Editing: The Man Terror Club

I talked with one of my editors this week. She’s just finishing a manuscript evaluation of my third novel, The Man Terror Club. She wanted to discuss her general impressions with me and ask some questions in preparation for finalizing her written feedback. Some of our talk was about how long I’d lived in Japan (twenty-five years) and how long ago I wrote the novel (fifteen years), but then we got into the whole question of why I was writing a story about a bunch of Japanese women who’ve been abused, when I am neither Japanese nor a woman. She didn’t go as far as asking what right I have to tell that story, but she made it clear that others certainly would. She said publishing the novel could easily end my career and told me in no uncertain terms that I would be crucified. That was the word she used: crucified.

Even if I research the hell out of this and have affidavits from a hundred Japanese sensitivity readers saying I have captured the culture laudably, I will be attacked by some because I am not a Japanese woman. Would I deserve such attacks? While I say no, I understand that some will only take that very claim of capability as more evidence that I am unfit to tell this story. Never mind that it’s a story no one else seems aching to tell. Better it remain untold than have it told by me, an American man who long lived in Japan.

My editor told me there are many good parts in the book, and that some of them may be usable in other circumstances. She was not specific which pieces can be molded into something else, but she did say that they would likely end up in various genre. So the writing was not a waste of time. (No writing ever truly is.) There is content that could make it into print without me being tied to a cross for days, tortured to death. (Crucifixion is a truly gruesome way to die.) But those are only parts of the story, not the whole thing in novel format.

If I want to publish The Man Terror Club as a novel and not just in bits and snatches here and there, I can see only one way to make it happen: the author must be a Japanese woman—or perhaps I may be so bold as to say that one of the authors must be.

I need a Japanese woman coauthor.

Unfortunately, I was not active in the Japanese writing community when I lived in Japan. I was not writing in Japanese. I wish my Japanese was that good. It would have been amazing to immerse myself in Japanese literature that completely. So I have the problem that I don’t personally know Japanese women writers (who are bilingual to boot). I am going to have to search through a network—one I do not have.

I say I don’t have a network, but I know people, some. And I have access to social media. Although it will test my people skills to the limit, a grownup ought to be able to make this happen. And The Man Terror Club will be a far better novel when it is rewritten by the two of us and published simultaneously in both English and Japanese. Oh my, there’s a goal!