Raymond Carver, a writer I love and respect, also enjoyed tinkering. He wrote, about another writer, that “he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting commas back in the same places.” I know that feeling exactly, for I have had the same experience many times. You reach the limit. If you tinker any more you will only damage what you have written. It’s a subtle point, easy to miss. The bit about replacing commas hits it right on the head.
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So that’s how I go about writing my novels. Some people really like them, and others don’t. It takes all kinds. I myself am far from satisfied with things I wrote in the past. I am keenly aware of how much better they could be if I wrote them today. That’s why I pick them up only if I absolutely must—they contain so many weaknesses!
All the same, I am sure they were the best that I could do at that time. That’s because I know the absolute effort that went into them. I spent as much time as I needed and exerted all the strength I had to bring them to completion. It was the equivalent of all-out war. That satisfaction of having given it my all remains with me even now. My novels have never been written on request, so I have not been hounded by deadlines. I have written what I wanted, when I wanted, in the way I wanted. I can state that much with confidence. Seldom have I had to look back and say, “I wish I’d done that differently.”
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There’s another aspect of time one must take into account when writing a novel. That is the “gestation period,” something especially important when writing a long work. The “quiet time” spent germinating and cultivating the seeds of what is growing within you. Through this internal process you build up the zeal to tackle the novel. Only the author knows for sure if enough time has been invested in each step of the process: completing the initial preparatory work, giving the ideas concrete shape, letting them fully “settle” in a cool, dark place, exposing them to the natural light when they are ready, carefully inspecting them, and then tinkering. The quality of the time spent doing these things will manifest itself in the persuasiveness of the completed work. It is an invisible process, but the difference it makes is huge.
A fitting metaphor for this might be soaking in the tub at home versus doing the same thing in a hot spring. Even if the water in the hot spring is tepid, the heat seeps into your very bones and stays with you long after you get out. A bath at home, by contrast, doesn’t penetrate so deeply, and no sooner have you gotten out than you start feeling chilly. I think most Japanese will know what I am talking about. When we enter a hot spring we heave a deep sigh of contentment, for we immediately feel the difference on our skin. If we try to explain that feeling to someone who has never visited a hot spring, we find ourselves at a loss for words.
I think great literature, and great music, follow a somewhat similar pattern. While the temperature of the bathwater at home and at the hot spring may be similar, soaking our naked bodies in them yields different results. We know this through our skin. Yet that “physical” knowledge cannot be expressed in language. The best we can do is “Yeah, the heat seeps in somehow—can’t really explain it.” If someone counters, “But the temperature is the same—it must be psychological,” then we （especially someone as ignorant of science as I am） can offer little in reply.
This is why I am able to shrug off harsh—sometimes unbelievably harsh—criticisms of my work with an “Oh, well, what can you do?” I know at the physical level that I cut no corners in the writing; that I gave it all I had. I spent whatever time was needed to gestate the novel and let it settle, and further time tinkering to get it right. This is why I never feel down or lose my confidence, however much I am criticized. Sure, it bothers me on occasion, but not all that much. I believe that any work into which so much time has been invested will pay off in the end. Time will tell. There are some things in this world whose value will become apparent only after many years have passed. If I weren’t certain of that I might grow depressed, however thick my skin. As long as I’m confident that I did everything I should have done, without stinting, there is nothing I need to fear. I can place my future in the hands of time. If we treat time with all the respect, prudence, and courtesy it deserves, it will become our ally.
Raymond Carver wrote the following in a 1982 essay he wrote for The New York Times, “A Story-Teller’s Shoptalk”：