{"id":408,"date":"2017-10-10T18:28:03","date_gmt":"2017-10-10T17:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/?p=408"},"modified":"2017-10-10T18:28:03","modified_gmt":"2017-10-10T17:28:03","slug":"eight-lessons-kazuo-ishiguro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/eight-lessons-kazuo-ishiguro\/","title":{"rendered":"Eight Lessons Kazuo Ishiguro, This Year\u2019s Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Can Teach Us About The Writing Process"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s very little that need be said about <\/span>Kazuo Ishiguro<\/span><\/a> that hasn\u2019t already been said: He\u2019s one of the great novelists of our time, and that fact was confirmed this week when the Nobel Prize committee decided to award him the Nobel Prize in Literature. It\u2019s an honor that caps a career in which he\u2019s won a slew of major writing awards and drawn millions of readers around the world to his work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ishiguro has given a series of interviews over the years about his writing process. In each one, he\u2019s refreshingly honest about what it takes to do the work, how hard it can be, and the odd habits he uses to make it all happen. In light of his winning the Nobel, we combed through a selection of these interviews to pull a handful of lessons that any of us\u2014aspiring Laureate or not\u2014can use to improve our work:<\/span><\/p>\n

1) Don\u2019t be afraid to write in jump across genres.<\/b><\/h3>\n

Ishiguro isn\u2019t shy about genre-hopping. In 2015, after 10 years of work, he published <\/span>The Buried Giant<\/span><\/i><\/a>. It was a tale set immediately after Arthurian Britain, and it featured dragons and orcs and a legendary knight. It was a fantasy novel, and Ishiguro himself <\/span>wasn\u2019t sure if his readers would go along with it<\/span><\/a>: \u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen. Will readers follow me into this? Will they understand what I\u2019m trying to do, or will they be prejudiced against the surface elements? Are they going to say this is fantasy?\u201d It took some courage for the novelist to jump out the genres he was accustomed to and into something completely different\u2014but it\u2019s valuable for all of us to remember that variety is a virtue, that you shouldn\u2019t be fearful trying out new and different types of writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

2) Consider using pen and paper for first drafts.<\/b><\/h3>\n

Ishiguro writes his first drafts with pen and paper. He writes illegibly on purpose, and he <\/span>explained why to the <\/span>Paris Review<\/span><\/i><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have two desks. One has a writing slope and the other has a computer on it. The computer dates from 1996. It\u2019s not connected to the Internet. I prefer to work by pen on my writing slope for the initial drafts. I want it to be more or less illegible to anyone apart from myself. The rough draft is a big mess. I pay no attention to anything to do with style or coherence. I just need to get everything down on paper. If I\u2019m suddenly struck by a new idea that doesn\u2019t fit with what\u2019s gone before, I\u2019ll still put it in. I just make a note to go back and sort it all out later. Then I plan the whole thing out from that. I number sections and move them around. By the time I write my next draft, I have a clearer idea of where I\u2019m going. This time round, I write much more carefully.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

3) Even if you\u2019ve been at it a while, writing might not be the most pleasant experience around.<\/b><\/h3>\n

It\u2019s tempting to think that someone as talented, versatile, and transparently brilliant as Ishiguro sits down at the page and watches as the Muse takes his genius and translates it into gorgeous prose. Not so.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even someone who has written best-selling novels that have won the coveted Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize, and now the Nobel Prize, doesn\u2019t always find writing to be an entirely pleasurable experience. Ishiguro was a talk at Oxford when he was asked about how he finds the work of writing. He <\/span>responded in a way<\/span><\/a> that should give comfort to anyone who has struggled with the craft: \u201cIt\u2019s not a pleasure, but I\u2019ve done it for so long now\u2026 I don\u2019t write every day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

4) Cure distractions with \u201cthe Crash.\u201d<\/b><\/h3>\n

As soon as it was announced that Ishiguro had won the prize, an old Guardian article popped back up on social media and started making the rounds. In it, he details the unconventional process that took him from no words on paper to a completed draft of his brilliant novel, <\/span>The Remains of the Day<\/span><\/i><\/a>, in four weeks. You didn\u2019t misread that: the first draft of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction-winning <\/span>Remains of the Day<\/span><\/i><\/a> was written in a four-week sprint. Ishiguro <\/span>described the process<\/span><\/a> that he and his wife created to help him complete the first effort:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo Lorna and I came up with a plan. I would, for a four-week period, ruthlessly clear my diary and go on what we somewhat mysteriously called a \u201cCrash\u201d. During the Crash, I would do nothing but write from 9am to 10.30pm, Monday through Saturday. I\u2019d get one hour off for lunch and two for dinner. I\u2019d not see, let alone answer, any mail, and would not go near the phone. No one would come to the house. Lorna, despite her own busy schedule, would for this period do my share of the cooking and housework. In this way, so we hoped, I\u2019d not only complete more work quantitatively, but reach a mental state in which my fictional world was more real to me than the actual one.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

5) Leave something in the tank at the end of the day.<\/b><\/h3>\n

Before \u201cthe Crash,\u201d though, Ishiguro believed what many believe: that he had a certain amount of output available in a day and that he ought to conserve what he had for the following day. Given that he produced two great novels with that strategy, it\u2019s <\/span>one worth considering<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t write every day; it depends on where I am in the project. For the rough draft it\u2019s counterproductive if I do it for too long; if I write more than 5-6 pages a day my work afterwards is substandard, and it gets confusing if I don\u2019t bottle up; the standard has to be kept at a certain level. It\u2019s like a jazz musician who gets the best music out and then pulls out. There\u2019s always something else productive or administrative to be done.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

