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#amreading Review Time

Ryu Murakami’s "Coin Locker Babies": Drawing in an Audience


For the past week, I’ve been engrossed in Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami (see the picture, left). My friend had shown it to me about a month ago, and, just by reading the front cover flap, I felt intrigued by the subject matter.

The book is roughly 300+ pages, but already I’m nearing the end of the book after only reading it for one week. The first sentence immediately drew me in, and, although a few parts have been a little slow in reading (Murakami likes to focus on descriptions/lists), the book in general has been very satisfying for me to read.

It’s books like these that make me feel really inspired: the writer takes a unique topic, twists it into this fantastical plot, and keeps going with it. Murakami is really talented in drawing the audience into the book fully. Although I haven’t read any of his other works yet, the reviews I have come across for his other novels have been nothing but positive ones.

I have to admit, the subject matter in this book may not be for those who get a queasy stomach (some parts become a bit too graphic), but it’s all very well written. I didn’t even realize that this book was meant to be somewhat “futuristic” until I noticed the story’s timeframe and the publication date of the novel (the novel was published in 1980; the story is set in the late 1980s).

I’m certainly looking forward to reading more of Murakami’s works, and I do believe I have found some spot of inspiration from this reading episode.

Categories
celebrity death music My San Francisco Chronicles

Unexplainable: Michael Jackson-related incident

It’s been a couple days since Michael Jackson passed away, and all the world/blogosphere is still buzzing away about the death. It’s still very hard for me to believe that the man died at the still-young age of 50; I remember growing up listening to his music and watching old music videos of the Jackson 5 on VH1. My siblings and I used to aspire to learn all the dance moves and found ourselves garbling together the lyrics of songs such as “Dancing Machine” and “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough”.

The point of this entry is not simply to remember Jackson, but to also present a strange incident that occurred to me on the morning of the 25th:

It was just a normal Thursday morning for me; hopped onto the bus, took my 40-minute commute downtown. I crossed Market Street and was walking towards the office building when, out of the corner of my eye, I spied a character dressed up strangely: the man was wearing a Michael Jackson-esque outfit, similar to what Jackson wore for his “Thriller” video. At first, I thought the guy was just dressed up weirdly and I shrugged it off as being “Oh, this is San Francisco; I’ve seen weird characters before.” But then, I studied the man’s outfit a little longer, and I realized that, in fact, he was intentionally dressing up as Michael Jackson, with the single white glove and everything. I didn’t study the man’s face too long; this whole little incident only took probably a minute out of my time that morning. It was 8 AM PST.

Michael Jackson was taken to the hospital around 12 PM PST. He died around 3 PM PST.

So, then, how did that man know? What was the purpose of that man dressing up as Michael Jackson so early in the morning? Did he somehow know? Was he deemed a “crazy man” but, in actuality, has psychic powers?

I hadn’t even thought much of that morning incident until the news broke of Jackson’s death and then, suddenly, that image of the man from the morning came back to me, and I felt myself growing spooked.

I don’t know if I’ll ever know what that man had meant by the outfit, but it sure gave me something unexpected to ponder upon.

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Inner Editor motivation NaNoWriMo Novel 2

Flipping through Novel 2 & Anticipating NaNoWriMo 2009.

As the saying goes, “Better late than never.”

After putting off any progress related to my later works, i.e., Novels 2 & 3, I finally got around to printing out the first draft manuscript of Dark Prayer’s Song aka Novel 2. I’m currently in the midst of reading the entire manuscript to refresh my memory on what the novel is about. It’s been hard trying not to let my Inner Editor come out and say “Man, this piece is not so great.” It took me roughly 10 months to finish that novel, mainly because I went through a big block during the middle of 2008 (I began writing the novel last January). There were a lot of tumultuous things going on in my personal life at that point anyway; once NaNoWriMo 2008 rolled around, though, I re-gained my inspiration again to finish up that novel. Writing “The End” to a manuscript is always a big accomplishment.

Speaking of NaNoWriMo: although it’s still four months away, I’m already feeling excited for this year’s event. It’ll be my fifth novel to write, and, well, who knows where this one will take me? With all my novel projects so far, I have been trying to dive into different genres to feel out my writing voice. They’re all experiments, as beautiful (and sometimes ugly) they may be. In the end, there’s no real regret for any of the projects; they’ve all been good learning experiences. I’ll write on-the-fly again this year with NaNoWriMo; it’s better that way for me anyway. Although I’m usually known to be one who makes lists/plans a lot, when it comes to writing, I just want to write and let it flow instead of pre-judging/overanalyzing how I’m going to go about it.

Really, just write; that’s all there is to it.

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#amreading challenge community goals Novel 1 Novel 2 Novel 3

Resurfacing.

I was MIA this past month due to a slew of events: family visiting, new projects at work, and, simply, the continuing Writer’s Block. I didn’t complete Writo de Mayo again; I probably quit earlier this year than last year due to the unforeseen busy weeks in May.

However, this past week I have been trying to get myself back into writing again with some exercises from The Pocket Muse. It’s a good change of pace from reading all the reference/self-help books I’d read in the past month; after awhile, my mind turns to mush if I read too much of similar material. I need to get back to reading fiction again.

This next week, I anticipate finally printing out the first drafts of Novels 2 & 3, Dark Prayer’s Song and Time Abroad. I’ve also revisited my plot for Novel 1, Writing the Past, and realize that probably part of the reason why I’ve avoided revising the novel is because I’m still a little iffy over the restructured plot.

Slowly, but surely, things will get done.

Categories
#amreading goals photography Work in Progress

Too many goals? & Author Photos

This past weekend I took some time off from the Internet and a lot of things that might have been keeping me stressed. It felt so nice to relax a bit and not think about things that I “needed” to do. I spent all of Saturday just reading and working out to my Wii games. Sometimes it’s best to just slow down and relax, enjoy the present.

I’ve been reading a couple of self-help books lately, and one line from Dave Ramsey’s The Total Money Makeover has struck a chord with me: to successfully accomplish something, one must have focus and take small steps at a time. It’s not the exact wording of the phrase, but that’s the general idea. It’s stayed on my mind for a couple of days because it has made me wonder if the reason why I haven’t made much strides in my writing projects is because I haven’t had focus. I’ve set out a lot of goals for myself in the field of writing, and a lot of them I’ve been attempting to work at simultaneously, e.g., finishing the first draft of Novel 4 and rewriting Novel 1. Aside from those two big goals, I’ve had smaller goals as well: blog daily in each of my blogs (three of them!), write reviews on Yelp! as often as possible, and so on. The smaller goals have become more habitual just because they are daily things for me; however, even with those, I have fallen behind.

It’s probably due to the fact that I keep just giving a little progress into each area, so it feels slow and frustrating right now. I wonder if I should reduce the amount of goals I have and try to just focus on one. What is more important to me right now?

In other news, late last week I finally received my author photos from NaNoWriMo‘s “Night of Writing Dangerously”. I had nearly forgotten about those photos until I saw the email in my inbox; they were initially supposed to be ready by February, but they probably got backlogged in their work. No worries; I was still glad to see the high-quality pictures. I’ll be posting them up on my website and my profiles as soon as I crop them down a little (they are very large files). I think it’s time to update my author photos anyway; haven’t updated in awhile! The pink jacket can only hold the audience’s attention for so long.

Here’s to (hopefully) a productive week ahead.