Haruki Murakami is a Japanese Novelist that has written and sold millions of copies of his books in over fifty different languages.

He’s known for taking a hard-hat approach to writing novels, viewing his profession more as an act of manual labor versus a form of creative expression.

In Murakami’s meditation on his life as both a writer and a runner, he shares the three qualities he believes a novelist must possess to have any chance at success…

1. Talent.
2. Focus.
3. Endurance.

Below, you will find these three qualities a bit more fleshed out in my own hand but, of course, inspired by Murakami’s terse prose.

Talent.

Murakami writes that it doesn’t matter how much effort and enthusiasm you force into the craft of writing, if you lack the talent you will have lost before you’ve started.

Additionally, the writer can’t always choose when her talent will run out.

Murakami believes that focus and endurance allow the writer to hold onto her talent (or at the very least get the most out of her talent) for as long as possible.

Focus.

Murakami’s definition of focus is the ability to concentrate all of one’s limited talent on whatever’s critical at the moment.

For Murakami, he claims he can sustain his focus for 3-4 hours every morning. Then, after this focus has waned (and with it his allotted talent for the day) he will go about his exercise and chores and housekeeping.

Endurance.

At first glance, I found myself confusing endurance and focus –– they seem to me, at least initially, to be one and the same –– but Murakami writes one’s ability to sustain a high level of focus for days and weeks and years and decades at a time, is a writer’s “endurance”.

In closing…

Talent is what a writer must possess at a bare minimum. However, Talent combined with both Focus and Endurance gives the writer a fighting chance.

Finally, I’d argue that Murakami may have left out one other factor… Lady Luck.

But, I digress.

By Cole Schafer.

P.S. This article was pulled from and inspired by Murakami’s fabulous book on writing (and running)… What I talk about when I talk about running.