let not dreams be your master

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim...

                                                                               --- Rudyard Kipling, "If" 
       

Would you like to hear a funny story (and by "funny" I mean "relevant to my career, and yours too if you're a writer")? 

My hobby is trapshooting. It's where five people get together in a line and stand a set distance away from a small mound. Beneath this mound is a mechanical launcher which, at the first shooters' word, slings small discs made of frangible clay into the air in different directions and trajectories. The first shooter puts on his shooting glasses and earplugs, raises his gun to his shoulder, and shouts "Pull!" The scorekeeper, typically seated on a chair behind the shooters, presses a button and activates the launcher, which throws a random bird out from beneath the mound and into the line of fire. The first shooter does his best to blow the little target out of the air with a shotgun blast. If he or she hits it, then the fragile disc disintegrates into a million tiny pieces and falls to earth in forlorn fragments. If the shot was a miss, the disc wings off into the distance and shatters on impact with the ground. Then the second shooter raises his gun to his shoulder, shouts "Pull!" and the whole process kicks off again, and continues until each of the five shooters has shot at 25 "birds." 

It looks kind of like this:

I've done this dozens of times, and I've never gotten a perfect 25. 

Why?

Because I always psych myself out. I get to 24, and then I start to sweat and grit my teeth and clench my gut and think of that lovely "25" patch I could sew onto my shooting vest, and I invariably jerk the trigger too hard and miss the final bird. 

Sloppy. Eager. Shaky. 

Too much speed and too much noise.

Today I realized that I have been approaching my writing in the same way.

Most of you guys know by now that I'm a science fiction guy, but I do fantasize about mainstream fiction occasionally. One of my favorite books is The Sand Pebbles, by Richard McKenna. It paints a dynamic and emotionally moving portrait of the life of a simple machinist's mate Jake Holman, who serves aboard the U.S. Navy gunboat San Pablo. The vessel and her dedicated crew of "Sand Pebbles" patrol the Yangtze River in China, mostly a dog-and-pony show to intimidate bandits and warlords who are keen to rough up American businessmen and missionaries in the area. The book also brings to life the grand scale, social mores, political upheavals, and intimidating personalities at work in China in the 1920's. The action takes place right on the eve of Chiang Kai-shek's Northern Expedition, and the Kuomintang and the unification of China are central themes. More than a simple novel of an ignorant country boy at sea amid the oppressive hostility of the Orient, however, The Sand Pebbles is also an insightful commentary on the human condition: the raw power (and irrationality) of love, the madness and chaos of war, the eternal struggle of old traditions and new ideas. 

It's precisely the kind of historical fiction I wanted to write. So, in 2012, between penning the first and second novels of my epic sci-fi series, I did NaNoWriMo. What I wrote was a 52,000-word piece called Mugunghwa (the rose-of-Sharon, Korea's national flower). Apart from a few lackadaisical edits here and there, I haven't touched the manuscript since. 

Then, just recently, I picked up Paul Theroux's Kowloon Tong. Not historical fiction by any means—it was published in 1997, the same year that the U.K. handed over Hong Kong to mainland China. This handover, while merely a peripheral event in Theroux's novel, nonetheless forms the catalyst for much of the action. I'll give you the Wikipedia summary: "Kowloon Tong is a novel by Paul Theroux about Neville "Bunt" Mullard, an English mummy's boy born and raised in Hong Kong. The story is set in the days leading up to the handover to China of Hong Kong from the British. Bunt is made an offer for his textile factory by the shady Mr. Hung from the People's Republic of China, and has no choice but to accept, when it is made clear that Mr. Hung knows all about the part of Bunt's life that he has kept secret from his mother Betty, namely his frequenting of the 'blue hotels' of Kowloon Tong and furtive sex with one of his workers, Mei-Ping."

