For as long as I can remember, I have been desperately concerned with my level of metacognitive skill. It was the reason I gave the first story I ever wrote for public consumption to my best friend to critique, I was seven and I remember vividly the relief that I had a chance to fix it before I read it to the prep class (the grade before grade 1, in Australia.) Metacognition is the ability to assess one’s own skill level and, of course, I didn’t know the word until my university philosophy of mind studies, but my greatest fear has always been not failure to achieve perfection but to have thought that what I had done was objectively good and then to discover that it wasn’t.

Whether a child, probably too young even to have metacognitive ability, should be worrying about such things is a valid question for another, more private, forum, but it has driven a life-long love of theory and research, if only to do as much as I can to make sure I don’t find myself in that situation. It’s what drives me to believe that editing and story analysis classes are more important for a writer than any “Express yourselves, dahlings!” creative writing classes. It’s also lead to a morbid curiosity about how on earth people have the confidence to, for example, audition for So You Think You Can Dance despite having no ability whatsoever. Aren’t they embarrassed? And how can they not know how bad they are?

The same questions come to mind when I read an terribly flawed piece of writing.* When I have been asked to give feedback (professionally or no) I have to try to work out why the writer hasn’t noticed these flaws so that I can work out the best way to approach giving my feedback in the hope that it will be taken as constructively as it is meant. I have found, again and again, that the level of confidence the writer has is an excellent gauge, invariably, those whose pieces need the most work are most shocked that any work is required and genuinely seem to have believed they had produced a masterpiece.

I have discussed this many times with Superman and he recently pointed me to a 1999 report which shed some interesting light on the subject and backs up the, now old-fashioned, belief that anyone who believes themselves to be the best at anything is unlikely to be even close to the best.

The Report: “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”**

In their 1999 report, Kruger and Dunning outlined four studies they had undertaken which were inspired by previous studies which showed a correlation between level of confidence and lack of ability. Kruger and Dunning devised experiments in which they asked people to take tests in the areas of logical reasoning, humor and English grammar, then asked them to estimate both: what their specific test score had been and; which percentile their test results fell into (i.e., where their test result would fall in comparison to others’.) The aim was to find the subjects’ actual skill level in an area, and then see if they were aware of what their skill level actually was.

Their findings were unambiguous: the less skill you have, the more grossly you overestimate your ability and, perhaps more instructively, it seems only those with above average skill underestimate their skill. Thus, if you want to make an assumption about a person’s skill from their attitude, the best thing to do is to watch out for humility, not confidence!

“But, but, but!” I hear all the management-book-steeped would-be-Donald-Trumps of the world shriek, “That’s loser talk. Confidence is the most important thing! If you don’t think you’re the best, who will?”

This is an attitude that, as far as I can tell, began to seep into the world in the 80’s, as advertising men, salesmen and generic ‘business’ men began to make enormous amounts of money, and people started looking to them as icons of success. Suddenly, everyone was reading management and wealth-building books written by these ‘guru’s, and this requirement for uber-self-confidence was being applied in interview rooms across all sorts of industries. Quiet confidence and humility became associated with ‘losers’ – who just didn’t want it enough, or were cursed with low self-esteem - a condition which was to be treated like a highly contagious disease.

I’m not denying the existence of, or problems associated with low self-esteem. It may surprise some people who have met me, because I usually speak with confidence, but I’ve been close to crippled by low self-esteem for much of my life. When I speak up, it is with confidence, but that’s because I only speak up if I have done copious research, practice and, especially if it involved public speaking, throwing up, in private.  I understand completely that a certain level of confidence is required just to step into any arena of experience, some more than others, but beyond the minimum level of confidence required for the particular task at hand confidence is, as the studies demonstrate, more of an indication of lack of skill than of competence.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that projection of confidence is essential in marketing, or sales, or any profession which requires one to convince others to willingly do what you want them to do. I also understand the philosophy that any interview is a sales pitch of yourself. It is not true, however, that every job is a sales job and anyone who conducts interviews for non-sales positions and makes their decisions based on who sold themselves most confidently really can’t complain when that applicant turns out not to have the skill they’d hoped (or has even lied on their resume!) Such interviewers are as responsible for the bad hire as they would be if they’d ordered a disappointing piece of exercise equipment skillfully advertised in the wee hours of the morning.

