 |
| I only wish I looked this good after a night of writing |
As a woman writer, I find myself looking out for women who also write in kdramas, feeling an instant sense of connection when I find them. It's as if we're part of a secret society! There's a handshake and everything!
But I genuinely find their lives and stories interesting, because the drive to write can give a character a complexity and insight into their fellow humans that make for compelling stories.
I haven't found too many of my fellow writers yet, but I'm keeping a weather eye out!
Han Ji Eun:
The first drama I encountered with a female protagonist writer was 2004 Full House's Han Ji Eun. She's a young woman with a fierce temper who is nonetheless very naive, like a child who's had no real contact with the world (which she hasn't). She lives in a beautiful house her father built years ago and in which she grew up, situated far out from the city on a beach--it's geographic isolation reflects her own isolation, because it becomes apparent that both her parents are dead, she has no other family, and her only friends are two childhood troublemakers who take advantage of her shamelessly, despite having (what I think) is a genuine attachment to her. It's like she's their mom, and they're her infantile charges, and they expect her to take care of them.
Han Ji Eun is interesting for a number of reasons. She clearly savors her independence, reveling in her messy house, her junk food habit, and the free time in which she writes internet novels. She certainly resents Lee Young Jae acquiring power of her house and her life (although who wouldn't?). But it becomes very apparent to us through the story that she craves family, and lives off of a diet of memories of happier times, when her parents were alive. She keenly feels her lack of formal education and the guidance parents would have provided. It's this sense of loneliness and inadequacy I believe that drives her to write, to fill up the holes in her life. Although she certainly has the writer's knack of insight, often saying things that surprise Lee Young Jae with their depth and meaning, especially when it comes to reading situations or people...although when the situations or people are related to her, Han Ji Eun can be frustratingly blind.
Lee Young Jae belittles her writing initially, which fires her up to prove him wrong, and sets her off to seek a publisher. She struggles here, her writing still very amateurish. Nonetheless, she doesn't give up, and finally finds a niche and a mentor with Yoo Min Hyuk, the head of a production company. He begins giving her weekly lessons, setting her homework, challenging her style and writing in a kindly but stern manner. With his guidance, she improves.
But it's not only his guidance. It's the flourishing of her life as she experiences love and family for the first time that seem to give her inspiration. In the end we see her first movie has been a hit, and it's one based around the events of her life, a rom-com which seems to flip the power-dynamic between herself and Young Jae in a satisfying way.
I like that about her--writing is empowering for her. She demands time to write in her deal with Young Jae, she uses it to change her reality, when he accidentally deletes a hard-worked on piece she doesn't back down in her anger at his messing with her stuff, she doesn't give up in believing that this is what she loves and is meant to do despite rejection. I also like that she's no insta-genius. She has to work at her craft, but in the end her dedication pays off, and even saves her love from his own downward spiraling career trajectory. It makes herself and Young Jae symbiotic partners in every sense as well.
Hong Nan Hee:
Nan Hee is very different from either of the other women on this list. When we first meet her, she's just turned thirty and is entering a a quarter-life crisis as her mother urges her to give up her lifelong but ultimately failed dreams of being a writer. She works a small struggling publishing house just to work with books, and wonders why some crap authors get published, while she can't.
So she makes a deal with her mother. One more chance. She writes a story, and if it gets published, she gets to keep her dream. If not....well, she'll give up and get married. So she moves into her best friend's apartment and gets down to work.
In between her struggles with love, friendship and accepting adulthood, she's constantly at work on her novel. She pours her grief and love and joy and confusion into that story. Her best friend turned problematic love interest Hyung Tae cheers her on from the sidelines, reading drafts, bringing her alcohol and taking care of her when she gets too absorbed in her work to take care of herself. In return, we see that the two main characters are actually an iteration of Hyung Tae and Nan Hee--squabbling partners up against the unknowable.
She loves to write. She can't help but write. Even when she acknowledges aloud that she doesn't have any real talent, she admits she can't stop...it's all she thinks about. That moved me, because that's how it is for so many writers. Writing can be a powerful drug.
In the end, her story isn't accepted. But Nan Hee has come a long way from the beginning of her bet. She's accepted that the maturity of being thirty is a worthy tradeoff for the youthful idealism of being twenty. She realizes that her job as editor is a worthy end unto itself, and that she can pour herself into that as well. It's not that she's given up on writing, she confides. It's that she's going to put it aside for awhile until she has more experience, and then she'll return to it.
It's the most realistic look at writing I've encountered yet, and Nan Hee's passion for it was one of the most central threads of the story.
Sung Shi Won:
The last woman writer I've encountered in kdramaland is, of course, the one and only Sung Shi Won, our forthright, fan-girl heroine from Reply 1997.
Shi Won is a diametric opposite to Han Ji Eun. She has loving, messy, involved parents, the grief of a dead older sister to shoulder, and a crew of old and new friends to love and fight with. She's so full of and surrounded by life, complexity, and the wide world. All this completely alters her approach to writing.
As a high schooler with an obsession for boy band H.O.T., she naturally writes fanfic about her beloved boys rather than focus on schoolwork, which she remains obstinately uninterested in. But it's her fanfiction that gives her a shot at her dream of attending the University of Seoul. Teacher (and long-time family friend) Yoon Tae Woong sees her potential and coaches her transformation from internet fanfic writer to short story competition entrant. She writes a short story that wins her a slot at the university, and sends her over the moon.
Watching Shi Won's passion for and worry about her story is ultimately one of the most rewarding parts of the show, as you see her realize that what she thought was just something she loved to do in her free time can also be a talent and a career. And in contrast to Han Ji Eun, everyone gets in on the act--rooting for her, proofreading her work, and letting her touch their lucky underwear (long story). For Shi Won, writing was a community act, never one related to isolation.
By the end of the drama, we see her settled into an underling job at a network company, working on programming. We don't know if she's still involved in the writing aspect, but in my head, Shi Won is working her way up the ladder, and will eventually someday be a beloved drama writer, breaking all our hearts with her bromantic tales of love and lust.
(top photo: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEg30JkfNEBU8YzSLvGPCMGoESUHWQGpx79IeTxH7yQSg6F83MB9_G0W4aFDgO4DkL_eC6ofpfLbdVVFU5-g033Pk_fw9s8Hk8knSvfzRThzzpjZb4_3TFS5ZGWzhBHlvSB3MMvecFhuhPhl2t2aI6nrHDi0Rr1TlctrWpkSFxabHBtGSLyr2yV1CnElNRTW433KnSd63CbRncNimLF-7hqJx9D19KrcFYXPDuDbO66vaOvhb_nWA0hMvMJG8A=)
No comments:
Post a Comment