I was wondering why my students were all so aware of those shootings in Virginia. Turns out the susopect is Cho Seung-Hui, whom they describe as a “Korean national”. I had to wonder whether he did his military service in the recent past, since the reports said that he was a Korean citizen, and since I also read that he was apparently a pretty good shooter (though he’d only recently bought the gun). I’ve seen guys come back from military service, shall we say, not quite “right.” But it seems this Koreanness is more of a label. Nobody seems to …
Month: April 2007
Should Study a Little More
Today I had a conversation with Lime’s mother, on the phone. Here’s a rendering of it, in English, though the original conversation was in Korean: Lime’s Mom: “Hello?” Me: “Hello?” Lime’s Mom: “Hi, Gord? This is Lime’s mother calling.” Me: “Hi. Yes. I’m knowing… er, I know.” Lime’s Mom: “How have you been?” Me: “Fine. How going it?” Lime’s Mom: “Fine, fine. But listen, I have some things to send to you. I wanted to confirm your address and get a phone number to put onto the package…” Me: “Um… phone number?” Lime’s Mom: “Yes. For the delivery guy, you …
Two More Scenes
… to go. I’ve gotten through almost 14,500 words of revision on Jjangguk, which is encouraging, since it’s only a 20,500 word story as it is. Of course, I still have an overall goal of getting it down to 15,000. This means reconciling myself to cutting things that I absolutely love. Mind you, a very well-regarded Canadian writer, Guy Vanderhaeghe, once said to us in class, “Whatever you are most proud of in your story? Cut it. Anything you love and think is great… cut it.” That’s not always the best thing to do, but it’s true that often, the …
The Spike
The writing tracker in the sidebar might suggest a sudden surge in productivity today, but in fact, that’s partly illusory. Part of the illusion is that I’m tracking “revised” words, now, which means any text that doesn’t need to be rewritten gets included. Still, I’m approximately a third of the way through my revision of “Jjangguk and the Madman of Pyongyang,” and and my pace is holding. I should note exactly what this means. I am about 35% of the way through the first complete revision of draft number 7 of the story. This doesn’t mean I’ve drafted it seven …
All in a Day
I finished reading a really good book today. Happy happy.But you need to wait for my end-of-April reviews to hear more. I am finally deep into reworking my Korean superheroes story. So far, it’s just small edits and collating the comments from my crit group — the comments I happen to agree with, anyway — but much of tomorrow and Sunday will be taken up with shoulder/digital-grindstone interfacing. After that, we’ll see. I spent an hour this evening with a tiny class of mine, discussing the first page-and-a-half of the graphic novel V for Vendetta with my students, kind of …