Japan

Back. Jetlagged. Had a great time. Three pictures.

In Yokohama

I promised updates during my Japan first so here's the first. Unfortunately there won't be any pictures as I don't presently have a means of downloading the images from my camera. You'll just have to take my word for it that they were some of the finest examples of the photographic art ever committed to an SD card.

My experience so far has been extremely favorable. I arrived early Thursday morning, to clear blue skies and an abundance of cherry blossom trees visible even before I'd left the aeroplane. I'd agreed to be met in the airport a couple of hours later, which allowed time for a shower (I could do an entire blog post about how excellent the shower facilities were, compared to the joke that is Heathrow) and some basic necessities such as arranging cellphone rental. Japan is 3G, so many foreign phones don't work here - however the rental process could not have been easier and the phone came with a handy set of basic operating instructions. I was up and texting within minutes of receiving the phone.

I was met at the airport by Tomoki Kodama, one of the Japanese fans involved in the organisation of the convention. Kodama-san and I then rode the impressively fast and modern Skyliner train into the Ueno district of Tokyo, where we met Andrew Adams, an ex-pat Brit with a long involvement in science fiction and who has been my point of contact in the long run up to Hal-Con. Within a few minutes of meeting we were sitting in the upstairs section of a fantastic Japanese restaurant, and not long after that we were eating. I had to pinch myself - I'm in Japan. Foreign trips like this are often so much more enjoyable when you can tap into a bit of local knowledge, and this was definitely the case here. The food was great. I've eaten enough Japanese food prior to my arrival to feel that it was to my taste, but one never knows quite how well that will map onto the true experience of eating locally. However, so far I've found the food to be excellent and very much to my liking. After an enjoyable stroll through Ueno's park and museum, Andrew very kindly invited me back to his place for an evening meal. Andrew and his wife were extremely hospitable and served me a very nice selection of sashimi dishes. Then I met up with Kodama-san again and we took a series of local trains to the hotel in Yokohama. I'll readily confess that, while having heard of Yokohama before, until the preparations for this trip I didn't know that it was so close to Tokyo. We were travelling at night, but I never sensed any great transition from one urban area to another.

I like Yokohama very much; people here (indeed, everywhere since my arrival) have been unfailingly friendly and helpful. And I've had a great day at the convention, in a characterful old brick building that I think many British conventions would kill for. I'll say a bit more about the convention in my next update, though.

Over Narita

"Sometimes I can hear the jets, laced into holding patterns over Narita."

- William Gibson, New Rose Hotel


So I'm off to Japan, where I'll be attending Hal-Con. I'll be in Japan for six days - five nights in Yokohama, where the convention is located, followed by one in Tokyo, which will place me near the airport for an early departure. Sitting here today, it's rather difficult to believe that, almost exactly a week from now, I'll be back in London, and then shortly after that on my way home to Wales. It all seems a little dreamlike. Other than an extremely short visit to Australia for a telescope run, I don't think I've ever flown more than 10 hours in a plane and not stayed for at least two or three weeks. It's a short trip, however, because I've a lot of work on at the moment, with two novels to finish and a busy period of commitments, literary and otherwise, running right through to June. I don't expect to have fully recovered from my jetlag before returning from Japan.

I'm tremendously excited, but also (I don't admitting) a little apprehensive. I consider myself reasonably well-travelled, including a fair few parts of Asia. I've spent time in Malaysia, Thailand, the Phillipines, Singapore, Hong Kong, and I can even legitimately claim to have visited China, albeit as part of a brief tourist excursion over the border from what was then British-governed HK. But Japan promises to be something else again. Every website or guidebook I've looked at leads to me to expect that I can expect a kind of sensory and cultural overload as soon as I get out of the airport. On one level, of course, that's massively exciting - like a chance to step into the future for a few days. But I don't doubt that I'll also find it dizzying and disorientating. I'll also be grappling with total immersion in a foreign culture, which is not something that can really be said of Hong Kong or Singapore. But, again, there would be no point going if I wasn't ready to experience that. As it happens, I've been fascinated by Japan for years - it's somewhere I've always wanted to visit - and I'll be a little disappointed if my perceptions aren't knocked askew just a bit. I fully expect they will be.

I'll aim to blog and tweet during my trip, in so far as it's practical, so watch out for updates.

Al

ps - and - in passing - thanks again to my extremely generous sponsors for the Sport Relief run, many of whom put in money after I'd completed the run. Thank you all for your donations.

Nestbuilder

I Ran

Back from the Sport Relief run - lovely day for it. Warm, clear skies, great atmosphere with everyone very happy to be out and about. Thanks again to all who sponsored me, and who retweeted my requests for sponsorship - much appreciated. I left my decision to enter until relatively late in proceedings, but as an asthmatic with an on-off chest infection for the last week or so, I couldn't really commit to the run until I knew I was up for it. (Of course I could always have hobbled around, I suppose). Aside from my generous sponsors, both friends and family, I must thank my wife for not only putting the word out, but also being there on the day with camera and encouragement. In the end we raised 340 pounds for Sport Relief (edit: now up to 400 pounds, which is astonishing!).

