On Being Yourself

The interpubs (my newly coined term for the publishing industry internet) went crazy last week with Dr. Seuss' birthday. I don't remember it being quite so celebrated last year (maybe because I wasn't on Twitter) but I don't pass up excuses to celebrate the Seuss-ter.

One of my friends posted a Seuss quote from THE HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOOK.

Today, you are you
That is truer than true
There is no one alive
Who is you-er than you

As my Jamaican friends would say, " 'im neva lie."

It's easy to get caught up in a race. It's easy to make competition where there is none. To try so hard to be appreciated that you stop being yourself. To do all this for so long, that you forget who that is. But today, Dr. Seuss and I are here to remind you. You're unique and special.

There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

Announcing Tomo: the Anthology! (And self deprecation)

Comment on today's post before next Wednesday 11.59 pm EST and be entered for a chance to win a copy of the anthology, TOMO: Friendship through Fiction, edited by Holly Thompson.

TOMO was released on Saturday, almost a year to the day after the disaster in Tohoku. It features 36 contributors who are somehow linked to Japan, and proceeds will be used to help teens in Tohoku. Even if you don't win, click the book to be taken to Book Depository, where you can buy a copy with free shipping (unless you're in Pakistan :( ).

I'm a contributor to the book. I wrote a choka. Choka,  translated literally, means "long poem." It is structured 5 syllables- 7 syllables, 5-7.5-7,...5,7,7. I decided to write a choka, because Japan is famous for haiku, but there are a zillion other poetic forms.

Anyhow, having the books got me to wondering if contributors sign anthologies. I mean, it's kind of technically "your book," but it's also kind of technically not. That led me into a whirlpool of reasons to sell myself short on being a TOMO contributor.

-- All contributors have a connection to Japan, and are writing in English, ie, smaller competition pool.

-- I know the editor.

-- I live in Tohoku, and was here for the earthquake. Including me = great marketing tool.

-- It's not like it's a novel or anything.

-- I didn't have to contact an agent or a publisher. 

I could go on and on with reasons why being selected for an anthology - this anthology - isn't important. But there are so many reasons why I'm happy that I'm a part of it.

Firstly, it's for a great cause, a cause I believe in, heart, mind and soul. I'm so proud to be able to contribute in these little ways. I mean, I decided to become a writer since I lived here.That's not to say I wouldn't have gotten here eventually, but I owe Japan and Tohoku for all of it. It's the least I could do, give my help when it's needed.

Secondly, I'm in a book. I mean I've written stuff before. I've appeared in organisational journals, and magazines and newspapers and even one e-book non-fiction anthology. But, now for the first time ever I'm in a real fiction book. People can go on Amazon and buy a physical copy of something with my fiction (well, poetry, potayto-potahto) in it. That's crazy!

And so in honour of the strong little creatures that still make me laugh every day, despite all we've been through -- in honour of these teens of Tohoku, I'm offering up a copy to one lucky commenter. Remember it's open until next Wednesday, 11.59 pm EST, and international. Also, I'll sign it if you want. Still haven't figure out the protocol on that. lol.

A Year On

Sunday marked a year since the earthquake-tsunami-meltdown. It's been a tough year, emotionally and physically, living in the disaster area, but not.

On Sunday there were ceremonies and moments of silence. At 2.46 pm (the time of the quake), fire trucks sounded their sirens followed by a "mokutou" - where everyone bowed their heads and payed their respects. There were also lighting and candle ceremonies in the prefectural capitals, and prayer services throughout the region.

Ad for a lighting ceremony in my prefectural capital, Morioka, Iwate.

WHERE WE ARE

I haven't been out to the coast since the 3 days I spent there last March. So my impressions of the coast come from friends and TV.

It seems much of the road network is back up. Some of the train tracks have been fixed, but I'm not sure how much. The airport in Sendai is running. People are rebuilding. There is still a long way to go. A long, long way, but everybody is dealing with it.

We're still on setsuden - electricity conservation measures. Noone seems to know if or when power plants will generate enough energy to support East Japan again. But we seem to be getting by on what we have. Everyone is conscientious about energy use.

WHERE I AM

I can't explain the emotion I feel in regard to the disaster. I lived through it, like people all over Tohoku. I live way too many miles in land to have been in danger of tsunami, but I went through the thousands of earthquakes with everybody else. My colleague and I started joking that anything under 6.0 wasn't even worth the time. It sounds offhand and callous, but when you experience 100 earthquakes in a day, you have to deal some way.

It's hard for me to deal with the coast. My TV broke and I didn't get a new one. That's partially because I don't want to pay NHK's ridiculous licensing fee. But it's also because there's tsunami are coverage every day, and I can't take it. I guess it's different when you've been there. You've seen my tsunami area pics. Imagine travelling to somewhere - somewhere you've been before, where there used to be houses and buildings and schools - and there's nothing. There's not even debris, no grass, just dirt, as far as your eye can see. I still can't get down to Ritz (Rikuzentakata) where my colleague, Monty Dickson, was claimed by the tsunami. I just can't face the place.

