Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Poker]

Has anyone here written a novel before or are in the process of completing one? (while being a GET in Korea) Anybody got their books published? I'm thinking of starting one. I think a few pages everytime I sit down to deskwarm would be enough time to finish a book in 1 year. How did it go for you?

[Asiablue]

I'm working on one now but it seems to come in fits and starts.

[nero]

I have nearly finished mine. It's called 'Weigooken' - a real 'fish out of water' tale of a young English teacher who goes to Korea and meets a vast array of crrraazzy characters!
While dealing with this strange new culture the protagonist finds love, new friends and, eventually, himself!

[partymop]

hahaha, i got to give props to that beak but your still a jerk! ^

Don't listen to him buddy. There's plenty of people that write here, this is a great environment for it. Most of us have loads of free time here, nothing in an apartment other than a laptop, and a whole range of interesting people to meet because their liberal arts degrees have made them unemployable in their home countries. That being said, if your intention is writing about solely about your experience coming here cuz it seems new and exciting, I would brainstorm a lot more. Its tempting, because you live in a bubble that can make it hard to think about other things. There's no shame in looking for stories in your current environment, but I think what this guy in the last post was getting at is that the whole, "im living as a english teacher in korea" thing is pretty cliched. If you want to take it seriously and develop your skills, there is a couple writers group in seoul, more specifially, the seoul writer workshop where you can bring your work for critique. Give it a try if your really committed to improving your writing. But if you think your going to sit down and bang out a novel because your bored and you think it would be cool, take my advice now and go join the ball hockey league or something

[rumdiary]

I think it would be awsome if more people were doing stuff like this. Using their disposable income, ample free time and art degree to do something worthwhile. Write a book, make a movie, record an album. You have a steady job and don't really need to worry about rent. Buckle down and do something that you'll be proud of.

This guy made a movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwD86NRENwQ&hd=1

[Gaber]

Back in naught seven I met a guy who had been here for a few years while doing a TEFL course in Thailand. He'd written a novel and gotten it published. It came out on Amazon while we were doing the course. It sounded interesting but the name was like 10 words long so I never got it memorized. Sometimes wonder how it went for him

[UknowsI]

I am not sure if anyone in this thread actually suggested writing about their experience in Korea...

...but if someone did, I strongly suggest relating your experiences to something completely different. Find a topic that is actually interesting, but incorporate many of the difficulties and experiences you have made here in a subtle way. Most good books revolve around character development and you should have developed quite a bit after your arrival to Korea.

I'm not a literature major though, so I'm sure most of you liberal arts majors know much more about these things than me anyway.

[jcm87]

Hey, go for it! It seems like the perfect time to write a novel...you have financial and job security, tons of free-time, and probably a low-stress environment. There also is a great tradition of people abroad writing about their experiences. The only problem is you're too late. If you came to Korea and taught in the 80s or even the 90s, it was a relatively new thing back then, so you'd have little competition. You could get away with writing a pretty formulaic novel on your experiences, not to mention, Korea was probably much crazier for foreigners back then. The problem is that pretty much everyone knows someone who has done this...it's so common for recent college grads. So keep in mind that being an English teacher in Korea isn't incredibly unique and not something you could write a memoir about (unless you did something really crazy).

That being said, it's still a great backdrop for a novel (Korea still is an interesting, relatively unknown place in the west, and there aren't that many foreigners here and the cultural experience you get here is pretty unique), as long as you write well and have good characters, and the setting or the "Korea experiences" doesn't dominate the novel. Don't make it too autobiographical. The Sun Also Rises isn't a great novel because it's about having adventures in Spain, it's a great novel because of everything else that happens. Of course, this is all assuming that you want to write about someone in Korea, which you never said you did.

Anyways, I'd definitely recommend short stories. I don't know how much writing experience you have but I don't think anyone should try a novel until they've written plenty of short stories. Also, novels can take years, and from what I've heard, it's a painful, exhausting process. You could probably finish one in your year here, but that doesn't mean you'd feel that it's finished. You could certainly finish a collection of short stories in your year here that you could feel proud of. I might try to do something like that (though I work in a test-prep hagwon so my hours will be pretty insane starting in a couple weeks).

Partymop, what's this Seoul writer's workshop?

[Died By Bear]

1) Avoid alliteration. Always.
2) Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3) Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
4) Employ the vernacular.
5) Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6) Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7) It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
Contractions aren't necessary.
9) Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10) One should never generalize.
11) Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
12) Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13) Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14) Profanity fucking sucks.
15) Be more or less specific.
16) Understatement is always best.
17) Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
1 One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19) Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20) The passive voice is to be avoided.
21) Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
22) Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
23) Who needs rhetorical questions?

[DorkothyParker]

I'm writing a novel this month for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).
I'm 12 days/20,000 words in. I need to catch up!

[stimpleton]

Ditto on the NaNoWriMo. I'm doing a bit better than you, though - 30,000 after 12 days. And it's my first time!
It's been a great experience so far. I definitely recommend it (and it's sister challenge, ScriptFrenzy) to keep the brain going.
As an aside, I think that writing is a great exercise to keep your vocabulary - after 4 years here I sometimes have trouble thinking of the word I want and have to resort to the 'net.

[Globutron]

[Died By Bear]

You're right, I shouldn't have posted it!

[gypsymaria]

I'm doing NaNoWriMo, too! 21264 words in 12 days, so I'm falling a little behind by today, but I've been cranking out 2k an hour on average when I DO sit down and write (I've skipped days), so I'll get caught up this weekend with some marathon writing sessions in my local cafe.

I highly recommend writing a novel, if that's something you want to do. The best advice I ever got about being a writer is "Quit. If you can't, you're a writer, and you might as well resign yourself to it." So, try it. If you can't hack it, you find another hobby. There's nothing really at risk here except perhaps some disappointment or frustration in discovering that you're not a novelist at heart. But the possibility of actually writing something you enjoy, whether or not it gets published, far outweighs that risk.

Go for it!

[Globutron]