Von Clausewitz, Friction and Abandoning a Manuscript

How can someone that smart wear epaulettes that stupid?

Von Clausewitz, in his seminal work On War, outlines a concept called 'friction'. Friction can be viewed simply as an aggregation of every crappy little thing we chalk up to Murphy's Law. The new contractor shipping rounds that don't fit the guns. The dysentery that cripples every battalion passing through a certain market town. The subaltern who doesn't know that data gathered about a Russian road in summer is worse than useless in winter. All the small and large things that go wrong - all the 'fires' that managers spend most of their time putting out.

Anyone who's managed a project (and who hasn't, these days) knows what friction feels like. It could be said that project management is just warfare by other means. Actually, it really can't, but I couldn't resist making a Clausewitz joke. Anyway, friction is that feeling that forces outside your control are throwing themselves in the way of your progress. That grinding, maddeningly frustrating sensation of progressing only one step for every three frantic attempts to surge forward. And there are times when the friction is so great, so unbeatable, that projects are abandoned altogether. The cost of combating friction becomes higher than the potential gains of project completion, and it's time to hit the classifieds and start looking for another job.

I think we can apply this principle to the writing of a novel - more specifically, to the question of when it's time to tear the whole thing up and start again. Let's take the novel I'm currently writing as an example. I had an idea, and a bunch of subsidiary, or connected ideas, a major theme, plot, subplot, peripeteia, anagnorisis- pretty much all the good gear needed to cobble together a story that takes tens of thousands of words to develop. Sure, I was missing some key stuff as well. Like the middle third of the plot and any firm idea of how to get to the climax, but I had enough to get started. In treading that fine line between proper planning and neurotically paralytic perfectionism, I felt justified and not a little bit virtuous about my decision to just start writing.

The first few thousand words progressed well. In the way that only fully realised literary prose or unadulterated stinking garbage can, the sentences tripped over each other in their race to appear on the page. And it was then that the friction started. What I had hoped for was a gradual clarification of the way ahead as each of the stepping stones of the rising action fell into place. The idea was that momentum would carry me through to the completion of the plan as I progressed along it. What happened instead was more like trying to drive water uphill with a broom.

Connective or process passages ballooned monstrously as my characters and chain of events frantically resisted any efforts to send them along the track of my thoughts. Every scene designed to move the plot had to be first violently wrestled into contact with it and, even then, came out as stubbornly static and lifeless set pieces. Every word, line and paragraph which came out served only to obscure rather than serve my narrative, but I pushed on, clutching at the straws of minor achievements in order to justify carrying on. It'll all come out in the wash. It'll be all right on the night. It takes a while for my genius to reveal itself. These and other scraps of delusional idiocy sustained me on a path that was necessarily doomed to failure.

One of the things which was confusing me was that I had all the component parts needed to construct the first act of my novel. Looked at from a certain point of view, there was no discernible reason for the dysfunction of all these component parts. Looked at from the point of view of the very intelligent and invaluably honest person who I often inflict my early-stage works on, it was pretty obvious. It was shite. What I had done was to take all the parts needed to begin a story and, thanks to my own head-up-the-arse syndrome, put them together upside down and backwards. To give you an idea of just how badly I'd muffed it, I point to the fact that my 'first problem' or catalytic action was scheduled to occur about twelve thousand words in.

Now, in this instance, what I did to discover this was to waste the time of another person in order to discover the blindingly obvious. What I should have done was remember Von Clausewitz, his stupid neck stock, his even stupider epaulettes, and his brilliant idea of friction. The sheer magnitude of friction being encountered in the creation of a work that was practically already written should have alerted me to its deep structural flaws long before I hit the ten thousand word mark.

They say the wise learn from the mistakes of others. In that spirit, I tender this idea for the benefit of any wise people who may be out there. Pay attention to friction. If writing a story feels like pulling out our own teeth with other people's fingers, it might be time to stop, take a step back, and ask ourselves why. Because while writing isn't meant to be easy, the kind of difficult represented by friction should be seen as an enormous, alarmingly red flag warning us to think again.

Silence and the Cult of the Sword

I knew a man who spent five years in total silence and isolation, contemplating on the sword. In some circles, he was thought to be taking the soft option by choosing to have an actual sword with him - an object on which he could focus his meditations.

Think about that for a moment. Five whole years, alone and in silence, trying to think about one thing and one thing only. And the fact he had that thing with him was considered to be tantamount to cheating.

I took a year-long vow of silence once. Of course, being a cream-puff city boy, it was pretty watered down. No lonely cave in the Wudang Mountains for me. I was allowed to carry on with my daily life, and to say functional things. I could do stuff like eat every day, answer direct questions, tell bus drivers where I wanted to go, and so on. What I wasn't allowed to do was volunteer information or contribute to conversation in any way. And I was absolutely forbidden from telling people what I was doing.

What I learnt from this is that the vast majority of what we say in daily life is utterly meaningless. And if you stay quiet and really listen, you can hear echoes of the lie buried in every human statement. The false, tinny resonance of the construction of persona, of people convincing themselves and others that what we say, think and do is important - that we are important. You discover just how much of our time is devoted to convincing ourselves that there are excuses for failure, and that our shortcomings are no fault of our own. I also learnt that keeping your thoughts entirely to yourself for a year is a very good way to go completely insane.

