Became an American Retro Novelist - Chapter 146



Only Noblemtl

146.

From the first class, a very interesting story came out.

‘Who writes the best novels?’

If they heard such words, some of the more energetic ones might shout, “Me! Me!” But today, nothing happened among the freshmen. Even John Smith, who was the loudest and most talkative among the freshmen, became mute.

Why did they act like that?

And why didn’t I raise my hand? At least I, who said that a novelist should never doubt that his own novel is the most interesting.

I wanted to ask other people’s reasons first before thinking about my own.

For half the lecture, Edward MacMillan explained what was to come, and for the other half, he explained what a novel was.

After class ended and the professor left, John Smith came up to me as if it was only natural. Then, other freshmen naturally followed suit, forming a large group.

The professor’s class was over, but our class wasn’t over yet.

In a situation where practically everyone was gathered, John spoke first.

“Hey, this is no joke from the first hour?”

“That’s right.”

Someone else answered.

“I never imagined that they would let us choose the materials.”

I agreed with that statement.

The old professor gave us an assignment to write a 1,000-word novel.

He told us to submit our papers in class next week and that he would have a critique session the week after, but he asked us to each come up with a novel idea in our heads.

When I heard that, I was momentarily lost in thought.

If it’s a good material, it’s better to think in a slightly larger frame so that you can expand your thoughts in various directions. Having come to that conclusion, I came up with the material ‘computer’. I also chose that word because I vaguely wanted to write a science fiction story.

Let’s write it down on a piece of paper and submit it to the front, our professor Edward pulled out one of the pieces of paper and presented the material to be used for the assignment.

······This person randomly selected novel material from among those suggested by students.

And the material suggested by Edward Macmillan’s drawing was ‘music’.

I was momentarily taken aback, but then I laughed.

‘So this is how it is.’

I have always written ‘alone’. I have only used my knowledge as a writing teacher, but I have never actually studied novels in a creative writing environment.

That’s why I felt so happy about this atmosphere where the act of writing was freely done. I was momentarily dumbfounded by the lottery system, but I even liked that.

And now, feeling a little excited, I couldn’t help but ask my colleagues.

“Who selected this material? Oh, can I ask this?”

“Wouldn’t that be okay?”

Someone behind him raised his hand in response to John’s answer.

“Hey, it’s me. Me.”

It was Rebecca Wong.

The black hair that seemed to have been carelessly cut near the cheek and the slightly upturned eyes created a strong impression as well as a confident impression.

After hearing her answer, I looked around and asked again.

“Why did you choose that as the material?”

“I just came here listening to music on my Walkman.”

If you think about it, it was for a very similar reason to mine.

The female student next to me asked.

“Why, why, God. Did you remember something?”

“Please share!”

“······No, not yet. Then, there’s one more thing I’d like to ask.”

Everyone’s eyes lit up.

‘I feel like I’ve become a professor or something.’

It was a bit burdensome, but I thought it was something I had to endure. Now, they were not just treating me as a classmate, but as a popular writer who had made a name for himself in California before them, ‘SEEN’.

“What do you all think about what the professor said at first?”

“Who among us thinks he writes the best?”

“I was a bit taken aback when I heard that.”

“That’s right. It was a question I didn’t expect at all.”

“I thought John would raise his hand.”

All eyes were drawn to it for a moment.

In front of him, John······ smiled faintly, placing his index finger and thumb on his chin.

“Haha, thank you all for seeing me as a confident person.”

“But why didn’t you raise your hand?”

“That’s right, that’s right.”

“Why? The real author is here.”

“······.”

“Oh, right. I was conscious of God too.”

“······Was that how everyone was?”

“It’s not me.”

Rebecca steps forward again.

Of the two, she was the female student who seemed to care the least about the fact that I was a ‘writer’. That’s why I felt like it was easier to talk to her.

Rebecca opened her mouth as if nothing had happened, looking at me intently.

“But what you said was quite impressive. Self-confidence. I felt like I still lacked that.”

“It’s a difficult problem······.”

