I recently celebrated (quietly, mostly privately) hitting the 10,000 word mark on the novel I’m currently writing. I thought it was the first time I’d ever reached that milestone. In my life, I’ve been a published journalist, review-writer, and professional translator of Japanese fiction, but it’s only since the pandemic hit that I started getting serious about writing my own fiction.
Here is the beginning of a novel I started writing in the early days of Corona-chan. I’d completely forgotten it existed, but it somehow got up to 14,000+ words before I abandoned it. I don’t know why or when I stopped, but it was a while ago. This is an unfinished work of fiction. I’m not going to finish it.
But I am going to share it with you, because I want to try and see if there’s any appetite for the type of fiction I write. Let me know your thoughts, if you have any. This is only the first part. From here, it gets weirder. If anyone wants to read more, maybe I’ll keep publishing these posts. Let me know.
Rest assured that the novel I’m currently working on is very different than this one. I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I am.
The first time I ever spoke to Yanagi-san, he was standing next to his minivan in the parking lot of the community center. The sliding door on the side nearest him was wide open, creating a surprisingly cavernous backdrop for him, and lending him a kind of stately air, which was fitting for him, as I’d come to find out. My daughter and his were both taking dancing lessons, and that’s how the universe brought us together.
“So if you work as a translator, translating other people’s stories,” he said, “then that must mean you’ve got a story of your own that you want to write.”
He spoke so casually, so matter-of-factly, that my knee-jerk reaction was to want to say something contrary. To challenge what he perceived as a known certainty, one that everyone in the universe knew, except me.
Instead, I said, “Yeah. I do. I will.”
I had no intention of writing anything of my own. I knew how difficult it was to cook up a story from scratch. At least, I assumed I knew. It seemed difficult, and so I assumed it probably was. Especially compared to what I did for a living, which was localizing (not translating) fictional stories originally written in Japanese for English-reading markets.
“That’s cool, man. It’s only a matter of time,” Yanagi-san said.
“Yeah, just whenever I get around to it.”
For the first time in my life, I found myself wondering when that whenever would be. It suddenly seemed like an imperative. Yanagi-san was effortlessly persuasive. And from where I was standing (both in that parking lot, and in terms of general life experience), he had every right to be. For one thing, he had two kids, both older than my daughter, who was only four at the time. As anyone who has survived living with a two-year-old—followed immediately by the even-more-harrowing experience of living with a three-year-old—can tell you, the idea of ever doing it again is tremor-inducing. But here was a man who’d done it. And he still had all his hair. The long, wavy hair of a rock and roll dude. Yanagi-san seemed to loom forward ever so slightly.
“So you play guitar, right? I think my wife said that your wife told her you play guitar,” I said.
“Well, I’m a classically trained musician.”
“Oh. Like, classical guitar?”
It turns out that Yanagi-san lived in America for a number of years, studying at a prestigious music college. He read and spoke English fluently, though he never used English around me.
“Among other things,” he said with a half-smile.
That’s when Yanagi-san’s wife, Emi, emerged from the community center, smiling and appearing to sway gently as she walked, though there was no breeze. Their daughter, Miu, trailed along a step behind Emi.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Emi said to Yanagi-san.
He just shook his head in response.
“Well, we’d better be going. See you next time?”
“Yeah,” I said, watching the first drops of rain splash against the window of their cherry red minivan, and wishing that I had a minivan, or at least an umbrella. “Good talking to you.”
“Likewise. Good luck with your story.”
“Thanks.”
The three Yanagis climbed into their vehicle, and as they pulled out of the parking lot, I gave them a tentative wave. I had no idea where their son was. He was only five years old, but such a quiet, unassuming little boy, he may have been sitting in the front passenger seat for all I knew.
I turned around and turtle-tucked my head, the way umbrella-less people do when they’re about to get drenched, and hustled over to the two-story gray brick building that housed the local community center.
Penny’s dance class was up on the second floor, but I could hear the cacophony of little girls and their attendant parents from the front entrance as I stepped inside. I was glad to escape the rain. Modern Athletic Rhythm, the class was called. Probably because that made it sound more worthwhile than Let Your Kid Leap and Wiggle Around for Thirty Minutes. It wasn’t as though we had prima ballerina dreams for Penny, and she mostly enjoyed the experience.
I made my way up the stairs, and just as I reached the second floor, Penny came running toward me, her bare feet slapping on the linoleum floor.
“Daddy! Did you bring Shanty?” Hair stuck to her sweat-shiny forehead. She brushed it away.
“Nope, flyin’ solo. Was I supposed to?” Shanty was Penny’s plush rabbit, all vibrant lime green and banana yellow.
“Oh, thank goodness. No! She wanted to come, but I told her to stay at home. Thanks, Daddy.”
I grinned. “Don’t mention it.”
That’s when Jen came sauntering over, arms folded across her chest. Her eyes were locked on Penny until she got close enough for our daughter to notice, at which point she shifted her gaze to me.
“How’d it go this week?” I asked.
“Not bad. I think she actually might have even danced a little bit,” Jen said.
“Mommy! I danced the whole time!” Penny, indignant.
“I know, baby. Can we finish getting you changed now?” Jen lay a hand on Penny’s disheveled brown hair.
“Why? I’m ready to go!”
“You might want to at least put your shoes on, Cap’n,” I said. “It just started to rain.”
“That means puddles!” Penny’s face lit up. “Did you bring my boots?”
“Gah. Nope. Sorry. No Shanty, no boots. Can you believe it?” I made a show of looking disappointed in myself.
“It’s okay, Daddy. I’m gonna go and get changed now.” And with that, Penny turned and skipped back to the practice room. Jen tried unsuccessfully to keep her eyes from rolling before joining her.