It's still hard to deal with how unaffected I was. I'm an hour inland. One drink fell over in the drink machine and an antenna fell off at work. We ran out of New Zealand Cheese and toilet paper. (My town is a farming town, so we were good for food.) We ran out of gas. The power went off. The trains didn't run for a week. The shinkansen (bullet train) didn't run for over a month, and then when it did run, it ran an hour slower. Due east of me another colleague spent her post-tsunami days cutting up cloth to cover dead bodies. I got off easy.

WHAT I HAVE TAKEN

I am still glad I was here. I am still glad I AM here. Living through the past year has taught me so much about the human condition. What love really is. How much people can help one another. How much they want to.

And it's taught me so much about me. About who I become in a bad situation. About how far I can go before I can't take any more. I know how I can be helpful, and how it all feels. It's made me understand that sometimes, when the world crumbles, all you can do is to keep moving as best you can. Never forget, no, always carry those memories with you. They make you stronger and better. But always keep moving.

Thank you, Tohoku. I will keep moving. ありがとう東北。続きます。

The words to say goodbye

My neighbour died.

He was an amazing man. He was the head coach of my school's volleyball team. And the head of NPO Sports - the organisation that puts on all the cultural and sports events in town. And the head of the neighbourhood festival team. And so on, and so forth.I'd gotten to the point that if I went to an event and didn't run into him serving as the head of something, I was shocked.

Not only was he amazing in general, he was amazing to me. In a country notorious for having little or nothing to do with foreigners, he was welcoming. Even in my neck of the woods, which is supremely friendly by Japanese standards, it's just not the norm for Japanese people to go out of their way to befriend people.

He did. He told us to call him Masa, for short. We never told him why that was funny. He came over to explain some of the crazy Japanese randomness. He brought us the happi (coats) that we would wear while pulling the neighbourhood float. He told us what time to be there. I think our festival team is the only one with a foreign contingent: the 4 or 5 English-speakers plus 10 or so Vietnamese. And he let us lead the procession (although I suspect the weight of the big lanterns might have something to do with that -lol). And when I mentioned, on Facebook, that he'd passed on English teachers from as far back as 7 years ago said the same things about his kindness and friendliness.

Here we are in last year's summer festival. That's me and my colleague in the marroon happi he lent us.  The light blue happi behind is one of the Vietnamese.

The night I found out, we stopped by his house, and his little brother sent us up to the funeral home to the viewing. I gave his wife my condolences, but I wanted to say more. And now, I've got even more to relay. I don't want to give a generic condolence. This man meant something to me. Enough that my experience in Japan is what it is because of him. And I don't know the words to say that. 

Sometimes that is the hardest thing about living in Japan. I am a wordsmith. In my native English, I can speak in any register, any tone. I can write, and read and understand anything. I can be succint, or I can pad my speech with superfluous, but flowery imagery. I can weave tales and write poetry. I can even do some of that in my 2nd and 3rd languages. Words are my business, and my heart. 

And it's hard not to have them. 

So I'm saying it here. My neighbour meant a lot to me. I can't imagine that he won't ever wave to me from his driveway as we both shovel the mountains of snow that have fallen in a ridiculously short time. I don't know what the town's summer festival will be like. In my mind, it doesn't exist without him. I will miss him.

Rest in peace, Masa. 安心に休めて下さい.

My views on Writer's Block

In 1968, nurse Margo McCafferey defined pain as "whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever and wherever the person say it does."

I don't think they've devised a scientific way of calculating pain. It doesn't have a unit of measurement. There's no way to predict how much pain a person will feel in a situation, or whether they will feel pain at all. Pain is unique to the person experiencing it. 

That's my view on Writer's Block. Writer's Block is whatever the experiencing writer says it is, existinng whenever the writer says it does.


OTHER PEOPLE


Many people do seem to experience Writer's Block. For whatever reason, they're afraid to write at all. They are afraid of new words. All the old words seem like too much crap to edit. They don't think in stories, characters, plots. They stop trying to improve the craft. Whatever, their reason, the writerly world takes it leave.

It's real to them, and it takes a supreme effort, and sometimes several years, to dig their way out.

A BLOCK TO WRITING

For me, Writer's Block is something that prevents writing and solely  writing. If I'm too depressed to get out of bed, that's not Writer's Block, because that's stopping me from going to work, and from eating and from washing clothes, and from shopping, etc.

In addition, Writer's Block, to my mind, should prevent all writing. I've never been in a position where I'm incapable of writing anything in any genre. I might not be able to get words down on my novel today, but if I can write even so much as a limmerick, then I'm not blocked.

