A new graphic novel by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, "A Drifting Life," is a semi-fictional autobiography of the post-World War 2 manga scene, and perhaps the thickest (856 pages) I have ever read.  Bracketed between the end of World War II in 1945 and the Peace Treaty in 1960, this story is about Hiroshi Katsumi learning to become a manga artist, his early work in magazine contests, working for a single publisher with shady business practices, working with other artists and multiple publishers, misadventures with women, and a political awakening that redefines a young man.  At times brutally honest, startling and revealing about the human condition, this book is a masterpiece.

Most artists internalized their fears regarding their work.  Although Hiroshi has his doubts from time to time, all his fears are externalized by his older brother, Okimasa.  Both aspire to be manga artists but the younger brother is more prolific and constantly refining his work more than the older brother, creating a tension between the two that range from mild verbal sparing to outright abuse.  Hiroshi is constantly escaping to get away from his older brother by being a substitute basketball player at high school, working on his manga at his aunt's place under the roar of American bombers flying out of the airport, or watching what would later become classic movies from America (Shane, Snow White, and Dumbo) and Japan (Seven Samurai and Godzilla) that would influence his work.  He later moves to Tokyo to live with other manga artists and find better business opportunities.

What I admired the most about Hiroshi is his willingness to keep working from project to project to create a critical body of work to enable him to advance to the next level of his career.  We see a steady progression from shorter lengths (four-panel on postcards) to telling longer stories (32-pages) to creating full-length books (128-pages), struggling and mastering each level along the way.  Experimenting with new and different techniques for story telling and visual presentations from classic literature, hard-boiled detective mysteries, and movies to keep the stories fresh and interesting.  Learning how to manage the business side with different artists, projects, and publishers.  Being an artist is hard work and this book that took ten years to make clearly demonstrates that.

If you're an aspiring manga artist or writer, and want to know how to successfully manage your career, this book is a must read.

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One year, one week, and 700 pages later, the rough draft of my first novel is finished.  I was crying when I wrote the final scene.  When I started out so long ago to write a novel based on my misadventures as a video game tester when I worked at Accolade/Infogrames/Atari (same company, two owners, multiple identity crises) for six years, I had the first chapter in hand, a broad outline divided into seven parts with seven chapters each, and the final scene in mind.  The middle turned out to be a journey not only for my characters but for myself as a writer.

The rough draft is a sprawling mess.  I wrote only the events concerning the main viewpoint characters, leaving out the secondary storyline and minor characters.  My inspiration was the "Genshiken" manga series by Shimoku Kio, where a group of college students are bound together by their love of anime/cosplay/manga/video games (the Japanese slang term is otaku) and their relationships with each other in their club room.  (Video game testers are not that much different when working 40 to 80 hours a week in the same room at work.)  There's no overriding story arc because each story was serialized in a magazine before being published in book form; when read together in all nine volumes, a common story emerges.  The novels I enjoy the most are often a series of little stories woven together into one fabric.

Two-thirds of the draft was composed behind the steering wheel of my car while taking my hour-long lunch breaks at work.  I wrote one to five pages a day for five days a week during that time.  When I got laid off from work four months ago, I had to readjust to writing in my home office.  Using the typewriter and scanning my pages into the computer, my page count was two to eight pages a day and my chapters went from 16 pages to ten pages (those longer chapters will be split in the next draft).  For this past weekend writing marathon to finish the rough draft, I wrote 38 pages in longhand.  Writing a few pages a day does add up in time.

Now that's the rough draft is done, what's next?

I still have 75 pages of handwritten and typed manuscript to enter into the e-file, print out the last pages for my first reader and my own reading copy (orange paper to discourage editing with a red pen), pack everything away, and forget about this story for the next three months.  When September 6th comes around, I'll read the whole thing, make notes, tear it apart to create a detailed outline, and write a new draft.  I'm planning to write two drafts in the next year before I start looking for an agent.

Meanwhile, I still have 20 short stories circulating in the slush piles, a new political short story to finish writing and a vampire novella to edit before finishing my short story collection, and developing the outlines for my next two novels that will each be 400 pages long.  When I'm editing a new draft of my first novel, I'll be writing the rough draft for either my second or third novel.  Being a busy writer means keeping the pipeline full.

In the final words of one of my viewpoint characters, "What a year!"

Update 11 June 2009 @ 9:45PM: Remaining pages have been entered into the e-file.  Here's the final stats for the finished rough draft: 665 double-spaced pages and 120,495 words.  That's six times longer than my previous longest work to date.  Time to celebrate this baby!

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