“That’s the thing about writing. No matter how well you think you wrote it, when you look at it again later, it’s really bad. So even if you want to fix it, you don’t know where to start. Ugh······!”

“I think that’s a given.”

“okay?”

“I want to hear the opinions of active writers!”

The gaze that had been directed at Rebecca turned towards me.

And I slowly blurted out what I was thinking.

“We grow as time goes by. As writers and as people. That’s why I feel bad about the things I wrote before. I think self-confidence comes from the process, not the result, so I try not to worry about that part.”

“Oh······.”

“Isn’t that a really cool thing to say?”

“I know.”

Rebecca, who always seemed chubby, finally smiled.

“There is something about those words that resonates with my heart.”

“Then God, why didn’t you raise your hand if you had so much confidence?!”

“Because I don’t know your writing yet.”

And even if I knew, I wouldn’t think that each piece of writing I read would prove the level of skill of those gathered here.

As I said before, novelists, especially young novelists, are always growing.

“But I can say one thing for sure. Right now, I’m having so much fun writing novels.”

I thought it was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was the 80s after all.

“Wow! I can’t lose!”

“I will write you the best novel!”

“You said 1,000 words?! Let’s give it a try!”

The theme is ‘music’.

In the midst of the excitement of creative writing, I thought like them.

I’ll try to write a great novel.

***

As the series ‘About T: Coach’ neared its end, Julia came to an idea.

‘The new writer definitely understands and writes about media franchises.’

Watching the fourth and fifth installments of the ‘About T’ series, I became even more convinced of this.

Tony, who became a temporary coach for a primary school football club, faced various difficult situations that came up while teaching children, and solved them with the help of new people he met at the right time.

In that way, ‘About T: Coach’, as a novel, showed various characters outside of school in a great story flow, and they were given a vividness that made them seem like real, living characters.

Jeremy Thompson, a producer at California Pictures, who watched ‘About T: Coach’, said that thanks to the writer’s writing, he is starting to have a clearer idea of ​​how to transfer this work into a video.

Of course, Julia agreed with his opinion.

The original ‘About T’ series, especially the stories before the drama was decided, were written with a focus on describing the psychology of Tony and Alice.

The novel was okay though. After all, the most important thing about the medium of writing is the pleasure you get from reading.

But when we transferred it to video, there were many difficult parts. This was because the video had to tell the story through movement and dialogue.

That’s why each sequence that makes up the story of the drama had to be handled somewhat vaguely and with a reduced psychological flow compared to the novel. And in that part, I had to rely on the actor’s acting, or I tried to overcome it through the directing of the scene.

And God understood exactly what the PD meant when he said, ‘I wish there were more characters,’ and provided a kind of guide.

Instead of text, it provided examples of characters that lived, breathed, and moved on the screen.

‘In the novel, scenes that were simply monologues could be more interesting to viewers if they were changed to a conversation format with characters presented in the work.’

To complement that, the story of ‘About T: Coach’ could be inserted between each episode of the drama, presenting each character in a different way.

For example, the taco shop owner that Tony used to take elementary school kids to eat delicious tacos with could appear in the drama as someone who comforts Tony when he is struggling right before the proposal. It’s just one example, but it’s a very possible story.

Anyway, the pilot episode of ‘About T’ was being produced without any major problems.

According to the PD, the series planning was already completed, and the pilot episode was said to be an abridged version of ‘Viewfinder’, where Tony and Alice go on an adventure to find a treasure map.

And after an internal preview with a 40-minute segment, they said they plan to air the show in advance on LBS sometime next spring.

The process of selecting the lead actor has already begun, and Julia also went to the audition site on behalf of the new writer. Although she did not give any specific opinions, she met with the drama writer of ‘About T’ and exchanged greetings and talked about the direction of the work.

In that way, the work that Shin had written before going to college was being gradually turned into a drama.

Julia smiled, wishing winter would pass quickly so she could watch real dramas on television.

***

Late at night.

After finishing all of today’s regular classes and returning to my room, I washed my face and showered, then sat down at my desk and picked up my pen.

