Grindstone Day 8

Time: 5.08 pm
Chapter: 1, take 1
Pots of tea: 1.5
Flavour: white wine and muscat (yes, a tea)
Lunch: Udon, fish cakes, shoyu and miso soup with mushrooms
Snack: apple

Time is starting to contract on me and I'm going to have to speed up my rate of writing (maybe spend less time on the internet?) if I'm going to make the deadline of 8 chapters by the 15th. I've been thinking today of the nature of memory, how we use it and how we interpret our childhood memories. Medical wisdom has it that we form most of our neuronal connections before the age of 3, yet most of us remember nothing before the age of around 5. What happens to those lost memories? Is it just that we reprocess them into something else? What are we anyway except for a conglomeration of our memories?

Maybe that's why the human urge to tell stories is so compelling. In my professional life, I know the power of stories. The medical history will give you most of the clues to the diagnosis, and is more reliable than the examination and all the high-powered tests put together. Even more than that, the best thing to do with a pissed-off patient who has been waiting in pain for hours is to ask to hear their story. Nothing heals someone so fast as the right to give out their memories, to say who they are.

Maybe that's why I write. Someone asked me yesterday why I bother to try writing a novel, if it's so hard. Maybe that's why. There are so many memories, mine and my characters', to tell, and for me, it's easier to try than to not.

Grindstone Day 7

Japanese girl at temple


Time: 5.18 pm
Chapter: 1, take 1
Pots of tea: 2.0
Flavour: black with honey and sudachi (native lime)
Lunch: Leftover curry, salad with cunningly devised homemade dressing
Snack: I can't read the name. But they are crunchy sweet cereal balls, very nice.

OK, so I realise there wasn't an entry yesterday. I got a bit distracted with preparations for a Xmas party. Yes, the Xmas parties have started and last night's was unusual, but strangely delightful.

Mark has a group of ladies that he tutors in English on Tuesday nights, at the home of one of the group (which also becomes a small cafe during the day). There seem to be many of these "home-cafes" dotted around the neighbourhood, though due to my shyness with speaking Japanese and the fact I have a perfectly good hot water urn at home, I haven't ventured out to try any of them.

Anyway, I digress. Last night, after I had spent some time elaborately wrapping the small gifts I had brought from NZ, we were whisked off and treated to a wonderful nabe (Japanese hotpot) meal. This is pretty much identical to the chinese hotpot - a pot of boiling soup stock is left simmering on a gas stove on the table, and various ingredients (veges, mushrooms, fish, pork, chicken and noodles) are added as people feel hungry, then fished out and eaten. It's one of the best communal meals I know. Burns are a necessary hazard with the risk increasing as things get merrier, and I have small blister on my little finger to prove it.

Meanwhile, the ladies, who had earlier grilled Mark on what I was like, introduced themselves to me and tried to use their English phrases. They expressed much astonishment, despite being prewarned, that I looked so Asian and still spoke no Japanese (I'm getting used to this). They also brought out an embarrassingly generous collection of gifts for me - a hand dyed short silk kimono, special-occasion chopsticks, special silk cloths for wrapping, and so on. They seemed baffled by the pot-pourri sachets I had brought for them as gifts (I suppose it is culture-specific).

A local old 'magic' hobbyist came to entertain us, the food kept coming including some amazing preparations of sashimi, bean paste and bamboo shoots, and we also played bingo, but luckily with the numbers in both Japanese and English. People overindulged in the local rice wine which tastes very close to water but is considerably more potent. It was a great night, excessive on many counts, but that makes it a real Xmas celebration.

Anyway, as well as catching up on the digestion, today has been spent looking at Chapter 1 which used to be Chapter 9. I expect to rewrite around 2/3rds of the novel and rejig the rest, and so far this chapter is following the trend. It's not bravery, it's just necessity.

grindstone day 5

Fountain for cleansing at a small local shrine

Time: 6.01 pm
Page of draft:(reading) yah! finished! now for the real work!
Word count for day: 0
Pots of tea: 2.5
Flavour: apple with added honey
Lunch: Udon with tomato and chinese cabbage
Snack: coconut sable biscuits (ultra yum)

Spent the weekend away in Kyoto,the big, elegant gracious city on Hokkaido, a couple of island hops away. It's 2.5 hours by bus, crossing en route over one of the world's biggest suspension bridges.

Mark was part of the Kyoto Foreign Student's music festival, a rather eccentric event to Westerner's eyes. It consisted of foreign students performing dances and songs in national dress, all in the interests of world peace and greater international understanding of course. I found this event slightly disturbing for a number of reasons, but enjoyed the rest of the visit which was my first on this trip to a major Japanese city.

While Mark practised with his Mexican friends I wandered the temples and old alleyways, easily blending in with my Japanese camera gear and propensity to take lots of photographs. I find I'm well camouflaged so long as no one talks to me. People are always asking me for directions. My Japanese is so bad I can't even understand the question let alone answer. Until now my main defence has been to look clueless and make goldfish noises, but I have now mastered "Wakaari masen" (I don't understand.) In Tokushima the response is still bafflement, but people in Kyoto seem to be more used to the idea that someone of Asian appearance might not understand Japanese. Either that or they are more accepting of idiots wandering the streets nodding and smiling.

Anyway, I'll post photos from my weekend with each blog post this week. But more importantly the writing is about to start. I've finished reading my old manuscript and have been amused, surprised, delighted and appalled in turn. It's strange how much of this I don't even remember writing; similarly I have "discovered" bits that I have subsequently "reused" in my plays without realising. I read an essay once which described the artistic process as raking over the same piece of land over and over, turning over the same themes again and again. Maybe that's true with me?

