Table For One

Posted on November 27, 2024 by Robert Tomoguchi

ChatGPT drawing of Orly Bialek and Yelena Solodnikova — ChatGPT’s rendition of Orly and Yelena

I’m still at it—writing Orly’s Journals. I had another slump like the one I mentioned in my last blog post, where I was stuck on a single entry for a couple weeks. I’m now only seven entries ahead. But with the time I’ll have off for the holidays, I’m hoping I’ll get caught up, if not get ahead. So far, all the journal entries total just under 41K words. That’s half the length of The Scribbled Victims, and I only began writing in April. Despite my depression being very bad and work being tough in recent months, I continue to sit down to write every single day. Of course, some days are more productive than others. My best days usually involve activating my Freedom internet blocker.

I recently started asking ChatGPT for author advice on how to grow my readership. It’s given me tips I’ve heard before, but it also suggested things I hadn’t heard and never considered. To my surprise, it knew about The Scribbled Victims. It got some plot points wrong and knew less about the subsequent books, but I was still amazed it had a general understanding of the characters and storyline. Because one of the things ChatGPT suggest I do is hold a fan art contest, today I prompted it with: “Can you create a picture of Orly Bialek and Yelena Solodnikova?” What it returned was more than I expected, although I think it still doesn’t understand Orly’s scribbles. Still, it made me feel my books are more recognizable than I thought. Maybe I’m fooling myself though—maybe ChatGPT knows I’m the author and is just being nice to me. If anyone reading this post uses ChatGPT, I’d be very interested to know if it recognized Orly or Yelena or The Scribbled Victims for you.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I’m going to Shojin in Culver City for a vegan Thanksgiving omakase dinner. Table for one. That’s my life. On Monday, my shrink and I talked about loneliness, and how, because of wanting to write, I often make choices that result in being alone even though I feel lonely. What to do?

On Patreon last week, I asked readers which characters they’d like to see more of in Orly’s Journals. To my surprise, the most votes went to Ji’Indushul. Because of this, my next “Scribble Secret” post on Friday will be about that character.

So that’s basically all that’s going on with me. With so much nothing going on, it must be no surprise that this is only my fifth blog post for 2024. LOL.

Orly’s Journals Update

Posted on September 17, 2024 by Robert Tomoguchi

Orly’s Journals, my serialized online novel through Patreon is going quite well. I have eleven subscribers already and am hoping for more. I want more subscribers to increase discussion among the readers regarding Orly’s new ongoing story. I’ve been posting a journal entry each Thursday. This Thursday will be the be the sixteenth post. To keep up with the demands of serialization, I’m nine entries ahead in writing and am currently working on Entry 25.

In addition to the journal entries, I’ve been posting image-based previews, solicitations from readers for character names and plot points, and my favorite—what I’m calling Scribbled Secrets where I post trivial information about Orly’s universe, inside and outside her trilogy, that the reader is likely unaware of. It’s fun to tell mine and Orly’s secrets.

As an independent author, I do have a small budget for marketing and promotion. But because that budget is small, I must be very selective when choosing what to throw my money at. Should I spend it on Amazon book ads? Instagram sponsored posts? Book review services? I’ve tried various approaches with limited success. But I feel like I should be more active in my attempt to increase awareness about Orly’s online journal and her book series. If anyone has any suggestions, my ears are open.

Other than that, I recently went through a minor writing slump where I was just spinning my wheels on the same entries. I think, at one point, I was only five entries ahead of what had already posted. I’m sure some, if not most, was due to depression. But I feel like I’ve gotten back up and am enjoying the substance and pace of what I’m writing again. If you’re one of the eleven people subscribed, I hope you’re enjoying reading the current work as much as I am enjoying writing it.

Two Books At Once

Posted on March 17, 2024June 6, 2024 by Robert Tomoguchi

I’m still working on turning Exhume into a novel. I’ve been at it for seventy days straight. I’m making incremental progress, averaging 130 new words a day. The more I work on it though, the less sure I feel I want to show it to anyone. To be honest, the more I work on it, the less excited I feel about it. This might be because I’m struggling to develop the characters beyond the screenplay version. It might also be because I’m writing in third person, present tense, which I’ve never done before. I chose this as it felt closest to the way a screenplay is written.

Recently, I had this thought of writing Forever Candy from a different point-of-view. The last time I tried writing it, I was writing from Candy’s POV, in first person. But now I’m thinking of writing it from Burrows’ POV. I’ve tried that before, but only in third person. For some reason it never occurred to me to write him from first person. I wrote a little, just to try it out, and I got really excited about it.