Of course, a study like this isn’t going to instantly change the prevailing culture but I thought it worth sharing with my small audience of, mostly, writers hoping to be published who are wrestling with their own levels of confidence, or perhaps should be

*Note: Any discussion of ability brings with it the jinx that there will be numerous grammatical and spelling errors in the very piece discussing it. I’d like to point out that metacognition is the issue here and I’m fully aware that this blog post won’t be perfect, unwilling as I am to spend more time than it takes to jot down the thoughts and get my creative juices flowing for my fiction writing!

** “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”, Justin Kruger and David Dunning Department of Psychology Cornell University, © 1999 by the American Psychological Association For personal use only--not for distribution December 1999 Vol. 77, No. 6, 1121-1134

Rather than write another how-to book, Mittelmark and Newman have produced a book in a format which will be familiar to TV Tropes readers, naming, describing and creating their own hand-crafted, hysterical examples of many of the mistakes that unpublished authors make in spec manuscripts (though I have certainly seen many of these in published books, too!)

Ask yourself, are you guilty of:

“The Overture: Wherein the prologue is a brief guide to the meaning of life”

“The Puffer Fish: Wherein the author flaunts his vocabulary”

“The Joan Rivers Pre-Novel Special: In which clothing is given too much prominence?”

“The Vacation Slideshow: In which the author substitutes location for story?”

“Gibberish for Art’s Sake: Wherein indecipherable lyricism baffles the reader”

““But, Captain…!”: Where characters tell each other things they both already know”

“Hamlet at the Deli: Wherein the character’s thoughts are transcribed to no purpose”

“Goodbye cruel reader! In which an inconvenient character is conveniently disposed of?”

“The Underpants Gnomes Where crucial steps are omitted?”

and does your novel end with

“Now with 20% More Homily! Where the author tells us what he’s just spent 300 pages telling us”

If you find yourself haunted by some of the examples (and if you are even slightly honest with yourself, you will) and if you find yourself trying to justify your particular use of them, then they are probably the things you most need to fix!

Laugh out loud, shriek out loud, funny, this book will teach you more than many similar books which take you away from your writing for far longer. Definitely a book every would-be novelist should read.

About a decade ago, I witnessed an Australian cognitive scientist declare with utter conviction that a person's capacity for happiness was genetically pre-determined and then refuse to be drawn into any discussion of environmental factors for the rest of the seminar. When asked if he was happy himself he responded "As happy as I am capable of being" and gave a smug, self-satisfied, lips-only smile - a happiness of sorts, I suppose. In contrast, Nancy Etcoff tells us that cognitive scientists have now discovered that, while they do their share, genes are only about 50% responsible for our level of happiness, the rest is a combination of chasing natural beauty, social activity and other such pleasure inducing experiences while avoiding misery inducing ones and the judicious satisfaction of desires (which may or may not be pleasure or misery inducing themselves).

Contrary to the idea Plato's Socrates gives us, that happiness exists only in as much as we experience the absence of its opposite, our emotional well-being is not a continuum from happy to sad but, rather, a balance of parallel emotional systems. Making ourselves less miserable does not automatically result in a move towards happiness, it acts solely to make us more able to enjoy whatever happiness we find without the chemical fog of depression. Similarly, pursuing what we feel an urgent desire to attain, whether it a material possession, or the love of a person, satisfies only our dopamine-based, "need" system, which is at the heart of addiction; we won't feel as bad as we do when we are yearning for that thing, but getting it will not necessarily raise the happiness level of the equation unless what is gained is something which also gives us pleasure, rather than merely the absence of yearning.

