Kyoto

'Are you...?' 'and you're....?' was how it went the first time I met Risa. She'd just got out onto the street from Shijo Keihan station. I'd been early, waiting outside Minami-za, the Kabuki Theatre where we'd arranged to meet. We set off straight away, where to I wasn't exactly sure.

Risa set up accommodation for me and my Dad when he came to visit this year in April May time. Since then we've traded e-mails pretty much every weekday about all kinds of stuff, and gotten to know each other quite well. A right regular 21st Century pen friend. So it was a little difficult, when I met Risa for the first time outside the Minami-za theatre, to reconcile the Risa I'd known for six months or so with the Risa right before me, standing in the sunshine (we had beautiful weather every day we were in Kyoto). A bit like reading a book, then seeing the characters you know and love done a little differently on the silver screen. Except this was all real, of course.

Risa was a lot of fun to hang out with. We set off straight away and walked all over. She told me her Dad likes to walk but not with her, because she goes too fast. I could see that. We saw some really pretty trees just nearing perfect autumn bloom, crisp reds and auburn yellows and golden greens setting it all off. Friday night me and some friends from Yamagata had gone to nearby Osaka to see Nathan Fake play, and the first train back wasn't til 5 or 6 or something- so when I met Risa for the first time there outside the theatre, it was already 1.30 ish. We spent the afternoon together, then when I caught up with everyone else it turned out there was a spare place at the izakaye Julia had booked up- so Risa came along too. We arranged to hook up Sunday too.

You can see what Risa made of the weekend here: http://www.kyotoguesthouses.com/news.php

Cheers again Risa, I enjoyed Kyoto with you a lot.

Kyoto

 
 
 

Quitter!

I hate quitting.

I don't often do it- most of the time I pick things I know that if I work hard enough and long enough at I can get done to my satisfaction.

I like to run, far. Not marathon far, just yet, but far enough away from home to start wondering if you've got enough in the tank to make it all the way back again.

Trying to write a book of 50,000 words in a month has been a real challenge. I've had to organise myself immaculately, to know exactly when I'll have time to get chores done, to get work done, to maximise time spent tapping away in front of the computer. And of course, I've had to make more time- I've been getting up at around 5.30 to write before work, then straight away and all the way to bed as soon as I get home again from work.

It was ok at first, as I fell into a pattern, a rhythm. My friend Kathryn was also doing it and it was the most comforting, inspiring thing to know that as I sat in the dark except for the milky blue light of a pc screen, she was out there somewhere else in the ken doing the same thing. Thinking about a book all day whenever I was away from my computer was also great and it really strengthened my resolve to try this schtick for real some day.

Apart from the glorious sunrises I've seen whilst scrambling for more words and more and apart from a warm cosy bed I've craved crawling into or back into, there's a whole life to be getting on with. I feel a schmuck for thinking up excuses, especially when you get pep talks through from the National Novel Writing Month people detailing this and that and the other and a horse then a dog getting sick, then the wheels falling off a car and I'm still going to write this bloody novel. My excuses pale in comparison with that.

But then, I've never really felt a part of the whole Na No Wri Mo community (I believe the term for us is 'WriMo's'...), it's just been me and Kathryn sitting and tapping a few dozen kilometres away from each other.

So when I was just pouring out the rice from my measuring cup into the rice cooker, I started to think about how relieved I'd be if I quit, how much more I could achieve with that time. I've got a big Japanese test to study for that coincides with the end of NaNoWriMo. The book has been sucking my time out of Japanese study, and I like to pass tests, to pass them well when I take them.

Besides that, I've got a life to live. I don't want to compromise my three day trip to Kyoto this weekend, trying to write on paper so I can later type on my desktop, or studying kanji on the way down I know I'll have forgotten by next Monday. There's not much time off, there's not enough time off.

So I spoke with Kathryn and we decided to se our own, revised limits. 5,000 more words, and try to make some sense of the crap we've written so far. That'd take me to 30,000, or about 65 pages. Let's just why not call it National Novella Writing Month.

The strangest thing, though, is that as soon as there was talk of quitting batting round my head and over Skype with Kathryn, I felt as motivated as I ever have this month to write, to get things down, which was all I hoped to gain from the entire experience in the first place. A little bit of motivation.

An interesting thing

I never knew it before but,

'It is estimated that nearly 50 percent of Japan's 35,000 kilometer coastline has been covered or somehow altered by Tetrapods and other forms of concrete.'

I (heart) tetrapods.

NaNoWriMo

I did something veery foolhardy, late at night on October 31st.

I took the plunge, jumped straight in and signed up for National Novel Writing Month 2007.

50,000 words in one month. You win if you do it.

I'm determined to make this one go further than the plans for a Triathlon (ha! a triathlon! aahhh.) back in the summer.

Apologies if this blog turns into a photo blog for the next 30 days or so.