I talked to my shrink about this quandary of mine—which story to pursue now. Even though I’m struggling with the Exhume story, she and I both belief that the regularity in which I’ve been writing it has really improved my mood and helped pull me out of my last depression. We’re wary of me walking away from that. On the other hand, I’m so excited to write this other story right now, that I feel like I should seize the opportunity of inspiration.

My shrink suggested I work on both, simultaneously. I can keep making my little daily progress on Exhume, while also embracing the excitement I feel with writing a different book. When she said it, it baffled me because I’ve never written two books at once. When I wrote The Last Midnight, feeling inspired, I had to put Scribbles of the Empress down completely, even though I was already 40,000 words into it, and I only picked it back up after I had finished.

So, I guess I’m going to give it a go, writing two books at once. Wish me luck.

I’ve been going to the gym regularly and counting calories on MyFitnessPal because my doctor told me I really need to lose weight. In twelve weeks, I’ve lost 18 lbs. While on the treadmill last week, I listened to Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. A friend from Silent Book Club told me she had read it. She mentioned what a despicable character the POV characters is, but I really enjoyed the character and found myself relating to her. This wasn’t because I want to or ever would plagiarize another author (but if I did, it would be Kwon Yeo-sun and her book Lemon, LOL), but because, as a mediocre writer, I know all too well what it feels like to be jealous of writers who have more talent than I’ll ever have. While listening to Yellowface, I was really impressed with and jealous of the author with how smart and sharp her writing is. She’s super gifted.

I don’t know if it was that book or other books I’ve read recently (For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Road, All the Lovers in the Night), but I’ve glimpsed the dawning of me giving up as a writer, feeling like I’m just not talented enough to write something worthy of the readership I daydream of having. Mediocrity is a dreadful thing to feel.

I know it’s not over just yet though. I’m going to try to keep going, fueled by my hopes that Forever Candy will be a good book. Again, wish me luck.

Mistaken

Posted on August 13, 2023August 13, 2023 by Robert Tomoguchi

In my last post, way back in May, I said I chose to write and began writing Forever Candy as a novel. Today, in August, I’m letting you know I stopped. It fizzled out weeks ago. The voice I was writing in just fell flat. It didn’t feel authentic. I considered starting over in a different voice, but right now, I think I must walk away from it. Maybe someday I’ll try again.

I finished my first UCLA Extension Creative Writing class, but I dropped the second class.

In the weeks since I stopped writing, I’ve become depressed. I feel adrift and without purpose. But I’ve been putting in a lot of effort in my sessions with my psychologist. I recently began considering writing about my childhood best friend. In the preceding post, titled Pushpins, our story is laid out in the fourth row of note cards and is something I intended to weave into another story I refer to as Candela.

Writing about my childhood best friend is something I think I can only write privately, without the intention of anyone ever seeing it. I think it’s essential in order to tell our story honestly.

So, for the readers I do have, you may not get anything new from me for a long while.

I deleted my Twitter accounts. I think Facebook will be on the chopping block next. Social media has proven to be more detrimental than beneficial for me, and after being off it for over 180 days now, the feelings of FOMO rarely surface.

I feel like disappearing.

I told my psychologist that by my next session I would open a new Scrivener document and save it for the new writing project. That next session is tomorrow. I’ve been struggling with what to save it as for a working title. I could stick with calling it Candela, but I feel like I should start fresh. I’m leaning toward saving it as I Was Mistaken.

Scribbles Updates

Posted on June 15, 2022June 15, 2022 by Robert Tomoguchi

It’s been two and a half months since my last blog post. In it, I announced I had finished the first full draft of Scribbles of the Empress and sent the final pages to my beta readers. As I revise heavily as I write, I believed my period of rewrites would be brief—two months—once I received feedback on the last chapters. At the end of May, I took a week off work to really push hard to complete my rewrites. I had originally booked an AirBnb in Portland for solitude and vegan food, but after flying to Colorado at the beginning of May for a work conference, I was too stressed to travel again and so I canceled it. Instead, I planned to rent a desk in a communal office during the week. I wrote there on Monday and Tuesday and got a lot of good work done. Daily parking cost more than the desk and the whole thing felt expensive, so on Wednesday, I decided I would write at Starbucks. The lobby to my usual Starbucks happened to be closed that morning, so I went to my second Starbucks, where to my surprise, an Instagram crush walked in for her morning coffee. I had problems concentrating in public, which is unusual. Maybe it only felt that way after the level of concentration I had while writing at that office. I would have gone back to the office for Thursday and Friday, despite the cost, but chose that Starbucks instead hoping my crush would come in again. She didn’t. But by Sunday, I did what I set out to do with my time off—I finished my rewrites.

