Novelist as a Vocation | Hacker News Reader

Novelist as a Vocation

theguardian.com

83 pointslermontov31 comments

> He describes it at one point as an “unadorned natural style”, but one that was arrived at in characteristically unorthodox fashion: having failed dismally on his first attempt to write what would become Hear the Wind Sing, he began again from scratch, writing not in his native Japanese, but English. “My vocabulary was severely limited, as was my command of English syntax,” he writes, and yet when he translated his words back into Japanese, the short, simple sentences created by those self-imposed limitations possessed “a distinctive rhythm”.

That's interesting. I wonder if he still does that at least some of the time for his more recent books?

The English translations I've read seem to be really good; I wonder if this technique/style has made the work the translators have to do a lot easier when they translate back into English or if it doesn't actually make much difference? It seems like it would at least lead to a tendency to avoid linguistic constructions and idioms that don't have fairly obvious English translations.

It would be fun to be able to read Murukami's initial English draft side by side with the English version of the published book to see how similar they are.

> I wonder if he still does that at least some of the time for his more recent books?

Don't think so however I have heard he proof-reads and adjusts the English translations after someone else translates them.

I don't get the impression he expressly does this (aka writes it down then translates) but I think he does run through the mental filters to reach the same result. But I'm also still early into this book (only read the introduction and first two chapters).

When I am struggling to express myself in English (my native language) I sometimes speak to myself for a bit in French. It's my second language and I'm not quite fluent in it. When I wish to express something in French, I often find myself forced to think beyond the surface words. I must discard how I would say it in English, and go for the idea underneath.

I get hung up on a particular turn of phrase in English. How would I translate a phrasal verb like "hung up" into French? And does the idea even translate that way? What I mean is fixated, stuck, obsessed, misled by chasing the wrong thing. There are many ways to express it besides "hung up on". Which is a very native English speaker thing to say, but bad style, now that I look at it. Fixated would have been better. Fixé.

Idée fixe, perhaps?

Many articles and books make it seem as though it might be reasonable to try and be a novelist

The truth is that most short story publishers pay about 3-10 cents per word, so the pay for your work is usually less than $300-500. Most novels sell less than 1000 copies, and often far less; even then, the author might only get 10% of the price tag unless they self publish (but then sales are apparently 1/10 as high)

If you earned half minimum wage, you would have cause to celebrate!

Even authors of bestsellers often have day jobs unless they have a string of huge successes. That’s why we see so many sequels — less risk to the author who sees their chance to finally be a full time writer

There are so many sites out there right now hosting free fiction that it’s hard for many to find readers, even if the work is released for free. Many authors I know spend more time on self promotion than in writing due to this: otherwise, nobody will ever read their work in the first place

Publishers are now preferring authors who already have large followings, which reinforces this dynamic

For some people, writing is a vocation, but for 99.999% of the others, it’s a dream or a hobby, or a way to meet like minded people and enjoy being part of a community

Anyway: go out and read some small publisher books. Many are fantastic! There are a stunning number of great books around with 0-3 reviews that never had a shot — look for them sometime!

If money were no object, I'd love to be a novelist. I'd love nothing more than for books to be my main focus in life. But money is an object, and it seems tremendously hard to acquire as a writer. To make a decent living, you're basically banking on becoming one of a few dozen celebrity writers. Even then, you'd expect to make be making pennies compared to the elites in almost any other field (music, business, sports, etc). The only serious money to be made is franchising your IP into a more-monetizable medium, like movies.

I know art isn't supposed to be about making money, but being a full-time novelist seems too precarious for all but the most foolhardy among us.

Other ways people make a living as a "novelist" or just author I guess:

- ghost writing (very common, most books by celebrity or popular figures for instance)

- not writing literature (not to be crass about it, but a lot of authors that make a living doing it find a template that works and beat the living daylights out of it as quickly and as much as they can; art is secondary to speed, smash and grab plots, and simplicity; each book might not be a top seller, but the total sales can be livable; think airport departure lounge books)

- they spend almost all of their time outside of writing on marketing

- they work in the publishing industry (increasingly common to look at some debut young author to see that they actually work in the industry, or were in some way affiliated by way of employment with the publishing industry)

- video game writing and or speech writing

I think something did change in culture and literary culture somewhere in the 2012 - 2015 range: https://jakeseliger.com/2021/09/30/the-death-of-literary-cul...

