Llama booty

Did I mention how amusingly awful speech-to-text can be sometimes? Anyhow, I've finally reached the Yamabushi scenes.

This is another of the check-the-boxes for a proper pastiche. My protagonist is nursed back to health at a remote monastery, and gets some useful spiritual advice before setting out again.

This novel is dragging on way too long. Japan was a mistake. I think it isn't that I know Japan too well, it is that Japan is just, well, peculiarly detailed. I mean, all cultures have a lot of interesting things going on if you dig. There's just something peculiar about Japan that means every writer that approaches it ends up putting in a lot of details.

I mean, if you are doing one of the "It's a small world" diorama sorts of things, Germany is a guy in lederhosen and tyrolean hat holding a beer stein. I mean, there might be some half-timbered building or some clockwork, depending on how much Bavaria they want to put in the picture, but that's it. France, you've got a mime and the Eiffel Tower and probably wine.

Japan, you'll get samurai in kimono holding paper parasols in front of Fuji-san with Hokusai's wave and a giant carp and in the background isn't that Godzilla?

I don't know if there is something peculiarly divisible about their cultural detritus that means you can't sort it into a few easy boxes, or if it is so popular and permeable that even people who don't know a wurst from the Arc de Triumph will still know about ninja.

There doesn't seem to be an easy way to cut through. Not even assuming that the audience already knows and you can skip over it. Can you just say; "sailor suits" and everyone will immediately picture stereotypical Japanese schoolgirls or do you have to spend a sentence for the one lady in the back who hasn't heard the term?

I have a new theory. It isn't that there is so much more "stuff" in Japan. It is that there are so many more words. I think this comes from the (seeming) accessibility of the language. Japanese words look straight-forward on the page and are easy to remember and to pronounce -- at least, close enough that many people will understand you. 

So if you are describing Germany you probably say there are castles. Most people would't bother calling them "schloss." When describing Japan it seems to be the thing to give everything possible its Japanese name, and there are of course names for everything.

So you could just say that mountain priests are connected to mythological creatures who are said to have taught the highly skilled spies and assassins who variously opposed and supported the warrior class and their chieftain.

But, no, you have to talk about yamabushi and tengu and ninja and samurai and the shogun. Which is, I admit, both more precise and more concise. But there you have it.

Anyhow, I'm within 4-6 K of the end. But I'm having trouble judging. I thought the scene where she shows up at the historic village of Shirakawa-go and is chased into the national park by chimpira would be quick. It's almost 2,000 words. And also a dozen rewrites before it finally started working.

So I have no good idea if I'm going to be able to do it by the end of September. I could probably kick it out the door, but all these rewrites are making it so much better I can't not do them.

***

Oh, yeah, I also got a 3d printer. This isn't taking away (much) writing time; I got it for work so I have something that is at least vaguely job-related to do when there aren't enough projects to keep me properly busy. The hard part has been learning FreeCAD (and also a bit of Blender, as well as re-learning Cura...)