Sounds quite tawdry and sinister, don't it? And it is, certainly. But more than that, it does precisely what The Sand Pebbles (published in 1962) managed to do: paint a vivid picture of a time, a place, and a savage cultural clash. I'm halfway through it and I can't put it down. The backdrop of Hong Kong is enticingly exotic (and lewd) and the characters simply sizzle off the page like bacon fat jumping from an overheated skillet: the weak-chinned Bunt, his overbearing mother Betty, the vicious Mr. Hung, the shy and vulnerable Mei-Ping, the slimy lawyer Monty, and the lascivious Filipino prostitute Baby ("Let we make fuppies!"). Here is yet another type of mainstream novel I should like to write: one set in a foreign country (an Asiatic one), concerning a culture utterly foreign to the reader, and yet which manages to faithfully portray the nitty-gritty details of that culture with beautiful, vivid detail—with a pressing social issue as its canvas and inborn human nature its paints. 

So I came up with a timely idea which I could write about: the plight of North Korean girls who decide to escape to China and the promise of work and income, only to be coerced into slavery by unscrupulous Chinese and sold to rural farmers in the northeastern provinces, and there sexually abused and worked like cattle.

Whatever. The idea isn't what's important.

What's important is the undue stress which reading Kowloon Tong caused me. 

I am a weak, insecure, spiteful, and needy man. I put too much pressure on myself. I read something good and I immediately want to emulate it. No, not just emulate it—surpass it. That in itself isn't a bad thing, but I go to extremes. I tell myself that I'm a failure if I don't manage to write something at least as good. I question my own worth and talent. I rail at myself that I'm not as keen an observer of culture and linguistic subtleties as I should be. Moreover, I'm usually in an all-fired hurry to complete the work. Paul Theroux wrote a damn good book, and I need to produce something similar now, NOW, d'you hear me, or my life as a writer is fucking over. This, or something very like it, is the loud, insistent, humbling message which my id splatters all over my craven ego. 

I put way too much pressure on myself. 

I've written three books and am halfway through another. (One of those books—the complete manuscript—is currently under review by the editors at Ace Science Fiction, an imprint of the Penguin Group.) I've penned dozens of short stories. But I remain unpublished. And that, to my mind, is simply not good enough. 

I put way too much pressure on myself. 

Now that one of my books is under review by a major publishing house, I feel an insistent need to edit the sequel into a refined state of readiness, while simultaneously finishing and editing the third installment and even the fourth. And these aren't short books, either: both the first and the second novel manuscripts turned out to be about 110,000-115,000 words each.

I put WAY too much pressure on myself. 

But I've been in a slump lately. I haven't written anything new since my appendectomy last May. I haven't touched my second novel manuscript; the writer's block just won't go away. 

And then I realized that it wasn't writer's block. It was that pressure. It was the background noise. It was me thinking about leaving Korea, moving to Las Vegas, missing Miss H, getting published by Penguin (or worse, not getting published by Penguin), winning the Hugo & Nebula Awards (or worse, not winning the Hugo & Nebula Awards), feeling inferior to Paul Theroux, wondering if I was even capable of writing something as good as Kowloon Tong or The Sand Pebbles, wondering, wishing, waiting, worrying. 

Enough. Enough already. 

I was taking notes on my new idea (about enslaved North Korean women) and I realized something. There was a feeling in my chest like a great big ship's boiler, overheated and ready to burst. My veins felt like cracked valves and my head was constantly pounding. To my shock, I discovered that this wasn't a new sensation: that knot of roiling, boiling pressure had been there for weeks. No matter how many bike rides I took along the Han River or the Yangjae Stream, no matter how many walks through Ttukseom Resort or Seoul Forest, no matter how many of my students wrote perfect descriptive paragraphs because I'm an awesome teacher, I was still stressed out. I was going to bed stressed and waking up stressed, stressing out with every word of every great author's that I read. And I was about to commence writing a fifth book with that lump in my chest. I was about to write it the same way I've been writing every short story and editing every novel manuscript: too quickly, too eagerly, and with too much background noise in my head. 

No more. 

The dam broke this morning. Something snapped inside me. My stress washed away, my head cleared, and I caught myself before I fell. I looked down at my notes and an inarticulate thought trickled into my skull, like sunshine after a rain shower. 

