Along the same lines, Franz Kafka wrote his works in the time between working at his job as a civil servant in an insurance company in Prague. He was by all accounts a very able, earnest official, and his colleagues all acknowledged how very capable he was. It was said that if he took a day off work, the company basically ground to a halt. Like Trollope, he never slacked off on his main job, and also was quite serious about writing （I get the sense, though, that he may have used the fact of having a full-time job as an excuse that kept the majority of his works incomplete）; but Kafka’s case was different from Trollope’s in that his regular lifestyle was praised rather than disparaged. Where the difference lies is hard to say. Certainly there’s no accounting for people’s opinions sometimes.
At any rate, my apologies to all those, as far as novelists go, who are looking for an idealized image of the unconventional—and as I’ve said over and over, I’m only saying this as it applies to me—but practicing physical moderation is indispensable in order to keep on being a novelist.
I think chaos exists in everyone’s minds. Chaos is in my mind, and in yours as well. It’s not the sort of thing, though, that in daily life needs to be given form and openly shown to others. Not something you brag about, saying, “Hey, get a load of how huge the chaos is inside me,” or anything. If you want to come face-to-face with the chaos inside you, then be silent and descend, alone, to the depths of your consciousness. The chaos we need to face, the real chaos that’s worth coming face-to-face with, is found precisely there. It’s hiding right there, at your very feet.
And what you need to faithfully, sincerely verbalize this is a quiet ability to focus, a staying power that doesn’t get discouraged, and a consciousness that is, up to a point, firm and systematic. And what you need to consistently maintain these qualities is physical strength. This might be seen as a boring, literally prosaic conclusion, but that’s my fundamental way of thinking as a novelist. Whether I’m criticized, praised, have rotten tomatoes thrown at me, or beautiful flowers tossed my way, that’s the only way I know how to write—and to live.
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I love the activity of writing novels. Which is why I’m really grateful to be able to make a living doing just that, why I feel it’s a blessing I’ve been able to live this kind of life. At a certain point in my life, if I hadn’t had an exceptional stroke of good fortune, I never would have been able to achieve this. I honestly feel this way. You might label it a miracle more than good fortune.
Even if I had some inborn talent for writing novels, it would have remained there, like with oil fields or mines, if I hadn’t unearthed it: undisturbed, deep underground. Some people insist that if you’re truly talented at something, your talent will definitely blossom someday. But based on my own gut feelings—and I trust my gut—that won’t necessarily happen. If that talent lies buried in a relatively shallow place, it’s very possible it will emerge on its own. But if it’s buried deep down, you can’t discover it that easily. It can be the most abundant talent, but as long as there’s no one to actually pick up a shovel, say “Let’s dig here,” and start digging, it may remain forever unknown, buried in the earth. When I look back on my own life, I really feel this is true. There’s a right time for things, and if you miss that opportunity, most of the time you’ll never get a second chance. Life is often capricious, unfair, and sometimes cruel. I was able, by chance, to grab a golden opportunity. Thinking back on it now, I feel it was nothing less than a stroke of good fortune.
But good luck is, so to speak, simply an admission ticket. In that sense it’s different from an oil field or a mine. Just getting that admission ticket is no guarantee that everything will be okay after that, that you can then live a life of ease and luxury. The admission ticket allows you into the performance—but that’s all. You hand over your admission ticket at the entrance, enter the site, but then what you do there, what you discover, what you gain, what you lose, how you overcome the many obstacles that crop up there, is all a question of individual talent, gifts, and competence, of the person’s abilities and outlook. And sometimes it’s simply a matter of physical strength. At any rate, you can’t make do with just good fortune.
As you might expect, just like there are all kinds of people there are all kinds of novelists. All kinds of lifestyles and ways of writing. Different viewpoints and styles of writing. So they can’t all be covered in one blanket statement. All I’m able to do is talk about the type of writer I am, so of course you need to qualify what I’m saying. At the same time, though—as far as being a professional writer is concerned—there should be something that goes beyond individual difference and connects us at a fundamental level. In a word, I think this is mental toughness. I’m talking about a firm, strong will that allows you to keep on writing novels despite all sorts of difficulties you encounter along the way—the confusion you go through, severe criticism, betrayal by good friends, unexpected failures, the occasional loss of confidence, or overconfidence that makes you slip up.