Courting Madness

so hold on tight and don't look back

2012-01-01T12:22:00.000-08:00

+ What's On: The Kids From Yesterday, by My Chemical Romance

I have probably mentioned this before, but let's say it again: I have a Kindle.

Six months ago, you wouldn't catch me dead with an eReader. I was one of those people violently opposed to ebooks. I was sure they'd destroy the publishing world, I didn't understand the appeal of reading books on a screen, and I wondered why anyone would give up the feel of a "real" book. Anytime someone mentioned Kindles or Nooks or what-have-yous, I felt this little bit of acid eating away my chest and I wanted to gnaw people's fingers off.

Well, maybe not that dramatic, but you get the picture.

I don't know what changed my mind. For whatever reason, though, I broke down in July and ordered a Kindle. It showed up July 14^th. I remember because I was getting ready to head to the theater. Some coworkers and I were going to watch Harry Potter 7 back-to-back, one part before midnight, one part after. I had just enough time to charge it before I left the house.

And you know? It's probably the greatest purchase I've ever made.

Since July 14^th I've read 32 novels and 5 short stories, along with a dozen-odd sample chapters, and I have 11 books purchased but as of yet unread. I read four books over Christmas Eve and Christmas. The only reason the number isn't higher than that is because I realized how much money I was spending. I'm going to have to be more careful in 2012, since I left my second job, but I know I'll figure something out.

But anyway, I wanted to share with you some of the best books I read in 2011!

MIND STORM – KM Ruiz

- This sounds gratuitous, since KM is my roommate and we've been besties for years, but I was honestly surprised by this book. KM understands—she knows I don't play well with sci fi. But I tore through this book in a day. Now I'm watching KM do page proofs for book 2 and reading pages whenever she leaves the room.

The AVERY CATES Novels – Jeff Somers

- The first book, The Electric Church, is still hands-down one of my favorite books ever. I have forced this series on more people than I can count, coworkers and customers alike. Gritty and foul-mouthed and amazing. I read books 4 and 5 this year, which is why I consider the series eligible for this list.

The CHAOS WALKING Trilogy – Patrick Ness

- Book 1 was everything I wanted in a book. That's the only way I can sum it up. I wasn't as sold on books 2 and 3, but overall it was a brilliant trilogy, and I'll probably reread it in 2012.

DEARLY, DEPARTED – Lia Habel

- Zombie steampunk with the world's most beautiful cover. Yes, really. Read it now, then come back and wait impatiently with me for book 2.

THE GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS – Rae Carson

- Probably one of my favorite heroines. She starts off as a neglected, sheltered princess who comforts herself with lots of food, and she evolves (believably) into a young woman worth following. Waiting eagerly for the rest of the trilogy.

LARKSTORM – Dawn Rae Miller

- I'm already reccing this book to people. Lark is another one of those true heroines—not perfect, not conveniently flawed, but completely real and believable. I love the detail in the world and know the next book is going to be amazing, too.

The DEATH WORKS Trilogy – Trent Jamieson

- Australian psycho-pomp laying ghosts to rest and saving the world? Hell yeah! I turned two regulars onto this series and we raced each other to the finish line. Not a perfect trilogy, but pretty close, and it's definitely a fun one.

The COLD AWAKENINGS Trilogy – RobinWasserman

- Originally called Skinned, I think? I don't remember how I stumbled across this, but I remember landing on Robin Wasserman's homepage where she was displaying the new covers and titles for the series. How could I resist a clever cover like that? I downloaded a sample and knew only a couple pages in I had to own it. This is what I read over Christmas, all three back-to-back. Brilliant.

LIAR – Justine Larbaleister

- I'm glad I knew nothing about this book before I read it. Spoilers would destroy this smart story. Fascinating MC. Have already foisted it off on a friend to read.

