, 2024

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In a sea of applause for a play that wasn’t his, Haruki Murakami thought he could write a novel. In Novelist as a Vocation, Murakami describes the feeling like, “… something had come fluttering down from the sky and I had caught it cleanly in my hands.” And in an instant, the path of his life was forever altered. Murakami discovered a calling—a calling to write.

For a man who spent his time working in and hanging around jazz cafes, reading books and listening to baseball on the radio, the idea struck him as odd, but he followed it.

“I think Hiroshima’s starting pitcher that day was Satoshi Takahashi. Yakult countered with Takeshi Yasuda. In the bottom of the first inning, Hilton slammed Takahashi's first pitch into left field for a clean double.
The satisfying crack when bat met ball resounded through Jingu Stadium. Scattered applause rose around me. In that instant, and based on no grounds whatsoever, it suddenly struck me: I think I can write a novel.
I can still recall the exact sensation. It was as if something had come fluttering down from the sky and I had caught it cleanly in my hands. I had no idea why it had chanced to fall into my grasp. I didn't know then, and I don’t know now. Whatever the reason, it had taken place. It was like a revelation. Or maybe “epiphany” is a better word. All I can say is that my life was drastically and permanently altered in that instant when leadoff batter Dave Hilton belted that beautiful ringing double at Jingu Stadium.” - Novelist as a Vocation

When a writer hears that call, I think, sometimes it feels like madness. For a moment, the curtain over our eyes has dropped, and we realize we can do this mad thing called writing and actually make it work. And once it happens, “life is drastically and permanently altered in that instant.”

“I had no special plans to become a writer, never even tried to scribble something down for practice, until one day the bug suddenly bit me and I wrote my first novel (if you want to call it that), Hear the Wind Sing, which ended up winning a literary magazine's prize for new writers. I went on to become a professional writer without ever having had to study the craft.” -Novelist as Vocation

As someone who studies the craft to some have called an intense degree, whenever a writer with talent says they’ve never had to study the craft of writing, I always think, Good for them. Or I at least want to think that and maybe after a while do get to that point, but at first, I must admit, I get a little bummed out.

My first novel that I ever wrote was ripped to shreds. I didn’t have any understanding of how words worked on a page, one after the other. I could build a world, my readers gave me that, but I couldn’t craft a character, design a narrative, build a scene upon a scene upon a scene. I wish I had innate talent like Murakami and the thousands of other naturally talented storytellers, but I don’t.

I gotta know the way the words work to make the words work.

One thing we do have in common, Murakami and I, is our willingness to answer the call to write, no matter how mad it seemed. For Murakami, that life altering call came while watching a baseball game and hearing that familiar crack of bat against ball. For me, I remember my call happening during a hacky sack game.

Me and a friend were talking about our shared love of books and writing and how we wished that being a writer was something feasible. Something anyone who had love and heart could do. He did not believe the age of authors, of romantic vistas with a writer tucked away in a cottage overlooking it all was still alive.

I mentioned self-publishing, writers who moonlit at teachers, and people who had other jobs while still pursuing writing as a career.

Essentially, the era of the author wasn’t dead but reshaping. Yeah, sure, we couldn’t survive off of our short story sales and we needed to be smarter about how we built out our author ecosystem, but the dream was alive. He chaffed and we continued our game of hacky sack beneath the afternoon sun.

But inside, I burned.

I may not have convinced him, but I convinced myself. And I heard the writer’s call in bird song and the laugh of friendship.

This moment happened when I was about 21 or 22. I was no longer in school, but I still wrote here and there for fun and amusement. Sometimes I’d read a poem or story at an open mic, but for the most part, my writing was for me and some of my other writing friends who, were interested in seeing what I was working on.

At that time, I was way more of a poet and would often submit to contests, magazines, and journals in hopes of getting something published. I managed to snag one acceptance for my horror true crime poem ‘christine,’ which went on to be read in audio. You can listen to the reading below if you like.

Despite how old the poem is, it’s still very much in line with what I do today and the voice I have in my prose. I was not a prose writer at this point, but argued there was more space for prose and nonfiction writers to actually make a career out of the author life than poets.

I’ve been (slowly) reading through Asimov’s autobiography and think it’s interesting that both authors found their calling for writing in their other passions. By all appearances, Murakami, before he became the author we know now, was just a guy who liked hanging with his girl, listening to music, and watching sports. Books were cool, but there wasn’t the idea that there was a job in writing for Murakami or for Asimov.

But through their love of other subjects, the tolling writing bell was able to appear for them. And out of stupidity or bravery they both answered.

Looking back at that time in my life where I wrote just for the fun of it and spent the rest of my time hopping from multiple jobs to hanging out with friends at bars, I didn’t really have another passion besides just living. Then taking that living and writing poems about it whenever I had the spare moment to scribble something on a napkin, receipt paper, tables, chairs, bathroom stalls, whatever. I was a starving artist who partied and worked, but after that short talk with my friend over hacky sack, I became something else.

Potentially, an actual artist.

Throughout the memoir, Murakami brings up an interesting comparison Artists vs Novelist. I think about this often. Are writers artists?

