side effects

Injuries are not all bad. Since I began my shoulder rehabilitation, it has been much easier to glue my butt to my favorite chair and write for several hours at a time. Some days I don't write as much, but I'm seeing progress on a longer piece I'm working on. Is it a novel or novella? Time and a little guidance will tell.

I'm reminded of a novel I read while on my trip in October. The premise was great but I often felt the author was drawing out the story through needless repetition. Sometimes repetition works, but to me it bogged the story down. At the end of the book was a Q&A where the author explained that the novel had originally been a short story upon which he elaborated. Aha! I felt kind of cheated, like I should have been reading a series of short stories instead of a novel that didn't keep me awake in my tent.

So I'm trying to be careful with my story so that it keeps moving along. While I'd shared the premise of the story with Jon, I hadn't yet shown it to anyone. Then I had an unusual opportunity to edit a story for a friend. My friend Mika lives in Japan and travels the world as a journalist, including trips to the Middle East and other Asian regions. Her stories are published only in Japanese-language publications. This fall she made a trip to London to research a story about a male belly dancer of Turkish descent who had grown up on the island of Cyprus.

The dancer, named Ozgen, wanted to read her story, however Mika doesn't typically write in English so she asked if I would edit her translation. I read over her story trying at first to not think about what I would change, but just to get the sense of it. Despite instances where the word order was complicated and a few cases of missing pronouns and articles, I could usually understand what she was saying. In some cases, even though her word order didn't follow typical construct for English, I liked her descriptions better than any 'correction' I could have made. It seemed that changing it too much would have taken away her voice and her unique way of seeing things. I made my edits and emailed the revision along with a few questions I still had.

After she cleared up my questions and sent the story to Ozgen, she told me he'll be posting it on his website. I haven't seen it there yet, but you can find some pretty cool videos of him dancing!

Now, about the 'time and guidance' I mentioned earlier. I asked Mika if she could provide some advice to me on the story I'm writing. The one that may be a novel. Because some of the characters are in Japan, and because it deals with historical & contemporary issues, I've asked if she can confirm some of the elements of the story. I'm concerned about the sense of place and how I represent the characters. While I'm trying to decide when to schedule a visit, my research has been limited to the internet and the Loussac library. Both are helpful, but there's nothing like being there.

With a commitment made, I spent the early part of this week cleaning up a draft of the first section of the book before I emailed it (along with a list of my intentions and concerns) to Mika on Thursday. This is the farthest I've gotten in creating a work of fiction longer than my many unresolved short stories. But, now I feel compelled to finish it. Mika has promised to help, telling me most eloquently: "It is important to have readers as an escort runner to finish the book." I await her edits.

remember this

When I was a junior in high school, I became friends with an exchange student from Japan. Mika and I did the usual teenage-girl things: went to basketball games, talked about boys, listened to music. She would sleep over at our house. As we got to know each other better, I would explain slang and she would work to better pronounce her Ls and Rs. She taught me a few Japanese phrases and let me try on her traditional kimono. And she shared a book.

Her mission as an exchange student during the early 1980s was to let Americans see the dangers of nuclear weapons and the arms race that was being waged by the world's superpowers. I remember sitting in the hallway outside the band room turning the pages of a hard-bound book filled with image after image of the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. When you're 17, something that happened almost 40 years ago seems ancient. Now I see that it had not been that long ago.

The '80s were the Reagan years and I may have worried more than the average kid about nuclear holocaust. But, this was the president who joked about bombing the Soviet Union when he didn't realize a mic was live. (Beware the smiling grandfatherly man...) My political views were just forming and I'm sure that viewing the photos and talking with Mika helped me form my positions. Though she didn't need to say much. The next year, after Mika had returned to Japan, I remember reading a story I'd found in a textbook. It was a portion of reporter John Hersey's account of the Hiroshima bombing. The story wasn't assigned, nor was it discussed in class. I had no one to talk to about my fears, my sadness...and my American guilt. I didn't think people remembered or cared.

I don't think of this often, but I'm reminded every year on the anniversary the bombing which was 65 years ago today. I promise myself I will go to Japan to visit the Peace Park and visit my friend. After years of not being in touch, I recently reconnected with Mika. She's a journalist, traveling the world reporting on issues that affect people in war-torn regions around the globe. It seems she's keeping with the mission she began all those years ago.

As I remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which was bombed on August 9), it's with sadness that many nations and people have not gotten much better at resolving their conflicts despite the efforts of the peacemakers. I was naive to think we would live in a peaceful world.