Becoming One with the Dragon
The weirdest anime of the season has offered me a new perspective on the writing experience.
Hisone and Masotan tells the story of Hisone, a young woman in the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force who becomes a "D-Pilot," someone who flies a dragon (her specific dragon is named Masotan). In the world of the story, dragons are real, and are a vital part of Japan's survival as a nation. But the public can't know about them, so the JASDF disguises them as military planes when they take to the air.
Unlike in most dragon stories, though, Hisone and the other D-Pilots don't get to ride on top of the dragons. Oh no, that would be too mundane. In this story, the dragons swallow the D-Pilots, who must then fly the mission from inside the dragons' guts (which somehow transform into a hi-tech cockpit display). When the mission is over, the dragons obligingly barf their D-Pilots back out.
Yes, I know it's silly, and I'm leaving out a number of problematic story elements, because I want to focus on my main point, which is this:
In many ways, writing is just like trying to pilot a wild, independent creature from the inside.
It swallows you whole, you can't see where you're going unless it lets you, and your ability to control what's happening is limited. Hisone and Masotan must learn how to trust and value each other. So it is with the writer and the story.
Oh, and there's one other thing. If a D-Pilot becomes distracted by the goings-on of her life, she becomes incompatible with the dragon, which will either barf her out immediately or try to digest her. In the show, "distracted" means falling in love, which sets up one of the show's more problematic elements. In the case of a writer and a story, it's not that specific. Many kinds of distractions can make a story pull away from you.
And that brings me to where I am right now, and why this silly show about dragons cosplaying as fighter planes has struck a nerve with me.
This past Saturday, I went out to the Ontario Convention Center for the annual California Homeschool Convention. It's the one time all year when my publisher comes out to California and we can meet in person to discuss what I'm writing. Two years ago, he pitched the idea of the Mathematical Biographies to me. Now the first book of the series is in his hands, and he loves it. We shared some ideas about where the series should go, and basically there's no such thing as my writing them too fast. He'll take them as quickly as I can turn them out.
That's a good problem to have - but it's still a problem. I haven't been able to write very quickly since I went back to the day-job world. The dragon goes as fast as the dragon goes, and applying brute force isn't going to make it go any faster. I've been there and tried that. It's going to take another way.
It's also going to take the elimination of as much distraction as possible, and the best place to start doing that is by cutting back on my internet activities - especially the politically-oriented ones. I feel a bit guilty about that, because I don't want to stay silent in the midst of all the awfulness going on, but a certain degree of it is essential. My books are intended to help the kids who will be stuck with cleaning up this mess in the future, and I can't write them if I'm too caught up in the mess myself.
So... you probably won't be seeing as much of me online, or at least I hope you won't. It's nothing personal. I just don't want to end up as dragon barf.
Hisone and Masotan tells the story of Hisone, a young woman in the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force who becomes a "D-Pilot," someone who flies a dragon (her specific dragon is named Masotan). In the world of the story, dragons are real, and are a vital part of Japan's survival as a nation. But the public can't know about them, so the JASDF disguises them as military planes when they take to the air.
Unlike in most dragon stories, though, Hisone and the other D-Pilots don't get to ride on top of the dragons. Oh no, that would be too mundane. In this story, the dragons swallow the D-Pilots, who must then fly the mission from inside the dragons' guts (which somehow transform into a hi-tech cockpit display). When the mission is over, the dragons obligingly barf their D-Pilots back out.
Yes, I know it's silly, and I'm leaving out a number of problematic story elements, because I want to focus on my main point, which is this:
In many ways, writing is just like trying to pilot a wild, independent creature from the inside.
It swallows you whole, you can't see where you're going unless it lets you, and your ability to control what's happening is limited. Hisone and Masotan must learn how to trust and value each other. So it is with the writer and the story.
Oh, and there's one other thing. If a D-Pilot becomes distracted by the goings-on of her life, she becomes incompatible with the dragon, which will either barf her out immediately or try to digest her. In the show, "distracted" means falling in love, which sets up one of the show's more problematic elements. In the case of a writer and a story, it's not that specific. Many kinds of distractions can make a story pull away from you.
And that brings me to where I am right now, and why this silly show about dragons cosplaying as fighter planes has struck a nerve with me.
This past Saturday, I went out to the Ontario Convention Center for the annual California Homeschool Convention. It's the one time all year when my publisher comes out to California and we can meet in person to discuss what I'm writing. Two years ago, he pitched the idea of the Mathematical Biographies to me. Now the first book of the series is in his hands, and he loves it. We shared some ideas about where the series should go, and basically there's no such thing as my writing them too fast. He'll take them as quickly as I can turn them out.
That's a good problem to have - but it's still a problem. I haven't been able to write very quickly since I went back to the day-job world. The dragon goes as fast as the dragon goes, and applying brute force isn't going to make it go any faster. I've been there and tried that. It's going to take another way.
It's also going to take the elimination of as much distraction as possible, and the best place to start doing that is by cutting back on my internet activities - especially the politically-oriented ones. I feel a bit guilty about that, because I don't want to stay silent in the midst of all the awfulness going on, but a certain degree of it is essential. My books are intended to help the kids who will be stuck with cleaning up this mess in the future, and I can't write them if I'm too caught up in the mess myself.
So... you probably won't be seeing as much of me online, or at least I hope you won't. It's nothing personal. I just don't want to end up as dragon barf.
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