Three of my beta readers are reading the entire manuscript as a whole now. Previously, they’d only ever seen it in batches, and that was over a span of thirty-three months. I’m still waiting to hear back from them. I know two of them have been busy with family commitments and the third can’t start reading until the NBA championships are over. I don’t expect anything major to come back, so I hope my next round of revisions will be minimal. I was hoping to give pages to my sister for editing by July 1, but now I think that’ll be delayed.

I’ve been talking to my psychologist about what to do now that the manuscript is pretty much out of my hands. I’ve decided not to jump into writing something new immediately. I’m going to turn my attention to trying to learn how to promote my work. I’ve been making an effort on Instagram, creating images on Canva that incorporates quotes from the new book. I’m also starting to look into TikTok because it seems like people can build large followings quite quickly. I had a stroke of luck last week when a magazine learned of my upcoming book release and asked for an interview. But beyond promotion, I told my psychologist that I want to do something, other than reading, with all this free time I have now. I even said I wanted to do something fun. So I’m thinking about taking Japanese language lessons, painting, and learning how to swim, among other things.

Instagram Image — One of my Canva creations for Instagram

My day job is really bringing me down though. I feel it’s actually affected my health as my blood pressure has recently increased and I’m now taking beta blockers as a result. I didn’t even go to the office today or yesterday because I felt too depressed about it. Yesterday, I worked from home, but today, I only replied to emails in the morning. I wish I could quit, but if I can’t support myself by being an author, I don’t know what other kind of job I’d be willing to do that paid enough. On top of this, I’m still feeling sad with letting go of Orly, now that her trilogy is complete. She’s been my constant companion since 2014. My days feel emptier without her.

First Full Draft!

Posted on March 27, 2022June 11, 2022 by Robert Tomoguchi

Yesterday I finished the first full draft of Scribbles of the Empress. I started writing it 1,008 days prior, before Covid was a global pandemic. That’s thirty-three months, many of them devoid of word count because I struggled a lot with my own depression while writing this book. It ended up being 108K words, so longer than The Scribbled Victims, but shorter than Scribbling the Eternal.

I’m not sure if this book means more to me than the others, but it certainly means something different. Many of my own struggles with grief and suicide are expressed openly through Orly in this final installment. There’s a section I discarded where Orly addresses her audience and says:

Earlier I said the war against me must seem anticlimactic. It was. But this wasn’t a war story. It’s a story about mourning and suicide. Perhaps it is even about suicide because of the inability to stop mourning. Late in these pages, I realized this is ultimately what all my pages have been about, ever since Yelena died.

I left those words of Orly’s out because it didn’t fit well with the text around it, but also because it breaks the fourth wall, which was something she did in The Scribbled Victims but I forgot to maintain the convention in Scribbling the Eternal.

I just emailed 72 pages to my beta readers, who have remained committed to this book since its beginning and whose help I am very fortunate to have. I’ll begin my rewrites now, hoping they’ll only take a couple of months, as I rewrite heavily as I go. Then editing and proofing. Then book design, typesetting, and audiobook recording. I’m aiming for an October release.

I hope my readers will love the book and how Orly’s series ends.

IG Post for Ashley — Though I’ve been off social media for 142 days, I made this while writing this month. Maybe I’ll post it to my IG. The words are part of the dedication I’m working on for Ashley Vargas.

End of 2021 Thoughts

Posted on December 31, 2021December 31, 2021 by Robert Tomoguchi

Today is the last day of 2021 and I just finished writing for the day. I finished my rewrites on Chapter Twenty-One and Twenty-Two. I netted 8,406 words for December. More than usual, but much of that is due to winter break at my day job. Tomorrow, I plan to reread Eighteen through Twenty-Two, and then if satisfied, I’ll send them to my beta readers who haven’t received pages since April 30.

2021 Goodreads Reading Challenge — I completed my Goodreads Reading Challenge yesterday, with one day to spare. In 2022, I plan to reduce the number of books because there are some very long books I want to read including In Search of Lost Time.

After I finished Chapter Twenty-Two, I went on to write text that felt like a confession, with Orly telling her readers what she discovered these books are really about. It’s really a confession of ours. I don’t know if it will make it into the final draft, but I think my shrink will be glad that I’m writing about it because it may help me process my own suicidal feelings.

