Hello again!

The best writing advice I’ve ever received was from Larry Correia:

Butt in chair, hands on keyboard, turn off distractions.

This general idea is key for productivity and success in just about any part of life. Need to dig a hole? Shovel in dirt, boots on the ground, remove distractions. Literally any other task you can think of? Put yourself in the right spot, get yourself in the best position to work, and don’t let anything take your attention away.

I got about halfway through typing that one paragraph before my two-year-old came in and took me away from writing this blog post for about ten minutes. Some “distractions” are stickier than others.

But the reason I bring this up is kind of a shoutout to other writers, creatives, and any kind of laborer out there. It’s easy to get down on your work and let things grind to a halt. Well… Hey! You! Keep at it! You can’t control success or failure, but you can control how much effort you put in to increase the odds of success as high as they will go! And, while the destination often does matter, if you can figure out how to make it about the journey too, and then the mere act of trying becomes a win—and you’re giving yourself opportunities to get better as you go, or do even better next time.

Again, destination does often matter—I still want my books to get noticed and purchased, you still want your projects to hit their goals. Let’s not pretend results shouldn’t matter. But they don’t have to hold the totality of meaning.

On a completely unrelated note, are you familiar with Devon Ericksen? Those who have stuck around here for a while certainly have—he wrote Theft of Fire, the single best book I have a hard time recommending (for content reasons). If you tolerate strong language, this guy gives some of the most fantastic analyses of current events that I’ve ever read, to the point where I wonder if I’ll ever try to describe anything in the real world myself ever again, or solely point people toward his X page. (Which… out of context, saying “Go check out someone’s X-page” doesn’t sound good.) I don’t agree with everything he writes down, but he’s hits the nail on the head far more often than he hits his thumb.

Bloggyness Review—Follow Up on Perfect Days

I have no idea how to discuss this movie.

To try to state, in short, last week’s summary, Perfect Days is a two-hour slice-of-life movie that is almost entirely carried by Koji Yakusho’s performance as Hirayama, a (middle-aged?) man who lives alone, cleans toilets for a living, and generally seems content with the almost unbroken pattern of his life. I would recommend watching it, but also think you’re going to get the most mileage out of this movie if you have an idea of what you’re getting into. I’ll discuss that a little in the next paragraph, but mostly I’m going to add my two pennies to the general conversation around the movie.

You spend a lot of time watching Hirayama clean toilets. And dreaming. And riding his bike, among other little, everyday moments. In fact, to steal an observation from another review, that’s the backbone of this movie: following Hirayama’s daily life, sometimes in excruciating detail, sometimes with days whizzing by, but never missing a meaningful moment, and dwelling in particular on the moments where Hirayama’s repetition breaks (usually because of an outside force). I think watching this movie in thirty-minute increments was a boon for me; I might have gotten exhausted and quit trying to watch all the way through if I had no breaks.

What I don’t get is why almost all of the conversation around this movie is about being present.

Yes, being present is a good thing—and this movie showcases so many of the most compelling aspects of mindful presence. Hirayama sees so many beautiful things in everyday life that most people would miss; he has wonderful interactions with random people that he may never see again. Others, who are distracted by phones or worlds in their head, seem to be somewhat anesthetized to life, at least compared to Hirayama.

As well, Perfect Days doesn’t act like being present is a cure-all. Hirayama is lonely at times. He’s sad at times. He’s frustrated at times. Sometimes he makes the wrong decisions, or otherwise reveals flaws in his character. He’s human, and that so often makes him extremely compelling.

Hirayama’s life might be able to be distilled into a quote of his that, particularly in context, I found quite moving:

Next time is next time, now is now.

~Hirayama, Perfect Days

Beautiful. A lot of people, myself included, sometimes need to be reminded to let now be now. Particularly when we’re with loved ones, or experiencing a profound, private moment.

But Hirayama is an island. And that’s not a good thing.

Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with seeking solitude, or enjoying being alone. Some people can find a great deal of meaning there, myself included. But it’s not healthy to be actively disconnected from the people around you, as appears to be Hirayama’s case. While I began the movie somewhat inspired by Hirayama, as the two-hour runtime ticked down I more and more realized how devastatingly alone Hirayama is—I grew to feel bad for him. He could go days, maybe even weeks, surrounded by people (by virtue of cleaning public toilets), without saying a word, or when he does speak not saying more than two or three words (or even just a grunt) to a stranger that he will never encounter again. That’s not healthy. I think Hirayama’s struggle between breaking down and maintaining optimism (at the end of the film) evidences this a bit. It left me with a hollow feeling, a sense of pity for a man desperately in need of connection, but who, for whatever reason, avoided it.

Maybe there’s such thing as being too present. So wrapped up in passing moments as they arrive that one never considers what could be.

Of course, part of what makes Perfect Days so discussable is how ambiguous it is. We know almost nothing about Hirayama’s personal life. We have surface-level details, such as, for example, the appearance that he is estranged from a wealthy family, and that there are either hard feelings there or feelings that are hard to bear; but we never get deeper than that. And, since we can’t read Hirayama’s mind, we’ll never know more. As a result, almost any observation on this movie, I think, reveals more about the viewer than the film itself. There’s some beauty in that, and some frustration.

But if I’m right—that Perfect Days is better at revealing its audience than it is at revealing itself—perhaps everything I have to say is simply an extension of my own love of solitude, but the pain I feel from isolation, and frustration I can have with myself at an occasional inability to be present.

Perhaps. But I still think Hirayama would be much happier if he just asked that one girl out on a date. She seems to like him, and he would be much less alone if that went anywhere.

Maybe that’s what he was going to do, before he became embarrassed by what he perceived as a mistake. No way of knowing for sure.

Again, I’d recommend Perfect Days. Just know that you aren’t getting a movie with action, big twists, or anything like that. You’re either watching a deep, thoughtful slice-of-life, or you’re looking into a slightly bent mirror. One of the two.

Writing Updates

Hazel Halfwhisker is at a little over 132,000 words, a roughly 5,000–word jump from last week. All right! About a thousand words a day! That’s not a wise hard goal when most days I average a half-hour of writing time, but it is an ideal I celebrate when it happens.

I predicted last week that I was about two weeks off of finishing Part 2 of the novel. Not happening… As in, I don’t think it’s a reasonable goal to be finished with Part 2 by this time next week. Maybe. I will be close, if nothing else.

Hazel Halfwhisker is part of the inspiration behind my mini-inspirational talk that started out this post. I like writing big, long, detailed stories set in worlds that I spend a lot of time building; doing so takes a lot of time, which can get very discouraging as the months roll by and I realize I haven’t even finished the story’s first draft. (Much less made meaningful progress toward publishing Inner Demon, which currently languishes in a final-draft-but-not-yet-publishable state, needing a cover, formatting, etc.) I do really believe that my work is worth it, though.

I did get a little boost of excitement this week. Do you know Dan Wells? If you do, most likely it’s through I Am Not a Serial Killer, his Partials YA novels, or his connection with Brandon Sanderson. Well, this week, during the Intentionally Blank podcast he does with the Sandman, Dan Wells mentioned that he is always on the hunt for media that makes him think of Redwall—he described it as his “white whale,” so apparently there’s a dearth of options out there. Well… it’s shameful to admit, but I have never read a single Redwall book. But my writing group will not stop comparing Hazel Halfwhisker to Redwall. As a result, I might be willing to kill to get an ARC copy of my book into Dan Wells’ hands. Even just a quote for a cover would be stellar, but if he enjoyed the book enough to give it a shoutout, that would vastly increase my tiny visibility.

The danger for me is that stories like Tale of Despereaux don’t count for Dan—too many humans, not a mouse-centric enough world. (Perhaps that’s why, for him, hunting media that “feels” like Redwall is like hunting white whales.) My world is very mouse-centric, but a key part of the worldbuilding is that, in the background, something apocalyptic has eliminated most of humanity, which is why intelligent rodents are able to flourish in the world. I’m hoping that, in the unlikely event I somehow get my book in Dan’s hands, I still count as Redwall-ish enough…

We’ll see. The odds of Dan seeing my book are exceptionally low anyway, I would imagine.

Send-off

If you have any way to get me connected with Dan Wells… Let me know. Beyond that, have a great week!