I think the point of it all was to gain a real appreciation of just how important contact and communication are. In the same way that no-one appreciates the value of food like those who have experienced starvation, the result of living with this kind of silence is the realisation of our own appalling weakness - our absolute dependence on the other. It's rather like that throwaway line in Fight Club. "What can you really know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?" It's the idea that we can have no real understanding of our limits until we have visited some of them. It's impossible to push the boundary if you don't know where it is.

One of my old instructors used to goad us with this every time we thought we'd perfected some new technique. "Are you satisfied?" he would ask. "Are you happy with yourself? In that case, let me congratulate you on having reached the pinnacle of your life's achievement." The idea was that without that central seed of dissatisfaction - without that troubling sense of being able to do better if we just work hard enough at it - life is over.

And this brings me, finally, to the point. I hear a lot of chatter about 'mindfulness' these days, often from people who are engaged in utterly mindless activities. Now, don't get the idea that I think of myself as one who leads the existence of the purely mindful. I'm well aware that, for the most part, I lead the existence of a fucking idiot. The point is that I am aware of it. That I do not excuse it in myself, and that every time I fail (which is most of the time), my sole hope of redemption lies in the full and frank realisation of that failure.

I'm usually at peace with the adaptation and dilution of Eastern ideas as they're absorbed into Western culture. What a lot of angry purists forget is that this is a two way process - just look at the mongrel versions of 'Capitalism', 'Democracy' and the 'Protestant Work Ethic' which exist in China. But mindfulness is one that I simply cannot let pass. In the form it takes when absorbed into the fatuous self-help culture of social media and daytime television, it is completely worthless.

Mindfulness is emphatically not about finding a way to be 'happy' with ourselves. It's about the understanding of rigour, the knowledge of our incompleteness, of the impossibility of perfection and the absolute requirement to strive for it anyway. It has nothing to do with scented candles, crystals, personal milestones, or any of the other garbage we use to loudly pat ourselves on the back in the full view of those around us. And it is absolutely not an escape from the slings and arrows of daily existence.

It's an absolute. A way of being that aims to strip away layers of self-deception, not add more. Adapting it to fit an infantile culture of self-congratulation is not just futile, it's a breathtaking desecration of one of the most important ideas ever conceived.

Truth in Fiction - Understanding 'Write What You Know'

Chancellorsville

Of all writing advice, I think the most frequently misunderstood is 'write what you know'. So many people I speak to, including students, seem to have the unshakeable belief that this means we cannot write about anything if we do not have direct experience of it.

This just isn't true. 'Write what you know' strikes me as being nothing more than the perennial idea that we should be expressing various kinds of truth, boiled down into a vague and less than helpful aphorism. I'm pretty sure what we're mainly talking about here is psychological truth. That for detail, visualisation and procedure Professor Google will do, so long as we are able to match our inner truth to these externals.

So while we may not have direct experience of selling dimebags of cocaine on the streets of New York, if we understand the corrosive effects of despair and crippling anxiety, it might be possible to produce something like Clockers. If we understand how it feels to be utterly overwhelmed by fear, then we can probably, after quite a lot of research, write a war story.

A scene from the Spike Lee adaptation of Richard Price's 'Clockers'.

This is exactly what Stephen Crane did in order to produce The Red Badge of Courage. In this story, we follow the fortunes of a private at a battle which may or may not be Chancellorsville, watching as he first fights, succumbs to battlefield panic and cowardice, then is redeemed by turning off his finer feelings and giving in to the animalistic nature of violence. The theme is the fallacy of Romantic conceptions of heroism, but the effect is one of total realism. On its publication, the novel received rave reviews, with many Civil War veterans utterly convinced that Crane must have been writing as a veteran of that battle himself. This despite the fact that Crane was twenty four, had never seen a battlefield, and was born several years after the end of the war.

So how did he do it? Crane himself, when called upon to explain it said, "Of course, I have never been in a battle, but I believe that I got my sense of the rage of conflict on the football field, or else fighting is a hereditary instinct, and I wrote intuitively; for the Cranes were a family of fighters in the old days." Which sounds like two parts bullshit to me, but we can hone in on the bit about the football field, as many of the emotions experienced in group violence of any kind can be directly and realistically transposed into any other.

Team sports can provide insight into many kinds of organised group violence.

It's pretty obvious, though, that this alone will not be enough. We need to think outside the square a little, like Crane did, and find feelings and reactions within our experiential grab-bags which might apply. Take this passage, for example, where his narrator is appalled to discover that the line from which he fled actually held, thus making his desertion an even more criminal act of cowardice.

"Thoughts of his comrades came to him. The brittle blue line had withstood the blows and won. He grew bitter over it. It seemed that the blind ignorance and stupidity of those little pieces had betrayed him. He had been overturned and crushed by their lack of sense in holding the position, when intelligent deliberation would have convinced them that it was impossible. He, the enlightened man who looks afar in the dark, had fled because of his superior perceptions and knowledge. He felt a great anger against his comrades. He knew it could be proved that they had been fools." 