To be truly happy, if I have understood Etcoff correctly, one must address not only misery and it's avoidance but our, separate,  desire system and the pursuit of its satisfaction, while also indulging in experiences that give us pleasure (yet another system again). Like an audio engineer finding the perfect mix, we must adjust all three sliders to find the sweet spot, which is likely to be slightly different for everyone.

As a writer, this insight is exciting; I can see how this will be a tool for tweaking characters: which one of the sliders is the character more influenced by, which does he have the emotional skills to manipulate better?

Etcoff is a great presenter, too. Enjoy!

SHELDON

It must be an emergency; everyone at the university knows that I eat my breakfast at 8 and move my bowels at 8:20

LEONARD

Yes, how did we live before Twitter?

- from The Big Bang Theory, S.2, Ep.23,The Monopolar Expedition.

When even the boys of The Big Bang Theory, champions of all things techie and geeky, appear to use Twitter merely to broadcast the minutiae of daily life, it’s no wonder tweeting is generally considered a frivolous procrastination. When I began tweeting I did so with no idea of what it was except that it was another social networking site which my fellow Japan Bloggers were jumping aboard to promote their blogs. I figured it wouldn’t hurt for me to try it out and see if I could give them a hand here and there. Approximately one year and 2,246 tweets later, I’m completely hooked on Twitter as an information resource which I have tailored to my needs and interests.

How Twitter Works

Because there are no stupid questions: a basic run down.

1) People make observations, ask questions, answer questions and broadcast information in the form of  a tweet - a text message which can be no longer than 140 characters.

2) Those observations, questions and information are seen by anyone who is either mentioned in the tweet (by means of their twitter name with an @ symbol in front of it) or anyone who has chosen to ‘follow’ all of the tweets of the person writing.

3)Repeat 1 & 2 on ridiculously huge, entangled scale.

How Twitter Becomes Useful

When we first begin, invariably we all follow the tweets of friends and family who have told us their Twitter name (I’m Danisidhe btw, nice to tweet you. Sorry.) We send them a tweet telling them we are on and they then follow us. At this stage, it is understandable that people think that this is just another Facebook or mySpace but without snappy (?) layout or pictures and, if you never go beyond friends and family, that’s true and you can use it that way but you’re not using Twitter to its full, wonderful extent.

The real key to Twitter is to give in to the curious cat within and risk one of your nine lives. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Note that when you choose to follow someone, you follow all of their tweets. When someone that you are following sends a message or replies to someone that they are following, you will see that message BUT you won’t know what on earth they are replying to. If your friend’s message catches your interest, click on that other person’s name and you will be taken to their page where you will see their last several tweets (possibly including the tweet to which your friend was replying, depending on the time your friend took to respond.) If the tweets on your friend’s friend’s page are of interest to you, you can choose to follow them, too.

Unless they have locked their account for privacy, in which case you won’t see any of their tweets at all, you can follow someone without getting permission like you need to in Facebook etc. If they see that you are following them and they don’t wish you to, they can block you (just as you can block people) but since Twitter is really a public information stream (so no-one should be twittering something they can’t risk strangers seeing) there is no reason that they should need to do that unless you harass or spam them. Note that following them doesn’t mean that they are following you, nor does it create any kind of social contract requiring them to do so.

And that’s how the tailoring begins.

Through the judicious use of ‘spying’ on people with whom your ‘twitter friends’ are conversing and following those with similar interests, you will soon find your Twitter stream is filled with useful information that you could never have gathered on your own.

It is always worthwhile checking out who is following you because chances are they share your interests and therefore might be worth following but who follows you won’t really matter to you unless you are using twitter as a way to promote something. Promoter tweeters devote their whole twitter-being to writing targeted tweets to attract as many followers as possible but that is only one use of Twitter and one that requires careful execution lest you become so obviously one-eyed that you are boring and people, like me, stop following you.