> What killed literary culture? The Internet is the most obvious, salient answer, and in particular the dominance of social media, which is in effect its own genre—and, frequently, its own genre of fiction. Almost everyone will admit that their own social media profiles attempt to showcase a version of their best or ideal selves, and, thinking of just about everyone I know well, or even slightly well, the gap between who they really are and what they are really doing, and what appears on their social media, is so wide as to qualify as fiction. Determining the “real” self is probably impossible, but determining the fake selves is easier, and the fake is everywhere. Read much social media as fiction and performance and it will make more sense.

What an interesting thought

Edit: great article, thanks for sharing!

In fact, the median salary for UK full time writers is well below minimum wage.

That is mitigated by the median household income for full time writers in the UK being well above average.

In other words, most people who write full time can afford to because of a partners income.

And as you point out, most writers don't write full time.

I've sold more than average of my two first novels, but still tiny amounts and there's no way I would consider writing full time - it doesn't even cover my monthly takeaway spend.

Was it Dorothy Parker who, when asked for advice for writers, said, "Marry money."

Don't forget Zlib!

This is less true in self published romance, btw. My wife saw almost 3x that many book reads/sales (Kindle Unlimited pays nearly as well as a sold book) in just two months of her first self-published book. It's kind of higher than expected but there's decent number of few romance self-published authors out there making good money, often in the six figures, in their first year. In order to do that they often write 4-8 books during that year though, writing fast and building giant series is pretty much required for romance.

My wife also has a day job in marketing, so she utilized that knowledge for market research, writing to market, learning what types of self-promotion works, and promoting aggressively, so that helped a lot as well. Also me being willing to do pretty much all the housework while she focuses on getting this off the ground (not doing an amazing job, things are slipping, but at least we have clean dishes :).

I like to write also, but just silly humorous fiction books (I've yet to actually publish one also, but hopefully in the next year or two), and I'm not expecting to be anywhere near as successful as she is. For me that will likely always stay a hobby (it's competing, and often losing, to my other dream of making games, anyway).

What marketing techniques does she find most valuable?

Some of the things she's doing for marketing right now:

- Making videos for TikTok. She has over 1000 followers already, up from 0 a few months ago. She's slowed down on it recently, mainly because she has to focus on writing her book.

- She sent out copies of ARCs in exchange for a promise to leave a review on Amazon, so she had about 30 reviews on the day of the book's release (thankfully very positive)

- Contests to win ARCs (advanced reader copies) that involve following her social media

- Contests to win physical books and swag after answering questions that prove you read the book. She's also purchased a mug press and a sublimation machine so she can make her own swag. She's already made custom buttons, bookmarks, tumblers, stickers (she bought the stickers though), etc.

- Scheduling and participating in social media 'takeovers' (mainly reader Facebook groups) where she schedules a timeslot to engage with a group's members with games, contests, polls, and comments back and forth, usually for a couple of hours at a time

- Exchanging slots with other writers to promote each other's books in each other's email newsletters (she puts them out weekly).

- She tried Instagram and wasn't getting anywhere near as much engagement there, so she's mostly stopped that.

- She also tried buying Facebook ads and didn't have much luck there.

I couldn't say for sure what worked the best, although based on conversations with her, giving out ARCs, posting videos on TikTok, and Facebook group takeovers seem to be the most effective for her so far.

She didn't just throw anything up there for TikTok videos, either. She consumed a good amount of TikTok herself for research (I think she kind of turned herself into an addict in the process, but that's not uncommon with that platform), sees what audio clips are trending, and makes her own variation on them that also promotes her book.

I'm sure she's doing other things as well. She likes to experiment and see what's working for her and not. She also attended several online classes given by established authors (which also let her network other people taking the course, and participate in almost weekly discussions with them), and I know she's signing up for another online course that her writer friends recommended to improve her TikTok game even more.

