Natsume Soseki wrote Botchan (equivalent to 234 manuscript pages) in just ten days—a remarkable feat. The key theme of this work is that writers should write “without thinking.”
It is essential to step away from the self that governs your usual consciousness and let the “other self”—the unconscious—take hold of the pen. By doing so, not only can you write more, but you can also produce stories that are uniquely yours. This, they argue, is the only way Soseki could have created such a masterpiece in such a short time.
This brief book is filled with advice that, while abstract, is highly practical. I highly recommend it.
Excerpt Highlights
Page 35
Writer and critic Saiichi Maruya calculated the length of Botchan to be 230–240 pages in manuscript format (another source specifies 234 pages). Soseki began writing it on either March 15 or 17, 1906, and handed the completed manuscript to Hototogisu magazine editor Takahama Kyoshi around March 25. This means the writing period was a maximum of ten days and a minimum of eight.
Soseki wrote an average of 24–30 manuscript pages per day—approximately 9,600–12,000 characters. Astonishingly, the manuscript shows almost no signs of revision, with only one discarded page. Soseki seemed to write as if copying words from the air, focused solely on the act of writing.
How was he able to write so quickly? The answer is simple: Soseki wrote “without thinking.”
Page 65
We do not write by the power of our “will.” Rather, we call upon another “self” that resides within us. This might be what people have long referred to as the “unconscious.”
This other “self” is not the one we usually recognize as our conscious, will-driven identity. It is, in a sense, an “other” within us. Why is this “self” considered “other”? It is because we do not truly know this version of ourselves.
This other self, so much like us, usually lies dormant. During the day, we live according to the rules and logic of the world around us. But at night, this “self” reemerges. Perhaps it has had similar experiences and lived in a similar world, but while we navigate the daylight world, this other “self” quietly inhabits an internal realm of its own.
We are usually unaware of this “self’s” presence, yet it patiently waits for “its moment.”