Who isn't familiar with this kind of angry self-justification in the face of moral failure? We feel it and use it almost every day, and its inclusion in this narrative context lends the story a surprising weight of authority.

But the mainstay of the novel is in its study of fear.

"He yelled then with fright and swung about. For a moment, in the great clamor, he was like a proverbial chicken. He lost the direction of safety. Destruction threatened him from all points." 

"He began to exaggerate the endurance, the skill, and the valor of those who were coming. [...] he was astonished beyond measure at such persistency. They must be machines of steel. It was very gloomy struggling against such affairs, wound up perhaps to fight until sundown." 

"The lieutenant sprang forward bawling. The youth saw his features wrathfully red, and saw him make a dab with his sword. His one thought of the incident was that the lieutenant was a peculiar creature to feel interested in such matters upon this occasion."

We are repeatedly confronted with startling moments of psychological truth. In the face of many moments like these, we find ourselves willing to accept the vagueness of Crane's battlefield details, the obviously fictional sequence of happenings and encounters, the characters who appear with such serendipity in order to illustrate some aspect of the developing theme - none of this really matters in the face of the fact that the narrator is reacting truthfully and realistically to his circumstances. 

It takes some intelligence, and a lot of research and fact-finding, but yes - it is eminently possible to write convincingly about unfamiliar setting and situations. It's not so much about knowing something before we write it, but rather a process of discovering within any situation that which we already knew, and then writing to that knowledge.

Strange, Unhappy People

Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Barry is a poet. He used to be a bare knuckle street fighter, slugging it out for a pittance in the car parks of pubs, most of which were shut down long ago as raucously violent blots on the community. The world in which he grew up is long, long gone - the robust, optimistic, mono-cultural blur of the eighties. It seems he hasn't really noticed, though, because his focus has turned almost entirely inward, as it always will when your whole life becomes a process of getting, using and then getting more drugs.

For the past few years now his drug of choice has been methyl amphetamine, otherwise known as 'meth', 'cold' or 'ice'. This isn't something altogether new, though - no victim of the so called 'ice epidemic' is Barry. He's been shooting up heroin, methadone, dextro amphetamine and cocaine for decades. The thing about ice is that it's relatively cheap, in plentiful supply and, taken in toxic psychosis doses, will last for days and days. The other thing about ice, I'm told, is that it appears to have the property of staving off heroin withdrawal sickness. I can't personally verify this, but I have noticed that other background addictions like nicotine simply fade from notice while the ice buzz is on.

In drug-taking circles, Barry's a lifer. He's been around forever, and everyone knows him, so he's plugged into all the little communities of the more serious end of drug subculture. These are many and varied, and on any given day Barry could be hanging out with twenty something homies, ageing hippies, bikies, homeless buskers or middle-class underbelly tourists. It doesn't really matter much who he's with - it's all the same. The community of pipe, and especially of needle, is a strangely unifying one. The distinctions of culture and 'tribe' are all wiped out by the over-riding sense of otherness which comes from the sustained and serious use of any drug, and especially one so heavily stigmatised as ice.

The last time I saw Barry, it was in a drug house in Manly. This house has been raided and shut down for a while now, so I can safely talk about it without compromising or endangering anyone. It was pretty typical of such places - filthy carpets, perpetually blinded windows, walls yellow from tobacco smoke and an absolute bare minimum of battered, donated furniture. At any given time there'll be a handful of men, and maybe one woman, sprawled, hunched, squatting or pacing in various attitudes around the room. Every face is a study in constrained patience, or absent bliss, because it doesn't matter when you rock up at a house like this, everyone has either just received a delivery, or is holding onto themselves as they wait for another one.

In either case, obsessive, repetitive activity becomes deeply satisfying to minds flying on ice. Mobile phone games, assembling or disassembling stolen bike parts, folding paper, flicking through television channels or browsing for porn - it's not important what the activity is, it suddenly becomes the most important thing on the planet. From a distance, if you squint, a room full of ice users can look a bit like a meeting of twitchy mad scientists who have forgotten that they're not alone.

All this tends to change when a new person arrives, assuming that new person brings a fresh element of some kind with them. In Barry's case, he normally sweeps into a house in a hectic wave of energy, beat poetry and beers in brown paper bags which he will share with the house. This is usually guaranteed to start a general conversation. Sure, not everyone will be able to look up from what they're doing, but they'll be listening and contributing. And that's probably the most surprising thing about ice addicts and users. If we're to go with the received image, we could be forgiven for thinking their days are filled with random nihilistic violence, robbery and beating up on their mothers. The reality is, though, that these people spend the vast majority of their time sitting around talking to each other.

One favourite topic for conversation is personal history. A staggering proportion of these people have suffered serious sexual or physical abuse at some point in their lives. As a result, they often have an air of disassociated numbness when it comes to their own selves, and their accounts of their past lives are intricately woven tapestries of fantasy and fact, by turns funny, pathetic, bitter and manic. Like the story Stevo used to tell about the first time he went to jail. He'd been driving a stolen car and had been stopped by the police for some innocuous reason. All was well, and they were about to drive on when his mother, drunk out of her skull, pulled up. While she was in the process of being breathalysed and arrested, she turned to Stevo and loudly pointed out that he did not own the car he was driving.