TOKYO VICE – Jake Adelstein

- This one shouldn't count, since I'm not done reading it, but I can't leave it off. I can't tell you guys the last time I read anything nonfiction. It was probably back in college when I had no choice. I saw this in a Kinokuniya window display and thought the title interesting enough to write down. As soon as I got home I downloaded a sample, and four paragraphs later I bought it. An American reporter working for a Japanese national newspaper covering the police beat and yakuza? Yes please.

When I sat down to write this list, I thought it'd be short and easy. After all, I enjoyed a lot of books these last six months, but how many were hands-down awesome, totally-read-again-able? More than I thought, obviously! These are the books I'd recommend to all my friends. In fact, half of them are sitting in my Amazon cart so I can ship the printed versions to my sisters in SC.

Even better? Today is January 1^st, which means a year of Apocalypsies 2012 debuts and sequels. Better get my Kindle charging now so I don't miss a word.

AJATT - The art of throwing away everything to gain everything

2011-11-27T16:50:00.000-08:00

(Part 1 was back here somewhere)

There's a site out there called AJATT, which I'm sure most other Japanese speakers & language enthusiasts found much faster than I did. It is a really fascinating site, not just for the webmaster's approach or his success but for his overall viewpoint. A lot of what he says can be applied to life in general, not just language studies.

AJATT means All Japanese, All The Time.

What?

No, really. It is what it says. Nothing more, nothing less. All Japanese all the time.

Basically, it means this: throw away your movies. Delete your music collection. Donate your books to Goodwill. Erase everything that is English about your environment and replace it with Japanese. Get a futon; sleep on the floor. Shop at Japanese markets. Eat Japanese food. Eat everything with chopsticks. Watch Japanese news. Have kanji posters. Put your OS in Japanese mode (and try your damnedest not to delete your harddrive on accident). It means immersion, no matter where in the world you are.

And you know? It's brilliant in theory, but so difficult to practice. Imagine my situation: I share a one-bedroom apartment with KM Ruiz & two cats. I work 5 days a week at Starbucks, and 2 nights a week at a kitchen in a bar. How the hell am I supposed to cut English out of my life? I can't throw out KM's five bookshelves, I can't give up conversing with KM, I can't ignore my baristas or customers, and I can't tune out the TV or blare only Japanese rock from our skullcandy speakers. My apartment is set up in a way where immersion would mean getting what I want (language skills) at the cost of everything I have.

I'm not the only one who's balked at his advice and approach. The owner of the site, "Khatzumoto", answers this dilemma with a more-or-less "Yes, I know what I'm asking you to give up, but you're the ones asking what to do to have my success. You asked, I answered." His success is basically his journey from zero to fluent in Japanese in a jaw-dropping 18 months. How do we argue with that? We can't.

He doesn't ever say the path is easy, nor does he say it will be easily accepted by our peers. He says to forget about the situations we can't control (job, family, etc) and focus on what we can (journey to work, lunch breaks, afternoons and early mornings, etc). If we can't commit 100%, then we at least have to commit 100% of the time we can control.

It's brilliant. It's fascinating. It makes perfect sense, and I want it.

But even still, I fall short. Facebook? Twitter? These things I can give up and ignore in my free time. But my books? I won't stop writing those. I can't. Even if my work-in-progress was the only thing standing between me and fluency, I'd keep chugging away. I'd prolong that final stretch to my goal so I could eat my cake AND my mochi at the same time.

So what's a girl to do?

Well, here's a start. I'm going to finally identify writing as a job. Instead of having 2 jobs, I'll have 3. Writing will have designated work times, same as everything else. Then I can't feel guilty about my Japanese interfering with my writing or vice versa. Writing will have its place, and Japanese will dominate everything else. I'll try this for a little while and see how it goes.

すべて抱きしめて　届けたい未来へこの願いを信じて　歩いてゆくだけ

2011-11-25T13:31:00.000-08:00

+ What's On: Gather, Ao to Bin to Kan

I've talked before about my fondness for Japan, but I don't think I've really touched on my love-hate relationship with Japanese language itself. This seems the perfect time to bring it up, since I've rebooted my studies from scratch.

