An optical disk recording apparatus is designed for forming pits on a recording surface of an optical disk of a given type at a given recording speed by applying a laser light in the form of a sequence of multiple pulses obtained by intermittently turning on and off the laser light according to a given multi-pulse pattern. In the apparatus, a write strategy circuit is set with a pattern table and controls the turning on and off of the laser light according to a multi-pulse pattern selected from the pattern table in correspondence to a length of the pit to be formed. A storage section stores a plurality of pattern tables of different kinds, each pattern table containing a plurality of multi-pulse patterns corresponding to a plurality of lengths of the pit. A control section selects one of the pattern tables based on either of the recording speed and the type of the optical disk, and reads out the selected pattern table from the storage section and sets the read pattern table in the write strategy circuit.