don't think before you write
I have recently read Murakami's latest book (in English, that is), entitled Novelist as a Vocation. Like lots of readers my age, I've become a huge fan of his writing, and I also find his discipline inspiring. He has a strict daily routine that involves getting up early and exercising everyday. That having a daily routine like that is important for essentially every productive lifestyle, is clear enough to me. I think sometimes people can correlate a strict routine like that to success itself, but as someone who has a pretty strict routine-- that doesn't mean I've been a successful writer! In fact, despite a constant effort to write more for years now, I have had little output. But after reading Murakami's book I've actually increased my writing by quite a bit.
Reading Murakami's book has helped me realized that part of my issue is my mode of thinking. Sure, I work on a creative project every once in a while-- when the creativity gets pent up and I release it onto an experimental vlog, a poem, or even a short story. But what often happens is I'm trying to think through and work through things ahead of time. As if I'm cutting and refining this perfect crystalline thought in my mind, and once it's perfect then I can write it down.
But how writing (in substantial quantity) usually works is you actually work through those things on the page. You're thinking while you're writing. Your thought process always has the shape of a story (this is what i truly think) and so if you think during writing, a story comes out organically. Every story has a shape, and the contours of that shape are the story's struggle. How can you write a convincing story if you don't struggle in your thinking while you write it? And I don't mean that "writer's block" just makes stories better (it probably doesn't), but rather quite the opposite. If you just let yourself write and think during the process, writer's block won't be an issue, but you'll probably have your work cut out for you when it comes to editing.
I mean, all my favorite stories I made, I made because I basically sat down and said to myself "time to write a story" and then I start with a line or two and simply link a bunch of ideas gestating in my mind with a story! It's that easy, really.
Murakami writes about this beautifully,
"In my opinion, having nothing you feel compelled to write may make it harder to get started, but once the engine kicks in and the vehicle starts rolling, the writing is actually easier. This is because the flip side of having nothing you must write is being able to write freely about anything. Your material may be lightweight, but if you can grasp how to link the pieces together so that magic results, you can go on to write as many novels as you wish. You will be astounded how the mastery of that technique can lead to the creation of works with both weight and depth--as long as, that is, you retain a healthy amount of writerly ambition."
A bit of a strange argument that he makes elsewhere has to do with the "speed" of your thought. He says if you're too smart, or if you think "too fast" you can never become a novelist. This is because you work out problems in your thought too quickly. Novelists are stubborn, and take the long way to find solutions.
If I want to become more of a philosopher (I don't!), trying to make perfect truthful arguments ahead of time, and then writing down those truthful propositions (which is something admirable but insanely difficult) then the story, the struggle has already occurred within the mind, and you're reporting the end result. What makes philosophy fun to read (at least for those whom it is fun to read) is the catching up, the struggle to register and comprehend those crystalline thoughts the philosopher wrote down. But it's not how you write a story! You need to struggle on the page itself. Imagine if a philosopher seemed wholly uncertain of what he was trying to argue and simply stumbled his way to the conclusion. It would be intolerable! Yet, this is exactly what a novelist does, and it's like candy. It's because it gives us a little beautiful moment to struggle alongside that thinker, to get enveloped in the story. To be involved in that thought process is to get sucked into the story.