How I use Twitter

Professional Development & Community

Most of the people I now follow and who follow me are writers, both budding and jobbing, print and screen, and there is quite a community. We share links to articles or posts from writers or publishing industry types on writing craft, tips on getting published, publishing trends, competitions… you get the picture. My RSS readers has blossomed since joining twitter as I add blogs recommended by my fellow writers or the blogs of those who’s tweets always intrigue. We support each other through the use of #tags like #writegoal – wherein we might tweet: “#writegoal today, 2000 words” then, at the end of the day we will tweet: “Woohoo #writegoal met plus 146 words!” and anyone who happens to be looking at the #writegoal search at the time of your report tweet will send you a ‘”woohoo, well done!” tweet. It might sound silly to some but when you’re sitting at a computer alone (as writers tend to be) just knowing you’ve made the public commitment and getting some positive feedback when you’re done can be great.

Here’s a tweet I received in my stream today from @BookEditorLM:

RT @BookBundlz "The Book Pick" Contest Deadline = 11/16 Enter yr novel, memoir; self-pub ok http://bit.ly/4nUd12 #Authors #Writers #Books”

In that tweet: @BookEditorLM re-tweeted (i.e., copied the original and sent it as her own tweet indicating it with RT) a tweet from @BookBundlz announcing a competition with a link to where you can enter. They also added #tags to the tweet so that any writers who regularly search twitter for any tweets containing those #tags will see it, too. In fact, I saw that tweet because I have a permanent search set up for any tweet containing “#writers” – not because I follow @BookEditorLM (though I do now!).

Now, I’m not actually interested in this particular competition but there are two things I might do with this tweet 1) I can click on @BookBundlz and see if they regularly tweet about competitions and thus might be worth following in case they mention one I am interested in and 2) I can re-tweet it myself so that any writers who follow me will be sure to see it (in case they don’t follow @BookBundlz , @BookEditorLM or any of the #tags.)

I follow #tags by using a desktop (i.e. not in a browser) application called Tweetdeck, which I highly recommend. I set up a search for, for example  #writegoal and Tweetdeck gives me a separate column for it and updates it automatically at whatever interval I tell it to (Twitter traffic permitting.)

Some of the #tags worth following if you are a writer #writers, #writechat (this one has a tweetchat which occurs at 4am Monday morning Japan time, for which I occasionally stay up and is always worth it,) #writegoal. There are heaps of others which I might duck into temporarily if I find out something is happening in it (usually by people adding one of the above #tags to a relevant tweet.) A currently busy one is #nanowrimo for all those participating this year!

Journal/Travel Diary

Those of you who subscribe to my feed will be vaguely familiar with this use because it is the reason you are hit with a “My Week in Tweets” post every Sunday night, Japan time. I’ve never been much of a journal-er because I’ve always felt there is a kind of wallowing, if not dishonesty, in trying to write down what you remember were your thoughts and/or feelings at the time something happened. With Twitter, you can record your observations as they occur (circumstances permitting, of course) and have a real record of what mattered to you enough to Tweet it at the time, rather than what you think is appropriate to record later.

Using a wordpress plugin by the wonderful Alex King called Twitter Tools, all the tweets from the week (that are not direct replies to other tweets) are published as a post on my blog, giving me a permanent record of my tweets. So, though I also have in mind keeping my friends and family in touch with my activities, it is often this that I am thinking of when I take a low quality photo with my phone and send it via email to Tweetphoto, with a comment in the subject line that becomes the tweet (GOD I LOVE Japanese phone internet lol.)

Using Twitter this way is a little different because it is not really about communicating with others and so isn’t something that Twitter is actually made to do, in fact, I don’t think it can be done without also having a blog with a plugin like Twittertools installed (there may be a way to have all your tweets emailed to you but I haven’t checked that out). Of course you also need a decent mobile internet solution, I don’t know how I’ll do it in Australia

Shameless Plug for Friend:

Speaking of travel, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my dear friend @ShaneSakata’s tweetchat using the #tag: #japantravel which occurs for an hour from Midday on Fridays, Tokyo time and is a wonderful resource for anyone planning a trip to or already travelling within Japan. You can find details and/or actually follow the tweetchat without an application like Tweetdeck here

/Plug ends

Keeping in Touch

Obviously I do use Twitter to keep in touch with friends in a similar way that one does on Facebook (which I only recently joined and I admit is mostly updated by clicking the ‘facebook’ button on the application I use to handle Twitter and posting to both services at once.)

Twitter does have a Direct Message function which enables you to send a tweet privately to one person (still 140 chars) and I admit to being more quickly contactable that way than by email these days. I check my email once a day (at best) while I check twitter many times a day (hence I have been known to request a virtual slap from my #writegoal friends if I tweet again within a certain time frame!) In fact a recent trip to Tokyo, to meet up with a friend for a two day feast of cookware and ceramics shops on Kappabashi, was planned entirely via Twitter and I even updated her on my travel status from the Shinkansen when I had web access on my phone but could not call or SMS her.

So, that’s why and how I use Twitter. How do you use it? And if you don’t, will you join ussss?

Today's post, Things that Drive an Editor Crazy, particularly inspired me to do this promo post for them. As some of you will know, I produced audio books for many years and so spent my days reading published books of all genres and was often horrified by the quality of writing. Unlike casual reading, producing an audiobook requires you to find a way to make every word in every sentence work and you'd be surprised how difficult it can be! Before anyone protests, I am not requiring of every novel something which should only be required of "literary" novels - there is a difference between a colloquial, commercial style and pure laziness.

Language has become a bit of a bug bear of mine in the blogging world, too. Sure, blogging is an expression of self but that doesn't mean anything goes! Everyone makes the odd typo or grammatical error (of course there are bound to be several in this post ) and certainly one can be a little less strict on a colloquial blog, nevertheless if you have chosen to blog, you have chosen a written form of self expression. At the very least, your blog should express that the language in which you are writing is  your mother tongue! Assuming it is, of course. 

Maryann puts it brilliantly :

Sometimes I will have a client say, “But I see that all the time in books I read.”

So?

Weak writing is weak writing no matter who is getting published. Some people don’t care. They just dash off a piece of work, grab the money and run. But I believe we owe our readers more than that. Developing the story and getting it down on paper – or stored on your hard drive – is only the first step in writing a book. The next couple of steps are crucial and infinitely more difficult – at least I think so. Rewriting and editing to find just the right words and phrases can lift an average book into the realm of good and maybe even great.

Obviously the buck stops with the writer rather than the editor, an editor can only polish what is in front of them. A good (or maybe just nice) editor will take the time to point out the kinds of things in the post linked above - IF it gets to their desk in the first place!  Then again, a writer needs to be able to trust their editor to notice when they have become unable to see the forest for the trees. I'll never forget the character's parents who flew in to see their son married on the last page of one book - their death during the character's childhood had been a large part of the character's motivation throughout story...

If you consider yourself a writer, add this blog to your reader - a lot of it will be familiar (assuming you do anything to educate yourself about your craft, and if you don't, why not?) but it comes from a practical point of view. I find that it refreshes concepts I may not have considered for a while or from a publisher's angle and, perhaps equally importantly, it reminds me that no-one simply spews out perfect writing first time round!!

I am no snob when it comes to novels - years producing audio books from all kinds of novels knocked any potential for that out of me. When I read a novel I read for the same reason I watch a film or a television series - to be immersed in a story. If the quality of the writing isn't perfect but the story is engaging then that's fine by me - goodness knows there are many "well written" or "literary" novels which will put you to sleep! Give me a good story over good grammar any day. Unfortunately, Sword of God gives you neither.

