Jean-Michel Serres, Composer-pianist (Apfel Café Music): Website

1. Are Novelists Tolerant Persons?

Many novelists have no harmonious personality and appropriate view.

I think a novel as such, anyone who wants to write it can write it. Who can write text, has a ball pointed-pen and a note and own certain ability makes a story, can write a novel anyway without a specialist training. Novel is a form of expression that has a broad entrance. But to continue to write good novels and to be a novelist is difficult.

To write a novel is not suitable for smart persons. To tell a story does at a slow pace. It is not smart work and is a succession of paraphrases as “for example” to express a personal theme. I think there’s the truth of the novel in this roundabout process.

I respect novelists who continue to write novels, they own core, will, endurance and requirement as a professional novelist.

2. When I Became A Novelist

Before I became a novelist, I ran a jazz café (The Japanese unique style café, plays jazz records.) from I was a university student. It was hard and tough work and life, but I spent the time happily. At end of my twenties, through this hard life, my mind reached a "settled and open space".

A clear spring afternoon, the 1978 opening day of the Central League, at the Meiji Jingu Stadium, I lay down on the outfield lawn bleachers and watched the game. When the first batter of the Yakult Swallows, Dave Hilton hit a fine double, at the moment, an epiphany fell into me, then he realized “That’s it, maybe, I can write a novel !”.

Anyway, I wrote the first manuscript of my debut novel Hear the Wind Sing as I like, but I didn’t satisfy it. So, I translated it to English and I translated the English translation to Japanese again. Then I got a neutral and flexible style that has my own natural voice.

The manuscript was adopted and was awarded a prize, so I became a novelist unexpectedly.

3. On Literature Prizes

I've kept a distance from the Japanese literary circles. Because I was an ordinary man, so I don’t know much about the circles and literature prizes. I think true writers treasure a response of which they create meaningful things and exist of readers understand the means. And I have no qualification to be a member of a literature prize committee, because I’m a too egocentric person, and to continue to write novels I must be egocentric.

4. On Originality

I think conditions that we can mention a creator is original are below. 1. A creator owns his original style apparently different from others. 2. And the creator can do version up the style by own energy. 3. The style must become a standard and it will be taken in people criterion of judgment.

"To reduce anything from yourself" is necessary work to be original. We get and have lots of content and information in the process of life. So we throw away wasteful things and simplify a brain, then we can act freely. I think the most important question to be original is “are you happy to do it like that ?”. If my originality maybe exists, it’s caused by my free and natural sense. I’ve written novels by my own voluntary natural and free will of I want to only write a novel.

5. Well, What Should I Write?

Young people who want to be a writer should read many novels first. And they should watch people, scenes and things. Then stock them as “materials” in their brain.

I had been felt I have no things to write, because I was a usual boy who didn't experience particular experiences, all the same, the fact becomes a weapon, means I can write freely anything by the magic of combination like the “E. T. system“ when I start to write a novel once.

6. Taking Side with Time: To Write Long a Novel

I think I'm a long novel writer basically. To a long novel as "a total story owns a possibility may reform myself“, I need a vast “space” I can use freely and unlimitedly. When I write a long novel I make rules and a routine, such as I do the work of long novel only and I write 4000 characters every day without fail like a factory.

After I finish writing the first draft anyway, I rest for a week, and I rewrite and boldly edit it for a month to two months. And I redo the same process. After the rest of a week, I rewrite the second draft, it is an accumulation of detailed edits, additions and adjustments of the consistency of the story, descriptions of sceneries and tones of talkings. Then I put the manuscript in my drawer for half a year to one year, and I rewrite and finish it.

To rewrite a novel or the attitude is important for novelists, I think. I like very much to rewrite a manuscript many times. I can say I prefer to rewrite rather than write the first draft.

7. An Extremely Personal and Physical Activity

To write a long novel is extremely lonely and personal work. I shut myself up in my studio and write for five or six hours every day, this daily routine goes on one to three years. To keep it up, I need physical strength and a sturdy body, then they gain agility of thinking and flexibility of spirit. Spirit or brain is a part of the physical body equally.

To write a novel or to tell a grand story is to go down the bottom of one's darkness of mind by oneself, bring back and face with it. The act is dangerous, I need a certain physical strength. People want a novelist to the “antisocial characteristic”, but I think a novelist shouldn’t express his chaos in his private life. I spend a usual and healthy life for I write a novel.

8. About School

I didn't like schools and their education. The study of schools was a bore, and I thought to read many novels, to intently listen to music and to go with a girl are important person studies.

Since I was a high school student, I've red many English paperbacks, so I can read English books through anyway. But my results of English tests are not well, also students who got high marks in English should have no ability to read an English book through. So I understand the English education in Japanese high schools don’t do for students to learn living actual English, it does for to gain the score of university entrance exams exclusively.

The aim of the Japanese education system is to make obedient people. It influences the whole Japanese social system such as companies and government officials. Its rigidness of numerical system, and efficiency and utilitarianism like mechanical memorizing, cause serious losses in various fields.

I think imagination is very important in any period. The thing that is on the opposite side of imagination is efficiency. I only wish for schools to “don’t suppress the imagination of a child already own his imagination”.

9. What Characters That I Should Present?

I hardly use a real person as a model of a character. Characters are automatically created during I write a novel. To describe characters, you must watch the appearances and sayings of people and keep them in mind.

I think I can become anyone by writing a novel, also a novelist is partly created and modified by his novel.

10 Who is I Write for?

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11 Going Abroad: The New Frontier

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12 The Place a Story Is in: Memories of Dr. Hayao Kawai

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Afterword

5 or 6 years ago I thought of that I have to write down a text about writing a novel. The manuscripts of this book are written on the assumption for a lecture meeting. (But I didn’t speak the content of this book.) This book would be regarded as an “autobiographical essay”, yet I only wish to write down as concretely and actually as possible how I worked and spent as a novelist. This book may be an egocentric text, though I appreciate it if it’s useful to readers.