2025 will soon be near and that means for me a three month trip to South Korea to hole myself away and work on my book "Soaring", which will be multiple books (and long af). This has been planned for a very, very long while, almost ten years. I was supposed to go this year or 2022 but the pandemic scrapped everything and the world basically stopped. I wanted to pick a year far enough in the future for sufficient planning and would be "safe" enough, mask/covid-wise. I still plan to bring a crap-load of masks, they have a mask culture there and I plan on reveling in it as much as a chinchilla revels in dust. As well as buy masks there because why not?
But in my apt when I am writing? I'm holing myself away, no mask on (unless I feel like it) and just working, working, working on my work. Diligently. Expeditiously. With remarkable haste.
I got the ink (Kaweco's Midnight Blue, a nice blue-black shader that's not hard on the eyes and (hopefully) pleasant to look at for hundreds of pages), I haz the pen (TWSBI Vac700R, extra fine nib), I'm accruing the journals (which means, "I'm in the process of making over a thousand pages worth of journals. My poor hands."). I just need to, basically, secure the apartment (I'm using AirB&B because if things go wrong, I want to spill my spleen to an English speaker and get things solved fast), and buy the airplane tickets (still too early to look at flights for my dates but I'm watchin'). I can already speak and understand Korean well enough to do the basics:
- Read signs
- Navigate public transport
- Go to the market and not die
- Avoid tourist traps
- