Okay, I’ll try it. Though I bet it’s nicer with the ocean than with, er, Bucheon below. But hey, you live where you live. My night eyes are long gone, but a laptop in total darkness will only hurt my eyes more, I think. So maybe I’ll just think it out.

Val,

Oh, I can’t write more than scattered notes before I get impatient and switch to a keyboard. And I can see how poetry would be easier to compose aloud. Fiction, well, some people do it, but I can’t. Not with stories, anyway. Maybe I could do pots that way, though.

I may just try hiking in the dark for that lovely spooked out feeling. And I am glad to hear that I’m not the only weirdo who does something like “method writing.” It’s like how I had the same short (30 second) sample of Lester Young on a loop as I wrote the majority of, well, you can guess which story. (Except for the phased-out music scenes, where I switched to some of Steve Reich’s phase music pieces.)

Bulgasari,

Ooops, seems I’ve picked up the mutated, urban-legendy form where the boys turned into girls somehow. The number 3 is, though, as I mentioned in my email, probably a faulty of my own memory. But I’ve heard it from independent students on campus that it was girls. Interesting, that. I may just do some little informal survey in my classes next semester. It’d be interesting to see whether the gender has changed in retellings of the story among students… one thing I can say is that at least one of the times I was told was a male student, and one was a female. Hmm. Anyway, that’ll teach me to believe my students, or, rather, not to research and confirm what they tell me.

And on the theme of urban-legendy retellings of disappearances on Wonmisan, I read that story right after I saw your comment, early this morning, and loved it. Great story. I’ll have to read the rest of the book, now… It was revealing to see that the joys of commuting haven’t really changed much since when that story was penned. I totally could relate to the guy when he yelled, “I’ll blow it up! I’ll blow this train up!” Excellently written, and I think, a kind of ghost story in its own right. As some Welsh (I think it is) proverb goes, “It is far more terrifying to see a ghost of a living man than a ghost of a dead one.”

And yeah, biking in early evening — ugh! Bugs in teeth… I even got a couple of bugs in my teeth just hurrying down the last bit of Wonmisan trail, the bit that leads down to the dormitories on campus, so I imagine on a bike the bugs in the fields would be much worse!

Do tell more about the three girls murdered on Wonmisan. When was that? Two boys were murdered there (or their bodies turned up there) in January 2004 (I was biking there two months later and saw posters pinned to trees – I don’t recommend biking on Wonmisan in March – you have to carry the bikes up the hills and then walk them down because they’re too damn muddy!).

BTW, Yang Kwija has a story in “A Distant And Beautiful Place” about a man who spends more and more time on Wonmisan before disappearing. One of the things motivating this is his fear of crowds, brought on by his experiences in “that southern city” in May five years earlier. I highly recommend that book.

Here’s a thought… maybe you could try recording a draft with a tape player instead of following your usual process with the laptop and and whatnot. A change in routine might prove fruitful. Then again, I’m speaking as someone who usually has to repeat any lines of poetry I get (when I write it) over and over in my head until I get an writing implement, so it may be less verbal for fiction writers (someday perhaps I’ll know).

Although that’s another thought…going up a haunted mountain with nothing more than a a flashlight, a candle, and a notebook. (the flashlight being for practical transit, the candle to write by, unreliable and old enough to keep the mood).

And the method writing idea sounds familiar…I know I’ve tried it, in different ways. Its research, just a different sort than websurfing or library wandering.

Naturally the first time I ever went into the pitch-black hills at night I was shit -scared (not to put too fine a point on it), but resolved to go in line with Baz Luhmanns’s advice to do something everyday that scares you (from the song “Wear Sunscree”. It’s amazing how quickly you get used to it though.

I’m not sure I’d ever consider taking a laptop up with me though. I used to relish the opportunity just to talk to myself with no inhibitions for an hour and a half or so and work various things out, but these days I just take the iPod. It can suffice as a handy torch, although in practice losing you rarely need it and losing your night eyes is annoying.

Enjoy!