By Laura P. Valtorta
It seems that every successful writer has written a short
book about writing. Two of the most useful ones I’ve read are How to Write a Movie in 21 Days, by Viki
King, and What I Talk About When I
Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami. These books are different from the
others because they entertain as well as instruct. Murakami’s book also reveals
his philosophy on living life well.
How to Write a Movie
in 21 Days is written in short,
choppy, ungrammatical sentences, like a movie script. King sets down a method
for writing a screenplay that is neither the formula for a plot nor the
necessary elements of a hit film, but, rather, how the writer can extract the
movie’s story from within herself. She never proposes that a writer quit her
day job. A screenplay, she says, will never pay the rent. She talks about
honing a message and telling the difference between a play, a film, and a song
lyric. (I would call that last one a poem).
The back of the book reveals that King writes for television
and works as a script consultant.
Murakami’s book, What
I Talk About When I Talk About Running, has a head-oscillating title but a
simple premise: physical exercise helps him to write. The locale shifts from
Tokyo to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Hawaii. He talks about American pop music
and jazz. He used to own a jazz club. He runs marathons and triathlons. He eats
a special diet. Sometimes we hear about his wife. But What I Talk About is essentially a book about writing and how
exercise fuels the brain. It’s a book about happiness. I want to be Murakami.
Murakami’s short stories are existential masterpieces. My
favorite, “Where I’m Likely to Find It,” is part of the excellent collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. A guy gets
lost on his way down a staircase from his mother’s apartment to his own, where
he lives with his wife, in Tokyo. Phenomenal. I think the story is about arranging
your sock drawer and losing 15 pounds by giving up pancakes. It’s about the
meaning of life. I want to know the person who wrote this story. I want to
invade his mind. What I Talk About
allows me to do that. It’s an homage to clean living. It’s a story about loving
life.
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