As a new writer, I find nothing as motivating as learning about famous writers when they were just starting out. What were their habits like? What setbacks did they face?

With millions of books sold across the world and numerous international literary prizes, Haruki Murakami is one of those rare writers who achieve popularity both with critics and with audiences. His characters’ apathy and the bizarre adventures have found resonance all across the globe.

The story of how he came to write his first extended prose piece at age 29 sounds like something straight out of his books: while watching a baseball game and drinking a beer, a player hit a double. At that exact moment, Murakami realized he could write a novel. He went back home and began it that day.

Back then, he and his wife ran a jazz bar together, so his writing had to wait until late at night. But everyday for four months he kept at it, and the result was the novella Hear the Wing Sing. Hi submitted the piece to the Gunzo literary contest and won first prize, kickstarting his career. (A bit of trivia: the same contest also helped establish Ryu Murakami, who won for Almost Transparent Blue.)

He followed up with a slew of acclaimed novels, each one earning him more readers and awards, until he became Japan’s most famous writer.

It makes for a great story—who wouldn’t want to hit it out of the park with their first novel? But, as anyone familiar with Murakami’s disciplined habits might expect, there’s more to the story than that.

Readers of Murakami know he’s well-versed in western (particularly American) literature. Since his teenage years, he had a voracious appetite for the works of Updike, Capote, Fitzgerald, and Raymond Carver, among many others. By the time he started his first novella, he probably knew more about contemporary American literature than many American writers.

And, as he states in his introduction to Soseki’s Sanshiro, in his 20s he immersed himself in Japanese classics, making his way through The Tale of Genji and the complete works of Natsume Soseki and Junichiro Tanizaki.

Hardcore Murakami fans might be aware of all this, but an important part of his origin story is rarely if ever mentioned. While Hear the Wind Sing was his first attempt at a novel, it wasn’t his first attempt at writing. At Waseda University, he studied drama with a focus on screenwriting and produced a number of scenarios there. In fact, it’s been suggested that his original ambition was to be a screenwriter. So although he hadn’t done much with prose previously, he’d studied narratives and writing extensively long before he went to that fateful baseball game.

Murakami thus goes from being a natural prodigy who struck gold with his first piece to a well-read writer who put in his time before seeing his first publication. So any would-be writers feeling down today, just remember that even the best often spend hours grinding away in anonymity.

My latest short story, “The True History of the Betan Conversion,” is available at Daily Science Fiction. Read it here.

I was delighted and honestly a bit surprised to see it sell. I had been reading a lot of Gene Wolfe when I wrote this, and liked the mythical/biblical style he used in his short story “The God and His Man.” As a writing exercise, I tried my hand at something short in a similar vein, and “The True History of the Betan Conversion” was the result. Once I had a draft, I barely had to do any editing, which I’m taking as a good sign that my writing abilities are finally able to match what I envision in my head before drafting anything.

Well, 2020 is almost over. Here’s to hoping that 2021 is a little less nightmare-y (*knock on wood*). But with the new year almost here, I thought I’d take a look back at some of my submission stats from 2020.

In 2020, I:

-Submitted 73 stories

-Had 63 rejections (and heard that I had made it to the second round at 5 pro publications)

-And had three acceptances (two at a pro market!)

 Not exactly a “breakthrough” year, but I’m still happy with my writing progress. In both 2018 and 2019, I had exactly one pro market acceptance, and aside from that received pretty much only form rejections. Hearing I made it out of the slush pile at a bunch of prestigious markets, and in some cases made it to the final round, felt almost as good as an acceptance.

I hope to continue to continue progressing. I’m starting 2021 strong, with 8 active submissions (and one of those has made it to the final round at a pro publication!), and I’m excited to see what the new year brings (hopefully an end to this pandemic, among other things)!

I’m happy to say I’ve had two recent acceptances: look for “Heart of the Highlands” in the summer issue of Lovecraftiana, and “The True History of the Betan Conversion” in Daily Science Fiction in the next few months.

So, Daily Science Fiction recently published my short story “The Chosen Ones.” It’s my third “pro” story published. The other two, also published in Daily Science Fiction, came to me pretty easily–I think I spent five minutes writing “Chrysalis” and another five minutes revising it. This latest one, though? It was incredibly difficult. I think it took approximately two years from when I first got the idea to Daily Science Fiction publishing it–and it’s a flash piece just a bit longer than 500 words. It feels self-indulgent to give a “behind the scenes” look at what went into the story, but I thought it might provide some motivation to other writers.

I first got the idea in the summer of 2018. Prior to that, I had rolled my eyes at the chosen one trope. It seemed so boring. Until I read a Reddit comment saying how there’s an undercurrent of existential horror inherent in the trope: a person bound by fate.

That got my mind going–there was a lot of opportunity for Kafkaesque situations–and I soon began drafting two stories, one a flash fiction piece, about the same length as the version that was eventually published, and another much, much longer, one I envisioned being a short novelette, about different incarnations of chosen ones repeatedly failing. The short one I finished; the long one stalled at ~1,500 words and I abandoned it there (note to writers: don’t do this–at least finish the first draft).

The short one didn’t feel right, however, so I let it sit for a month, eventually expanding it into about 2,000 words. But that wasn’t right either, so I let it sit some more.

With most stories, I probably would have tried submitting it to various venues at that point. There usually comes a point during the revision process where I am not completely happy with a piece, but I can tell that anything short of a major rewrite wouldn’t do much to improve it–a rewrite that could easily become its own unique story, thereby giving me two pieces to shop around. So I just start submitting the piece.

I didn’t do that here, though. I felt like there was a really good story waiting to be told, and I’d be doing it a disservice to send it out.

What I eventually did was rewrite it entirely. The resulting story was about 4,000 words long and, I thought, the best thing I had ever written. It had action. It got philosophical. It was filled with what I considered beautiful writing. But in an objective sense it was complete crap, though I didn’t realize it at the time. That epiphany only came after a few rejections, whereupon I took the best parts and cut out the rest, and then looked at the best parts and cut half of that out. This one was closest to the idea in my head. I did a few minor revisions after that, but the resulting story was pretty much what Daily Science Fiction eventually accepted and published.

Still with me?

That flash fiction story took me four almost completely different drafts (not counting the abandoned one) over the course of two years to nail down and get right. And even then, it received a slew of rejections before it found a home. A flash fiction piece. In the grand scheme of stories, it’s relatively tiny.

But I really believed in my idea and kept working on it. And in the end my belief in it paid off–not just because I got published, but because I did true justice to the idea that had been rattling around my mind for so long. So, if you’re working on a story or novel you really believe in, keep at it, even if you’re not completely into your current draft. It may take much longer than you initially thought, and the final form may be very different from what you had at first envisioned, but it will be very much worth it.