Where does someone cross over from writer to artists? When they follow the story and form more than the production. - my book notes

An artist doesn’t see a plot or a road but a feeling, a particular shade or hue that is so distinct, it can carry a project across hundreds of pages. Instead of worrying about a reader, an artist worries about the subject beneath their pen.

As Murakami describes it throughout Novelist as a Vocation, writing isn’t some high art. It’s easy for the most part. You get the call. You answer. You write the story. You edit the story. You sell the story and receive high acclaim. There is no art. Or at least not in the sense that most people see art taking place:

Over a laborious period where a writer studies themselves, the world, and transplants all that they’ve observed to the page.

The struggle to turn out a story and to reflect the world the writer lives in happens for Murakami, no doubt, you can tell in how he writes. There is true reflection on the world in his prose and in his memoir. There are even a few sections that are dedicated to talking about the Japanese literary world and he spends a lot of his time in-between writing, reading the newspaper, and interacting in the world.

And in his fiction books, no matter the wide scope of things that happen in the plot, the pages themselves are focused on the day to day lives of his characters and how their daily lives are shaped by the larger world.

Based on how Murakami puts it throughout the novel and how I also feel about the distinction between author and artist, he isn’t one. He’s just some guy who writes books. And I kinda agree.

My first encounters with his work weren’t so great. Many of the books I came across all had this same ‘sad-boy-needs-girl-to-save-him’ feel and a lot of the people who read his books and loved his work were those types of people. I could see that he was a great writer, but the themes, the vibes, the characters were all flat and basic to me. I didn’t get the same ‘oh, wow’ feeling that others got while reading through his books.

With all that being said, I am still very inspired and in awe of Murakami’s career. Diving into the book was exciting and exhilarating for me in ways that his novels just aren’t.

writing is feeling sorta like the least interesting thing about me. I write so what? What do I say? What do I do? - my book notes

Sometimes, Novelist as a Vocation, was the highlight to my day. There was a lot of wonderful cozy inspiration on how it felt starting a career in an industry where things aren’t certain ever, but Murakami believed or knew he was set and going to make it.

One thing that stuck out to me is Murakami’s reliance on simple prose and focusing on writing a story well and nothing else. Murakami isn’t the type of writer who works on tons of projects at once. He’s methodical, slow, and more than anything intentional. Asimov is the same way. I think this is because writers who got started decades ago had the privilege of time.

But writing that sounds wrong or small minded.

I can work on one project at a time and have been. Forest in the Distance, my dark fantasy novelette, is the only project that I’ve been giving intentional creative space to of my own work. And unlike before when I was working on multiple projects at once and moving through them like lightning, Forest in the Distance is taking almost a year to get right.

There’s a chapter in Novelist as a Vocation where Murakami talks about originality and his strive or lack thereof for it. For Murakami, originality is found in the unique space of creativity and individuality. Because I am me and see the world the way I see it, by tapping into my creativity I can create a unique and original piece of art.

“Words have power. Yet that power must be rooted in truth and justice. Words must never stand apart from those principles.” - Novelist as a Vocation

It did make me think of my trunked novel, Out of the Machine, that has had a hard time finding a home. One reason being that I tried a new style I called closed cinematic where the reader got no internal monologue or even internal world. Everything the characters’ felt or thought was showed in the external world and in the atmosphere of the prose.

I really liked the style and it set up the switch to a more open and familiar narrative style I had planned for the second book in the series, Into the Heart. I thought it was original and creative, but the editors and agents who requested fulls all said the same thing: they couldn’t connect with the characters, though they could connect with the world.

While a lot of the advice in Novelist as a Vocation read more like a relaxed King with obvious lessons like:

Don’t care about awards
Don’t study writing
Live your life and let stories bloom
Don’t record your ideas and let the best one flourish

These ideas didn’t so much feel like groundbreaking looks into a masterful writer but simple thoughts of an unreflective writer. That isn’t to say the book isn’t one worth reading. It was, at many times during the month I read it, a nice break from living the writer’s life.

There were a few chapters that seemed really fat-phobic and had this gross superiority complex about class and systems. For example, Murakami believes that people who aren’t in shape can’t be writers.

“I have but one answer, and a very simple one: you have to become physically fit. You need to become robust and physically strong. And make your body your ally.” - Novelist as a Vocation

Another thing about the memoir that stuck out to me was Murakami’s steps to writing a novel:

Focus totally on project
Write 1,500 words a day
Rewrite draft
Rewrite draft
Edit draft
1st reader (his wife)
Rewrite trouble scenes
1st reader
Rewrite draft
Present to editor

“When writing a novel, my rule is to produce roughly ten Japanese manuscript pages (the equivalent of sixteen hundred English words) every day.” - Novelist as a Vocation

The thing that stuck out to me was that his wife was his first and only reader before passing it on to his editor. She isn’t a writer but is a reader and is smart, allowing Murakami to write for his reader in a way that makes his prose intimate and easy to read if not understand.

I also had a theory that it’s why all his books have the same sad lover boy vibe. It’s because he’s a sad lover boy. And because I’ve heard other authors use their friends, family, and partners as first readers to help them understand whether something makes sense, I’m considering it, too.

