Learning and growth
Haruki Murakami
Writing as physical work
Haruki Murakami (Japan · 1949–) — Writing as physical work.
What actually happened?
He would like a gravestone, he writes, that carries his name, the dates, and then two lines: Writer, and in brackets, Runner. At Least He Never Walked. It is a joke, and it is also the whole standard he works to. Not the best, not the fastest, not acclaimed. Simply that on the days he was supposed to be moving, he did not stop and walk. Nobody sets that bar for you and nobody can check it. He has spent decades holding himself to a line that only he can see, which is exactly the problem most people run into with anything long.
Stop while it is still flowing
Ten pages a day when he is writing a novel, filled on a bad day and stopped on a good one. The hard part is not writing but starting again, so he leaves the day at a point where he already knows the next sentence and tomorrow costs almost nothing to begin.
Stop in the middle of a sentence. Tomorrow you sit down and simply keep typing.
Set a ceiling, not only a floor
Most people give themselves a minimum and nothing else. The ceiling is there to stop the good day from borrowing against the next three. The real enemy of output is not laziness but swing, and swing is what an uncapped good day produces.
Twenty thousand words over a weekend, then a fortnight of touching nothing. The books balance, or come out worse.
Two things besides talent, and both can be trained
A novelist needs talent, focus and endurance. How much talent you were given is settled and worrying about it produces no action, while the other two grow under load the way muscle does. So the hours belong to the two that move.
I have no talent may even be correct, and it still cannot tell you what to do today.
Nobody asked, so the reason has to be yours
Work has reviews and school has exams, and both supply the reason from outside. Something you chose has none of that. Make the response your reason, the views and the verdicts, and it can be withdrawn at any time. His replacement is yesterday's version of himself, which is present daily and never runs out.
Three posts, nobody reads them, and you stop. The reason for writing was in other people's hands from the start.
How do I use it today?
Pick the long thing you keep starting and stopping, and give it a daily amount low enough that your worst day still finishes it. Measure input, not output. Then add the part almost nobody adds: a ceiling, so the good days stop borrowing from the bad ones. Finish each session while you still want to continue, in the middle of a sentence if you can. And the next time you want to quit, say out loud whether it is because the work was bad or because nobody saw it, then decide.
Deep read
Read alongside
Further
Lines to keep
The only opponent you have to beat is yourself.
Set the daily amount where your worst day still finishes it.
No readers is not a reason to stop; readers are not either.