The stronger my feeling about Peking to Paris grew, the more I wanted to leave a record of it in some form.

But I had no money for the vast cost of publishing — and then along came a National Publishing Audition, where ¥3,000 buys you a shot at being published.

The National Publishing Audition

Over two months, the top eight in the public vote go through to the final, and two of the top fifteen get through that.

The first step towards the final was writing a proposal.

I had applied meaning to write about Peking to Paris and the motor challenge, and instead I was taught how to dig down into my own history.

Digging into my own past as hard as I possibly could, the theme shifted a long way from “taking on Peking to Paris”: I saw how my past experience connects to what I am living now.

That ¥3,000 challenge gave me the most valuable experience of the lot.

I rewrote it again and again with coaching, and submitted it by the deadline.
And from there it becomes a matter of asking people to vote.

Person to person — real support was what made me happy

To gather votes, every entrant pushed as hard as they could on social media.

I deliberately valued the real over social media, and treated each vote as a vote with a face attached to it.

When a friend said “I’ve got an event on, I’ll mention you there”, I went to almost all of them.

If I had a chance to explain to someone I had only just met, I asked them to vote on the spot — I even half-forced my doctor into it.

Face to face, nobody refused. Not one.
People’s feeling about it made me genuinely glad.

Friends spread the word to people I had never met. That too overflows past anything “thank you” can carry.

Week one: first place. Week two: second. Sincere support passed person to person brought an extraordinary number of votes in that first month.

I also met true companions, people who can support someone else’s challenge with nothing held back.

Choosing to withdraw

But after about a month, something started to feel unsettled.

Thinking about the large challenge I was actually facing, spending time here began to hurt.

Friends who had seen me working and backed me for real; people who had given up precious time to wrestle with a voting screen.

Should I see this audition through to the end? Or should I narrow down to the large challenge I am really meant to be facing?

Is withdrawing here really all right?

But then —

how do I explain something this self-indulgent to the people who backed me in earnest?

Full of apology, and sorting out ruthlessly the fact that I was splitting my attention when I needed to concentrate, the conflict inside me kept growing.

Naturally my feet stopped moving, and the numbers showed it, humbly.

Down to fifth, and finally eleventh.

Eleventh place gave me a ticket into the repechage, and I chose to withdraw. I felt genuinely sorry towards the people who had backed me — more than towards myself — but in the end I decided to withdraw.

Not “giving up”, and not “losing”

Through that period I felt a great many things and was pushed to a series of forks and choices, and because it became clear that I should concentrate on what I have to do now, I decided to withdraw.

To everyone who supported and spread the word about this audition, I am full of apology and of gratitude.

Thank you, truly.

Carrying a great deal of gratitude towards the friends who fought alongside me with the same heat I had, I turned towards the next stage.

What became visible beyond the result

I decided that the book will come after the great challenge of Peking to Paris, and that I will publish it by my own hand rather than through a competition.

To everyone who supported me, I decided that I will deliver it after Peking to Paris, carrying an experience of life larger than the one I have now.

When I told the others in the audition I was withdrawing, message after message came back saying our challenges take different shapes but let’s work at it together. The proposal never reached a publisher’s eye — and from the experience of digging into myself I learned an enormous amount.

Writing your own history

Everyone has, in the life they have lived, experience nobody else has. All of it becomes material, and is of use to someone.

Even without entering an audition, I want to say how much it matters to write out your own history in order. It becomes necessary time in a life: looking back objectively at the new version of you and at the one who has lived until now.

I will leave my first “personal history proposal”, which nobody ever saw, here as a memory.

With gratitude to everyone who supported me through this audition.