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When I began my first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, I knew I had no choice but to write about having nothing to write about. That I would somehow have to turn having nothing to write about into a weapon if I was going to move forward as a novelist. Otherwise I would be powerless to stand against the generation of writers who had preceded me. This, I think, is an example of what writing with what you have at hand implies.
Adopting this approach requires new language and a new style. You have to fashion a vehicle that no one has driven before. Since you won’t—can’t—handle heavy topics like war, revolution, and famine, you must deal with lighter material, which in turn impels you to develop a lighter vehicle that is agile and mobile.
After a great deal of trial and error—I will save the details of this process for another occasion—I was able to cobble together an appropriate Japanese style to use in my work. It was far from perfect, with holes scattered here and there, but I figured it was my first novel, so I had to accept it as it was. I could fix the mistakes the next time around—if there was a next time.
Two principles guided me. The first was to omit all explanations. Instead, I would toss a variety of fragments—episodes, images, scenes, phrases—into that container called the novel and then try to join them together in a three-dimensional way. Second, I would try to make those connections in a space set entirely apart from conventional logic and literary clichés. This was my basic scheme.
More than anything else, music helped move this process forward. I wrote as if I were performing a piece of music. Jazz was my main inspiration. As you know, the most important aspect of a jazz performance is rhythm. You have to sustain a solid rhythm from start to finish—when you fail, people stop listening. The next most important element is the chords, or harmony if you like. Beautiful chords, muddy chords, secondary chords, chords with the tonic removed. Bud Powell’s chords, Thelonious Monk’s chords, Bill Evans’s chords, Herbie Hancock’s chords. There are so many kinds. Though everyone is using a piano with the same eighty-eight keys, the sound varies to an amazing degree depending on who’s playing. This says something important about novel writing as well. The possibilities are limitless—or virtually limitless—even if we use the same limited material. The fact that a piano has only eighty-eight keys hardly means that nothing new can be done with it.
Finally there is the matter of free improvisation, which lies at the root of jazz music. Once the rhythm and chord progression （or harmonic structure） have been established, the musician is able to weave notes freely into the composition.
I can’t play a musical instrument. Or at least I can’t play one well enough to expect people to listen to me. Yet I have the strong desire to perform music. From the beginning, therefore, my intention was to write as if I were playing an instrument. I still feel like that today. I sit tapping away at the keyboard searching for the right rhythm, the most suitable chords and tones. This is, and has always been, the most important element in my literature.
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In my opinion （and this is based on my experience）， having nothing you feel compelled to write about 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.
In contrast, writers who from the first write about heavy topics may eventually—although, obviously, this does not occur in all cases—find themselves faltering under the very weight of that material. Writers who launch their careers writing about war, for example, can approach their subject matter from various angles in various works, but at a certain point they may, to some degree or other, find themselves backed into a corner when forced to think of what to write next. Some are able to continue to grow as novelists by shifting course in midcareer. Those who are unable to accomplish this change of direction, however, may sadly find their strength waning over time.
Ernest Hemingway, without a doubt one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, is widely considered to have produced his greatest work early in his career. I especially like his two early novels, The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, as well as his early Nick Adams stories. These are all written with breathtaking vigor. Yet his later works, while brilliant in part, fail to realize their potential and lack the stylistic freshness of his earlier writing. In my opinion, this falloff likely stemmed from the fact that Hemingway was the type of writer who took his strength from his material. This helps explain why he led the type of life he did, moving from one war to another （the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War）， hunting big game in Africa, fishing for big fish, falling in love with bullfighting. He needed that external stimulus to write. The result was a legendary life; yet age gradually sapped him of the energy that his experiences had once provided. This is pure conjecture, but my guess is that it helps to explain why Hemingway, after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, sank into alcoholism and then took his own life in 1961, at the very height of his fame.