Category: Inspiration

Oh Fengxia!

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi
An image of My Favorite Reads of 2024
My Favorite Reads of 2024

2024 was a good reading year for me. I’m happy about that. It’s a big bummer when it hasn’t been a good reading year. My Goodreads goal was 52 books and it looks like I’ll finish at 57. My favorite reads this year were To Live by Yu Hua and the manga I Want to Eat Your Pancreas written by Sumino Yoru and drawn by Kirihara Idumi. Both touched my heart. Both made me cry. (Oh Fengxia!) Both stayed with me. I’m thinking of getting a page from Pancreas tattooed on me.

Another book that stayed with me was For Whom the Bell Tolls. What masterful writing. What emotion. I hope I learned just a little about writing from Hemingway during that read. Other books I really enjoyed were Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee, and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy which I’m almost through but love in advance of finishing. I also reread a favorite read from 2023: All The Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami.

At the end of the year I always enjoy Spotify sharing my listening habits. My most listened to song in 2024, I believe was the same song in 2023: せかいでいちばん(Sekai de Ichiban) by Inoue Sonoko, the theme song of my favorite show, Ainori Love Wagon. According to Spotify, I’ve already listened to it 636 times this year, and I know I listened to it at least three more times today.

But if anything, 2024 has to be the year of ILLIT for me. I learned of them through Instagram in April and they became my most listened to artist of 2024 and three of my top five played songs were by them. I believe in the past three years, MXMS was my most listened to artist, but this year they didn’t make the top five. I’m guessing because they stopped releasing new work and that was a big bummer, but they’re still my favorite band.

I definitely think what I read in a year affects what and how I write in that same year. I believe music does as well as I’m usually listening to music most of the day, every day. I become obsessed with songs and listen to them on repeat and this definitely impacts my mood which I believe filters into what I end up writing even though during my longer writing sessions I tend to listen to ambient noise.

Anyhow, I just wanted to share that. Sorry if it was of no interest to you. Even if it wasn’t, I hope you had a good reading and listening year yourself.

Grasshopper

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi

My Favorite Reads of Another blog lapse. I haven’t posted here since August. This is only my fifth post of 2023 and it’s the last day of the year. Maybe it seems remiss of me not to have posted since August, but I haven’t had anything noteworthy to mention. Since that last post, I’ve just been spinning my wheels, going in circles, and getting nowhere. I tried working on I Was Mistaken, like I mentioned, but it became painful to write. My shrink said a little discomfort is okay, but what I was doing was retraumatizing myself. I then went back to writing about Tara Raikatuji but couldn’t find her voice and so I completed another lap around my circle of stories by returning to Forever Candy. I struggled with the same point of view problems I’ve always had with that story, and my last attempt read back so lifelessly that it made me think of a desiccated grasshopper, if that’s a thing. This week, I pulled out a screenplay I wrote in 2008 about a cellist. It’s kind of a haunted house story. I’m kicking around having a go at novelizing it and it feels fresh because it’s not yet part of my traditional merry-go-round of stories that I tinker with then give up on. I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere though.

So that’s what I’ve been doing since August, even though I’ve written every day for the past 48 days. I’ve been forcing myself to write for a minimum of ten minutes a day to try to get something going. Though I haven’t made any progress on any of my projects, forcing myself to write like this has at least awakened whatever it is that allows me to daydream. I’m hoping this will soon lead me to finding solutions with my current stories or thinking of something entirely new.

I’m going to remember 2023 as the year I had writer’s block. I’ll also remember it as the year I read All the Lovers in the Night and Kokoro. It’s also the year I deleted Twitter, and deactivated my author Instagram and TikTok. I decided only to keep my personal accounts (@deadponies). My author accounts felt like a collection of promotional posts for my books rather than showing anything about me as a person. Hopefully, the posts about me are more interesting than my advertisements.

I really hope I get through this writer’s block soon. I can’t have another year like this. I was thinking about pretending I got an agent and a book deal so I can give myself a deadline to finish something—anything.

Goodbye 2023.

Hello 2024.

Of Love and Rage

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi

I attended American Ballet Theatre’s Of Love and Rage last night. I had considered not going because I would have to go alone as I couldn’t find someone to take my second ticket, but I put on a suit and put a bottle of Klonopin in my coat pocket and went anyway.

American Ballet Theatre Of Love and RageI’m glad I went. It was a beautiful performance and it told a mythological story I had never come across before. The emotions captured between Callirhoe (Christine Shevchenko), Chaereas (Thomas Forster), and Dionysius (Blaine Hoven) were spellbinding and heart wrenching. The chorus performances really stood out in a way that I hadn’t felt in a ballet before. Watching Katherine Williams as the Queen of Babylon, made me think of Yelena—not the étoile but the one who stole Marcel’s heart. (In a handful of scenes, the head of Aphrodite was suspended in the background. It was so glorious I wanted it tattooed on me. I took a picture during bows, so maybe I will.)

The reason I’m including this in my blog is because the performance reminded me how important it is as an artist to experience other art. The ballet was so moving that it became inspirational. The experience has already influenced the chapter I am writing this morning.

And I didn’t even need the Klonopin I brought with me.

Listening

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi

Back on November 7, 2019, I posted that I felt disappointed when I went back to reread some of The Scribbled Victims. I mentioned how that always happens to me when I go back and reread my work after time has passed. That should have been such a happy day for me too, as it was the publication date of its sequel, Scribbling the Eternal.

On Monday, I told my psychologist something extraordinary happened in regard to this. I decided to listen to the audiobook version of The Scribbled Victims to try to keep me engaged with the series as I slowly write the third and final book. When I listened to it, I was no longer disappointed. I quite liked the story and felt myself loving Yelena and Orly. Sure, there were sentences I wish I could revise, different words I wish I would have used, but overall, I felt proud of it again.

I don’t know listening rather than rereading made such a difference. Maybe the credit is due to my narrator, Laura Bannister. Maybe hearing the words in her voice, rather than the one that reads aloud in my head when my eyes move over text, allowed me to appreciate it from a different and fresh perspective—as if the story was no longer my own, for I am certainly my worst critic. At any rate, I’m glad I decided to give it a listen.

I’m now listening to Scribbling the Eternal. Being so immersed in Orly’s thoughts as I listen, continually gives me new ideas and I scramble to jot them down on my reMarkable tablet. I hope this doesn’t sound egotistical, but as I write the final book, I may listen to the audiobooks over and over again, as it keeps me engaged, keeps Orly’s voice alive, and keeps the wheels of my imagination turning.

Putting Forth

Posted on by Robert Tomoguchi

Saturday night, I saw the Mariinsky Ballet perform my favorite ballet—La Bayadere. I always love how dreamlike the Third Act is—The Kingdom of Shades. It makes my imagination swoon. But this performance was made more special by the beautiful sadness of Nikiya’s dance before her death at the end of the Second Act. (Nikiya was performed by Maria Khoreva.) As someone who loves words, it’s awe inspiring to see how much can be expressed through movement. My heart broke for her and it was glorious.

 

Sunday night, I finished listening to the thirty-five chapters of the audiobook version of Scribbling the Eternal. I have only sixteen things I’d like re-read. I feel very proud of this book. I feel like I’m putting forth my best work, and there is nothing more important when you choose to share your writing.