Not counting my college education fees, I have easily spent at least $3000 on Japanese study aids. I have software, textbooks, dictionaries, workbooks, books dedicated solely to particles, books on Japanese slang, business Japanese, novels and children's stories in Japanese, so on and so forth. It's actually pretty pathetic, when you look at everything I've bought, every method and restart I've tried, and realize none of it's done me any good. Two years in Japan and four semesters at university, and I'm still at best an upper beginner.

Why? Couple reasons. First and foremost: I've always been a horrible student. I never learned good study habits. I was always the "Procrastinate, then cram cram cram" kind of child. I did just enough to get by. I don't recommend this to anyone. As time-consuming and aggravating as studying is, imagine graduating from university and realizing you've learned almost nothing. Awesome!

Japanese should have been the exception, right?

I have a lot of reasons why it wasn't. Some excuses, some legitimate, some things that were all in my head that I could just never let go of. I tried writing about it here, but it became this sprawling, out-of-control essay that felt petty and delusional. Just know this: jealousy put the first strain in it, really early on, and frustrated hatred broke the rest. Maybe we'll get into the details later. (But probably not.)

You know what? I'm tired of failing. There are two things in the world I want to succeed & be good at: writing and Japanese. I'm working on the former. Time to fix my attitude toward the latter and stop shooting myself in the foot.

I finally understand: those $3K worth of books aren't going to teach me a language. I have to teach me a language, and I have to find a new approach. I've spent the last several months digging through everything I can find, trying to figure out where I went wrong so I know where to start again. I finally have a battle plan to show for it. I've broken up the components of Japanese into various categories, and I have a structured way to start and improve for each. For example, in the Listening Comprehension box, I start with audio conversations and increase in difficulty until I'm watching movies and newscasts.

I'm not feeling optimistic so much as determined. I'm in it to win it this time; there's too much to lose if I don't.

There'll be more on this in the future—who knows how much, since I'm bad about updating blogger (Twitter spoiled me with its tiny, easy posts!), but I at least want to talk about a couple brilliant programs I'm focusing on this time 'round.

View from inside Chukyo University's Main Building

夢の中で広がる世界はthe last secret garden

2011-08-07T17:13:00.000-07:00

+ What's On: Secret Garden, by Gackt

Let me tell you about one of the greatest weekends of my life.

Years and years ago, when my obsession with Japan was in its earlier stages, when Japan was nothing more than anime and JPOP and "where I was born", I learned of a singer named Gackt, a beautiful man with a god's voice. I listened to his music, understanding not a single word, and loved him. My sister and I talked about learning Japanese, talked about running away to Japan, talked about a perfect life in a perfect place. We would know we were living the dream the day we saw Gackt in concert in Japan.

We were kids; forgive us.

2004, I move to Nagoya for my year of study abroad. Fellow exchange student Jeena and I are having trouble making Japanese friends. We join the kyudo (archery) club. It's not at all what I expect—what was I expecting? I can't speak enough Japanese to connect with the rest of the club, I'm horrible at archery, and it's time-consuming as hell. But it's glorious in the same breath, the swish of the hakama against a polished wooden floor, the sturdy weight of a six-foot bow in my hand. I love every moment of it. I even harbor a mad crush on the vice captain of the club.

The club goes to a competition. Jeena and I don't compete, but we decide to go along. I stuff a chunk of money in my wallet for no real reason. I spend most of the time at the competition helping the others with their English homework. I half-expect things to be as crazy dramatic as a manga would make them. It's not dramatic at all. No underdog victories, no tense confrontations, no floating sound effects or injuries to overcome. Just straightforward archery. Beautiful and boring in the same breath.

Except on the walk from the train to the site, we pass an arena, and in the arena parking lot is a bus.

This bus.

Oh, god, lovies, oh god.

