Melissa1031

Dreaming about your future is a euphoric exercise; making it happen tests you to the core of your being. Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard gave a name to the action of a person faced with a choice that can’t be rationally justified: they take a leap of faith. Dreaming of being an author when you’re too busy to breathe, requires such a leap. Still believing you can find your great love when you’ve been hurt too many times, requires such a leap. In my case, I inadvertently chose to fly instead of jump. “Ms. Gregory, here’s your seat,” the flight attendant said, motioning with both hands as she presented the aisle chair in front of the last row in first class. “Can I assist you in getting settled?” Looking around at the spaciousness of the cabin, I couldn’t help but compare it to my usual stuff-them-in-like- cattle seating. It felt surreal. “Thank you, I’m good,” I responded. “And please, call me Meg.” She nodded and gracefully turned to assist the next passenger. I sat and fastened my seatbelt on the Korean Air flight from JFK to Incheon Airport, with a laughable flight time of 12 PM to 5 PM. If only it weren’t for the 13-hour time difference making East Asia a day ahead of my North American Eastern Time zone. As the realization of the trip hit me, my insides rippled like ginger ale poured into an ice-filled glass. Korean passengers surrounded me, all speaking their lyrical language. The use of the suffix honorifics -yo and -nida, among others, combined with many words ending in vowels, makes the language soft and musical. Yet, a litany of Anglo swear-words telling someone off is nothing compared to an angry Korean honorifically, ironically, and eloquently, berating someone who was owed respect: …nida. …Nida. … NIDA! I started watching Korean TV programs, or K-Dramas – the historical, fantasy, and rom coms being my favorites – during the COVID pandemic lockdown. The need for something… anything… new during this time was a healing tonic and I grabbed onto them like a teased child finally retrieving their precious item from a callous game of keep away. As someone with untreated ADHD (‘That’s not a real condition,’ my parents scoffed), the desire to experience anything unique was overwhelming. As I wrote in my article, there were times when watching a few K-dramas in the evening got me through another day without a meltdown. If someone confessed their love for a seatmate, I’d understand at least part of it, having absorbed a few words and phrases based on repetition and reading the English subtitles. Otherwise, it was going to be a lonely and long flight. That was alright though. I had the outline of a novel I was eager to work on. I'd wanted to be an author since reading my first Harry Potter book, and I'd been writing stories ever since. I also brought a book to read. I suspected I’d mostly worry about the upcoming television interview about the article I wrote. As I waited for takeoff, I ruminated on the reason I was sitting on this flight. “There is an age-old argument amongst people of European descent, whether French, Spanish, or Italian is the language of love. I put forth another candidate for consideration – Korean.” So began the opening statement to my article, “Korean: The Language of Love.” I wrote the article to better understand my fascination with Korean television: a bit of scholarly and celebrity research, combined with self-examination. Pleased with the results, I pitched it to several lifestyle magazines. To my great amazement and joy, Vogue magazine accepted the article, and upon publication, it took on a life of its own. Soon Vogue-Korea had translated and published it, followed by a Korean tv cultural news report. However, I was unprepared when English language channel ROKBC-TV reached out and offered to bring me there for an interview, which included an expense-paid two-week vacation as my reward. My initial reaction was disbelief, followed by hesitation. I’m a small-town girl. The fashion and entertainment industry always felt distant from the reality of my life. What would I possibly talk about? However, international recognition was not something to pass up. Naively I hoped it would jumpstart my writing career and allow me some breathing space to follow my life-long dream. Besides, their offer of an expense-paid, two-week vacation excited me, and that would be mine alone to enjoy. How wrong I was. “What can I get you to drink?” a flight attendant asked. “Water’s fine,” I assured her. I’d have a glass of wine with my dinner, hoping a drink would help me sleep. How I’d get myself onto Korean time before the dreaded interview I wasn’t sure. I’d have one full day to get used to the time difference and realistically I knew that wasn’t enough. Come to think of it, I’d have two drinks with dinner. Suddenly the voices behind me grew louder, and the tone of one of the speakers was filled with vitriol. My stomach began to churn. I suddenly wished that ginger ale illustrating my excitement had been flat. ‘You have to learn to deal with conflict,’ I heard my sister Hannah chiding me. Two years older, she was the me I wished to be. Competent, organized, and confident, she held an important position with the state. She’d know how to handle an interview and even direct its focus. She was the daughter my parents were proud of; I was the ‘Oh Meg, when will you ever learn?’ one. As young children, my sister and I were frequently left to our own devices. Indeed, Hannah and I joked we were feral kids. Our next-door grandparents often fed us, and we slept there regularly. As we got older, we got little parental advice. Whether it was a boyfriend or a college major, the choices were ours to make, and then live with the consequences. They weren’t unloving parents; they were just more involved in their own lives than in ours. Amazingly Hannah turned out to be organized and focused, while I seemingly drifted from one bad decision to the next. One might be excused for wondering if we were raised by the same couple. “So, I told that American asshole to stick it!” An audible sigh. “They all suck!” This was spoken in perfect, albeit East Asian accented, English. His tone shook with the intensity of his indignation. Oddly, the voice also seemed familiar. Suddenly, I felt the jolt and heard the thud of something hitting the back of my seat, followed by the reverberation of the impact. What the ….? Wow! Not only is this guy technically insulting me, but he’s smacking the back of my chair! One would think he’d use his own language at least. But then again, I was the only non-Asian in first class, so maybe he didn’t want others to understand. Also, I was sitting in front of him. My 5 foot nothing stature made me barely visible during ordinary circumstances and the seatbacks were high. Invisibility was my superpower. I employed it liberally as a teenager, however, as an adult, I’d found it problematic. One had to be noticed to achieve success, and it’s especially difficult if that one was short and a bit of an introvert. I wasn’t the type who evaded others, indeed I liked working collaboratively. But interactions with strangers were uncomfortable for me, and I rarely initiated them. That was why my reaction to this encounter was so out of character for me. I turned and looked back at the two men sitting behind me. “I think you’ve painted us with too broad a stroke.”