It was because of the assignment I received in today’s ‘Writing 1’ class.

‘Music, there’s a thousand words.’

A situation where two things are presented: material and quantity.

If we were to serialize it in a newspaper, it would be about the size of two episodes. It would be like a short story.

What kind of story can be told with ‘music’ in this?

The first thing that came to mind was, of course, the music I usually listen to.

When I write, I often listen to quiet music without lyrics, because that kind of music is the best for silencing the surrounding noise and focusing my mind completely.

Sometimes I listen to songs with lyrics. Usually, when I go to school or come home from work, I connect YouTube Music to my car via Bluetooth and listen to strong music like AC/DC. It felt like I was waking up.

‘Then it moves on to the flea that is linked to that song.’

You can also discover new music that suits your taste by listening to playlists that can be considered collections of similar genres.

As I was following the natural flow of thoughts to come up with ideas, I soon realized something.

‘Huh?’

Now that I think about it, this was all something that happened in a ‘past life.’

Actually, after returning, I don’t remember looking for or listening to any music.

‘First of all, it was music that everyone knew······.’

Sometimes, I’d hear on MTV or something that a great singer was on the air, or my friends would tell me to listen to a certain song, but it was all songs I’d heard hundreds of times before.

Even if it had been an ‘easy to listen to’ environment like my previous life, I would have played it like white noise.

‘Because now is not the time for that.’

1984.

Listening to music required a lot of tedious preparatory work and a lot of money.

Since CDs were not yet widely available, the easiest way was to buy a tape containing music of your choice and listen to it with headphones using cassette audio. And the cost of doing so was quite expensive.

‘The Sony Walkman costs $99, and the extras like the cassette player, headphones, speakers, etc. are quite expensive.’

It was a huge amount of money that I wouldn’t have been able to even imagine if I were at this time in my previous life.

And now, I didn’t buy it because I thought, ‘Why bother?’ For me, who was used to listening to music with clear sound quality in the future, the Sony Walkman didn’t feel like a good medium for listening to music.

I had a strange feeling.

I basically thought that music was an art through sound. Although the medium was different, I thought it was the same as other arts in that it conveyed certain emotions. However, even in the future when I was even more immersed in music than I am now, I wasn’t particularly conscious of it.

In other words, even though the act of listening to music is an act of enjoying art, I did not take it as something special······.

‘Why is that?’

Come to think of it, when I listened to my favorite song, AC/DC’s ‘You shook me all night long’, I didn’t really care about the lyrics. If it were a novel, I would have savored every line of the description of ‘the experience of being toyed with by a woman who kills me’.

But I didn’t do that when I listened to the song. I just enjoyed the auditory stimulation created by the intertwining of voices, sounds, melody, and rhythm.

Music is like this to me······.

“Is this the art that is most close to you?”

Yes, it was an art form that was more natural than a novel.

It was so absurd that I couldn’t help but laugh.

Music is something that is deeply embedded in the subconscious. Everyone hums a song when they feel good. Even if they don’t remember the lyrics, they can naturally make sounds with their mouths to ask someone, “Hey, what’s this song?”

That’s what music was to all of us.

The easiest and simplest art that anyone can do.

‘I guess dancing is like that too.’

Nodding, clapping, stomping.

For some reason, a smile came to my face.

“All, all, all~ all~ all~.”

I suddenly found myself humming the chorus of ‘You shook me all night long.’

It was only then that the idea of ​​what kind of novel I should write occurred to me.

Then a voice is heard from beyond the back.

“Huh? What did you just say?”

When I turned around, my roommate, John Smith, who was sitting at the desk with his back to me, was tilting his head. He was also trying to write a novel, but I interrupted him.

But I was a little elated that I had caught something and asked with a big smile.

“Do you know this song? Da, da, da~da~da~.”

“Huh? I’ve heard of that. What was it?”

“All, all, all~ all~ all~.”

I repeated the song over and over again until he remembered it.

And in the meantime, I organized the content of the short story I was going to write.

It was the story of a man who couldn’t remember what song ‘Da, da, da~da~da~’ was.

End

(146)