I spend half the competition texting other exchange students about it. Afterward I wave the team off at the train station and wait, occasionally approached by a scalper. I tell the guy I have friends coming, and he promises to keep three tickets for us, whichever three are closest together. The best he has are 2 seats together and one alone down a section. I take the lonely ticket.

And that night, I see Gackt in concert.

A couple hours after wearing a hakama and watching my club compete, I'm standing in an arena in Nagoya, Japan, watching Gackt sing. Taiko drums and fire and lights and the crowd screaming and begging for more. The next night I go back, pay almost $200 for another ticket, and see it all over again.

These days I rarely listen to Gackt. Not because I've outgrown his voice, not because I've discovered new favorite bands, but because Gackt means too much to me for me to listen to him casually. At best, it's distracting, because I start daydreaming of Japan. At worst, it's absolutely heartbreaking, knowing I had it and lost it.

The day I was accepted to the study abroad program, I learned to believe in luck, because my application was so last-minute as to be offensive.

That night I learned to believe in dreams.

Even when we've forgotten about them, even when we've shrugged them off as flights of fancy, they remember us. And sometimes, they really do come true.

even a blueprint is a gift and a curse

2011-07-11T21:30:00.000-07:00

+ What's On: When They Come For Me, Linkin Park

Dudes, I'm not so good at this blogging thing. Twitter's more my style, I guess, since I can fire off random things throughout the day that have no substance whatsoever.

Real-life update:
- Quit the laundromat. (YES) Haven't quit the cafe yet. (Noooo) Now work part-time at a kitchen in a bar a couple nights a week (Yes!)
- I am also attempting to do p90x. IT HURTS US

On a writing front, things aren't going anywhere fast, but hey, that's life in the publishing industry, right? I'm running out of ideas on who to query with my urban fantasy. Most of my energy these days goes to a new project, a YA urban fantasy set in San Francisco. The story has potential, I think, but it's fighting me every single step of the way. This is a good thing, I think, since it hopefully means less serious issues when I'm revising.

Also, last time I posted (in January!), I said I was trying to overhaul a project. I killed that idea. Here's the thing: I have a love-hate relationship with all my stories, but there's one that means the absolute world to me. Unfortunately it's also the one with the least chance of success. This January I thought I'd do anything to better the odds. I stole the characters from that book and put them in a new one.

Mistake.

I made it only three or four chapters in and then I couldn't stand it anymore. It absolutely broke my heart. If the story ever succeeded and I got The Call from an agent, I think I'd bawl my eyes out knowing I killed a story's soul for the sake of getting published. I'd rather trunk the entire thing as-is than do that. So I put my story back together again piece by piece.

Common sense says to give up on the book, to put it online for friends and anyone to read, to be happy that anyone's reading it at all. But I can't, not yet. If I don't believe in this story, who will?

Anyway, I'm off to finish laundry and get some sleep. 3AM comes way too fast.

would you make it shallow so that I can feel the rain

2011-01-09T16:21:00.000-08:00

+ What's on: Gravedigger, by Dave Matthews Band

Oh, lovelies, it's been a while. How have you been?

Life's been kind of crazy here. Still writing, still submitting, still revising and rewriting. Have recently committed to overhauling a very old, very precious story. It's going to be a brutal process and I'm probably going to hate every second, but it will be worth it in the end.

On the RL side of things, I have gone from lots of free time to hardly any at all. Still have my job at the cafe, and I picked up a part-time job at a cafe-laundromat three days a week. 60-70 workweeks are not my friends. In another month or so I'm going to get a third job, and that's when my schedule's going to really get complicated. But, like revisions, it's worth it. I'm determined to pay off my credit cards this year and save up for some future traveling.

Speaking of traveling, K.M. and I are going to Vegas in February. Closest I've been to Vegas is the airport, and that was when I was too young to even play slots on my layover. We're definitely looking forward to getting out of town for a weekend. (Now we just have to figure out who's going to watch our cats while we're gone...)