Here are some snaps. I was feeling a bit apprehensive about the whole thing to start with - 3 miles is not much but I'd already seen one man being helped out of the earlier 6 mile run with what looked like a painful knee injury.

The calm before the storm:

Enjoying a last sip of fruit juice.

The start! Brilliant mix of adults and kids of all abilities.

About half way around. It's an up and down course and the steep bit seemed to get a bit steeper each lap, the swines.

Daffodils.

27 minutes after the start, it's over! I feel as knackered as I look. Time for a celebratory ice cream, and then we stayed to watch the 1 mile run which had a very good turn out.

Once again, thanks for the support.

Silent Running Man (see what I did there?)

This Sunday, I'll be running three miles for Sport Relief. You can find out a bit more about it, and sponsor me if you so wish, by following this link:

http://my.sportrelief.com/sponsor/alastairreynolds

Thanks!

Wordy Rappinghood

How much is a decent day's work for the jobbing writer? I've often been asked about my own working habits, and I've tried as far as possible to answer honestly. I aim to produce 3000 words each working day, which for me is essentially the normal working week; I'll generally do a bit of work on weekends, but that's more about catching up and maintaining momentum, than hitting a set target.

But that aim of 3000 words is exactly that: an aim. It's something I'll do my best to achieve, and on a good day, or near a deadline, I'll shoot well past it. But I won't kill myself if I don't hit it; what counts is that week in, week out, there's a sense of productivity. 3000 words is a short chapter, or about half of a normal one (by my standards). It's half to a third of a short story. It's a fiftieth of a long novel. The main thing is that if I can hit somewhere between 10 and 15,000 words of fiction a week, I know that the work is going well and that I will eventually produce enough raw wordage to begin to shape a submission-quality draft. The secret to finishing a novel is not writing tens of thousands of words in a single caffeine-fuelled writing binge, but steady work over many months. Most of us will know what it's like to work ridiculously hard to meet a deadline, but by the same token we will also know the draining muscular and mental fatigue that follows. We all have to do it sometimes (I've done 10,000 words in one day) but that's no way to sustain a writing career that one hopes will span decades, rather than years.

However - here's the key thing: I didn't always write 3000 words a day and I'd hate anyone to think that this was some absolute gold standard that must be met. Far from it: I know writers who produce much less than this, and who do perfectly well. I also know at least one writer who cranks out 5000 words a day, again to no obvious detriment to either career or health. Ultimately, the individual must find the working habits that best suit their lifestyle and temperament. Do you produce 500 meticulously polished words of near-publishable prose, or 3000 words of rougher material that nonetheless moves the story along and can be edited and shaped further down the line?

When I had a day job, and a lengthy commute to and from work, I found it just about manageable to produce 2000 words of fiction an evening. But this wasn't always easy, and I could only do it because my wife was there to keep me suitably fed and watered. And that 2000 words was only achieved when I'd already had a good number of years of serious work behind me. I certainly couldn't hit anything like that wordage when I was beginning to find my way into writing.

Writing is an art, but as with any art there are elements of craft which can only be learned with time. The novice writer struggles with the basic units of prose: it's tricky to put together a decent sentence, let alone more than one. The rhythm's off. One sentence doesn't lead fluidly into the next. That paragraph break feels like it's in the wrong place, but you can't quite put your finger on where it ought to be. But if you work at it hard enough, and over a long enough period, you'll eventually get to the point where you'll have internalised the basics well enough to be able to write almost effortlessly on the level of sentence and paragraph. (That's not to say that it's all suddenly become easy, it's just that you've raised your game enough to be worrying about a whole truckload of other things). During this phase you're a bit like a learner driver, still trying to get to grips with the rudiments of clutch, throttle and brakes. And just as you wouldn't set out to drive 5000 miles before you'd got to grips with the basics of gear shifting, so I don't think it's realistic to set yourself difficult word targets before you've reached some basic level of fluency with the elements of prose. Put another way, by all means try and write 2000 or 3000 words if you think you can attain that, but don't feel too bad if you can't. Like most things, it will come with time.

Speaking for myself, I did 2000 words today. But I also did a lengthy telephone interview, and tomorrow I have a function to prepare for. The key thing is flexibility. Find a personal work target, set it, and aim for it as best you can. Be strict, but at the same time cut yourself some slack when the goal is clearly unattainable. We all have off days. If you exhaust yourself trying to meet today's target, you're probably not going to have too easy a time of it meeting tomorrow's...