Conspiracy theories are also practically ubiquitous amongst this set. Weirdly intricate frameworks of power and interest are constructed into a sort of murky, confused world view. The CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, various police forces, banks and governments are co-opted into a narrative whose burden is that the whole world has connived to block them from attaining personal success. Often, their knowledge of the organisations they suspect doesn't go much beyond knowing their names, but that's not really important. The point is that the game is rigged, the power sits with others from whom it cannot be taken, and it makes perfect sense, therefore, that they have opted out of life.

Other than that, they tell funny stories about themselves and each other, bitch and gossip, share Youtube videos and Facebook memes - yes, just like normal people. Because essentially, that's what most of these people are: perfectly normal, damaged and discouraged people. Of course, it can be said that their existence is entirely without meaning. Their whole lives are taken up with nothing beyond the acquisition of money in service of the acquisition of drugs, and they can spend days and days sitting in one stinking room talking nonsense to people they don't really know or like.

But when you think about it, you can't help but wonder just how different that is from any other person's life. We work, save and spend on furniture, holidays, alcohol, over-priced meals, all of which are consumed in the company of people we may not particularly care for, but to whom we hold on because a person is supposed to have friends. While many of us are happy, some of us sublimate our despair with these frivolities, and I simply don't see the difference between that and what a meth junkie does. Except, of course, that the acquisition and consumption of ice is by its very nature criminal, and the people who do it criminals by extension. And then there's also the fact that constant drug use is a much quicker and more visible way to kill oneself than, say, sugar.

Sometimes, when I see an addict twitching down the street shouting at himself, or searching frantically through a bin, I'll recognise someone I've seen in my travels. This forces me to reconcile the insane hobo image I see with the thoughtful, gentle and tortured person I may have spoken to, years ago, when I was on the same trajectory. I think that if everyone had to do this - had to see beyond the dirt and strangeness and into the actual person, they might be less quick with their judgements, and with their dismissal of these people as people. In the words of Palahniuk, "We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world," so who are we, really, to decide which of us is more or less crap than another?

The Calculus of Hatred

I don't know what it's like to be a Muslim in Australia. In fact, I don't know what it's like to be a Muslim full stop. What I do know, though, is what it's like to be an Asian growing up in an Australia dominated by racial politics.

I came to this country when I was two years old, landing in what used to be the rough and tumble neighbourhood of Surrey Hills. Some of my earliest memories are of drunks stopping me and my mum in the street, bowing and saying, "kon nichi wa", or shouting "Ching Chong Wah" into my face as they walked past.

The leftist narrative of the nineties says that John Howard attempted to garner popularity and unite the country by appealing to deep-seated and long-held cultural anxieties, calling for an end to multiculturalism and insisting that newcomers to Australia conform to Australian values and ideals. I don't know how accurate this is and I don't care - the whole thing strikes me as meaningless anyway. On the face of it, demanding that Australians be accepted and regarded as Australians and that they act accordingly sounds like a politically expedient truism that shouldn't do any real harm. I'm pretty certain that's what Howard and his people thought it was. As a concept, it's so vague as to feel completely unreal. What does feel real, though, is the subsequent ascent of the far right and Pauline Hanson.

The real world consequences, for me, were mild enough. Having to put up with 'Asians Out' plastered on walls in pretty well every neighbourhood, every conversation eventually turning to race, and reasonably regular, but not usually serious, violence. Looking back, I can sort of see it as a parabola, peaking some time around the millennium before taking a slow and steady nose-dive into the realm of bad dreams half-remembered.

Of course, it's all come back to the surface now, and I remember, with startling clarity, exactly what it's like to be the focus of the kind of negative attention Muslims are receiving today. Every day, just like for everyone else, is a collection of small - laughably small - negative incidents. An insult yelled out of a car window, filthy looks in pubs, the news constantly reminding people that you exist and aren't welcome, fist fights at bus stops and your friends and relatives being insulted, snubbed, called upon to justify their existence to complete strangers and, sometimes, spat on and abused.

In terms of the negative contacts that most people face on a daily basis, all of this is pretty small. The difference is, though, that it's constant. And more than that, it's very easy to get the idea that it's institutionally acceptable - that the majority of your adoptive country might shake their heads and tut but, at some level, they're okay with it. It's just how things go. It used to be the Italians, now it's you, now it's the Muslims, and next year it'll be some other group. This makes it okay - it's just the hazing ritual every newcomer has to go through and this is right and just and why don't you just develop a sense of humour for God's sake and get over it?

And you do - if you're not to go completely insane, you learn to laugh at it all. To play on it, to revel, in fact, in being the one who pre-empts the racist joke. But there's a part of you that knows you're being a shameful clown, that you are pissing on your heritage every time you join in on racist banter because you're tired of fighting, that you are a disgrace to yourself, the place from which you've come and the place in which you are.

And then there's the fact that every single insult and indignity you swallow pours another tiny dram of hatred into your heart, and inches you just that little bit further away from the community you so desperately love, admire and want to be a part of. And eventually, your cup runneth over, and you look up one day and discover that you are so far beyond the pale that you can't even watch television or read a newspaper without feeling like an alien in your own home.

Which is why I don't care about red or blue, left or right, who's to blame, or long, pointless conversations where people exchange half-baked, poorly understood factlets about Islam, Arab history, colonialism, or whatever else has been dragged into the half-arsed narrative we pre-chew and spew out to poorly explain complex ideas to the public.

The essential thing for me is that we're on the upturn of that parabolic procession again. Heedless of the past, we are creating yet another generation of newcomers to this country who will remember, always, that their existence rests on a precarious knife-edge of potential bigotry. Who are aware that the person smiling at them today was very likely the same one who threw food at them out of a car window yesterday, and may do so again tomorrow.

Free Story - The Hero Atsukawa

It was in the second summer of the Shogunate of Tokugawa, the summer of the rains, when the little girl called Yurimaru was taken. An interval of woe, when the grain harvest was devastated by the great winds and waters, and the people ate grass and dogs and children to survive. The Daimyo of Yurimaru’s prefecture was a man of great justice and kindness called Lord Mitsui. When he heard of the disappearance of Yurimaru, Lord Mitsui sent horsemen and harbingers far and wide to offer a large reward for the head of the man who took her. Lord Mitsui did this even though Yurimaru was a person of low birth and little importance. So great was the justice and kindness of Lord Mitsui.

***

The East West Road cuts a straggling horizontal line through the island of Hokkaido. This stretch is a muddy scar of black clay connecting a string of villages - poor places, where few live and even fewer stop. For all its quietness, there are still a few people trudging along it, hurrying through this featureless backwater, trying to push on to more salubrious surroundings before sunset. The ceaseless rain churns the mud into a quagmire six inches deep, a sucking trench of ooze that clutches at the feet of travellers and slows their progress to a crawl. Heading west against the usual flow of traffic, is a clutch of despondent farm labourers plastered in mud and carrying clean tools over their shoulders. As they plod up the road, which here is little more than a narrow track, they pass a jaunty old man who walks with that strange, bobbing step of one who never locks his knees. He is dressed like a merchant. His peasant jacket is made of bright blue silk embroidered with cart wheels, and his trousers are of finest black cotton now befouled to the thigh with black mud. He carries no wares, and there is no train of pack animals following him. There is only a bare, six foot wooden staff propped at a jaunty angle over his shoulder. He calls out a cheerful greeting as the little knot of labourers streams past and around him. They return it with surly nods. Struggling along in the old man’s wake is a girl no more than twelve. She has a koto in a bag - a travelling musician. The old man calls over his shoulder to her.

“Beautiful girl! Come and be my friend and I will pay you! Then, when you grow up, you can be my wife!”

The girl ignores him.

Some way behind them is another sort of man entirely. He is shabby, his hakama and haori are frayed and worn, his hair bound in a loose top knot. Only his swords, the long katana and short wakizashi, have the look of love and care. They are magnificent pieces, sheathed in gleaming black enamel, corded with yellow silk, hilted with gold jewels and bright silk bindings. The farm labourers walk a long way off to the side of the road and wait with bowed heads until he passes. He ignores them. His eyes are fixed straight ahead, his feet moving with steady, patient regularity - left foot, right foot, and onwards, without a moment’s pause, sure and stable even in the clinging, slippery clay.

The old man follows one of the few bends in the road and comes upon a little roadside shelter selling tea. It is occupied by some drabble-tailed geisha huddled together under the meagre awning and flinching away from the water that sheets down from its edges and splashes at their legs. He turns his beaming face to them and calls out in a strong, fruity voice.

“Ah! Beautiful girls! Why won’t one of you follow me and be my wife!”

They simper and giggle, their hands flying up to their mouths to cover their teeth. The old man beams at them and carries on to look for better comfort and shelter. The little musician treads silently behind him. The geisha, thinking that she means to join them, shriek and fling clods of mud at her, but lose interest as it becomes clear that the girl means to go straight on. Some minutes later the swordsman plashes round the corner in his sure-footed way, seeming to glide along the surface of the road - on it, but not of it. His swords, his blank eyes, make the geisha fall silent and still. They watch him as a cat watches, coiled, tense and ready to flee. He comes inexorably closer, and even though his eyes never once even flicker in their direction, the geisha flee their shelter to hide behind it, cowering in the soaking rain until he is finally past.

There is a small grove of rocks and trees, its limbs and crags embracing the low form of a small tea house. It has a rich blue tiled roof and fine framing, and the painted signs have been brushed by an expert hand. The old man gives the house the shortest of glances before turning in his tracks and making for the front door. He is a few paces away from the shelter of the eaves when the lady of the house jerks open the door and comes hurrying out, a trail of soup dribbling down the white lead paint that covers her face.

“Noble traveller! Won’t you come in out of the rain? We have refreshments!”