WHAT IS WRITING

The other reason I don't believe that Writer's Block exists for me is because of my wide definition of writing. Many people define writing as putting (new) words down on paper (/hard drive). But that's not all there is to writing in my mind. When I re-read my work, and edit it, that's writing. When I brainstorm characters or plot points, that's writing. When I let things ferment in my head for a week or a month, that's writing. When I read craft books, that's a part of my job as a writer. Ditto for reading, both in and outside of my genre.

If I'm unable to do any of these things, or I'm stuck in an endless loop of one of them, without moving onto any of the others, then I'd consider myself blocked.

How about you? Do you believe in Writer's Block? Have you ever been blocked?

A Good Veg

One of the biggest drawbacks of my otherwise fantastic job is time. There are only 20 days off per year. Theoretically, that's not so bad. Most jobs give 21 days at home. But let's consider the extentuating circimstances.I'm on the other side of the world from friends and family. It takes 4 days (both ways) and a couple thousand US dollars to go home. And I'm in Asia - a continent so far away from home that I feel like you'll never again get a chance to explore it. Plus, the fact that there are those days when the kids are "on vacation" from teaching, but still coming to school for clubs, and you spend weeks on end doing not much more than sitting at a desk.

Add these up to arrive at what happens to most JETs. You feel like you can't take days off unless you're doing something, or more likely, going somewhere. Eventually, you get to the point where your "vacations" are more exhausting than work. I saw all of Hong Kong in 3 days. 1 day at the Great Buddha and Disney. 1 day in the North seeing the heritage. 1 day going up to Madame Tussauds at the Peak and then seeing the biggest standing music and lights show in the world at Victoria Bay. Phew. The plane ride home was the most relaxing part of the trip!

End result, for me anyways, is constant exhaustion. (Not ignoring the fact that the longer I do anything, the tougher it gets, and 4 years is a year past my limit.) To the point where I haven't taken a real vacation in forever. I haven't hit up any of the exotic destinations in this side of the world since Australia in 2009. The last time I left the archipelago was to go home for Christmas 2010. And last Christmas, my "vacation" was just the days they give all public servants and I spent them in Sendai, an hour on the bullet train from here. Honestly, I'm not sure that somewhere you can day-trip really counts.

And so I've taken the week off. Not a plan in the world. I've pencilled in "clean the house." (My neigbour last year said that my living room looked like another living room had thrown up in it.) And I'll probably nip out tomorrow to hand in a form and go watch a class (I know, semi-defeating the point of a vacation, but my colleague's Dad is in, so I want to). And on Friday, I've got to head to Sendai for my appointment and meds refills. But other than that, I've been staying up as long as I feel like, going to bed when I feel like, doing what I feel like. 24 hours awake followed by 13 asleep.

And it feels great. It feels great not to have a list of things to do. Or places where I need to be. I mean, I love living. But sometimes it's great to just exist.

When's the last time you had a good veg?

Commit

I'm currently reading The Eight Characters of Comedy by Scott Sedita. It's really a guide for actors on playing sitcom characters, but it's quite useful for comedy writers as well. Sedita mentions four "Cs." Commit is one of them. Actors have to commit to the role they're playing.

What's that mean? It's not about showing up early, and doing your research, and understanding the character, although you should do all those things as well. It's about to committing to being the character. Look at the GOLDEN GIRLS.



Rose is a complete idiot. Dorothy is sarcastic. Blanche is a manaholic. Sophia is mean. They all commit to that characterisation. When Rose says something idiotic, she can't act like it's idiotic. She has to be perfectly serious. She has to think it makes sense. If she knows she's an idiot, then it's not funny any more. Ditto, the others. Dorothy has to look at the others like she really believes she's better than their company. Blanche has to behave like sex is number 1 (and 2, 3,4 and 5) on her list. And Sophia has to act like she doesn't give a damn about anybody else or their feelings. The have to grab on to the role, commit and not let go, not even for a second.

As I read, it occured to me that this is something I've been struggling with in my latest MS. The main character is supposed have a certain set of characteristics. She's supposed to be logical to the point that sometimes people think she's heartless. But she's not heartless. Deep down she feels just like the rest of us, maybe more. And I keep trying to highlight this with scenes that negate the characteristics I'm supposed to be establishing. Instead of seeming like X with a sprinkling of Y, she's coming across as rapid oscillation between the two. A wishy-washy version of what's supposed to be a really in-control character.

And it's because I don't commit.

But when you write you have to. You have to commit to the characters being who they are, even if they're bad, or not like you, or there's more below the surface. You have to commit to the plot, even if (and especially when) harsh things happen. You have to commit to the voice and the tone and the message and the setting.

That's not to say that there won't be little parts that are "out of character." It's just that if you want to go out of character, you have to establish the character first.