New Author Photo!!! (and How My Photo Shoot Went!)

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Yep, that’s me.

Above are two cropped versions of my new author photos, superbly set up, photographed, and photoshopped by Toyama-based photographer Kaede Tsuji (@maplens27). We took these photos back in early July on a swelteringly hot Saturday in Kansui Park in Toyama City.  I’ll be using one of them (probably the standing one) for the release of MFA Thesis Novel in April, along with marketing, publicity, social media, and all that good stuff.

This was my second time doing a photo shoot—my first time was back in New Hampshire in 2016 Continue reading »

There Are Other Weird People Out There Like Me: An Interview with Krissy Diggs

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Krissy Diggs posts illustrations on Instagram, where she has a lot of followers but doesn’t make a big deal about it.  She first achieved internet fame in the late 2000s making videos as That Chick With the Goggles for what would become Channel Awesome, and briefly produced her own Youtube show, Challenge Accepted!!!  Her art has been featured in exhibitions, on concert posters, a novel cover, and a Japanese beer label, and she’s worked as a waitress, an art director for a major cellular company, and an English teacher in Kanazawa, Japan.

Krissy and I first collaborated in 2019 when she shared some of her drawings with the TRAM zine in nearby Toyama.  When pandemic restrictions eased up I took the train out to meet her in Kanazawa, where we enjoyed a lunch of hanton rice and she shared her insights on the Day Job life.

 

I. I Just Thought of It as Fun

 

But I Also Have a Day Job: So when did you join Instagram?

Krissy Diggs: I was an early adapter, so I joined when it was a new thing.  When I first started I never took it seriously as a platform to share art or anything.  I was kind of using it the way everyone else was—sharing pictures of food, etc.  I tend to have my name on all of my handles because I get in early enough.  I have that for Twitter, Instagram, and I think TikTok too.  I don’t know how to do TikTok, but I’m trying to learn. Continue reading »

Life Upheavals Make It REALLY Difficult to Do Your Creative Work

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Yeah, I’m here.

I just packed up my entire apartment, said goodbye to all my Toyama friends, spent two and a half days traveling halfway across the world, finished another round of developmental edits on my novel, and met up with my New Hampshire family and friends for the first time in two years, all while battling jet lag and struggling to find the clean socks I’d scattered throughout the darkest regions of my luggage to save space.

How you doing? Continue reading »

Leaving the JET Program, Part 4: Why I Switched to a Shorter-Term Day Job

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At the end of July I’m finishing my Day Job teaching English in Japan with the JET Program, and the transition has given me a lot to think about.  This is the last post in my series about working on JET, what it’s brought me, how I feel about it, and where I’m headed in the future. If you missed the beginning you can get start with Part 1 here.

The cover photo shows decorations for a festival on a street in my town of Namerikawa, Toyama, sometime in the early- to mid-twentieth century.

Today I had my last day of work, and it was really sad.

There were a lot of goodbyes, a lot of farewell cards, a few presents, a last-day lunch, and one of my old supervisors even came from a different school to say goodbye and thank me for my service.  For Japanese-style goodbyes, coworkers will usually gather at the door to wave to someone as they leave for the last time, and that was really nice too.

I also gave a speech during my main school’s end-of-semester ceremony, which was really meaningful as well.  I talked about the shock of working in a Japanese elementary school for the first time, how I always Continue reading »

Leaving the JET Program, Part 2: Honing My Life Focus

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At the end of July I’m finishing my Day Job teaching English in Japan with the JET Program, and the transition has given me a lot to think about.  This is the second in a multi-part series about working on JET, what it’s brought me, how I feel about it, and where I’m headed in the future. You can check out Part 1 here.

The cover photo shows an actual girls elementary school (which later became Tanaka elementary school) in my town of Namerikawa, Toyama, from the early- to mid-20th century.

As I wrote about last week, I really like my job teaching English with the JET Program, but it’s time for me to move on.  Besides some problems with one of my co-teachers and not being able to see family and friends in the States, there’s one really, really important reason for my leaving that deserved its own post:

It’s time for me to focus more on creative work, and not on Day Job work. Continue reading »

How is a Career Different Than a Job?

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I talk about Jobs a lot on this blog—as in, Day Jobs vs. Real Jobs, a Day Job as separate from a job you’re passionate about, a job as a way to establish your credibility, and so on.

What I don’t talk as much about, though, is the idea of a Career, which is something I’ve been overlooking both in my own life and in my philosophy about work in general.