“Ah! Beautiful lady! Won’t you be my wife?” says the old man, grinning. The lady of the house titters into her hand, her shoulders hunched, her whole body bowed and shaking with affected mirth. Her hard black eyes, however, follow the movements of the old man, relaxing only when he reaches into the folds of his jacket and produces some coins.

“Come in, come in, noble traveller! We have some guests already and they are excellent company.”

The old man grins and nods as she speaks, shaking water from his sodden jacket. He follows her into the house, stepping out of his muddy boots in the genkan and luxuriating in the warm spring of dry tatami under his cold, wet feet. The lady leads him to a noisy, brightly lit room. Through the paper walls the silhouettes of two men can be seen prancing antically with a pair of geisha. The lady slides open the shoji and bows the old man in. As he steps inside, the two geisha disengage from their men and hurry over to the little table laden with sake jars and cups. The men turn, hilarious smiles still lingering on their faces. They too are merchants, dressed in bright kimonos that swell with the fatness of their bellies.

“Hello my friends!” says the old man. “My name is Hira, but everyone calls me Sake Warm because that’s what I always ask for, see? All up and down the East West Road, call in at any house and say ‘Sake! Warm!’ and they will think it is me! Will I drink with you today, good friends?”

Their drunken leers return to their full brilliance. They introduce themselves as the brothers Kojima, fuss over Sake Warm and usher him to their table, calling for drinks, for another girl, in their rough peasant burr.

The lady of the house fusses around taking fresh food orders, gathering up empty sake jars. She is distracted by a movement behind her. The little girl with the koto has followed them inside. She opens her mouth to say something, but the lady chivvys her into the room, urging her to begin. The little girl moves to the far corner and sits down. She slides her instrument out of its cloth bag and sits patiently, waiting for a break in the noise and conversation. When the three men have settled to boisterously toasting each other, the lady totters back toward the front entrance. The little musician’s appearance has reminded her to close the door. There, under the eaves, is the swordsman. He stands perfectly still in the little pool of water that is streaming from his clothing. His left hand rests lightly on his katana as he gazes into the house. The lady stops short, hesitates for a moment, comes to a decision. She bows almost to the floor.

“Samurai sama, welcome to my poor and humble house. Will you step inside and take some refreshment?”

He says nothing at first, merely stares past her for a long moment, listening to the sounds of the voices within.

“I am Atsukawa,” he says, finally. The sounds of the party of Sake Warm and the Kojima brothers seem to be happening on the other side of the world.

“Welcome, Atsukawa sama. How can I serve you today?” says the lady. Her bent back begins to tremble as she struggles to hold her bowed position.

“Sake,” he says, stepping inside, making it finally possible for her to straighten out her tortured spine.

“Atsukawa sama, my most abject apologies - we have only one room and it is occupied. Would you care to use my private chambers?”

“I will go there,” says Atsukawa, nodding at the room in which the outlines of Sake Warm and his new friends can be seen. The lady bows deeply, then hesitates again.

“The rate is three mon…” she stops when she realises she is talking to the empty air. Atsukawa has walked past her as if she no longer existed. He slides open the shoji and stands framed in the doorway.

The three men have frozen ludicrously in place, hands outstretched to fondle girls who are no longer there - who have fled to the corner of the room. They too suffer a moment’s hesitation, unsure of their visitor’s rank, the shabbiness of his clothes vying with the magnificence of his swords. Sake Warm is the first to recover. His face crinkles into the broadest of grins as he bows deeply and greets the newcomer.

“Noble, noble samurai! You are welcome, samurai sama! My name is Hira, but everyone calls me Sake Warm because that’s what I…”

“I am Atsukawa,” he says, cutting the old man off. Atsukawa walks to the low table at the centre of the room, kneels in the central place and pulls his swords from his obi, laying them down by his left hand side. The three men stand respectfully in a line against the far wall, their eyes on the newcomer. A geisha scurries over with a cup and jar, pours him a measure of sake and makes to scurry away.

“Leave it here,” says Atsukawa. She puts the jar down on the table and retreats to the corner where the other girls are. Atsukawa drinks, pours himself another cup. His eyes lock onto the girl with the koto.

“Play,” he says.

She plays.

“You,” he says to Sake Warm. “Sit with me.”

Sake Warm grins, bobs his head, and sits cross-legged opposite Atsukawa, clumsily fumbling with his staff for a moment before finally deciding to lay it across his knees. Atsukawa drinks off his second cup and Sake Warm tentatively reaches out for the bottle. Seeing that there is no reaction to this, he pours a cup for Atsukawa and then one for himself.

“Kanpai,” he says with forced cheerfulness, holding up his cup with both hands. Atsukawa looks at him, gives the slightest of nods, and drinks his own cup empty. Sake Warm pours again and, after giving Atsukawa a long, searching look, begins to speak.

“I see, samurai sama, that you wear no markings or livery. May I humbly ask where you are from, and which lord you serve?”

“I have no lord.”

There is another long silence after this as Sake Warm waits for Atsukawa to say more. The mournful picking of the koto seems to absorb the swordsman’s whole attention. After a little while, Sake Warm toasts again, drinks again, pours again.

“Where have you come from?” Atsukawa says suddenly.