"Even if this isn't as good as anyone else's, it'll still be fun to write, won't it? I should just focus on having fun."

I don't know why it took me so long to remember that. Writing is supposed to be fun, you know. Even when it isn't. Even when it's agonizing and painful, like childbirth, or humdrum and dull, almost like work. It's still cathartic. It's still an escape. It's still a kick in the pants. Somewhere along the line I forgot that. I put too much pressure on myself to write a lot and write it well, better than anyone else. As an egocentric male, and as a human being who wants to leave this world richer than he found it, I stressed myself out trying to succeed on the first try. And predictably, my creativity suffered. I have to remember —and something tells me that I will from now on—that writing is not (just) about the destination. It's about the journey. 

Writing is like driving. You have to do it often to stay in practice. If you're only doing it to get paid and eat, it's no fun. It's nice to just take a quiet, pleasurable Sunday drive and see where you wind up. But not too fast: if you keep stomping the accelerator, you'll get frustrated and sloppy. You'll probably burn out your engine, too. Oh, and turn that radio down. It's good to listen to the sounds of the road. Too much background noise and you can't concentrate on what's important. If the engine starts acting up and you slow down, then it's time to take that baby to the repair shop—maybe even trade it in for a newer model. Get the picture?

Long story short, writing is an act of creation. And any act of creation, be it sculpture, oil-on-canvas, sand castles, babies, or fictitious worlds, should be a pleasurable one. 

Revelation over. 

Hokkaido diary: Sapporo to Yamaguchi

Don't know where Yamaguchi is? Don't sweat it: I didn't either until February 6th of this year. Here's a little map for you.

And here's my diary entry for that day:

2/6:

5:23 a.m. Well, shoot. I thought I was being clever. Up at 4, at the station by opening time—5:15. I checked if the subway was open, but no dice. Ah well—it was only a 15-min. walk and there was no wind and the stars were out and it was sort of sexy, sneaking to the station in the predawn blackness. On the way I saw bonsai trees in people's yards, bedecked with a network of ropes to keep the slender branches from snapping under the weight of the snow. I saw great machines scooping up the enormous heaps of snow on the curbs and vomiting it into waiting dump trucks with a keening roar. In the dark, with their garish lights wreathed in snowy dust, they seemed like monstrous creatures locked in some kind of ponderous symbiosis. 

Normally-busy Sapporo Station, a ghost town at 5:15 a.m.

I got to the station to find that the ticket counter doesn't open until 5:40 and the first train for Hakodate doesn't leave until 7:00. So much for being clever. At this rate I won't reach Shin-Aomori until lunchtime. No wonder Google Maps said I'd reach Fukuoka at midnight tonight...

Statue of an Ainu man in Sapporo Station.

5:48 p.m. As I suspected—and I should have known—one cannot trust Google Maps in matters of foreign rail timetables. The fact that the earliest departure for Hakodate is 7:00 is the fatal flaw in my plan. The farthest I can go today is Shin (New) Yamaguchi. Granted, that's only 40 minutes from Hakata, but even so...here is my schedule. 

     Sapporo → Hakodate
     (7:00)           (10:31)                 Super-Hokuto 2

     Hakodate → Shin-Aomori
     (11:19)           (1:29 p.m.)        Hakucho 28

     Shin-Aomori → Tokyo
     (1:42)                (5:08)           Hayate 36

     Tokyo → Shin-Osaka
     (5:33)       (8:26)                       Hikari 523

     Shin-Osaka → Okayama     
     (8:40)                (9:52)            Kodama 765

     Okayama → Shin-Yamaguchi
     (9:55)             (11:48)              Kodama 767

Darn, lots of transfers. And I really don't like that I have only three minutes at Okayama to transfer. What if my train's delayed? Ah well—part of the adventure of it all, I guess. Just like where I'll sleep—or if I'll sleep at all—in Yamaguchi until the next morning's ride to Fukuoka. At least it'll be warmer down there. 