The plot is the good ol' retired-military-man-is-the-only-man-who-can-stop-the<insert topical nationality/culture> terrorist's plot. Yes there are a few more twists and turns than that but nothing substantial (unless you find it unusual for a US military man to become a bad guy due to military manipulation and trauma... sigh). On top of that, the writing in Sword of God actually gets in the way of what story there is. For example, I know readers of these military type novels love copious details about military hardware and process but plonking them down right in the middle of potential action scenes, destroying any flow which may have existed, is just inexcusable especially when it is done over and over. Similarly there is no excuse for high school phrasing to end sections as in: "She didn't think it could get any worse. But she was wrong." (p253) and the book is full of it.

I will admit that, perhaps, if I hadn't been lured to buying the book under the pretence of it being a very different kind of plot, I might have been more open to the story, if only because I wouldn't have been quite so focused on waiting for that plot-line to re-appear. Which brings me to something probably more interesting than this book: blurbs.

Blurbs for books are not written by authors but, obviously, by publishing staff keen on sales. I used to edit them for the backs of our audio books and was often struck by how they reflected the contents of the books to varying degrees. The blurb for this one is truly false advertising. In fact here it is:

Tunnelling deep under one of the most holy cities in the world, an ambitious young archaeologist slowly works her way towards an unthinkable goal. Somewhere ahead is a chamber containing the collected fragments of an ancient scripture, a find of unimaginable significance...

Meanwhile, halfway round the world, a covert military bunker holds a macabre secret. An elite special-forces officer seems to have been brutally murdered - but how, and more disturbingly, why? Any hope of solving the mystery rests on the grisly clues that remain.

As the race to uncover the truth begins, a plot unfolds that could burn all of civilization in the fires of holy Armageddon...

Sounds like the archaeologist plot and the "find of unimaginable significance" would have at least equal significance to the plot of this novel as the military plot, yes? Or at least SOME significance at all? The archaeologist does, early on in the novel, discover a sword which, it is hinted at, may be the sword of Mohammed which it is rumoured may be the sword Jesus will use on judgement day AND THAT IS THE LAST TIME THE SWORD IS MENTIONED. At no point does the sword or the ancient documents have ANY RELEVANCE WHATSOEVER to the plot beyond being reason for being in the convenient place at the convenient time. In fact, you could happily remove the archaeologist subplot entirely without effecting anything but the length of the novel. Sure, there would be a couple of loose ends, you'd need some other character to hand over one piece of evidence but that's about the only important role she plays and could have been handled for more elegantly. Certainly there was no threat of holy Armageddon other than that the attempted terrorist act may have sparked a war which would be justified by the combatants as a "holy war" but there would certainly not have been anything supernatural about it. Very very disappointing.

REVIEW
Overall Score: 17/60
Story: 2/10 - derivative
Structure: 4/10 - all over the place, too much left undone or unsatisfactorily tied up.
Dialogue: 3/10 - cliche but not unbelievable for the characters, particularly bad when used for exposition
Characters: 3/10 - stereotypes (and I don't mean archetypes, just stereotypes)
Descriptive style: 4/10 - cliched phrasing, lack of flow mostly due to badly inserted exposition
Exposition handling: 1/10 - clunky, incongruous, often resorts to straight lecturing, inconsistently breaks rules of POV in 3rd person intimate

So how is it that Death Note seems, so far, to be escaping the usual Amercanization treatment? I think the plot itself may actually be providing somewhat of an immunity in two main ways.

First, the storyline is based in pagan religion - something I doubt any American Production company would dare bring to American shores, at least not for something they are hoping to make quickly and easily and then reap the fast-horror-bucks. Without giving too much away, the "Death Note" of the title is actually a notebook which is the property of a Japanese Shinigami, or god of death, any human who finds the book and follows the instructions on its use can kill anyone they like, in any manner they like as long as they know their real name to write in the book. The shinigami becomes both visible and bound to whoever is using his book and must stay with that person until their death and so our anti-hero also gains a bizarre, often amusing, confidante of sorts in the form of this pagan god. The shinigami can just be made out as a shadowy shape in the background of this poster to the right - it is he who likes apples I'd imagine that this film would be as popular as things such as The Ring and so details would quickly leak out and I can see protests across the very christian and increasingly fundamentalist nation - I would think american actors' agents would be treating this one with great care.