“I am a simple merchant, as you can see,” says Sake Warm. “I have come from Yubari, where I live with my family, and I travel between there and Sapporo. I trade in tea and tea sets, if it pleases you, Atsukawa sama.”

Atsukawa thinks this over for a moment.

“You lie,” he says. “You are the criminal Hira, and you are from this prefecture. You took the girl Yurimaru into the forest, raped her, ate her, and now you have doubled back so that you can pretend to be a traveller and a stranger.”

The koto stops playing. The only sound for a moment is indrawn breath.

“With the deepest respects - you are mistaken, Atsukawa sama. My name is Hira, but I am no criminal. Go anywhere along the East West road and say ‘Sake Warm’ and they will know me. I swear to you - I am no criminal, I am a tea merchant…”

But Atsukawa has stopped listening. A lightning quick flick of his left wrist has brought his katana to hand. The sword hisses out of its beautiful sheath and through a vicious arc, clashing as it stops against the foot long blade that has just sprung from Sake Warm’s staff.

The two men spring apart, Sake Warm’s once cheerful face now contorted in a ferocious snarl. Atsukawa’s face is blank. He seems to be looking through the old man as he drops the sheath and takes a two handed grip of his sword.

“You are well armed for a merchant,” says Atsukawa, softly.

“Ronin scum! How dare you attack me? You will die!” screams Sake Warm.

Atsukawa nods to himself. He steps left and the old man follows the movement, swinging the bladed staff so that it sings through the air. But Atsukawa has sprung off the ball of his left foot, darting suddenly right and away from the arc of the strike. He brings his sword down on Sake Warm’s unprotected shoulder, cutting the torso diagonally in half. Blood splatters on the paper walls. A thin line of splashed blood arcs across the ceiling as he brings his sword up again. A gobbet of human flesh flicks onto the face of the nearest geisha. She screams and makes a run for the door. Atsukawa reacts to the movement, cutting her down. There are more screams at this, so he steps forward, slashing right and left, and the other girl falls heavily onto the bloody floor. The Kojima brothers are backing away from Atsukawa, shoulders hunched submissively, hands raised in token of surrender. Atsukawa looks at them. The sword blurs again. The first brother is slashed across the belly and he follows the cascade of his intestines to the floor. The second brother has stood in the way of the backswing. He sways for a moment before his head falls to the floor, teeth chattering as it bounces on the tatami matting. A great jet of blood spurts to the ceiling. The body drops and the fountain of blood turns into a gushing river. The shoji slams open behind Atsukawa as the lady of the house comes pelting in.

“What have you done!” she shrieks.  Atsukawa turns and slams his sword point into her open mouth so hard that several inches of blade punch out the back of her head. She sags, and Atsukawa lets the weight of her bring his sword point down. He plants his foot on her gaping face to help him free the point from her skull. Atsukawa turns to the little girl with the koto. She sits perfectly still in the corner, her doll like face and hands splattered with crimson flecks.

Atsukawa points his dripping sword at the mess of innards and flesh and bright yellow fat that was Sake Warm.

“Is this the man who took your sister?” he asks.

The girl looks, pale faced with terror, then shakes her head.

“But his name is Hira,” he says.

“Forgive me. It is not him,” says the girl.

Atsukawa nods to himself, flicks the thick blood off his sword and wipes the remaining smears on the already heavily crusted hem of his haori.

“We go to the next place,” he says.

The girl nods, gathers up her instrument and follows Atsukawa through the now silent house and out into the rain.

***

At length there came the noble ronin Atsukawa. He had heard of the reward and wished to punish this crime that cried out to heaven of its evil. The noble ronin Atsukawa travelled far and wide, seeking the monster who had taken the girl Yurimaru. He had many adventures, and performed many great deeds until he reached Sapporo, where he finally found and killed the criminal Hira who had taken the girl Yurimaru. As well as the reward, Lord Mitsui accepted Atsukawa into his personal retinue. In time, Atsukawa became the leader of Lord Mitsui’s retainers and performed many great deeds. It is for this reason that the town of Kawajima has its name, in memory of the great and noble deeds of Atsukawa.

The Tyranny of 'Narrative Drive'

He who would pun would pick a pocket.

Most writing advice columns will start by telling you that it doesn't matter what you write, what your 'style' is, and that there are no rules. This is bullshit.

Okay, so it's not a complete lie, but it is an over-simplification. It's the sort of polite thing people say when they don't want to discourage you. Like, "You write quite well for someone your age," or, "Yes, it really suits you, but I like the other one better."

There are rules. They're broad and flexible and can be applied in a huge variety of ways, but rules they are and exist they do. One of these rules has to do with the requirement for 'narrative drive'. This is a vague one to define, but it basically boils down to the feeling that stuff is actually happening and that the story is actually going somewhere.

I hate to say it, but anyone who tells you this isn't important is flat out lying to your face, albeit with (usually) benign motives.

Probably the most important aspect of narrative drive is a sense of momentum. I believe it's actually true that things like pace and frequency of incident don't really matter - a lot of readers prefer slow, contemplative works. What kills momentum, however, is the lack of a unifying idea or set of ideas, lack of consistency in pacing, and the lack of coherence in incident.