Ah, the coffee's done brewing. Time to buckle down and figure this story out. See ya~

What you build you lay to waste

2010-07-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

+ Listening To: In Pieces, Linkin Park

Oops, it's been a couple weeks. Seems I'm still not very good at this blogging thing.

I do have a small excuse, though - I'm querying a project of mine. Have gotten a dozen-odd No's so far, but also two full requests(!). One full's still outstanding. The other was returned with a no, but also an invitation to either resubmit if I could revise it sufficiently or to keep her in mind with any future projects. Since she's on my list of Top 5 (a list decided by the projects they represent and the outstanding praise authors have for them), you bet I'm revising.

I went through the entire thing again, tweaking conversations and trying to clarify points, then sent a couple choice scenes to my sister, who read the first & third drafts. (Remind me to write a post about my sisters one day. All three of us write.) When that was done, I printed the whole thing off and gave it to roomie K.M. Ruiz to edit. It's her first time reading it, so I'm not sure what she'll think of it. I was a bit leery of asking her for help, because she's up to her eyeballs working on her own books (her debut comes out next spring, so she's working on that and its sequel AND a variety of other future projects). She doesn't have a lot of free time leftover, and I didn't want to distract her from her plotlines. I needed help, though, so when she offered, I was like PLEASE OH GOD PLEASE.

She's working her way through it a couple chapters at a time, so every night this week when I come home, I've got printouts on my desk ready for me to review and fix.

With any luck, it'll be done by the end of next week, and I can re-query Agent A. There's no guarantee she'll say Yes this time, but there's no harm in trying, right? The trick is to get it done and get it back to her before I hear back from Agent B. And if she still says no? Well, I'll have a revised ms to submit to other people.

In the meantime, I've stopped sending out new queries. I know I'm just making the process longer for myself, but I think she's worth the wait. Guess we'll see how it goes.

While I wait, I'm supposed to be working on another project, but I keep bouncing between two different stories. Focus focus focus. Bah.

Waiting for our ship to come but our ship's not coming back

2010-06-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

+ What's On: Believe, The Bravery

A while back I started rewrites on the Stones trilogy. I'd written the rough drafts of the first two and a half books some three or four years ago, then set them aside to focus on a couple other projects. The third book never got finished because I realized I wrote myself into a major corner. Consequence of writing by the seat of my pants, I guess. The only way I was going to finish that third book was if I changed a couple major things in books one and two.

So in January I finally had the time to start over. Got as far as chapter three and completely stalled out. Again. Frustrated, I kicked it aside and focused on getting a stand-alone urban fantasy ready for submission. Now that that one's out of my hands and off into the wonderful world of PLEASE PICK ME, I have no excuses to not work on Stones.

Problem? I have to start over, again.

I stared at it for weeks, wondering what the eff could be stalling out my story in the first eight thousand words. Finally I pinpointed the loose screw that was taking my entire story apart. I hit a WHY I couldn't answer, because the answer didn't make sense. "Why can ABC do THIS but not THIS?". ABC created a plot hole, so ABC had to go.

Now chapter one's edited and set aside, and I'm ready to take on chapter two. Hopefully it'll go better this time.

一夜明けた暗い朝に窓を額に見立て / 眠る肌起こし濡れた絵に手を伸す

2010-06-16T07:21:00.000-07:00

+ Glass Skin, Dir en Grey

In fall 2006, I went up to Boston to apply to Nova Japan. I got a response back fairly fast—I was going back to Japan. The next month or so was scrambling to get my work visa application in order and to get what I'd need to take with me. Nova operated on one-year contracts, but I knew what I wanted: I was going to work for Nova for a couple of years, study Japanese on the side, and then try to move up into a Japanese company. I was ready!

This "dream future" got off to a rocky start. My parents both lost their jobs right after I graduated college, so my family and I were living off mine and my younger sister's credit cards as best we could. I had enough money to get a ticket to Japan, but that was about it. I arrived with roughly $200 to my name that I needed to make last me the better part of a month. It worked, if only because I lived off the bag of skittles my parents sent along as a farewell gift. Breakfast of champions, dudes.

