I. L. Chang

Progress

Story 1 – Takashi (submission draft done)

Story 2 – Camila (second rewrite)

Story 3 – Vivian (started, 2 pages in)

Story 4 – Stephanie (Began one sentence)

Story 5 – Ka Chun (2/3 of the story complete)

I rewrote the story again about Takashi and decided it was good enough for submission. Is this a “pop open a champagne and toast” moment?

After that, I started to rewrite Camila. This story took me a long time to get through. Somehow through the writing, my voice and the characters’ voices became muddled. I’m not clear on who is really speaking. Am I trying to build the character or am I trying to express an idea through the characters? I waded through the mud and completed my rewrite. I don’t like it at all, but at least it’s finished.

I started Vivian with a descriptive scene I felt good about. But after my rewrite of Camila, I don’t want to be in the Ramen Bar stories for awhile so I switched to the next set of stories, Stephanie and Ka Chun.

I thought I was writing about characters in an apartment. I thought I would be exploring the theme of loss and love. Instead, I find myself deviating away from the original imagery and themes. As I prance through the words and storyline, I find myself moving further and further away from what I intended. Yet, when I am trying to write within my original intention, my fingers get tangled and words won’t come out.

I know that the first draft isn’t supposed to be good, but I’m at a lost on how to make the second draft better. I need a team. I need others with experience who would want to buy in on the project and help me. I now see why at the end of published books, the author writes a list of people they are thankful for. These people are on the team that contributed to turning an idea inside the author’s mind into ink on paper bounded by a book spine.

I learned a new Korean word: 간절곷. It is the word for an area of land along a body of water that protrudes. The English word for it is cape or cliff. That’s where I’m standing right now with my writing. How do I get to the water? The journey to the bay where the land meets the water looks impossible.

적당히 – Adequately, moderately

A Korean staff was teaching a new worker. After teaching him what he needed to do, he said, “Just enough is good enough – 적당히.” This is the Gen Z mindset, especially in the workplace, that I see floating around on instagram. Moderately, adequately, reasonably doesn’t compute in my mind. I only know what “above and beyond”, and “do what needs to be done without being asked” looks like.

My millennial mindset may be contributing to the lack of inspiration and creativity. Routine isn’t force. Goals aren’t deadlocks. Perhaps, the characters, plot, themes, and ideas for my stories need space to open up. There is only a reasonable amount of effort I can put into it and the rest is – God’s will.

It seems more and more impossible that the manuscript would be done in a year but despite that I must carry on and keep writing. I will not know until the year reaches its end.