Of course, the shinigami element could probably be removed (thought the poster above suggests it will not be) and have the book be simply a mystery that just ... works - maybe hint at witchcraft or some slightly less controversial supernatural function - but even then you'd have the very delicate matter of the vigilante hero and the complexity with which the story deals with the concept of justice. There is no escaping the fact that the main character is a teenager killing people even if they are convicted criminals. Americans prefer their vigilantes to have superhero complexes ("hey he just fell into that vat of acid when he was lunging to kill me - I didn't touch him") and this simply is not possible here. The discussion of the concept of justice is far from black and white there is little hope of Tobey Maguire's agent allowing him to follow up Spidey with such a role (though I must say I can actually see a younger Di Caprio in either of the lead roles in this case...) The script-doctor in me says that the obvious solution would be to make 'L', the mysterious teenage genius to whom the police entrust the hunt of our vigilante, the main character but if that were done it would turnt he film into a simple man hunt and really would not be Death Note anymore.

I guess I've disproved my own argument - Death Note is not immune to being stripped bare and americanized at all. Could it be that someone out there just has the guts to leave the guts in this story...? I hope so. Time will tell.

Standing in my local secondhand bookshop I had a desire to read something about Japan and found myself looking at ever-so-slightly foxed copies of both "Geisha of Gion" and "Memoirs of a Geisha". I knew that Iwasaki had been Golden's muse for "Memoirs", indeed she had sued him for revealing that fact, and so, ever the historian, I decided upon autobiography over fiction.

Geisha of Gion is a prettily drawn insight into the Karyukai of Kyoto and life within the Iwasaki Okiya, where Mineko, born Tanaka Masako, began training at the age of five. Her memory and descriptions of kimono and the details of her arts are exquisite. I particularly appreciated that she does not shy away from using the proper Japanese terms and then interpreting them for us, rather than simply using English substitutes as one often finds in books edited by Americans for Americans. If you are looking for a book filled with Japanese culture then it certainly meets that criteria and I certainly appreciated that element of the book. However that was not, in the end, the element which I found most intriguing.

One of the reasons autobiography is it's own category rather than being lumped in with non-fiction is not only to classify it as written by the subject of the book but also because classifying autobiography as non-fiction is problematic. No matter how well researched, the content will always be from the point of view of that one, intrinsically biased, person (indeed there is no real research requirement unless the author wishes to impose one upon themselves, legal clearance that is doesn't defame anyone is all that is really required.) Sometimes the author's bias or desire to impress a particular belief upon the reader is so glaring that it adds an element of fascination in itself. While neither "Memoirs of a Geisha" nor its author are never mentioned by name, Geisha of Gion is nevertheless heavily influenced by Golden's work. It is clear that Iwasaki wishes to correct some of the impressions left by Golden particularly in two respects: the suggestion that a geisha is a high class sex worker and that Iwasaki's father simply sold her to the okiya against her will.

The first issue is simply stated and backed up by, amongst other cultural experts, my Japanese teacher Prostitutes exist, Iwasaki informs us, but they are oiran (courtesan), not geisha(entertainer or artist.) The mizuage (or coming of age ceremony) for the two types of women is different, for both it occurs when the geisha first menstruates and at both her best clients receive small pink cakes with a tiny red nipple on top, representing a breast. The difference lies in that for the geisha it is simply a celebration of her coming into womanhood and parties are held and gifts received, only for the oiran is the girl's virginity sold to the highest bidder. Geisha do not give sexual favours for their fees. Geisha often have boyfriends (who sometimes become husbands) but sexual liasons are carefully managed and outside of the professional requirements of a geisha. How much of Iwasaki's story is sanitized in this respect is of little consequence.

