Happy Thanksgiving!

My visit to Purdue was good. But I haven't written much at all lately. I really want to write. But I have so much other work to do...

Yes, I'm behind, I admit it. To be precise, I missed 4 complete mornings and am 2h 50min behind. Yes, I will get on it. I'm finally done with classes and am free for break. Though I have a ton of work to do over break, in addition to visiting Purdue, but I should really try to catch up on my writing too. So much to do! I am still at something of a loss as to how to proceed with the story. Ganbaru ze.

Also, after reading this article, "Should I Tweet?" I started to think more about my platform, or lack of one. So far, I've really had no success with building an online presence because in the end, I'm actually shy online too, even if less so than in real life. So I've started and abandoned, or left in various states of neglect, four blogs since high school, not including this one. I guess I never had a theme I could stick to and write consistently about. But thinking about it, and thinking about the kinds of people who might buy my books in the future, maybe I should start a blog with a theme about Japanese history. Well, Japan and culture in general, but history too, since that's my particular area of interest. I think the market for my writing would be people interested in Japan, and people who have been brought over by the soft power of cultural things like anime and manga and video games. That's probably the most promising potential market of any substantial size. Of course I want my writing to be accessible to everyone in general, but it's probably the people who have some degree of established interest in Japan who will be the main kind of reader. Anyways, maybe I should think more about this and start a blog with the new year or something? Maybe with blogspot or wordpress, seeing as those seem to be the most popular for literary types. Livejournal is excellent for fandom, but I get the feeling it might not be the best for what my subject will be. Or maybe I should do more research. I guess because two of the four blogs I've flubbed up have been lj, it would be harder to have that feeling of starting anew, if I did start a new blog there.

This morning I flailed, but I made it! The previous night, I went to bed much later than usual, almost midnight (as opposed to 9 p.m.) due to putting in a few serious hours on my Japanese history paper and watching several fabulous episodes of the fabulous anime about American football, Eyeshield 21 (Deimon vs. Shinryuuji game). I set my alarm and woke up with it at 4:20 a.m., but with so little sleep, I was far too tired, and yes, wasted, to apply myself to writing. Plus I hadn't finished the Deimon vs. Shinryuuji game yet and had had dreams about how Deimon could pull off a 20-point touchdown, so I ended up watching the last three episodes of the game. Which worked to wake me up because I have never fallen asleep while watching anime. Then I took a shower, and then I forced myself past my reluctance to write and my uncertainty about where to take the story. And I wrote. And I somehow produced a page with plot progression that I can build on. Thank goodness. Sometimes you just really have to power through.

It was a bit risky to watch anime first thing in the morning instead of writing or showering, but it worked out. Day 12 of NaNo and still going strong.

Also, arrangements have been made for my visit to Purdue in a bit over a week! People there sound very nice, and I am quite looking forward to it!

Day 10, and I am keeping up. Although to make a confession, today I spent my hour today deleting instead of writing. It's because I've moved on to a part of the story where the plotting and everything is still up in the air. I had about 25 pages of old stuff for this chapter, but having made some decisions as to where the story is headed, I had to sort out stuff that I wouldn't need anymore, and stuff I wanted to keep but needed to figure out how to incorporate still.

This is usually the point in my writing where I become deathly afraid and unsure of where to take my story, and then it languishes for a year. I suspect this is why, from college graduation until now, I've averaged a bit more than one new good chapter a year. It's a really sad pace at which to make progress on a novel. That being said, I must find a way to plow through this. Thinking is involved, yes, and planning, and plotting, but I can't let myself stop writing either. It's too easy to stop under the pretext of needing more time to think, and then suddenly half a year has passed and not a word written.

Thinking on it this afternoon, I realized that thus far, my characters have faced no great obstacles. Sure, there's the obvious one around which the story is centered, but there's nothing that throws a wrench in the works when they decide to do something. Perhaps that is why my story is languishing at this stage. Throwing obstacles in front of my characters would be a good thing to revive the pace of the story, introduce new things in interesting ways, and just keep the story going. My characters have had it too easy. But vacation is over! It's time for them to start working.

What is this, Day 6? Writing is still going well and I am keeping up. I finished Chapter 5 yesterday/today and today wrote the first page or so of Chapter 6. Chapter 6 goes back to the other character's side of the story, which is good because I need more time to think about how I want Hinako's story to progress. It's nice to finally be making progress, even if the quality is not so great.

Thursday at dinner a girl from my program asked me how my writing was going. I told her how I had not written anything for well over a month and then recently started writing an hour a day. She said, "Oh, that's good, to take a break and then start writing again when you're inspired." Maybe it's okay to take a break sometimes, but I think a one month break is just awful and lazy. There's nothing good about it. And I didn't start writing again because I was inspired. Inspiration happens in the early stages as a story idea is still fresh with endless possibilities. At this point, maybe a fourth of the way through the story, it's all about discipline. Forcing yourself to write and slugging through it no matter how you feel that day. There's no inspiration, except that which you create if you desperately need to delude yourself into believing that there is inspiration. Inspiration, if there is such a thing, only comes when you stick your butt in the chair, open up that story file, and start typing out the shaky ideas that you don't think will work but type anyway because you've got nothing else. That is my kind of inspiration.

Day 1 of NaNoWriMo off to a good start. One hour, one page. And a few great ideas, big and small.

One big idea was to change Kyoshi's name to just Kyou. That way it might better follow the conventions of female names in the given setting, and also it contains a delightful pun in Japanese that is particularly relevant to the story itself. You wonder why I didn't think of this earlier. Well, I still need time to consider it, but I like it, particularly in terms of the historical aspect and the pun.