Haruki Murakami

Most of What I know About Writing Fiction I learned by Running Every Day. I ran the NY marathon for 3 times already. My legs start to scream at the end of the race. I do not take 2 days off in a row when running. If you follow proper procedure, they will conform. If you don’t work out for a while, they will lower their limits. When you are training for a race, you must not let them relax for too long. There was a lot of things I have to do but I will just to slot in running. I bumped into professional athletes in my running course in Japan. Writing involves some talent, but the problem is you can’t control its amount of quality. The next element is the ability to concentrate on whatever’s critical at the moment. Being able to focus is very important. When I write, I just write and I don’t think about anything else. Without focus, you can’t accomplish anything. The next skill to have is endurance. For a fiction writer, you need at least 1 year of concentration. Unlike talent, focus and endurance can be honed. Writing novels is manual labour to me. It is not manual labour, but it is dynamic labour going on inside you. Training your focus and endurance is paramount. How do you sustain that? It varies from author to author. A lot of the lessons from running is applicable to writing. For this, I am very grateful to running. Running helps you to push your limits and achieve goals. My muscles take time to warm up. People can adjust their tendencies, but not their essence. Since I started running, my natural pulse is only 50 beats per minute. Those who pant a lot while running are the beginners.

Muscles are like work animals that are quick on the uptake. If you carefully increase the load, step by step, they learn to take it. As long as you explain your expectations to them by actually showing them examples of the amount of work they have to endure, your muscles will comply and gradually get stronger.

Muscles really are like animals, and they want to take it as easy as possible; if pressure isn’t applied to them, they relax and cancel out the memory of all that work.

No matter what, though, I keep up my running. Running every day is a kind of lifeline for me, so I’m not going to lay off or quit just because I’m busy. If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I’d never run again. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit.

People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they’ll go to any length to live longer. But I don’t think that’s the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest.

You open the fridge and can make a nice meal with the leftovers. All that’s left is an apple, an onion, cheese, and eggs, but you don’t complain. You make do with what you have. As you age you learn even to be happy with what you have.
– Haruki Murakami