10:40 a.m. Just alighted at Hakodate, at the very extreme southern tip of Hokkaido. Started to snow heavily as we arrived; first snow I've seen (falling) all day. Dawn over the outskirts of Sapporo as we pulled out, with the sky blue all the way to the horizon and the pink and purple clouds reflecting onto the huddled buildings caked and glazed with snow, was the prettiest thing I've seen in a while. When the sun lifted itself above the clouds, I even saw a sun dog. As we got up to speed, a fine spray of snow flew from our passing, and when two trains met there was a veritable explosion of white dust, pure and clean as...well, driven snow. This island is a skier's paradise—not too cold but laden with tons upon tons of fine white powder. Incredible. 

I now have 35 minutes in this bleak, chairless, freezing station until the Super Hakucho for Shin-Aomori leaves. Think I'll eat some of my snacks. 

What I would have sworn was an active volcano just south of Sapporo.

The Super-Hokuto 2 in Hakodate Station.  

The platforms at Hakodate. Snowing like the dickens. 

Bleak, cheerless, chairless Hakodate Station. 

The Hakucho 28, ready to leave. 

11:13 a.m. Sitting on the train and waiting to get going. Feeling a powerful sense of melancholy which I can't account for, which began last night. The trip nearing its conclusion? The gray skies? Missing Miss H (and knowing that I won't see her until late tomorrow night)? Approaching the climax of Dan Simmons's The Terror, and knowing that his book puts my own paltry, puerile manuscript to shame? Musing that I'll be 28 this year and have the creeping sense that I've accomplished nil in all that time? The persistent feeling that I'm not really traveling, just picking first-world countries and cities on a map and booking tickets on line? The tallboy of Sapporo Gold I just cracked open? 

All of them, probably. This is going to be an unpleasant introspective two-hour ride to Honshu, I can tell. Oh well. Let's hope some more sightseeing out the window and a bit of music will put me to rights. 

1:45 p.m. Back in the land of bullet trains. I have a comfy, spacious seat and a porthole to myself again. But confound the Hokkaido JR! We were seven minutes late pulling into Shin-Aomori. I made the Hayate 36 with literally a minute to spare. Not cool. The Hakucho from Hakodate came to a complete, inexplicable stop TWICE during the two-hour run. Rrrgh. Makes me mad. At least I have a huge, delicious, green Hokkaido apple to console me. 

2:05 p.m. Dang, that was a tasty apple. 

The skies are clearing—we went through some blinding snowstorms on the last stretch to Aomori. There's a lot less snow down here, though I've seen snow-devils whirling and dancing in empty fields. I hope it stays clear through Honshu—and I hope I'm on the right side of the Osaka train so I can finally see Mt. Fuji (speaking of apples, heh heh). I didn't see it the last time I came this way. 

I am SO going to miss my connection at Osaka—no, I mean Okayama. I'm calling it right now. 

2:36 p.m. Morioka is a very pretty place when it isn't snowing. Blue snow-covered hills and cloud shadows. 

3:30 p.m. Gathering a boatload of passengers at Sendai. Last time I got a JR Pass they gave me a map with it. I expected it this time, but they didn't give me one, and I neglected to bring any. I'd love to be able to track our progress. We're more than halfway according to my watch, at least—though we did sit pointlessly in Morioka for 10 minutes or so. Hoo boy...well, the snow is all gone. No slush, even—just moist earth and wet pavement. I wonder what the weather will be like in Kyushu. 

4:49 p.m. Between Omiya and Ueno. We'll be at Tokyo Station in 20 minutes. Shades of night are falling fast; it'll probably be too dark to see Mt. Fuji. I've been traveling for 10 hours and have another 7 to go. 

6:13 p.m. Okay, I think I've got it figured out. If by some miracle I make my transfer at Okayama, all well and good. I'll moon around Shin-Yamaguchi Station all night and take the first train to Hakata in the morning. 