Here's three broad principles which, when kept in mind, should help to preserve narrative drive.


WEAPONISE YOUR NARRATIVE

Treat the narrative as your primary delivery system.

This is about having something to say. Before the first word of a story is written, careful consideration needs to be given to the ideas or feelings which the author is trying to get across. Basically, if your plot is not designed as a delivery system for a devastating assault of ideas and emotions, then it's just possible that your story might not be worth reading.

Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating, but it is important to be clear about what you're writing about if you want to avoid producing a story that feels vague, aimless or pointless. It doesn't have to earth-shattering. There's no rule to say that every author must always and only write about the horrors of war, or the insane hubris inherent in human existence. Sometimes, a story which perfectly captures something small - like the desolation of a grey and rainy day, or the heartbreak of life's minor defeats - can be more poignant than any towering epic of literary greatness. But deliver something you must, as people who read writing purely for the sake of beautiful words are called 'poetry readers'.

It could be argued that what I'm saying here is genre specific, but I don't think it is. Remember, I said delivering an idea or a feeling. It really doesn't matter what you're writing, from advertising copy to screenplay to literary doorstopper, it is guaranteed that you will be trying to deliver one or the other. Thrillers deliver excitement, horror promotes dread, sci-fi often shoots for wonder - the list goes on.

By focussing on the idea or feeling you wish to convey, it is far more likely that you will hit upon the best possible vehicle for delivering it, as well as avoiding a story which leaps peripatetically between a dizzying over-abundance of concepts.

The process is a simple one. Some people start with ideas, others with stories, others still with disconnected scenes. Whichever starting point works for you, it's important to pause and determine what you want to make the reader think and/or feel, and then design the rest of your story accordingly. Not to do so is to radically increase your likelihood of producing either an incomplete or a failed manuscript.



DON'T FAFF ABOUT

If your book is this thick, restart and try again.

When you have an idea of where you want your story to go, it's important that you get there as efficiently as possible. Now, don't get the idea that I'm saying every story needs to tear along at the pace of a Lee Child thriller, but it's still not okay to waste scenes and actions. Just as we apply Chekhov's Gun to story elements, so too should it apply to everything else.

On a very basic level, let's say you start a chapter of a novel knowing that you must achieve the following before you can move on:

1. A meeting between two characters
2. A key piece of foreshadowing dialogue
3. An overall impression of a locale
4. The introduction of an important object

The immediate tendency is to think of each of these plot and story elements and create a scene perfectly designed to show each of them. When you're one or two chapters in, this approach may very well work best, but if you continue in this way throughout your book, what you're going to end up with is a smoking hot mess. Characters will have to be used, re-used and invented, and your people and events will start moving in repetitive loops. Also, there's a good chance you'll end up with about 700 chapters.

It's a good idea to apply, at the very beginning, the principle of economy. If all the things on the list above need accomplishing, what is the minimum number of scenes and character actions required to do that? Can the characters meet in a venue which is emblematic of the chosen locale, have a conversation in which they foreshadow the plot and then proceed to notice or mention an important object? If you consistently craft in this fashion, even stories not exactly crowded with incident will gain a sense of momentum and purpose. 

It's easy to forget, but what I try to do is imagine that I have to painstakingly hand draw each scene I'm going to create, and then let my constitutional laziness take over. This is generally effective because, as a writer, painstakingly hand drawing every scene is exactly what you have to do.

PANTSER OR POSEUR?

This is a hipster reading paper anime because it's cool. Don't be that guy.

You may have noticed that much of the foregoing assumes a degree of planning. This leads me to believe that many authors are going to skim through this thinking, "Well, I'm a pantser. None of this applies to me."

A word about pantsers. Nobody who writes anything worth reading does so with zero preparation or planning. 

Nobody. 

I like to use public speaking as an analogy. There are speakers who are brilliant at extempore speaking, and those who require careful planning, notes, and so on. Extempore speakers tend to have a few things in common. Firstly and most fundamentally, they have expertise in both speaking and at least one subject. People who can speak extempore can usually do so because they have practiced speaking to the point where they are glibly articulate, and because they know what they're talking about inside out and upside down. On top of this, when observing an extempore speaker, one notices that they do not, in fact, speak entirely off the cuff. When called upon to speak, they will pause, see the broad outline of their argument in their minds, and then set off. 

From this we can see that they don't eschew planning - their whole lives have been a process of planning and preparation for the moment of speaking. This means that all that's left to do on the day can usually be shortened to a second or two of thought. This is emphatically not the same as failing to prepare or plan at all.

Now, you may think that the divine and plentiful flow of your unique genius is sufficient to keep a reader locked in the compelling spell of your literary greatness, and if you do, I won't argue with you. There wouldn't be much point anyway. But if you're a pantser because you've assessed your spontaneous writing to be better than your contrived, then I'd just point out one thing. However good it is, you still need a rudimentary scaffold or path to your destination. And you still need a destination, because the greatest single killer of narrative drive is aimlessness, and the quickest way to kill a reader's interest is to lack narrative drive.