Training started a couple days later and lasted three days. Three days to learn how to teach, not bad, I guess, considering Nova lessons consisted of following a very strict outline. (The trainers even timed us on how long it took us to get through the sections. Ahahaha…) I fell out of love with my company almost immediately, but I respected the job, and I tried my best.

In a way, it was like Nagoya all over again—teachers were forbidden to fraternize with the students, so I was hanging out with other foreigners after hours. We weren't allowed to use Japanese in our lessons, either, so almost everything I did was in English. Most of the students who wanted to see us outside of class wanted to do outings in English, anyway, for the casual practice and friendship.

On top of work problems, I had financial problems out the wazoo. I was making decent money, but I was sending more than half of it home every month to deal with credit card bills and student loans—and trying to help keep my family afloat. So I was in Japan—with my hands tied. In the year I was there, I took two out-of-town trips. I was as much a miser as I could be and still survive. My roommates (other teachers) went out all the time, drinking and dancing and having fun, going on trips. They invited me along almost every time, but I just laughed and said I was in the middle of a big story I couldn't walk away from. I took as much overtime as I could, to the point that I worked in 40~60-day cycles with a half-day or day off in between.

By April, 2007, I was feeling choked, so I figured it was time for a drastic change. I applied for a transfer to a school in Tokyo. I had a couple online friends who were living up there, also English teachers but with other companies, so I figured it had to be more fun. I spent the first month living in a friend's living room while looking for a place to stay. We were both broke as shit, but we figured out our priorities real fast: we'd buy groceries from the dollar store and make them last as long as possible, then spend what little extra income we had on alcohol. She was too sick to travel, and I didn't want to travel without her, so we drank and took long walks and wrote and listened to street bands play in Kichijoji.

There was only so long I wanted to crowd her space, though, so I moved into a gaijin house, a community house specifically for foreigners. I shared a room that was so small I could put my hands out and touch both walls, and in that room were two beds, two desks, and two sets of narrow shelves. My suitcase took up half my bed; I used the other half. My roommate came and went at all hours of the night. She was in Japan as a Japanese student, not there to work, so she had lots of time to blow her seemingly endless supply of money on clothes and all-night parties. I probably said twenty words to her the three months I was there. Ha.

Life was perfect—the only kind of perfect that matters, where it's frustrating and disappointing and has more downs than ups but you wouldn't want it any other way.

Then Nova went bankrupt.

It took a couple months to die, two months where our checks were late and one where it didn't show up at all. I worked overtime toward the end, knowing I wasn't going to get paid, knowing teachers were quitting left and right and students were still booking lessons. The district manager was busting his ass trying to find people to cover lessons, and every time he called he sounded defeated. I couldn't tell him no.

Lies

The day our checks didn't show up, I had to say enough. I had roughly $800 on me, money I'd been saving so I could spend Christmas in Okinawa. I could survive another two months in Tokyo and look for another job, but if nothing came, I had no way of getting back to the US again, and no one to turn to for financial help. I couldn't risk it, so I put the money into a ticket instead and flew home two weeks later.

One week later, I got a job offer in Shinjuku. Great money, wonderful location, Japanese company. They needed an office worker who could double as an intermediary between the Japanese staff and English-speaking staff—exactly what I wanted when I moved to Japan. Too bad I voided my visa and blew my money on a plane ticket home, hm? That's life, I guess, but I am still a little bitter over it, even when I try hard not to be.

Now I've been back in the US for almost three years.

For the most part, I'm doing okay. Then it'll hit so hard it's crippling—that need to go back, that need to find anything Japanese I can and hide myself deep inside it. I live practically one street away from JTown in San Francisco, but sometimes I can't bear to walk through it. Sometimes I can't stand hearing Japanese on the sidewalk below my window. I go mad, thinking I'm in the US. I start hating everything about where I live and what I'm doing. I spend hours comparing ticket prices and apartment prices and job hunting, then drink myself numb so I can't think anymore.

