Murakami's Writing Regimen

Ah, so this explains why I've never completed a novel:

[Murakami] wrote "Kafka" in six months, starting, as he usually does, without a plan. He spent one year revising it. He follows a strict regimen. Going to bed around 9 p.m. - he never dreams, he said - he wakes up without an alarm clock around 4 a.m. He immediately turns on his Macintosh and writes until 11 a.m., producing every day 4,000 characters, or the equivalent of two to three pages in English.

Of course, I have my job as an excuse, but that never stopped folks like Einstein and Eliot from pursuing their own creative dreams.

Somebody, lash me to the mast!