Small Positives in 2020

Posted on December 31, 2020 by Robert Tomoguchi

I haven’t posted here in over a month. My depression is still bad, but I’m trying. I only wrote 13 days this month, but 10 of those days happened in the last 12 days of December. I also had a December word count of 4,347 new words when my monthly goal is 6,000. I feel these things are significant and positive and hopefully a sign that I’m picking myself back up. I just emailed Chapters Eight, Nine, and Ten to my beta readers. They haven’t received new Orly chapters since July 28. A lot of that was because of interrupting my progress with Orly to write and publish The Last Midnight, but in looking at my word count spreadsheet, more of it is the result of depression. But again, it looks like I might be picking myself back up.

Today is the last day of 2020. I know it’s been a bad year for most because of the pandemic, police violence, and our election being contested, but today I’m trying to see the small positives. I exchanged video messages with my best friend nearly every day. I imagined and published The Last Midnight. I learned that I enjoy working from home. And I’ve begun to gain the courage to retire from my day job early. I’m looking forward to 2021. I’m hoping the Covid-19 vaccine will help turn things around. I’m hoping I will finish writing Scribbles of the Empress so that I can publish it in early 2022. I’m hoping I will cope with my depression and anxiety well enough to remain productive.

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Turning to Sleep

Posted on November 26, 2020December 31, 2020 by Robert Tomoguchi

The Last Midnight Proof Copies — My Proof Copies

My proof copies of The Last Midnight arrived on November 24. I avoided looking at them until the next day, and when I did I purposely gave it little thought and pressed the button to publish. I didn’t want to think of fear and give in to indecision, so I just did it. The paperback became available while I was asleep last night. I’ve gone to bed by six p.m. for the past three nights, because my depression persists and I believe I’m still descending. Who knows how low the low will be. I turn to sleep because I don’t want to be part of reality. Because of the writing and publishing of The Last Midnight, I haven’t visited Scribbles of the Empress since September 8. I’ve talked to Orly a couple times though and rehearsed some of Rosanna’s dialogue in my head. But now that The Last Midnight is out, I should go back to Orly. I plan to open her manuscript after I post this. I hope reuniting with her might help my depression even if it ends up being, at best, a distraction. It would be nice though to feel inspired. That’s what I’ll hope for. Happy Thanksgiving.

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Cupcake

Posted on November 22, 2020 by Robert Tomoguchi

On the fourteenth, I registered the ISBN for The Last Midnight. On the seventeenth, I received the final typesetting and copyrighted the story with the US Copyright Office. On the nineteenth, I approved the final version of the book cover. The audiobook is currently being recorded. I’m waiting for the physical proof to arrive tomorrow. If it’s acceptable, I’ll have to find the courage to click the button to publish the paperback. (The eBook can’t come out until January 8 at the earliest, for reasons I don’t want to bore you with.)

Though I’ve spent a lot of money producing this book, I still don’t feel compelled to publish it because the money is already spent and because I’m still scared. I’m scared it will be ridiculed. I’m scared it will be very successful. I’m scared because I plan to make the eBook free in order to try and get a lot more readers which will mean more feedback than I’m used to. I still make it a practice not to read my reviews, but with this story I think it will be difficult not to take a peek.

My anxiety has been terrible today. I’ve already taken two Klonopins and want a third. I don’t know how much of it has to do with the book release, how much has to do with feeling overwhelmed at my day job and tomorrow being Monday. It’s probably a combination of the two with other things like Covid, the election, and loneliness sprinkled on top. A stress flavored cupcake.

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Fear and Book Covers

Posted on November 8, 2020 by Robert Tomoguchi

I never went back to writing Orly’s book while waiting for the rest of my beta readers on The Last Midnight because I fell into a depression. It was pretty severe. I’m still not out of it, but I am functioning and have been working with my psychologist and psychiatrist to deal with it. I heard back from my last beta reader a few days ago and as the stress of the presidential election passed yesterday, I finished my rewrites. Today, I sent it to my sister for editing. I’m tempted to contact my typesetter and cover designer because it feels exciting to go into production, but I’m still not certain I will publish this story. I want to but I’m scared.

Speaking of my cover designer, she’s been working hard on a new concept for the Black Wax Vampire Trilogy book covers. I was very happy with my previous covers, but a book consultant recommended I go with something that suggested vampire. The updated covers are now live on Amazon and Audible for The Scribbled Victims and Scribbling the Eternal. Even though Scribbles of the Empress is still being written, she made a cover for that too. What do you think?

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The Last Midnight

Posted on October 4, 2020October 18, 2020 by Robert Tomoguchi

My writing sprint was successful. It was helped by taking three Fridays off in a row in order to give myself three, three-day weekends. I always write more per day during a three-day weekend than I do in a regular weekend. Today is the end of my third three-day weekend. Twenty-four days after conceiving of the idea for my ghost story, I finished writing it. I titled it The Last Midnight. It’s fifty-six chapters and just under 17,000 words, making it a short novella.

I didn’t write every one of those twenty-four days. There were a couple days where depression got the best of me, and more days when I was too stressed and exhausted from my day job.

This is a different book for me. For starters, the chapters alternate between the points-of-view of two characters, one character written in first person, the other in third. This structure is something I’m considering doing if I ever get around to writing Filming Tara Raikatuji as a novel. This will be the first time I publish something in third person which I’ve thus far been too afraid to do as I feel like there is more responsibility required when writing in the third person.

