Two things; A note on TV and how I write

I wrote this last night before going to bed, using my phone. It was long and tedious trying to type it all out on my dinky little phone.

Today was a lazy day. I wasn't feeling good, so I just chilled in the dorm. The first half of the day was boring, just watching random videos on YouTube, trying to write something, and generally just wasting time.

Then, a little after lunch I headed over to drama fever, my one stop shop for Korean dramas. I hadn't really found anything to watch since Me Too, Flower ended, and I guess I was missing it. Anyway, there's one show that had been on the main page for a while now, and I kind of wanted to watch it for the last little bit. It has one of singers from one of my favorite bands, which its usually the reason I start watching something. But it looked too drama-y for me, so I hadn't gotten around to watching it yet. Anyway, I watched the first episode, and was instantly hooked. In fact, I watched all 14 that are currently available all in a row. It was a good thing they were only about 44-50 minutes long, instead of the usual hour and ten minutes.

The point is, as I was watching, and after I finished watching and was thinking about it, I realized another thing that is different between American TV and Korean TV: in American TV when the couple goes through that mandatory rough spot, I almost always feel bad for the guy. Usually because I don't like the girl, or I don't feel like she deserves him. On the other hand, in Korean TV, I always feel bad for both the guy and the girl. The guy for the same reason as in American TV, but the girl because I have noticed that most of the time the main girl is a little bit innocent. At least, in the romantic comedies, anyway. My point is, I guess, that the Koreans have still managed to hold on to pretty, as defined as having an innocence, as the ideal, rather than hot, as the American people have. This is one of the reasons I enjoy watching the Korean dramas, because I am not hot. Sometimes I'm not pretty either, though my mother will say different. But I strive for that pretty ideal. And from what I've seen, both in the dramas and in real life, men use the hot women and marry the pretty women.

End what I wrote on my phone.

Moving on. Since I had watched all of that one drama yesterday (it's called What's Up, since I forgot to write that) I had nothing to watch today while I was still feeling too icky to go to chuch. (Once again, I couldn't go to church... I hope this doesn't become a trend...) I was kind of in the mood for a historical, so I decided to watch some more of a drama I started watching a while ago. It's called The Return of Iljimae, and I started watching it originally because it has the same guy from Flower Boy Ramyun Shop in it. And I really like him, he's really pretty. Anyway, I picked up where I left off, watched a couple of episodes, and was inspired to write something.

As I started writing, the words seemed to flow onto the page through my fingers almost effortlessly, until I reached a certain point and had to stop. Then the words struggled to come out, and I realized something about my writing. I've sort of known this for a while, but it's still a little bit different. I don't just make stuff up when I write, I write what I see.

Mini movies are constantly playing in my head, especially when I'm writing. In terms of my writing, I'm first like a director. I direct the action in my head, gently prodding the actors into action on the scene while it's all still in my head. I have a little bit of control, but mostly I let my actors do what they think fits the characters and situations best. Because they aren't just actors, they are the characters. Once everything is recorded in my head, I become a transcriber, translating what I see down on to paper or computer. And if I can't see it, then I really struggle to get it out.

Let me give you an example. When I write, if my character has to move in a certain direction, or has to turn a certain way down a certain street, I watch what happens in my head to see which direction it is. So if the character turns left in my head, he turns left in the story. If the building she has to go into is on the right in my head, it is so on paper. I have very little control of the setting and the characters, and even on most of the action in the story. I'm just a tool for the stories to get written down. I just have control over how everything is written down.

This is one of the reasons I didn't finish my NaNo last year. I reached a certain point in the story, and couldn't see the connection between one part of the story and another, and so I couldn't write. I tried jumping ahead, but I hate writing out of order, because then I have to work harder to make the pieces fit together.

Anyway, that's my ramble for this week.