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Why Bestselling Author R.F. Kuang Runs in Silence Every Morning

The author of Babel, Yellowface, and the upcoming Katabasis, talks about how running and creativity have a lot in common

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(Photo: Anne-Sophie Soudoplatoff)

When R.F. Kuang first took up running in college, she was stymied by what it meant to be a “real” runner. “I thought you had to run at least two miles without stopping, and I thought you had to have a seven-minute mile time,” she says. But after several false starts and a couch-to-5K training breakthrough, she realized that “real” runners have just one thing in common: they get out the door and keep moving.

Kuang is the mega-bestselling author of several award-winning novels, including , , and the . Nowadays, she travels the world speaking about her books in far-flung cities—and wherever she goes, you’ll find her running along the nearest river first thing in the morning. Currently training for a half marathon, with the goal of working up to a full marathon, her insights from the road always pour onto the page. Her latest novel, , launches on August 26.

When Did You First Become a Runner?

I’ve been trying to become a runner off and on since I was in college, but I wasn’t training the right way, so I would try to run a mile, then get pooped and give up. But about two years ago, I discovered a couch-to-5K training plan and thought, “Maybe this will work.” At the time, a 5K seemed like a Herculean achievement. I was like, “People run for half an hour continuously? That’s crazy.” The day I ran my first 5K, I was ecstatic. It was one of the best running experiences I’ve ever had. I’m very much a late-stage adult runner, but it was cool to see that you can get into it at any point in your life.

How Do Running and Writing Interact for You?

The main thing is a sense of discipline. My thinking on this is inspired by Haruki Murakami, who so famously loves running that he wrote a book called What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. In his essay collection, Novelist as a Vocation, he writes about the physical stamina it requires to sit on your ass and work on a manuscript for hours every day. Writing advice is always very cerebral, but he writes about how you must stay physically fit. There’s a crazy line where he says, “Once a writer puts on fat, it’s all over.” I think that’s a little bit extreme, but I understand the gist. The moment you start getting lazy or taking your foot off the gas, that’s when creatively, it gets dangerous.

The other part of discipline is doing something even when absolutely nobody is forcing me to. If I don’t go out there every morning and run, there will be zero consequences. I think of writing the same way. Nobody is asking me to write books. I’m creating something from nothing, and the only thing propelling me to do that is sheer willpower. So every single morning, I do the enormous task of forcing my body to keep doing something that I don’t want to. And when I sit down to write, I’m forcing my mind to do something that it doesn’t want to, because naturally, you want to be at rest. But the rewards only come when you push yourself into an uncomfortable zone.

How Has Running Shaped Your Approach to Discipline?

Running has been incredible in teaching me that when I wake up in the morning, even if I don’t feel up to doing all the things I need to do, the hardest part is just getting out the door. Then your body takes over from there, and it all gets easier from that point. Similarly, when I don’t want to start a writing session and I’m dragging my feet by doing the laundry or putting away all the dishes, I remember that the worst part of writing is sitting down and opening the file. But then once I’m looking at the words, I forget that I didn’t want to write that day. Then I’m fully immersed in the problem. The run of my creative process has begun, and I’m not stepping off the trail until I’ve written whatever scene I need to.

Do You Think About Writing When You Run?

Running is very good brainstorming time. I used to run to music, podcasts, or audiobooks. Now I prefer to run in total silence, because it’s time to think and the world is quiet. I have to entertain myself somehow when I’m on the road. So I think I do my best writing—or at least my best brainstorming—when I’m bored and I have to generate my own entertainment. If I took an hour off to just brainstorm in my office, I would feel very antsy, because I would think I should be doing something more active. But giving my mind that unhurried time to think in the mornings is wonderful.

Do You Talk About Running with Other Writers?

In my immediate writing circle, nobody else runs, and they think I’m a crazy person for subjecting myself to this. Runners are the most boring people on the planet, because the only thing we want to talk about is running. It feels like this secret brotherhood. I get bored talking to people about writing, but I never get bored talking about running.

Do You Run in Other Cities When You’re on Book Tour?

That’s a big priority for me. I used to find touring really exhausting, because it was all about being on trains and planes every single day. So it’s a little bit delirious of me to force a run into that schedule, but it’s actually provided some good structure to the day, because I’ll wake up very early just so I can run at least a 5K in a new city before we have to move on. It’s a fantastic way to see a city on foot without it taking hours. My default strategy is to find the river as quick as I can and just follow the river. Another surefire way to find a good running path is to head out in the morning when everybody’s running, find a runner who looks local, and follow them wherever they’re going. I did this in Milan and it led me to a really nice loop around the castle.

What’s Your Advice For a Newbie Runner?

I wish I’d known it’s OK to run slow. Even if you’re running a 12-minute mile and you’re only running one mile, you’re still running. When you do that and do it continuously, you get faster and faster, and you start accumulating a capability for distance. The training plan that finally made running work for me was based on intervals, a lot of breaks, and starting from very short runs. I was dazzled by how quickly my endurance and speed built up.

It’s very similar with writing. You think about writing a novel and it feels like this insurmountable mountain—how on earth am I going to write 90,000 words? But you don’t write the entire novel at once. You write it one sentence and one paragraph at a time. You write 500 words a day. Five hundred words is two good paragraphs—and anybody can come up with two good paragraphs in one day. If you do that for six months, suddenly you’ll have a novel-length draft. So focus on the very achievable task right in front of you. Don’t focus on the end goal—you can’t get there overnight. Just focus on finishing the next mile.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

Buy Kuang’s New Book