Though this is another story about love, I really struggled to write it. A couple of days ago it occurred to me why. In The Scribbled Victims, Yelena’s love for Marcel is lost love, and the love between Yelena and Orly is the love between mother and child. In Scribbling the Eternal, the love between Orly and Mirela is dysfunctional, and the love between Orly and Berthold is unrequited. In The Last Midnight the love may be a tad impulsive or even obsessive, but it’s the closest thing I’ve written to healthy romantic love. I don’t know if I succeeded at expressing it. Only Amirah has seen it and on Friday when I sent her the ending chapters, she sent me back a video crying after finishing them. That felt like a success, but I just don’t know if the love is believable. I hope so. I really want people to love this love story.

After I post this, I’m going to email my beta readers to ask if any of them would like to give feedback. I’ve written this so quickly that this will be the first time my beta readers will see something all at once, rather than a few chapters at a time. I’m terrified of their responses, one beta reader especially. Wish me luck.

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Ghost Sprints

Posted on September 13, 2020October 4, 2020 by Robert Tomoguchi

Three days ago, I was looking for a new audiobook to listen to on my evening walks. I went down a rabbit hole, finally browsing my way to horror and discovering a sub-genre listing for ghosts. I love ghosts, more than vampires even (but I still love Orly most). I was hoping to find a book about someone falling in love with a ghost, but after browsing for a total of forty minutes and realizing it was getting darker and darker out, I gave up and went for my walk without bringing earbuds. While walking I tried to imagine a ghost love story of my own, thought of one and watched it unfurl before me. By the end of my walk I had beginning and end and was very excited. At home I took out my ReMarkable writing tablet and hand wrote notes so I wouldn’t forget the story, as I didn’t’ think I’d be able to get to it for another year, after I finish writing Scribbles of the Empress.

That was a Thursday. On Friday I finished working my day job early, and gave in to temptation and began writing digital notecards in Scrivener to outline the ghost story. I was wary to do that because I didn’t want to get sidetracked from finishing Orly’s final book, because I know when I think of a new story I always think it’ll be easy and I’ll be able to write it all quickly, but once I begin, complications always arise and then it’s never quick. But writing notecards didn’t feel like I was diverging from finishing the book I need to finish. It was just structuring the story so it would be solid when I came back to it.

But the more I worked at it, the more excited I became to write it. And as it felt like it would be a short work—a long short story—on Friday evening, I did a writing sprint and wrote five chapters. They’re all very short, but it felt good to write them. I don’t know if the writing style will appeal to readers, but I think the story will, and so I’m thinking of publishing it online for free, in the hopes of attracting new readers.

On Saturday, I sprinted again and wrote six more chapters. I haven’t looked back to read any of them over, but that’s my strategy with the sprint—just get to the end and revise after.

Today is Sunday, and I’m going to sprint again. If I make enough progress, I’ll take Monday off work so I can keep running with it. I hope to get to the end soon, so I can go back to Orly.

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Twenty

Posted on August 29, 2020 by Robert Tomoguchi

After twenty days of not writing, I finally sat back down today and opened my manuscript. Over six hours I read through the first six chapters, comparing them to the notes given by my beta readers and making notes. It did feel like I had fresh eyes, for there were many details I had forgotten. To my surprise, I was happier with the pages than I expected I would be. I will need to go back for rewrites, but they are fewer than I anticipated. My beta readers have seen up through Chapter Seven, so I’d like to get through that chapter today as well, but my eyes hurt and my brain is tired.

I’m going to go for a walk and then out to eat. I’m donating platelets in the morning which takes a few hours and takes a lot out of me, so I can only hope that I’ll have the time and energy to sit down again tomorrow, but I will try, even if only for a fraction of an hour.

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Hiatus

Posted on August 22, 2020 by Robert Tomoguchi

I haven’t written for fourteen days, but this was planned with my psychologist after the mental and emotional difficulties I had earlier this month. She thought it best that I take some time off to just rest and I thought it would be helpful to clear my head from the new book since I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it. I’m hoping when I return to the manuscript and read it again, fresh eyes will show me what’s missing.

In the time I haven’t been writing I’ve been reading and making linocut prints. Linocuts are something I used to do years ago as form of therapy. I carved a new one today and inked it. I’d post it, but my psychologist wants me to consider not sharing them. She’s interested in seeing what it would be like for me to have something creative that I do just for me. The thought being that perhaps I was happier with my writing before I began to publish it, making it public, which led me to start caring about response, feedback, praise, and criticism.

My two weeks off ends today, so I could start writing again tomorrow, but I don’t know if I will. I still have a lot on my mind. I miss Orly, but I don’t know that I’m recovered enough to struggle with her story.

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Cuckoo

Posted on August 8, 2020 by Robert Tomoguchi

I wrote 7,441 new words during my week off from work and my manuscript reached nearly 43,000 words. I was very happy about that. But the following week, I had severe mental issues, the kind that I don’t talk about much, but it was very hard and I missed work and didn’t write for three days. I’m starting to feel recovered today and I wrote for a couple of hours. I’ve been looking over recent chapters. I have this feeling that they’re not right and I need to overhaul them, but when I reread them, I don’t see anything I want to change. There’s just something that doesn’t feel right about them. I don’t know if it’s tone, or if some of the passages seem rushed. I figure I’ll just keep moving forward and the answer will reveal itself later, perhaps as late as my rewriting period after I finish the full draft.

I’m thinking of starting a new Patreon page where I will write what I’m going to call Crowd Fiction. I will write stories using the input and suggestions of my patrons. The stories will evolve based on what the Patrons submit. I’m worried though that no one will join or that I’ll come across as egotistical to think anyone would want to pay to support my page just so they can write with a nobody author. I wish I had been born with fearlessness and confidence, but I wasn’t. I was born instead with a brain that likes to daydream and sometimes go cuckoo.

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