Meet Yoshi Funaki - FFPP Lead for SWF22
Yoshi Funaki
Yoshi’s background is in international development where she worked for the UN and the World Bank in Dili, DC, Juba and Khartoum. Now working as a freelance consultant, Yoshi only started writing with a focus around 2 years ago. She won the Fotografiska flash fiction contest during the 2020 SWF festival. She joined the SWF Board of Directors in 2021 and headed up the Stockholm Writers Festival First 5 Pages Prize for SWF22.
You can connect with Yoshi on Twitter @YoshiFunaki, and read more about her and her writing at: https://yoshifunaki.com/
A fairly common thread in the SWF community is that many of us have dreamed of writing for years before we ever had the time, resources, or ability to sit down and actually do it. When did you first decide writing was something that you wanted to actively pursue, and then how long was it before you started writing seriously?
I was a pretty precocious child and I had this belief, from about 7 years old onwards, that I was going to be a writer. That I was meant to be a writer.
It was partly because of a school writing competition that I had won quite often, but it was also just this ingrained belief. And it’s weird, I held on to that belief for over thirty plus years before I realised “well if this is true, then why aren’t I writing?” I’d persuaded myself in that time that I needed to live first before I wrote. I would scribble stuff down every now and then, and I have about 30 pages of ideas I jotted down for later, but I never properly wrote. It took me a long time to realise what was holding me back - an ingrained fear of failure. I’d built up writing in my head as this purpose that was going to save me – it was going to redeem all my past failures and faults – and that was just too much pressure. It meant that every time I sat down to write, nothing I wrote was good enough.
It was when I gave birth to my son that it felt like I woke up. Time became such a scarce commodity, I realised I would have barely any left for the foreseeable future, and if I didn’t get on with it now, I might end up being an 80 year old in a retirement home whispering “I was going to be a writer once” to anyone within earshot. So I made a choice to write because I enjoyed it, not in order to be successful – to stop worrying about whether it was good enough, and to just get on with it.
What is your primary creative writing genre, and did this change over the years, or has this always been your main focus?
I’ve just finished the first draft of a fantasy novel. I’m editing it to death (mine probably) at the moment. It’s funny, but during my decades long writers block, I was very sure I was going to write a piece of serious fiction loosely based on my time working for the UN. And then when I sat down and let myself write whatever I felt like, it turned out that what my brain and heart felt like writing was fantasy.
What would you say were the biggest takeaways for you from SWF?
The value of other writers, especially writing groups. Before SWF I don’t think I got how important they can be to your own writing.
How have you evolved as a writer since attending your first Stockholm Writers Festival, and what part did the festival itself play in that evolution?
I’d say I’ve evolved as an editor because of SWF – which is part of being a good writer but it’s not quite the same thing. As in – I cannot write while my editor brain is engaged, I need to let myself write terrible sentences and be far too convoluted and repetitive. It’s only after I have a first draft that the internal critic can come in and tidy up my creativity into something legible.
SWF had so many modules dedicated to different aspects of editing – from plot arcs to character arcs to how patterns in word choices can impact your readers. It really helped me develop as an editor. What I like best is the variety in the experts in the room, you get a wide range of experiences to learn from. You can tailor the advice to fit your profile as a writer.
Can you tell us a little about a piece you’ve written in the past that you are particularly proud of, published or not — just something that still moves you every time you revisit it?
It’s actually the full version of the piece I’ve submitted below, though I’m not sure how it will work as an extract. It’s a really short story of about 700 words that I wrote about my father. I interspersed a description of a scuba dive I went on, with descriptions of sitting by his bedside as he died. I’m proud of it because I think I managed to capture the love and pain of that moment without being too on the nose about it – if that makes sense.
Overall, has attending SWF helped you in pursuing the “path to published," and if so, how?
Yes, it’s definitely helped me. I think it’s shown me where my focus needs to be at the different stages. For instance, when to worry about your pitch vs your blurb vs using beta readers, etc. Doing the agent one on one helped me improve my agent pitch, it taught me the framework I needed to fit into.
I was quite intimidated by the publishing part of writing. I was especially intimidated by the thought of pitching my book to agents (probably why I’m taking so long to finish editing it). I think I was so worried about it, I was splitting my focus too much and trying to tackle it whilst also editing.
I realised that I needed to just focus on editing right now. I can’t worry about the pitch and all the other business side of things if my manuscript is still not at the best level I can produce. It also helped clarify that some of the blocks I was having with my pitch and blurb were because I hadn’t quite settled core concepts of my book (something I was reluctant to admit) like “what is the main theme here?”
Is there anything specific that you hope to learn more about at SWF22?
Hopefully by then, I’ll have finished editing my book. Then, I think I’d like to learn how to be creative with your marketing, especially the blurb and pitch writing. I feel like my creativity switches off the minute I try those particular areas. I think it’s because I still haven’t got a sense of who the audience is exactly – is it genuinely the reader group you hope to engage with or is it the agents and publishers and their perceptions of the market they want to sell you in.
We asked Yoshi to include a short piece that she’s written — a short poem, a 100-word story, something creative that we could share with you all for inspiration. This is a moving extract from a piece she wrote about her father.
Divisions in Time
Yoshi Funaki
Holding his hand. That sound, like snoring; he's asleep, he might wake up soon. My siblings and I are sitting and waiting.
We are waiting for different things, ever the way.
Hurrr, fharrr, hurrr, gasp, pause, gasp, hurrr.
We're laughing, trying to make each other laugh. They tell anecdotes about the wedding, when we last saw him, how our mother approached him, walking to his table and holding out her hand. The Soviet Union shaking hands with the USA. Queen Mary the Bloody smiling at Queen Elizabeth the First, firebrands smoking gently from where they were quickly stashed.
"Did you see?" Yes.
He came to me afterwards to tell me he was proud of me - words that I had built my towers towards and watched them crumble, over and over, the foundations unsteady - handed carefully to me. "I'm proud of you."
I'm still holding them, wondering where to put them, what to do with them, trying to fit them in somewhere, clear out some space for them. They're still there, in my hand, by that bedside. I'm holding his hand and I'm telling a story where he is the foil to the punch line and my siblings are laughing and he gasps and no noise comes after.