On Sunday afternoon, I attended Tokyo Writers Workshop (TWW). In one form or another, it has been meeting for over thirty years and is a wonderfully eclectic group of writers. We meet once a month to critique each other’s work.  I submitted chapter 1 of Neyuki, and I am thankful for the valuable feedback I received.  I also had the chance to hear others’ comments for the various submissions.  My first impression was that my responses were woefully lacking in detail and I must up my game if I want to be a contributing member of the group.  It was also fascinating to see the submissions through others’ eyes.  Things I had dismissed lightly were discussed in the context of genres of fiction with which I was unfamiliar, and I learned that some I thought were “out there” were actually mainstream.  Again my too thin reading experience came back to bite me.  I will look at future submissions with kinder, more supportive eyes.

Regarding Neyuki, there was no real consensus in the group as to what changes were necessary, although many thought the chapter needed to move faster.  As a result, I moved some descriptions of the setting into the next chapter.  I also added more tension to the scene where Will hides the body.  Overall, the pacing is better than before. Still, it would move even faster if I cut it by 20 percent. That is this weekend’s task.

There were also questions about why a good man would move his colleague’s corpse rather than just call the police, so I heightened Will’s fear of involvement with the Japanese police and strengthened the logic he follows.  I also set up his logical thought process, which struck some as cold, as an escape Will turns to when reality is too awful and terrifying to countenance.

The one thing on which everyone seemed to agree was the first chapter effectively hooks the reader.  That was my biggest question.  I wish I could have gotten everyone’s feedback on the entire novel.  To submit it piece by piece to the group would take most of two years, and I hope to publish it long before that.  I can, though, submit the pieces that worry me.  There will be plenty of time for those before publication.