After I closed the bar and began my life as a novelist, the first thing we—and by we I mean my wife
and I—did was completely revamp our lifestyle. We decided we’d go to bed soon after it got dark, and
wake up with the sun. To our minds this was natural, the kind of life respectable people lived. We’d
closed the club, so we also decided that from now on we’d meet with only the people we wanted to see
and, as much as possible, get by not seeing those we didn’t. We felt that, for a time at least, we could
allow ourselves this modest indulgence.
It was a major directional change—from the kind of open life we’d led for seven years, to a more
closed life. I think having this sort of open existence for a period was a good thing. I learned a lot of
important lessons during that time. It was my real schooling. But you can’t keep up that kind of life
forever. Just as with school, you enter it, learn something, and then it’s time to leave.
So my new, simple, and regular life began. I got up before five a.m. and went to bed before ten p.m.
People are at their best at different times of day, but I’m definitely a morning person. That’s when I
can focus and finish up important work I have to do. Afterward I work out or do other errands that
don’t take much concentration. At the end of the day I relax and don’t do any more work. I read, listen
to music, take it easy, and try to go to bed early. This is the pattern I’ve mostly followed up till today.
Thanks to this, I’ve been able to work efficiently these past twenty-four years. It’s a lifestyle, though, that
doesn’t allow for much nightlife, and sometimes your relationships with other people become problematic.
Some people even get mad at you, because they invite you to go somewhere or do something with them
and you keep turning them down.
I’m struck by how, except when you’re young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in
what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a
certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance. I placed the highest priority on the
sort of life that lets me focus on writing, not associating with all the people around me. I felt that the
indispensable relationship I should build in my life was not with a specific person, but with an
unspecified number of readers. As long as I got my day-to-day life set so that each work was an
improvement over the last, then many of my readers would welcome whatever life I chose for myself.
Shouldn’t this be my duty as a novelist, and my top priority? My opinion hasn’t changed over the
years. I can’t see my readers’ faces, so in a sense it’s a conceptual type of human relationship, but I’ve
consistently considered this invisible, conceptual relationship to be the most important thing in my
life.
In other words, you can’t please everybody.Even when I ran my bar I followed the same policy. A lot of customers came to the bar. If one out
of ten enjoyed the place and said he’d come again, that was enough. If one out of ten was a repeat
customer, then the business would survive. To put it the other way, it didn’t matter if nine out of ten
didn’t like my bar. This realization lifted a weight off my shoulders. Still, I had to make sure that the
one person who did like the place really liked it. In order to make sure he did, I had to make my
philosophy and stance clear-cut, and patiently maintain that stance no matter what. This is what I
learned through running a business.
After A Wild Sheep Chase, I continued to write with the same attitude I’d developed as a business
owner. And with each work the number of my readers increased. What made me happiest was the fact