At the beginning of this year Titan Books asked me if I'd be interested in doing a book on anime for them. Nothing too esoteric, they said - a beginners guide, a nice zappy introduction to the subject for anyone who's heard the word being bandied around and wonders what it's all about.
I had a couple of free weekends, so I thought, why not?
This was Mistake Number One. With any creative project, whether it's writing a book, doing a piece of artwork, or knitting your own Mobile SUIT to wear to a convention, the one thing of which you can be absolutely certain is that it will take a lot longer than you think it will. This is why film directors have producers to work with, artists have agents and authors have editors. You might not need any help with the writing process but you almost certainly need someone to make sure you meet the deadline!
Well, I thought, this'll be fun. I'll be able to tell all my hordes of readers about my favourite anime shows and have a whole new audience for my pet anime theories, like the use of violence as a metaphor for moral decay and the vital importance of the shower scene.
That was Mistake Number Two. You see, publishers tend to insist, sticklers for detail that they are - that the book you write is the book they asked you for, the one they've advertised in their catalogue, the one bookshops all over the country are (hopefully) ordering in vast quantities Right This Minute. You may yearn to produce the ultimate commentary on ecological symbology in the work of Miyazaki Hayao, you may know that the world will be a better place for your volume entitled TEN BEST BATTLESUITS OF THE EIGHTIES, but if they've asked you for a beginner's guide to anime, then the likelihood is that's exactly what they want you to give them.
The problem with writing a beginners guide to anything isn't what to put in - it's what to leave out. This is one of the most difficult processes any writer can go through. All the odd little bits of hard won esoteric knowledge you love to show off with are no use now. All your detailed and painstaking research on your own pet subjects is in vain. You have to go all the way back to your old, totally inexperienced fannish self and remember what it was like. What did you most want to know? What questions did friends ask you about this weird new interest of yours, and which ones left you stuck for an answer? How did you make contacts, get information, find out where to go for help, advice, tapes and books? Distilling all that down to sixty four pages, including index, doing all the picture research, and making it read as if the whole thing's fun, is an incredibly difficult task. But I've finally managed it - or so I thought.
Early in April I took the last page off the printer, packed it up and sent it off to my editor. Ever since, I've been waking in the middle of the night with an overwhelming urge to alter that paragraph at the end of the chapter on anime's early history, or to take out that show and mention this one instead, which is more representative of the type. I've been typing something totally unrelated and found myself inserting, quite at random, a different style of anime index entry into the poor, innocent, inoffensive document that isn't my Beginner's Guide to Anime. I have to keep forcibly reminding myself that the book is FINISHED.
That was Mistake Number Three; because, of course, it isn't. I keep thinking if new, different, better ways of doing all the things I tried to do in the text, or new, different, better things to do in the same ways. It's totally unlike doing a regular column; in SUPER PLAY, for instance, if I miss something out, get a bit more information or see something new, I ban tell my readers about it next month, but once a book's finished and sent off to the typesetters, that, barring very minor changes, is that. maybe nobody ever really finishes their first book. Maybe instead, the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse (the editor, on a pale horse called Deadline) sneaks up when you're getting into your stride and snatches the pages from you printer before you can stop him, dragging them willy-nilly towards the innermost circle of Hell - Publication date - long before you're ready to face it's terrors.
In any event, finished or not, ANIME - A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO JAPANESE ANIMATION, ISBN 1 85286 492 3, will appear in the bookshops around 22nd October 1993. It gives a brief history of anime, an extended glossary of anime terms, a look at the major themes of the medium and lots of pictures, and it's yours for a measly £6.99, so please rush out and order a copy right away. You probably don't need it, but there are some nice piccies and the odd detail on one of two fairly obscure minor genre shows of the kind otaku like to swank about, and if we sell lots Titan can ask me to do another book covering all the things that couldn't be fitted into this one!
Oh yes, and I'll go anywhere to promote it. Cons, weddings, barmitzvahs - my publicist has told me to leave no stone unturned!!