I just have to find willing participants who want to read some wild ass stories and give me their thoughts.

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When I read this book back in January, I received my finalist award medallions for my Ignyte noms. Feeling cagey and in a strange state with my craft and career (I made it, now what?), I ran off to the ocean and buried my award medallion in the sand before the ocean and beneath the call of birds.

I considered leaving the medallion hidden somewhere on the shore, like a grave for Monica, Sherril, Nancy, and Christina, but I cared too much for the work put into the award to give it away like a sacrifice. Then this thing happened as I started loading my car back up, like Murakami, I realized that all my dreams would come true.

I’d sell books, get book deals, have fans, the whole lot.

“That's when it hit me. I was going to win the prize. And I was going to go on to become a novelist who would enjoy some degree of success. It was an audacious presumption, but for some reason I was sure at that moment that it would happen. Completely sure. Not in a theoretical way, but directly and intuitively.” - Novelist as a Vocation

I could die in the next 5 minutes. War planes could litter white smoke on my neighborhood and the life I believed in could come crumbling down. But I still believe that at the end of my life, I’ll be a storyteller.

My head is all over the place. I heard back from a publisher about kicking my novella, Twilight Children, to the next round, Iowa should be sending out acceptances or rejections over the next month, and I have a date thing on Sunday. I have a date thing on Sunday. All things are open to possibility, but I just want to be here, right now while I can with Georgia and this book. Not in tomorrow filled with deadlines or the next days filled with responsibility. - my book notes

While I was reading through Murakami’s memoir and have been reading through Asimov’s, I’ve been working on a novelette and plotting out my next book project. Both are taking much longer than I normally take when writing a book project. Normally, I write the initial draft of the book in a month or so, depending on word count of the piece and then I edit and rewrite it over the course of a year before submitting it out.

This time, I’m taking a much slower approach and trying to build my worlds and stories with the simplest words and biggest of feelings.

“… in a certain sense, while the novelist is creating a novel, [they are] simultaneously being created by the novel as well.” - Novelist as a Vocation

And it made me wonder, what of my novels have created me and how? Well, so far up to this point, I’ve written three novels:

Monsters I Have Known
Out of the Machine
Twilight Children

To be honest, it’s felt like more. It feels like I’ve written 5 or 6 novels. I believe this is because I am a rewriter, so each one of those novels was written at least twice. In the case of, Monsters I Have Known (a novel that each draft sits at 120K-180K) was written three different times over the course of three years. And Out of the Machine was rewritten twice with each draft between 50K and 80K words. Twilight Children is the only novel that I didn’t rewrite multiple times. It’s also the most ambitious literary wise of the other two novels.

My first novel showed me I have the ability to go the distance, to create wondrous worlds and cultures, and take harsh criticism without giving up. But how has it created me? Shit, I have no idea. I think that first one is too old for me to look back on and see the monster it made of me. My second novel, not so much. Out of the Machine made me into a literary writer. Before writing that book, I don’t think I had a designation. What I was doing, was just writing to me.

With that novel, though, I tried to do things that were way above my skill level. Some of the tricks I used worked and some didn’t. But it gave me the name of being a literary writer with dense prose. Agents, editors, and other writers who got a chance to read that book all left with the feeling that I could do great things with my sentences, things that I shouldn’t be able to do, but I do and well. But they also all said it was for very specific types of readers who liked that cerebral sci-fi. It wasn’t commercial. And neither was I.

And Twilight Children made me into a freak. Up until that book, most of my novels could me classified as young adult and even young reader. Twilight Children is in no way a read for children. There’s body horror, sex, and abuse. It does thing that it shouldn’t. Ends in disturbing places ways and starts in sudden shocks. It’s strange and unruly in a way that made me strange and unruly.

I’m more daring now in my writing because of the feats that book climbed. It was also never picked up by agents or publishers because of the format and density of it. No worries, however, that novella will see the light of day in this newsletter as a serialization!

The current novel I’m plotting out is also changing me. I’m in the process as we speak of being changed by it. It’s going to be the darkest and sexiest thing I’ve ever written and it’s going to hurt.

Novelist as a Vocation turned me into a more relaxed writer, I think. Same with Asimov’s autobiography I’m reading now, In Memory Yet Green. It’s a big ol’ book that’s taken me months longer to finish than I originally intended, but it’s also helped me see that my life is more than writing.

Yes, I love writing and story and everything connected to those things, but I also love not doing any of those things. I love building plant and terrarium landscapers and drawing crappy maps and trees or starting a puzzle and giving up—I really love that.

And that’s okay, too. I’m at this point in my career where I don’t need to super stress about where my next writing gig is going to come from or if I’m ever going to sell another piece. Rejection hurts and the fear of losing it all is very real, but if I lose writing, I’ll still have everything else that makes up my life.

Enough about me and Murakami! How about you? What was your vocational call and how did it sound to you?

Writing Skins

Hearing the Writer Call - Novelist as a Vocation Book Review

Book review on Haruki Murakami's writing memoir, Novelist as a Vocation

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