"There are so many sites out there right now hosting free fiction that it’s hard for many to find readers, even if the work is released for free. Many authors I know spend more time on self promotion than in writing due to this: otherwise, nobody will ever read their work in the first place" - first hand experience very true. I saw with kindle self publishing that, when the book is published, in the first week you do see some uptick, probably because it gets shown in some 'latest books' list. After that it dwindles. Mine went to zero after a week. Sold 24 copies. Its hard to make a book visible in millions of others.

I wrote a pretty detailed blog post about Murakami's background and how he was able to create an emotionally powerful masterpiece in Norwegian Wood: https://backtohumanity.substack.com/p/reading-guide-norwegia.... Hope you guys enjoy :)

Norwegian Wood is one of my favourites, so I look forward to reading it. Thanks for sharing!

Many years ago I considered being a novelist. Until I read this quote by an acting professor at Yale that I’m now paraphrasing: you should only act, if acting is the only thing you can do.

Spoiler: I didn’t become a novelist.

I remember watching an interview from a famous movie director who had a similar thought. Again paraphrasing but:

When asked, "How did you become so successful?"

He responded, "Movies are my only hobby. I have nothing else."

Unless you're planning to get an MFA, people should first try to write a novel before worrying about being a novelist.

The experience of actually writing is much different than thinking up a story in your head.

I often tell people that wonder about writing a novel the same thing: just try. Not to be a prick, but people simultaneously think it's way easier than it is and think it's way harder than it is. Most of the time is spent just getting through 2 hours-ish of writing a day, or 2-4 pages a day. Then rewriting a lot after the first draft. Most good readers aren't used to the rhythm of writing fiction, which is usually slower, and is far more about the accretion of detail rather than flying from plot point to plot point with seamless ease while you're reading. Making sure a novel is good is, almost always, very time demanding and requires its own set of skills (many mental). All that effort and time spent working alone is hidden from the reader breezing through a 350pg novel.

I think so many different things are like this. I want to make a video game, or I want to make a movie, or I want to put out an album of music. The enemy of all these ambitions is attrition—you give up before you finish.

Yeah. "I was going to be a novelist, but..." doesn't really track. It's an investment of years and (at least) hundreds of thousands of words just to figure out if you're theoretically capable of writing a novel people might want to read, to say nothing of actually doing it and then making a career of it.

It also speaks of misplaced priorities. Writing has to be its own reward from the beginning, or you won't get far with it.

Was IQ84 any good? I meant to read it a while back but the wiki page scared me off - it won a "worst sex scene in literature award" and wasn't well liked by critics.

I read two other stories by him (Kafka on the Shore and some short story about Yakuza). Neither really made me hunger for more though.

I haven’t read anything else from Murakami but The Second Bakery Attack and absolutely loved it. It’s a short story so quick to read, and thoroughly enjoyable. Might want to give that a try!

[0] https://web.mit.edu/norvin/www/somethingelse/murakami.html

I enjoyed it a lot although it definitely leans heavy on all of his usual Murakami-isms while trying to do something new. It's been almost a decade since I read it so I can't say I remember it with a lot of detail.

It receiving a "worst sex scene in literature award" doesn't really surprise me that much considering most of his books could be given that reward...

I personally enjoyed 1Q84 slightly more than Kafka on the Shore, but if you actively disliked KotS, you probably won't like 1Q84 either. It has a bit more forward motion to the plot, but it is still in my opinion best enjoyed if you embrace the Murakami-style dreaminess. I love all of his books enough that I try to limit myself to reading one per year on vacation when I can really focus on it.

It's a very long book. It was good when I read it years ago but if "Kafka" didn't make you want to read it, I have a hard time imagining you'd like 1q84. That said, after that long book, I've been good on murakami. I tried too but felt like I wasn't gaining anything anymore.

I had read a few of his works before that one, and found it didn't reach as high of a bar. But it was fine. Personally most enjoyed Windup Bird Chronicle, Hardboiled Wonderland, Colorless Tsukuru.

The bad/weird sex is kind of a trope in his books

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