Left alone to wait for them, I gazed around the second-floor common area. A low shelf off to the left bulged with a variety of brightly-colored atlases and encyclopedias, clearly aimed at kids. There was a book about bugs and other creepy-crawlies, one about space travel, and another about baseball. All of them were written in Japanese, of course. When was the last time a kid voluntarily cracked one of these open? I wondered, before my mind drifted back to the work I still had to get done this afternoon. Being a freelancer had its perks — I could set my own hours, allowing me to meet up with my wife and daughter in the middle of the day, for example — but it came with a simple caveat: never stop working. No work, no pay. It was as simple as that. I’d tried being a salaried employee in the past. Hell, I’d tried all manner of salaried and paid-by-the-hour employment in my non-career before and after relocating to this side of the planet (not to mention a few get-paid-when-the-boss-felt-like-it arrangements), but it wasn’t until I decided to try the localizer for hire lifestyle that everything clicked into place for me. I wasn’t rolling in riches by any stretch of the imagination, but I could support myself and my family. We weren’t hurtin’ for anything, as my old man would say. And that was good enough.
The current project starred an eager but somewhat socially awkward young woman who had just begun her career in a major hospital in the city. All of the projects starred eager but socially awkward young women because, for whatever reason, that’s what sold. That’s what my editors told me, anyway, and I wasn’t invested deeply enough to ask any difficult questions. The folks buying these stories, however they identified themselves on the gender spectrum, liked the idea of being emotionally overwhelmed. That’s what I figured.
I imagined the target customer like this: someone who works an anonymous, thankless job, maybe in retail or, even more likely, some bullshit nondescript office job, where nobody in any given department knows what anyone in any other department really does all day. The target customer probably rides the train (in this country, everybody does), but their commute is likely longer than that of their boss, and certainly much longer than that of their boss’s boss. Ol’ TC puts in overtime, or works odd hours, afraid to say no to any work that comes their way, because a little low-wage work is better than none at all. And so TC is too tired all the time for much of a social life, and dating? Forget about it.
No one ever needed cheap, disposable entertainment more than the downtrodden, and, say what you will about it, a number of companies in Japan made healthy profits every year by pumping out endless streams of cheap, disposable entertainment. Only a few years ago, paper would have been required. Or compact discs. But at some point everything shifted online. Suddenly, entertainment could be cheaper and more disposable than ever.
I would have loved to meet the first person who ever paid money to download an anime romance visual novel to their phone and read through the whole damn thing. What must that experience have been like, without a community of like-minded Target Customers to share it with? Patient Zero.
That particular train of thought was mercifully derailed by a tiny hand tugging on the back of my flannel shirt.
“Can we get ice cream, Daddy?” Penny’s eyes were gleaming with the kind of hope only a small child can muster.
“Fine by me. What does your mom say?” I looked over at Jen as I said it, and noticed one corner of her mouth curve up slightly.
“I could go for some ice cream,” she said with a sigh, sounding as if she’d just lost a bet.
That settled it.
I really liked what you wrote here. Clear narrative style and eminently relatable. I am fairly certain I've had this exact conversation with my wife and daughter after meeting them at dance class. I can't think of any substantive or constructive comments other than the narrative shift when the protagonist is waiting for the daughter to put on her shoes, but hey, that's how my mind works too.
I hope you return to this someday. I'd love to read more.
I like this. I would definitely read more.
As a reader, here are my thoughts and expectations based on what you've set up [note: when I say "expectations," these are things that I feel you've made a contract with the reader about. You've promised these things, so if they don't happen, the reader will either be confused (and lose faith in the story) or will need to see a good narrative reason for the subversion]
[Another note: I've written a lot of fiction myself (6 books, working on my first non-fiction book now). I have a degree in English Lit and a minor in Creative Writing. All this is to say, on paper, I should know what I'm talking about...but in actuality, I know enough to know that I never know enough :) My comments below migtht be stupid; I accept that as a possiblity/probability]
[Another another note: I realize you've already stated this novel is abandoned, so my comments below aren't really valuable. But hey, I have fun writing about writing, so maybe this was more for me :) ]
Your contract with the reader tells me:
Yanagi-san will play a very big role in the story. He's been set up too deliberately to allow him to only act as the origin of the inciting incident. I expect he will be with our narrator for many pages.
Yanagi-san has qualities that the narrator wishes he had himself. He has a cult leader-like quality about him. At some point, the narrator will eventually see Yanagi-san as a flawed human, which will be a moment of transformation for the narrator.
Yanagi-san's left-hanging "among other other things" also promises continued mystique around this character.
Other, non-contract, thoughts:
Humanizing Yanagi-san so quickly zaps him of his allure. Specifically, when discussing his children. The wonder should be maintained for longer. Maybe he doesn't even have kids, and it's not until the narrator is at home, later, that he suddenly finds it odd that Yanagi-san was just hanging out in the parking lot of a child's dance class (but I also hope this wouldn't lead to Yanagi-san simply being a pervert; maybe he's an estranged father himself, and comes to the parking lot as a way to vicariously live a life he's regretfully abandoned...he gets emotional when he sees a father holding hands with their daughter. Or not. Sorry for dumping a bunch of "oh, you should do this" talk on you.
The description of the narrator's job is much too sudden and much too long. I think this should be a classic "show don't tell" opportunity. Show us the narrator as he works. This would give you the opportunity to also show how his work impacts his life (assuming he works at home). There might even be opportunity to show how he got into the work.
I would also recommend saving the work stuff for it's own chapter. Yanagi-san is such a powerful character that it seems a shame not to let him linger at the end of the chapter. He should bookend this first chapter. Maybe his "among other things" comment comes back into the narrator's head.