1) Story Statement: Pursue and obtain a writing career this single-parent protagonist desperately wants, and have a trusting relationship after too many heartbreaks, while remaining a devoted parent. 2) THE ANTAGONIST: Mine is a first person POV, so antagonist is seen through protagonist’s pov. The antagonist is a Korean actor with a bit of a temper whose focus is his career success. He is also a partner in a production company that employs the protagonist (which is a vehicle to her dream job). His father left the antagonist and his mother when he was 12, and he inwardly uses his career success to deal with that abandonment. He had some early success as an actor but was sidetracked due to required military service, immediately followed by a scandal that derailed his acting career. He meets the protagonist at a time he’d just gotten work again and gained recognition for it, which he uses to justify abandoning their budding relationship. When the antagonist discovers he’d become a father because of their short-lived romance, he interjects himself between the protagonist and a new love interest. He jealously tries to convince her to return to him, which includes his inability to acknowledge their daughter without a formal family relationship. Whether he cares about the protagonist is debatable, even to himself. It is their daughter who the antagonist really wants in his life. 3) Titles (3): A theme that is threaded throughout the book is the “sky” – the book begins with the protagonist boarding a plane, where she’ll meet the antagonist, whose given name means sky. There is air travel involved, the daughter’s name is Leigh Skye, and the second lead’s given name means bright sky. The book ends in an airport getting ready to board a plane back to LA. As a result, my titles revolve around the term sky, and the phrase “embracing the skies” is used several times in the book and therefore while it wasn’t originally my first choice, it has become such. “Skies the Limit” was the working title for the book. Embracing the Skies: A novel inspired by Korean Dramas Embracing the Skies Skies the Limit 4) Comparables: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin = includes Asian and non-Asian characters, including a love triangle between a Korean man and a Japanese man and EuroAmerican woman, the latter two have a child together. The trio are employed in the gaming industry, another form of entertainment. My book has a Euro-American woman (a beginning writer) and two Korean actors, she has a child with her first relationship. It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover = includes a woman who had a child with a man that is more driven by jealousy and possessiveness versus love, and the protagonist is learning to trust herself to love someone else again. My book has a similar theme, although the relationship isn’t the only focus as her career is also her goal. 5) hook line: Abandoned by the Korean actor who unknowingly fathered her child, an insecure young Euro-American woman must gather her strength and believe in herself to take a chance to pursue her dream of becoming a writer and learn to love again. 6) Two More Levels of Conflict A) Inner conflict: Protagonist’s inner conflict begins as an insecurity about achieving her writing dream (as well as having a trusting and loving relationship – the secondary conflict), which is complicated by the birth of her daughter. A scenario in the manuscript is when the protagonist finds out she’ pregnant and decides she wants to keep the baby but will not tell the antagonist to protect him from another scandal (as well she hasn’t heard from him in weeks). However, the thought this decision will add to her lack of time to write and pursue her desired writing career causes her to believe she will have to give up on it. She's driving at the time and has to pull off the road where she breaks down and weeps. Secondary conflict: After the antagonist inadvertently finds out about his daughter (just before the protagonist was going to tell him) he confronts the protagonist and her new love interest, a fellow Korean actor. The antagonist informs the pair he intends to be involved in the daughter’s life and reminds the other actor that Korean society doesn’t look favorably on his acceptance of another man’s child and it could ruin his career. 7) Importance of Setting: I honestly found this assignment to be the most difficult exercise to do and am at a bit of a loss on how to respond. It isn’t that I think my existing work is perfect, but it does answer some of the questions / comments the article describes. I believe it would be more useful to hear what I got right and what I didn’t versus trying to make up something new at this juncture. I look forward to learning more about enhancing this topic for my manuscript. For background: the settings for my book are several and include the following. Seoul is the major location followed by Busan, South Korea. As well, there are settings in LA, Montreal, and the Adirondacks, the latter two northeastern North American settings are only for a few short chapters each. Each setting is used to propel the story forward from the initial meeting on a plane to the ending in an airport where the protagonist reflectively makes important growth decisions. For example, the urban, Korean settings introduce a new place to the reader, but also act as a sense of differences and sometimes conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. She’s a small-town girl from the Adirondacks, and he’s an urbanite. He’s used to (new) wealth and attention, while she’s struggled most of her adult life and uncomfortable with attention. As the antagonist takes her into his world, it brings out her insecurities in her thoughts, while outwardly she’s absorbing it and trying to handle these encounters without looking too naïve. Despite the difference in cultures (and some of this is brought out throughout the book), the protagonist identifies more with the climate and geography of South Korea than she does with LA. Another example includes the house in LA, which is operated by the Korean production company the antagonist is a partner in. Four Korean actors have arrived to prepare for the U.S. portion of a drama they are filming there. The protagonist is the English-language coach working with them, as well as part-time assistant / consultant to the writers. One of the actors becomes the second lead (love interest) in this story. The house and property are spacious, described as needed in terms of meeting the production company’s needs, and it’s used to develop the budding relationship between the protagonist and the second lead (which will be enhanced when the production moves to Seoul). I also use it when the protagonist goes to Seoul to work by comparing the spaciousness and light of the house in LA to the smaller and darker apartment that the protagonist will move into.