If (as I suspect) I don't make it, no biggie. I have ¥27,000 ($250-$260) left, which should cover a night bus—or train, if there is one. Or I might just say to hell with it and moon around Okayama. It's just one hour between there and Shin-Yamaguchi, and the ticket agent in Sapporo told me it's just 40 minutes more to Hakata. I could catch the 7:00 train from there and be in Hakata by a quarter to nine. When I get to Okayama, I'll have a look at the timetables. 

I have a really unhealthy lifestyle, you know? All I do is sit—and read, or write, or play computer games, or ride trains. No wonder I'm fat and blind (well, overweight and eyestrained). 

7:55 p.m. Just finished The Terror by Dan Simmons. If anything it's shown me what marvelous fruit an exhaustively researched and (as one ecstatic critic put it) "fully textured" historical novel can bear. Subsequently I've begun to believe that my own attempt at a historical novel, Mugunghwa (and perhaps Book One of my magnum opus, Revival, which is a historical/science fiction adventure tale) may be woefully under-researched, under-developed and inadequate. What'd make me feel better is if I had my computer with me so I could start making a list of written resources I've used (and need to look up as well), and begin tweaking both manuscripts again. The Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen has wi-fi, but I don't have my laptop. Shazbot. 

One more stop and then it's Shin-Osaka. That stop, incidentally, is Kyoto—one of my favorite cities in Japan. Sure is a shame I can't stop and play in it while I'm here. 

Okay, enough melancholy. I have my work cut out for me when I get back. For now let's just focus on getting to Okayama—and Shin-Yamaguchi, if possible. 

8:41 p.m. It's frustrating knowing that the train I'm in is sitting on the same rails that would take me all the way to Hakata—but can't, not tonight. What's also frustrating is that the train left the station five minutes late (either because it was tardy in arriving here or the cleaners took too long or both). That leaves me one measly minute to transfer at Okayama. 

Yeah. Right. It ain't happening, not unless the Kodama 767 at Okayama is also late in departing. Time will tell. 

9:09 p.m. Nishi-Akashi. Why are we just sitting here?!!

9:14 p.m. Finally moving. Jesus. That was easily 10-15 minutes. This didn't happen the last time I was here. Is Japan crumbling? Nah. A country shouldn't be judged by whether its trains run on time. Not solely, anyway. 

Young couple across from me are dozing together. Her head's canted at a 90° angle to rest on the dude's bony shoulder. Both are dressed in identical shades of gray, black, and white—NE Asian thing, couples dressing to match; the Koreans do it all the time, much to Miss H's disgust and my amusement. These two got on at Osaka. As I've wondered so many times while traveling on planes, boats, or trains—who are they? What were they doing and where are they heading?

9:55 p.m. I really can't believe it. I made it. The Kodama 765 pulled into Okayama at 9:53, and the 767 was right across the platform waiting for me. I jumped on without even looking to see what number it was—only reassuring myself with a tentative peek out the still-open door. I am Shin-Yamaguchi bound. 

Gotta hand it to Japan Rail. I had to admit I doubted 'em there for a minute. This is like a novel where the author looks like he's going to kill off your favorite character in the most contrived and ignominious way possible, only to save 'em at the last minute and have them execute a bold and brilliant counterattack which eviscerates the threat. 

First priority when I hit Yamaguchi at midnight—timetables. Second—a map. I want to see where in flaming hell I am. The western tip of Honshu, I'm guessing. 

So let's see here—setting aside that the Sapporo-Hakodate-Aomori run was by express train and not bullet train, I've nonetheless traveled from central Hokkaido to western Honshu in—what's it been—15 hours? WHY don't we have high-speed rail in the U.S. yet??

No, wait, scratch that. I'm not in western Honshu. Jumpin' Jesus—I haven't even passed Hiroshima yet. That's where I changed trains to go to Hakata when I was here in August. 

Dang. Gotta see if I can find a map in Yamaguchi. 

10:46 p.m. About an hour out of Yamaguchi and thundering toward Hiroshima—I hope. I just finished Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. Feelings are too effervescent and profound to describe. All dark outside the train windows. It really is like being a bullet in the barrel of a gun. What'll we hit? I miss Miss H. Need water—or beer. 