6) A rejection can turn into an acceptance, even if you didn\u2019t anticipate it.<\/b><\/h3>\n

Ishiguro\u2019s literary career began, in a way, with a rejection that became an acceptance. It\u2019s the kind of endearing story that can give any of us hope:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAfter university, when I was working with homeless people in west London, I wrote a half-hour radio play and sent it to the BBC. It was rejected but I got an encouraging response\u2026Then, almost by accident, I came across a little advertisement for a creative-writing M.A. taught by Malcolm Bradbury at the University of East Anglia\u2026I sent the radio play to Malcolm Bradbury along with my application. I was slightly taken aback when I was accepted, because it suddenly became real.\u201d (<\/span><\/i>Paris Review<\/span><\/i><\/a>)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

7) Great song-writers can teach us something about how to write great prose.<\/b><\/h3>\n

Ishiguro\u2019s writing began in the form of songs\u2014writing his own, and being a devoted listener of them. As <\/span>the <\/span>Telegraph<\/span><\/i> put it in their profile of him<\/span><\/a> in September 2017, \u201cHe got his \u2018adolescent angst phase\u2019 and his \u2018Joycean stream of consciousness stuff\u2019 out of his system, and by the end, when he recorded \u2018quite a bad demo\u2019 in a bedroom, understatement was his style.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As <\/span>he told <\/span>The Paris Review<\/span><\/i><\/a>, \u201c<\/span>I liked the idea that a musician could be utterly self-sufficient. You write the songs yourself, sing them yourself, orchestrate them yourself. I found this appealing, and I began to write songs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Songwriting <\/span>gave him models<\/span><\/a>: \u201cThe Canadian that influenced me perhaps the most in my writing is probably Leonard Cohen, his songs\u2026He had a profound influence on my growing up and my turning to writing. For me it was an incredibly sad day when I heard that he died. Leonard Cohen along with Bob Dylan were great influences on me and had a lot to do with my wanting to be a writer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

8) Remember that ideas can come from anywhere.<\/b><\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s the origin story of the Booker Prize winning <\/span>The Remains of the Day<\/span><\/i><\/a>:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cIt started with a joke that my wife made. There was a journalist coming to interview me for my first novel. And my wife said, Wouldn\u2019t it be funny if this person came in to ask you these serious, solemn questions about your novel and you pretended that you were my butler? We thought this was a very amusing idea. From then on I became obsessed with the butler as a metaphor.\u201d<\/span><\/i> (<\/span><\/i>Paris review<\/span><\/i><\/a>)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

That\u2019s right: a joke about pretending to be a butler become one of Ishiguro\u2019s greatest works. IT can come from anywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s very little that need be said about Kazuo Ishiguro that hasn\u2019t already been said: He\u2019s one of the great novelists of our time, and that fact was confirmed this week when the Nobel Prize committee decided to award him the Nobel Prize in Literature. It\u2019s an honor that caps a career in which he\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEight Lessons Kazuo Ishiguro, This Year\u2019s Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Can Teach Us About The Writing Process - Writing Routines<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/eight-lessons-kazuo-ishiguro\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Eight Lessons Kazuo Ishiguro, This Year\u2019s Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Can Teach Us About The Writing Process - Writing Routines\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There\u2019s very little that need be said about Kazuo Ishiguro that hasn\u2019t already been said: He\u2019s one of the great novelists of our time, and that fact was confirmed this week when the Nobel Prize committee decided to award him the Nobel Prize in Literature. 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Ishiguro, best known for \\\"The Remains of the Day,\\\" won the Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday, marking a return to traditional literature following two years of unconventional choices by the Swedish Academy for the 9-million-kronor ($1.1 million) prize.\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/eight-lessons-kazuo-ishiguro\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Eight Lessons Kazuo Ishiguro, This Year\u2019s Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Can Teach Us About The Writing Process\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/\",\"name\":\"Writing Routines\",\"description\":\"A behind-the-scenes look at the daily habits of writers and authors\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Writing Routines\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/writing-routines.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/writing-routines.png\",\"width\":1280,\"height\":720,\"caption\":\"Writing Routines\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/writingroutines\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/writingroutines\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/writingroutines\/\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/#\/schema\/person\/a2da8a719a4aa9d1696b8bd8759fe175\",\"name\":\"Kevin Currie\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a895ee40fa4dc9bd6e05a5b3cc103d0f686e1b2c695f3dd8885f82d2a4dd379a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a895ee40fa4dc9bd6e05a5b3cc103d0f686e1b2c695f3dd8885f82d2a4dd379a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Kevin Currie\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Eight Lessons Kazuo Ishiguro, This Year\u2019s Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Can Teach Us About The Writing Process - Writing Routines","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.writingroutines.com\/eight-lessons-kazuo-ishiguro\/","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"Eight Lessons Kazuo Ishiguro, This Year\u2019s Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Can Teach Us About The Writing Process - Writing Routines","og_description":"There\u2019s very little that need be said about Kazuo Ishiguro that hasn\u2019t already been said: He\u2019s one of the great novelists of our time, and that fact was confirmed this week when the Nobel Prize committee decided to award him the Nobel Prize in Literature. 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