I have plans for my future. I have careers I want—with the military, maybe, or the San Francisco Police Department. I'm old enough that I should pick a respectable job with a steady income and get out of minimum wage. The smart thing to do is pick a solid career, pay off my debt, and save up for a future vacation.

But sometimes I want to throw it all away just to get my feet back on Japanese soil. And I'll be right back where I started, penny pinching and a sore thumb, the same credit card bills and student loan debt that made it hard to live last time, but I'll be home, and sometimes that feels like a more than fair trade. After all, I'm doing that same financial juggling right now as a barista in San Francisco. Why do it here if I can do it there?

"Luckily", I can't afford to just drop and run. When you're busy making ends meet, you don't have time to save up for international plane tickets.

Ahhh~ Stay to the course, marynoel, stay to the course. It's gotta get better than this, right?

Next time I talk about Japan, I promise it will be more shiny pictures and less grumbling.

(Disclaimer: I don't know who took this picture. Sorry for using it without permission, but it was the only picture we could get of our colleagues' protests. If somehow you find it here, and it's yours, let me know and I'll take it down/give proper credit!)

君の記憶がどんなに優しい言葉より / 誰も消せない僕の痛みを消してくれる

2010-06-12T16:59:00.000-07:00

+ What's On: Metamorphoze, Gackt

Oh, Japan.

Where to start?

Rather, where to start again?

Any time I try to write about Japan, it becomes a rambling essay choked with useless asides and occasional snarking. Explaining why Japan is so important to me, and what a tangled mess it makes of me, is difficult to do concisely.

Let me try to explain.

I love Japan because I was born there. My father was in the military, so my older sister and I were born in Okinawa. Funnily enough, my mother was also born in Japan, in Fukuoka, thanks to her father being in the Air Force.

I don't remember anything about Okinawa, because I was less than a year old when we left, but growing up, I knew—"I am not from here. I am from there. I am from somewhere else." It was a thought reinforced by having a nomadic childhood, and it makes up the core of everything I am—that this, THIS, is not home. No matter where I've lived, it's never felt like home. Even when we were in South Carolina, with the same permanent address for 12~13 years after my father chose not to reenlist, even then.

Japan was part of growing up for me, from pen pals in middle school to anime and choppy, self-taught Japanese lessons in high school. I said earlier I studied international business. Not my first choice, but it gave me an excuse to learn Japanese. One requirement of the program was that I had to study abroad or do an internship with a Japanese company in the states. Of course I chose the former.

I went to Japan before I was ready, but I don't think I could have waited any longer. I was there for an academic year, living in Nagoya, with barely a year of Japanese lessons under my belt. I couldn't have an intelligent conversation with a rock, but I was trying to make it on the other side of the world. I survived only because the international studies staff was looking out for all of us.

I made few friends. I have only one Japanese friend from that time, who I sporadically keep in touch with, and have mostly lost touch with the other foreigners from my class. My Japanese actually got worse doing that time, since I was hanging out with English speakers all the time. I learned absolutely nothing in my classes. I gained weight like mad, because I am probably the world's third pickiest eater and don't like the majority of Japanese food.

I loved almost every second of it.

Despite the strange looks, the signs that said NO FOREIGNERS ALLOWED, the food, the almost solid language barrier, the weight issues—Japan was home. It was a bone-deep feeling.

It ended; it had to. I came back to the states to finish my degree and regretted it immediately. The only positive was that my Japanese improved dramatically. Apparently my subconscious had been paying attention even when I wasn't. By my senior year, though, I hated the language program at my college and started sleeping through all my classes. Goodbye, Japanese skills.

I spent all of college waiting to go back to Japan. A couple others in my degree talked about going overseas as language teachers, and I got sold on the idea pretty quick. After I graduated, I applied to a couple language schools, and snagged a position with Nova Group Japan. That December, I moved back to Japan, this time to Fukuoka.