11:10 p.m. Brushed and flossed and ditched my trash while we were passing through (and stopping at) Hiroshima. How many times am I going to sneak through this town without stopping and seeing it?

No idea what the weather's like out there—temperature, I mean. People are still wearing long coats. At least there aren't any hats, gloves, scarves, or earmuffs. 

11:34 p.m. Tokuyama—last stop before Shin-Yamaguchi. Some people actually got on. Still no clue about weather—I can tell it's windy and that's that. Heavens—did I really leave Sapporo nearly 17 hours ago??

I hate to stop there, but that's the final note in my journal for February 6th. I'll fill you in on what happened that night after I got off the train at Shin-Yamaguchi tomorrow. I'd also like to add, here and now, that this train trip was the first time I'd ever seen a sun dog, a snow-devil or an active volcano. Oh mama, the places I've gone and the things I've seen...

Facebook update

Well, it's officially been a week since I quit Facebook. More than that, in fact: since I live in the future, it's Saturday here, and I quit late last Friday.

The first couple of days went well. I was out and about, getting fresh air, exercising, watching sunsets, scribbling, and generally being productive.

Now, however, I've noticed that things are starting to slow down. Instead of clicking on the Facebook link all the time (which I've since removed from my list of bookmarks), the junkie in me has fallen back on other tactics. I'm beginning to fill the void which Facebook left with other sites: YouTube, TV Tropes, and other vacuous time-wasters. I blew one-and-a-half days of my four-day weekend, Thursday and Friday, doing nothing but staring at screens. As usual. (The remainder of Friday was spent bottling our second batch of home-brewed beer. Then we went to Taco Bell. Sweet!)

This indicates to me that Facebook—as well as the other stuff I do online, even Wikipedia—was never about keeping in contact with my friends. It was about my brain satisfying a craving for input. I'm no autodidact. All the hours I spent on Wikipedia educating myself about the Taiping Rebellion, Mondragón rifles or the Registan were just the fulfillment of an unworthy part of my brain, the information addict. Now that Facebook is gone and I can't satisfy myself with the doings and thrashings of my friends and acquaintances, my mind has begun to toke on my other Internet drugs of choice.

Apparently, I need to meditate more. More walks, more workouts, more bike rides, more contemplative smokes down by the Han River (if my friggin' Coleman matches would ever arrive from Gmarket). Studies have shown that meditation can be as beneficial to your health as sleeping, and even more so. It helps clear your mind of white noise and file everything away, categorizing and sorting, a sort of mental disc defragmentation, if you will. 

Oh, and there's also the O-Train this weekend.

What's the O-Train, you ask?

This.

It's a train line that runs in a big circle through three provinces in northeastern Korea. Just got started in April. There's actually two trains. The O-Train (above) does the complete circle (about four hours); the "O" represents the round shape of the route. The V-Train (below) is a little diesel engine that only runs through a particular slice of the route, but that slice is one of the prettiest, rockiest, most mountain- and stream-filled valleys in Gangwon Province. The V-Train (the "V" stands for "valley") moves slowly but scenically, and on board you'll find nostalgia like hot stoves, wood detailing, and baked sweet potatoes. It's all about atmosphere, you see? If you want the feel of a quaint old narrow-gauge steam railway (without a quaint old narrow-gauge steam locomotive) then you take the V-Train. If you want to sit in comfort and take in all the scenery that Gangwon, North Gyeongsang and North Chungcheong Provinces have to offer, then you take the O-Train.

You know how much I love trains. I've been agog to ride on one of these babies ever since I first heard about 'em. A good long train ride through gorges and over rivers, past trees clad in autumn colors, would do wonders for stress, mental clutter, and ennui.

Now, someday I'd like to ride both, but for the nonce, Miss H and I will content ourselves with the O-Train. (I can always come back and ride that zebra-striped beast later.) Tomorrow (Sunday) morning, my lady and I shall waltz into Seoul Station, grab a mugunghwa train for Jecheon, Gangwon-do, and then hitch a ride on the Big O. That ought to put paid to my inner Internet addict.