The other thought I had, as I wrote TMMI (too much medical info) in the margin yet again, is that maybe last year I was unconsciously writing as "doctor becoming writer" rather than just writer. There's a lot of self conscious medical detail, as if I want to convince people that I know what I'm talking about - a weird mix of self exploration, medical documentary and pseudo soapie. Guess the next few weeks will tell me whether I've managed to overcome this.

grindstone day 4

Time: 3.27 pm
Page of draft:(reading) 208
Word count for day: 0
Pots of tea: 3.0
Flavour: citrus and peach
Lunch: more leftovers
Snack: weird caramelised potato chip things

A professor from Auckland was visiting and last night Mark and I had dinner with him in the centre of town. Of course it was bucketing down by the time we finished our "Chinese" restaurant meal (like all good Chinese I get sniffy about other cultures trying to imitate our superior cuisine). It's a good 20 minute cycle home, and with the downpour we both arrived home soaked, and me in a grumpy mood for going out without anything waterproof - I forgot to pack my beloved Goretex. Needless to say, a trip to the haruku-yen (100 yen - the local equivalent of the $2 shop) is in order to get me some cheap waterproofs. Today I took advantage of the sunny day to dry all my sodden clothes.

Since Mark doesn't have a car, I'm having to get used to cycling every time I want to get somewhere, and limiting my load accordingly. It's ideal conditions for cycling - flat, we have pedestrian right-of-way and are allowed to use the pavement and cycle across intersections, and the cars are on the whole respectful of cyclists. And there are a lot of us. Last night the city seemed to blossom with night cyclists, all of them gracefully holding a parasol aloft as they pedalled, while Mark and I gritted our teeth and barrelled through the rain.

Reading is still going slowly. I've discovered a downside to the old mantra "write what you know." There's a real risk of writing too much of what you know, in the (mistaken) concern that you have to show that you know what you're writing about. My old manuscript is now littered with my handwritten scrawls: TMI (too much information!).

Grindstone Day 3

Time: 1.53 pm
Page of draft:(reading) 137
Word count for day: 0
Pots of tea: 2.0
Flavour: the last dregs of Strawberry caramel
Snacks: man, those rice cracker things are moreish....
Lunch: huge bowl of egg fried rice, along with leftover beef and shitake stir fry (local shitake mushrooms are cheap and very juicy!)

I've taken a photo of the inside of the apartment today. We live on the 4th floor of a 5-storey nondescript concrete apartment block on the south side of Tokushima. It's university owned, with heavily subsidised rent for the lecturers and their families who live here. I'm not sure if this is typical of modern apartments in Japan, but the inside of the apartment is a lovely blend of old and new - the layout is a square divided (mostly) with thin sliding wooden partitions into 3 bedrooms, kitchenette, shower and lounge. It's all rather sparse but functional, though how much of that is Japanese influence and how much is bachelor lifestyle I'm not sure.

There's tatami matting in the bedrooms, futons (which are supposed to be rolled up during the day but we don't bother). The kitchen is a bit basic (gas cooker, sink, tiny fridge and couple of exceptionally useful gadgets,hot water urn and automatic rice cooker), but the toilet, shower etc are fully modern and westernised (no squatty toilets in this place!!). It's a very workable space for writing, as during the day I just open up all the partitions and have a large space to myself. It's quiet as well, except for the occasional advertising trucks that go by with announcements and elevator music (no noise control laws here, apparently).

Still reading my old draft and cringing when I notice the mistakes and overwriting. One hopes I will do better when I actually start the rewriting, but I guess that remains to be seen!

Grindstone Day 2

Time: 1.10 pm
Page of draft:(reading) 52
Word count for day: 0
Pots of tea: 2.5
Flavour: Strawberry caramel (yum!)
Chocolate: Whittaker's dark mocha, 4 squares (so far)
Lunch: Um...does congee count?

OK, maybe this will spur me into doing some work instead of taking cute pseudo-Japanese pictures with Photobooth. Every day I will post some details of my novel redrafting progress.

Today, I am rereading draft 2 with a big blue pen in my hand, scrawling notes like "too slow", or "more interiority". They say that one of the best editors is the one at the bottom of the drawer and it's been about 12 months since I last really looked at the manuscript in its entirety. I really think that the year away from the manuscript has been quite good. I can look at it much more objectively (yes, there is cringe when I realise I wrote this - though I think post-writing cringe affects everyone.) Also, the year away has been spent learning to write drama, whose keywords are action and conflict.

I think I'm recognising more easily the places (there are many, sadly) where my writing loses momentum and focus on what is happening (something needs to happen all the time, whether it be in the mind of a character or in real conflict between characters). I think I'm also getting better at recognising when I am "telling" instead of "showing".

Anyway, in about 2 hrs I have to cycle into uni to meet Mark for a dumpling party, so I'd better get off the internet and keep going.

Tokushima toiling

Well, here I am in Tokushima - spent the weekend biking around and exploring, and now it's time for the real work. I have until Dec 15th to work on the first eight chapters of my novel, and then I'll keep going on the next eight. I'm on draft 3.0 at the moment and once again I'm doing major surgery on the manuscript(amputation and limb regrowth). Looking forward to it, in a masochistic kind of way.

Headlines: Giant banana launched!!

at Te Karanga gallery, with amazing art exhibition in background.


The lovely Anna Kaye plays.



Some of the banana cake-munching crowd.

My newest poetry chapbook, Banana, was launched today, with guest readings and performances by my friends and mentors, Riemke Ensing, Siobhan Harvey and Doug Poole, family member Michael Onslow-Osborne and friend Anna Kaye. Around 50 people turned up including some friends and family who just happened to be in town for the weekend - what luck! It was an amazing feeling performing to a room full of new and old friends. The only hitch was when my nephew Marcus came up and tickled me as I was about to read a serious poem, and under the delightful onslaught I had to give in and start over once he had fled the scene.