I imagine a Career as a way of defining all the work you’ve done in a way you can be proud of.  A Career is something you’d openly tell others about when introducing yourself at a cocktail party, or something you’d write below your name on a business card.  A career is a way of defining yourself, and it establishes a kind of identity for you as a working person. Continue reading »

Shoe Leather Hustling: An Interview with Writer Sean Doolittle

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Sean Doolittle is a crime, suspense, and horror novelist and the author of seven books: Dirt (UglyTown, 2001), Burn (UglyTown, Bantam Dell, 2003), Rain Dogs (Bantam Dell, 2005), The Cleanup (Bantam Dell, 2006), Safer (Bantam Dell, 2009), Lake Country (Bantam Dell, 2012), and most recently Kill Monster (Audible Originals, Severn House, 2019).  Originally from southeast Nebraska, his books have won the ITW Thriller Award, the Barry Award, and many others.  He’s also worked full-time throughout his writing career.

I first met Sean in 2014 when he taught a graduate-level fiction writing workshop at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he gave me some instrumental feedback on my first novel and wasn’t afraid to make pop-culture references in class.  We kept in touch, and earlier this year sat down over Zoom to talk about getting his work out there, his mid-career slump, and finding time to write when you have a day job. Continue reading »

There’s No Magical Line Between Famous People and Regular People

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When I was a kid I thought famous people lived in a different world than regular people.  I figured that after Arnold Schwarzenegger made the first Terminator movie they issued him a special “I’m a Famous Person!” card that let him eat at special restaurants and fly out of private airports so he wouldn’t be mobbed by crazed fans on a daily basis.

I thought that fame, and the card that went along with it, made famous people like Arnold Schwarzenegger different than regular people—like he’d crossed a magical dividing line.

While elementary-school Ian was correct in that class stratification ensures that famous people (plus anyone with money) can live entirely different lives than the rest of us, the line between being Famous and being Not Famous isn’t that cut and dry.  (For starters, I’m pretty sure there’s no “I’m a Famous Person!” card…) Continue reading »

I’m Taking Time Off From My Day Job and Using That Time Productively (Oh Yeah!)

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As some of you may have heard, back in the fall I was planning a Christmas trip back to New Hampshire to visit family and friends…which I ended up calling off when COVID cases and restrictions ramped up.  This sucked pretty hard, and while I don’t regret calling off the trip, it’s unfortunate that circumstances forced me into making that tough decision.

Here’s the good point, though: while planning the trip, I got approved for a four-week vacation from my Day Job.  And when I called off the US trip I decided I’d still use the time off.

Quick bit of backstory: My job as an ALT on the JET Program comes with, among other perks, 20 paid days off per year that are pretty flexible, especially if I schedule them in advance.  Last year because of COVID I barely used any, so when my new JET contract started in August I found myself with a mouth-watering 29 days to use or lose as I see fit.

And I have no intention of losing them. Continue reading »

How I Changed My Routine to Reduce Stress – A Rundown

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It’s been a rough couple of weeks, but things have been getting better.  (And on that note, MANY thanks to everyone who reached out to see how I was doing—it means a lot.)

As I wrote about last week, I’ve been having some issues with stress and general pessimism both in- and outside of my Day Job, and earlier this month I sat down and talked with my boss about it.  This was a pretty big step for me—and not just because of the language barrier.  Rather, it was me admitting to myself that I needed to slow down, step back, and reprioritize some aspects of my life.

This understandably involved a few changes—some big, some small, some I implemented right away, and some that were more gradual.  In order from most to least significant, here’s a rundown of what changes I’ve made, why I made them, and what effects they’ve been having…. Continue reading »

Is Too Much Freedom With Your Time a Bad Thing?

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Short answer: Sometimes.  Long answer:

Recently someone asked me how I felt about the idea of having total freedom to write or do whatever creative work I wanted—and whether that much freedom would be overwhelming.

The question took me back to the last time I had a lot of freedom with my time, after I left my job where my boss was crooked and before I started my current job in Japan.  I was editing the fourth or so draft of MFA Thesis Novel during the day, editing the first New Hampshire Writers Project Anthology in the afternoons, and in between that I was brushing up my Japanese, doing editing side gigs, and trying to read a lot of books.  I also had to find time to move all my stuff into storage and vacate my apartment.

In short, I was pretty busy. Continue reading »

I’m Getting Ready to Write a New Novel But Not Actually Writing It Yet—Here’s Why

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My writing’s been in this weird state of transition for a long time now.  That’s because, for the first time in nine years, I’m not actively working on some sort of novel.

Instead I worked on querying MFA Thesis Novel to publishers for ten months, and in between queries worked on some shorter pieces in various states of completion.  Having time to focus on these other projects has been great, but I’m realizing how badly I miss having a bigger, more involved project to work on, and how much I want to get back into the creative process of working on a novel.

But, as I wrote about in my post a few weeks back, I’m having trouble starting.

That’s partly because this novel idea is particularly ambitious—it’s like nothing I’ve ever written, and writing it the way I’m imagining it is going to take every bit of my writing skill, in addition to a lot of skills I’ve yet to get a handle on.
Continue reading »