Last night, I decided to remove the Soleil story from the book. Soleil is a diminutive finch Orly received among many other finches from Berthold. She was meant to parallel Orly amongst her coven, but as I near the end of the book, the payoff for it feels too on-the-nose. So even after I reach the final page of the full draft, I’ll have that to write out of the book. I’m not looking forward to it. Right now, my to do list of things to check before releasing the final draft is up to fifty-seven items.

I wrote the opening lines of this book on June 22, 2019. I didn’t think it would ever take me so long to write this book, but there were multiple long bouts of depression. I keep telling myself that it will come out in summer of 2022, but now I’m not even sure. I have to make sure there are no loose ends and I want it to be the best book it can be. Just writing about its release in this blog post I can feel my anxiety writing. I know I’ll release it, but I’m terrified.

At the same time, I’m afraid of finishing it but dreading it will never be finished.

I hope 2022 is a great year for you.

Headspace

Posted on December 4, 2021 by Robert Tomoguchi

I made a lot of progress with my book since my last post. Starting on November 6, I began to write with some regularity again, for the first time since May 2. I ended up writing 8,825 words in November, which exceeded my monthly goal of 6,000 words for the first time since April.

I finished Chapter Eighteen and Nineteen and am nearly finished with Chapter Twenty. Two days ago, my total word count passed 80,000 words. It feels good to reach novel length.

I’m still dealing with thoughts of suicide but it feels more manageable than it had been thirty days ago. I wonder how much these thoughts have affected recent chapters. I wonder if Chapters Eighteen and Twenty are longer than they need to be as Orly and I are in our headspace so much. I’m not even sure if her/our thoughts and feelings will make sense to readers if this book sees its release.

I don’t have much else to report other than I feel like I need to vomit because of something I ate. I’m drinking licorice root tea to help deal with it. I’m hoping to finish Chapter Twenty by end of day tomorrow, but I’m feeling disconnected from everything today, so I don’t know if I’ll get there.

The Bridge to Corn Dogs

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Robert Tomoguchi

I finished writing the beginning of Chapter Eighteen, which begins the bridge between midpoint and climax of the book. This is always the hardest part of a story for me to write. Using handwritten notecards helped me organize it enough to get it done. Looking back, I feel like it shouldn’t have taken me so long to write so little (currently 1,138 words), but then I must remember depression and then it makes sense even though it’s still disappointing.

Last week I waited on hold with a suicide prevention chat line for twenty minutes before I gave up and logged out. I wanted to talk to someone, and I know talking about suicide makes the few friends I discuss it with sad and sometimes tearful, so I wanted to spare them.

I tried to be kind to myself over the weekend. I hung three paintings in my office. I drove to get the vegan corn dogs I’ve been craving. I drove on side streets aimlessly and skipped to songs I could sing to. I drank hot chocolate.

I had a list of things I wanted to talk to my psychologist about today, but she called out sick, so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

I’m glad I finished the beginning of that bridge. Going on from there should all come easier unless, of course, the depression…

A Snail’s Pace

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Robert Tomoguchi

What can I say? I didn’t recover like I hoped. If I was coming out of my depression, I never fully got there. I’m not at my worst, but

I’m still depressed, and I keep thinking suicide…When you’re done with this book, it’ll be okay to let go. My shrinks know that’s what I’m feeling and we’re working on it, hoping to find something to occupy me after I’m done.

I’m moving forward in the book, but at a snail’s pace. I reverted to handwriting on notecards to try to map out Chapter Eighteen. It feels different, not staring at a computer. I don’t know why this chapter is so difficult and I have no idea when I’ll finish it. My daily post-it note goals are far from ambitious; if they were, I know I’d be setting myself up for certain failure; I’m failing more often than not as it is.

Yesterday, I told my psychologist that sometimes thinking of suicide feels like a relief. Sometimes I even feel excited about it. She asked me what I’d be relieving myself from. I said, “Depression and loneliness.” I think it made sense to her. She nodded. I’m going to be installing an app she recommended that will help me remember our plan if I ever get close—who to contact and such. It’s in my to-do list to install today.

I don’t know if anyone reads these things. If anyone does, posts like these are not cries for help. I have therapists who are very good to me, and I have a small but strong network of friends I can reach out to. I guess I’m just writing things down for those who are wondering when the hell the book will be finished and what led up to my own ending if indeed, I end up having one.