The second impression Iwasaki is at pains to make is that of her father's character as a loving father, sadly misunderstood by her four older sisters who were also sold to the okiya and to this day are still angry and or bitter to varying degrees. I found it heartbreaking to read as this woman now in her thirties and a mother herself insisted that at the age of five she and she alone made the decision to go to the okiya to become a geisha like her sisters. Again and again she describes how her father resisted the okiya 'mother' when she requested their youngest daughter come into her service. She describes how when she first agreed to go to the okiya it was simply some kind of trial which she could have ended at any time - a special arrangement because the okiya mother was so desperate to have this child as her heir because she was so very beautiful. I have no doubt that Iwasaki believes everything she has written in this book but I simply don't believe that her father had not entered into a similar contract as he did with his other four girls, nor do I believe her protestations that he was so concerned for her welfare. She describes how, at eight years of age, she went to court to be adopted by the the okiya mother (as she had to be to become the heir to the okiya) and took the Iwasaki name. The judge asked her to say which family she chose to belong to - after choosing the okiya, she promptly threw up. Clearly she was desperately torn by the decision and yet she wants desperately for us believe that her father was a loving man, or at least that her father loved her if not her sisters.

Of course if his situation was such that he needed to sell his daughters into service then that is sad but understandable and perhaps he was a loving man - unfortunately Iwasaki presents an enormous paradox regarding this. She explains fairly well the reason that he was forced to sell his first daughters (very much against their will to this day) and yet she is also keen to impress upon us how successful her parents were as artists, particularly her father - revered and also ... making very good money, certainly at least by the time the third fourth and fifth daughters are sent. Nor does it explain why the couple went on to have so many more children - eleven in all (her mother is described as having a weak constitution) five of girls sent to the okiya. But Iwasaki does not present her father as an angel - she reveals man prone to sudden violence when angered but who treated her as special and mostly she was spared the violence. In fact she seems disturbingly proud when describing violence or raging committed by her father in defence of her after her brothers and sisters had teased her in some way or, in one shocking case, when a chicken has pecked at her and has its neck wrung in front of her when she is three years old. Clearly she cannot deny the violence and neglect her father displayed towards his children but she is determined to believe that she had a special place in his heart.

The overwhelming sense that she is special was no doubt encouraged by her father and by her being given the place of atotori - or heir to the okiya - at such a young age (she was wanted by the okiya because she was so breathtakingly beautiful even as a three year old doncha-know?) and narcissism permeates every line of this book. One is left with the impression of an extremely sad little girl who, desperate for attention, love and a place in the world, latched on to her place in the okiya and became, quite simply, a spoiled brat. This manifested in what was no doubt an extraordinary dedication to her arts but a failure to mature socially and emotionally. Iwasaki displays the same sudden explosive temper as her father and his mother before him had, sometimes in legitimate defence of herself but sometimes far too violent for the situation or sheer tantrums (such as the violent destruction of the fur coat of the wife of a man with whom she had an affair for many many years) and she describes each one with the same utter conviction that she was justified. When she describes the cattiness and cruelty of the other geisha, first within the okiya and later, seemingly, across the karyukai of the entire country, she puts every incidence down to pure jealousy and protests that she siply didn't understand it. I'm sure jealousy was a large part of it and any woman knows how bitchy and cruel women can be to each other but the character displayed by the author is certainly one which would not endear itself to other girls and I have no doubt she did not help the situation.

Geisha of Gion is definitely worth the read, not only for the insight into this area of japanese culture but as a fascinating study of the effect this odd situation in which she suffers being abandoned by her birth parents but is sold into a life in which she is paid deference at an age when she has no abiility to understand it as anything other than that she is superior to all around her. There are many stories of being sold into service and being treated poorly (as were her sisters) but this is a different psychological story and a new one for me. It would be fascinating to read the accounts of other sisters - particularly Kuniko who lived in the okiya with Mineko. Kuniko did not have the potential (read beauty) as a geisha and so was essentially a maid but she had intelligence and so became an integral part of the behind the scenes in the okiya and, it seems, a much more grounded personality than her sister and would have quite the tale to tell.