But I don't want to talk about Nova yet. My experience with Nova didn't kill my love for Japan, didn't even dent it, but the experience was pretty sour. We'll save that for a different time. Also for another time: entries about life in Japan.

Bit of Trivia: Chukyo University is where I got the name "marynoel". My history teacher was convinced that was my name, despite my best attempts to correct her. Oh well.

The things you said, I'm rehearsing them

2010-06-10T19:21:00.000-07:00

+ What's On: Bury Your Head, Saosin

For me, the true danger in revisions is that it is revising, not creating. Sure, there is genuine writing going on, and major things can change, and sometimes the plot twists and turns to an unexpected new place, but—it is new inspiration on an old idea, old characters, old scenes.

Don't get me wrong; I love revisions. Heck, I've spent the last several years revising several different stories. I've changed genders, changed genres, tweaked timelines, and even juggled a couple character deaths. In one trilogy, I wrote out the main relationship! (Let's never do that one again. It's exhausting work.)

But years and years and years of revising can be poisonous, because I get so caught up in the fixing and perfecting that I don't create.

Right now I have three major stories on my plate. In a way, that's good, because when I get frustrated with a story, I can jump to another one, and they're all such different genres that I get the mental breather I need. But they're all old projects. One I just finished polishing, so I might be able to set it aside for a while. The other two are partially-complete trilogies that need reworking from the ground up before they can be finished. All I'm doing is going from rehashing one thing to rehashing another.

Sometimes all I do is open up the projects one at a time and go, "Oh, THIS one again. Bah." and close it without even scrolling past the first page. I have a tiny pity party where I feel like I'll never come up with anything new. Then I shrug it all off and go back to work, because if I didn't like the stories, I wouldn't have written them in the first place.

My saving grace comes in the form of NaNoWriMo. You can love it or hate it—I happen to like it. It's nice getting in touch with other writers, for one, and it's the one time these past several years I've allowed myself to put aside all in-progress works and start on something new. I already have a vague plot for this year's project, and I'm excited to see what comes of it. Between now and then, though, my plate is full.

Speakin' of.. Time to stop procrastinating and get some work done.

She made up someone to be / She made up somewhere to be from

2010-06-06T06:47:00.000-07:00

+ What's on: Dead and Lovely, Tom Waits

Hello, and welcome to my spot of the woods—take two.

A couple things about me, and maybe you'll tell me a couple things about you.

The facts:

I'm an International Business major with a focus on Japanese studies. Japan will actually get a whole 'nother post of its own, else it'd completely dominate this one. You'll see why when the time comes.

I'm an Army brat, and therefore have an Army brat's restless feet. At 25, I've lived in four countries and a dozen-odd cities. I currently call San Francisco home, but I have a list of places I want to go next. I was technically supposed to move this fall, but finances and a 1% shot at a dream kind of changed things on me. I live with a fellow writer, K.M. Ruiz, and our two ridiculous cats, Firefly and Bones.

I've been a food service worker, a call center employee, an English teacher, and a barista. With my degree, you'd think I'd push for a more stable career, but it's hard to think career when all you want to do is move..! Besides, my coffee shop job has a fantastic schedule for having a life and writing – I open, so I'm up at 3 am and at work by 4:30, and I'm off at 1:30pm unless something goes wrong. If I can stay awake, I have the whole afternoon to do things.

I read, but not often. I'm an extremely picky reader, frequently disappointed in or bored by the books I pick up from the library. I'll probably update a reading list on this blog from time to time. In the meantime, if you have a favorite book you think I will definitely enjoy, please tell me! It's frustrating checking out 10 books from the library at a time and finishing exactly 0.

I write—and that's primarily what this blog will be about. I'm unpublished, but like every other writer am hoping to change that. I write novels in a couple different genres, primarily urban fantasy and soft sci-fi. That's all I'll say for now, since you'll have to hear about my projects over and over again in the future, anyway…

That's me. If anyone's out there, it's your turn now!