On Craft…
I’ve recently been on a tear of nonfiction by translators. Specifically, the people who translate Haruki Murakami into English. Hours before writing this newsletter, I read Jay Rubin’s Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words in one sitting with the fall breeze lightening my mood. Of course, pumpkin beer was involved. Fall is my favorite season, and I will always indulge. In any event, Rubin spliced his analysis on Murakami’s many novels with biographical insights and interview quotes, one of which reminded me Murakami writes for hours every day, in a marathon-like fashion. I try to do the same, taking off a day or two a week to live my life. Writing every day feels essential to the plot of being a writer.
Too, writing every day feels essential to my character. When I say “write,” I of course am including reading and consuming art, as that is writing in my view. I am including anything that you’ve worked into your rituals and routines, that gets you creative, and that helps you produce your best work. I also, of course, mean the physical act of putting words to the page. Writing every day could be reading for a week, without touching the page. So long as you’re communing with language and expanding your mind, you’re writing in some capacity. It’s not a productivity contest, but rather, a matter of mixing discipline with pleasure.
Lately, I’ve been dedicated to the physical act of writing once a day. Even if it sucks. Even if it’s awful. Even if it’s a sentence. I’m trying to push myself to physically write every day because—and this is probably toxic on some level—I’m obsessed with tangible results. As much as I preach the importance of reading as writing, watching the books pile up isn’t nearly as satisfying to me as watching the word count go up. For the last 17 days, I spent every morning, roughly two or three hours, working on one piece. You’ll all see it soon, but in the process of writing every day, I’ve reignited my deep love for the act.
Writing every day, especially physically writing every day, helps maintain your relationship with creativity. It becomes familiar and warm, in a way, like a relationship. Proximity is key to building a romance, and the same can be said for building yourself up as a writer. I think about writing all the time passively, and turning it into an active something only serves me. I establish rituals and routines, and sometimes I break them for fun, but mostly, I love to hear the sound of my keyboard and to watch the words populate the page. I am in love with the simple feats of making work. This, I would wager, is why I never tire.
When you write ever day and develop your muscle, writing becomes less painful over time. It becomes second nature, and the flow state becomes ever more available to you. Too, writing every day presents the opportunity to improve every day. You can learn something about yourself and your process from every word typed. If you take the time to study your work as you go, there’s a great chance you’ll grow faster than if you wait for inspiration to strike. To that end, I don’t believe in lightning bolts of inspiration so much as I believe all people are always inspired, we just have to beat the exhaustion of being alive to get to our creative highs.
Take this newsletter as a reminder that writing every day is not a chore, but a chance to sync yourself with your desires as a creative. You could jot ideas in a notebook for five minutes, and through that, become a better creative than you were the day before. All that matters is the act of trying. As a people, we love results, but we cherish effort far more. From others and from ourselves. There’s nothing quite like putting in an honest effort. There’s nothing quite like giving something a fair shake, a real go.
The good news, of course, is that your “fair shake” can take any shape. There are no rules, which means you get to make the rules, which means you get to define your artist life. Define wisely, obviously, but define with whimsy. Write every day because it is a joy. Fish that energy out of you every chance you get, and let it take whatever form it needs to. Forget pressure. There is only growth on the horizon.