IF YOU WANT to be a writer, consider becoming an accountant. Number-crunching worked for Mary Yukari Waters, the award-winning author of The Laws Of Evening: Tales From The Twilight Of A Civilisation (Scribner $130).
The 37-year-old Japanese-American, who was employed by several Los Angeles accounting firms between 1990 and 2000, explains why: 'Because you deal with numbers and things all day so when you start writing at home you really are much fresher. Your brain starts dealing with words and images and it's easier, I think, than if you were doing, say, copy-editing all day - that would be terribly draining.'
Waters would write at night which was also helpful. It taught her not to be 'finicky and diva-ish'.
She can work almost anywhere. 'Some people claim that they can only write in the morning and only write between eight and 10 and I think that's great. But if you don't have that luxury, then you learn to make do pretty fast.'
A fast talker, Waters quivers with energy that may stem from her quotidian workout routine and diet incorporating nine servings of fruit or vegetables a day. She looks good, too. It's her height, her porcelain skin and those cheekbones 'packed high like an Eskimo's', to quote from Egg-Face, a Laws Of Evening story about a girl who, despite this feature, has reached the age of 30 and never been on a date.
Egg-Face is, in sharp contrast with Waters' persona, full of melancholy. So, too, is Aftermath, which explores life after the bombing of Hiroshima leaves a widow with little solace except the memory of her dead husband. Likewise, in Rationing, a son struggles to tell his dying father, a member of the generation that rebuilt Japan from the ashes, how much he admires him. In Circling The Hondo, an old woman who is winding down her life recognises 'the sorrow of things passing' in the smile of a water Buddha statue.