A hermit's life revisited

During the last year I have hidden out from COVID-19 and got settled into a hermit’s life, as I wrote about last August. It gave me more time to write. But now there are vaccines and some places are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. (Although India has taken a horrible turn.) Demand for COVID-19 vaccinations in America has peaked and is falling—to the point in that locations are taking walk-ins. Japan has been creeping along. Vaccinations for the general population have not even begun. I worry my turn won’t come until next winter. So I am being sorely tempted to travel to America, get vaccinated there, and spend a few weeks with my family. I haven’t seen them for over a year. I miss people.

My school started hybrid MBA classes in April. Some students are online and some in the classroom. It’s up to the students how they attend, and it breaks down about fifty-fifty. (The undergrads went from in-person classes in April to totally online when Tokyo entered its current state of emergency.) 

The COVID numbers are bad for Japan, but are still relatively light compared to America. I should be staying home as I did last year, but I don’t feel the danger as keenly as I used to. Staying home was affecting my mental health as well. Interestingly, it sort of crept up on me. I didn’t notice myself deteriorating, but it got to where I wasn’t even leaving the house to take a walk most days. I was not depressed. I am sure of that, because I know depression. But I think I would have been except for all the medication I’m on. My outlook, though, has taken a distinct upward and outward turn since I started commuting to school again. It’s interesting how we don’t notice a slow slide until it’s over.

So I am not a total hermit anymore. This is better for me. I’m still not talking to anyone except for my lectures, but I’m out in the crowd, a passive sort of sociality.

Don't abuse the muse

The writing process is anything but painless.  Not just every aspect of every character and twist of plot, but every phrase and even each word begs a choice.  Each of my novels may have required a million decisions.  And as an author struggling to create each nuance of meaning, you face those million decisions on your own.  In many ways, it is arrogant to believe that you can make enough of those choices well that people will want to read what you have written.  

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have someone who inspires you to go just a little (or a lot) further in search of the perfect choice?  Wouldn’t it help to have someone to whom you can show your words, with judgement better than your own, that you trust to tell you when you’ve gotten them right?  Wouldn’t you love to have a muse?

I was lucky enough to have one.  She was my best friend.  We sat in the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop in Shibuya, and I read to her parts of what I had written.  (She liked my voice.)  We sat next to each other so that she could see my computer screen and read along, because she’s not a native English speaker and seeing the words helped the meaning come through.  I read bits that I thought were good, as well as parts that had problems.  I asked for her ideas, and she was honest with me.  

I had no idea how blessed I was.  She was better read than me, more artistic than me, more successful than me, and a better writer than me. My first novel, Under Shōko’s Bed, would be only a shadow of what it is now without her input.  As I read it, I see her influence on almost every page.  When I was unduly impressed with my early drafts, she was the one who convinced me that my writing was not good enough.  She even got an editor friend to read my complete novel, and my muse delivered the editor’s verdict: amateurish.  

The editor’s reaction was what my muse had been telling me all along.  So I read about writing.  I read Stephen King, Sol Stein, Donald Maass, Anne Lamott, and others.  I put all that I learned into Under Shōko’s Bed and the novel got better.  I could tell it was better, but more crucial to me then, she told me so.  This is where it becomes even more unbelievable: she read the novel more than once and commented as I revised it.  The commitment of time alone was formidable, but on top of that, she was reading in a foreign language!  As I look back on it now, I am awestruck.

There are a lot of reasons that my muse drifted away from me.  Mostly it was me being cantankerous and not investing enough in our friendship.  One of the causes of her growing indifference, though, was my second novel, Neyuki.  She didn’t like it.  Still, I asked her to read and help as she had with Under Shōko’s Bed.  I was pushing too hard, though, and the day came that she said she did not want to see it again, that it was obscene.  I was stunned.  I shouldn’t have been.  She had been negative all along.  I should have put it aside and written something else; I was not bereft of ideas.  When my muse spoke, I should have listened.

At the same time I lost my muse’s devotion, my job required more attention, so I sank myself into that.  But I was depressed, in part over the loss of my friend, and also over feelings that my writing was yet another failure in my life.  In fact, before long I was not writing at all.

So how did I make the decision to go back to writing and push through to self-publish Under Shōko’s Bed?  My doctor found the right mix of medications to end my depression.  With that and significant emotional recovery in many areas of my life, I felt good enough to face my novels again.  As I reread them, I realized that I liked most of what was there.  So I started working through them once again as I contemplated whether it would be worth it to try to publish them.  Under Shōko’s Bed has been easier.  It was in better shape to begin with, and my muse had not told me it was trash.  Fixing Neyuki has been more difficult, but I have worked hard to soften it, because in my experience—although I did not always recognize it at the time—my muse was correct.  So if she found it objectionable, it was.  In fact, I’m still not sure that I've gotten it right.  In the end, though, I decided that self-publishing Under Shōko’s Bed would be worth the risk, despite the considerable cost.  So now I have a website and a blog, and soon I will have novels ready to show the world.

I wish I could say that my writing was moving again because my muse returned to me.  I asked her to read the first chapter of something new a year ago.  I had just finished the first draft of the novel, a story of a group of women who had been betrayed, abused, and abandoned, and their vengeful response.  She had told me before that it would be impossible for me to write it.  Now she said she did not want to read anything like that.  I have not given up on the novel, but after leaving it alone for a year, I have decided to proceed only after I have completed significant research.  I expect it will take me years.  As I research the women in my novel, though, I have to write.  After all, that’s what writers do, muse or no muse, and if we don’t write, we’re not real writers.  So as I wait for a professional edit of Under Shōko’s Bed, I am working on a new novel.  The first draft is nearly done.  All of the million decisions have been mine alone, and I fear the novel is less for the loss.

The idea: Under Shōko's Bed

I am the first to admit that Under Shōko’s Bed is an odd tale.  If the story is charming at all, I think the oddity is part of the charm, though.  The germ of the story came on a visit to a dear friend of mine.  (She is also the one who chose the name of the main female character, Shōko Kawasaki.)  I had been suffering on and off with depression for years, and when it was time to leave the friend who so buoyed my spirits and go back to my day-to-day routine, I told her that I wished I could remain a little longer, that I would be happy just to stay under her bed.  She laughed, which always lifts my heart, and I said goodbye and went home—and started ruminating.  I had begun a novel before, but lost the motivation when I changed jobs and felt no more need to push out creatively to compensate for frustration in my work.  But the idea of someone who is broken enough to actually carry through on my suggestion, to be so shattered that he would curl up under a friend’s bed, stuck in my imagination.  I have known despair.  I have wished I was dead, unable to stand the incessant pain of knowing my entire life would amount to nothing.  I could imagine a person acting that mentally ill, because I was very nearly that bad off.

So in the periods when I wasn’t depressed, I wrote.  I wish I could say that the writing is what healed me.  It certainly helped, but what banished the depression completely two and a half years ago was finding the right doctor and then the correct combination of medications.  Now the depression is gone, although not the daily struggle, so I continue to write.  The healing goes on with each little success, but more than that, I simply enjoy getting the stories out of my head, turning them into words.  Hopefully, those words will spark others’ imaginations too.

Finally, if the character’s depression in Under Shōko’s Bed rings all too true, you have my deepest sympathy.  Just know that there is light at the end of the tunnel.  I overcame depression and I believe that you can too.  It’s worth trying—it truly is—even if just for today.