POSTSCRIPT
POSTSCRIPT
-
What I remember about Tyrant’s Stars is where I wrote it. Actually, I’d completely forgotten until I was asked to pen this postscript, and I was surprised when I looked at the postscript to the Japanese edition and saw it there. Where should I write it but Istanbul in Turkey?
Even on a sightseeing excursion overseas, I write manuscripts. You finish seeing the sights, have dinner, take a shower, and then relax . . . but I just can’t take it easy like that. On a trip overseas for ten days to two weeks, I’ll write anywhere from one hundred fifty to three hundred pages. Even in Japan, I’ll write anywhere. On the platform for a train out to the airport, in the train, in a taxi—although the wildest of all had to be the time when a deadline coincided with the final showing of a movie I wanted to see and I was actually writing at the theater. I’m not talking about sitting on a sofa in the lobby between shows. I mean in my seat, while the movie was playing. Fortunately it was a movie I’d seen before, so I knew which parts I wanted to see and which parts didn’t really matter. During the latter, I wrote by the light of the screen. Of course, that wasn’t bright enough. Since I couldn’t see the lines on the paper, I went by instinct. Just trying to get in the general area, you could say. When I checked what I’d written later, everything pretty much lined up, which was beyond strange and downright comedic! Even I had a good laugh that time.
That’s how I am, so when I go overseas it’s no different. While the bus is headed toward our destination, I write like mad . . . I only steal peeks at the scenery. But still it stays with me as a series of memories. Later, when I compare them to the recollections of my traveling companions, they overlap for the most part. Said companions then give me an odd look for a while, as if they were scrutinizing an alien disguised as a human being. Even I think it’s kind of a shame after going to all the trouble of visiting a foreign country.
On a plane though, with just sky and clouds around me, nothing beats writing. The blinds get drawn and everyone goes to sleep. But since I do my work while other people sleep, my pen just keeps going.
While we’re on the subject, I have this particular habit of always doing something while I write. On the way to New York, this inconvenienced those around me, but that discussion will have to wait until the next volume.
-
Hideyuki Kikuchi
August 19, 2010
while watching Horror Hotel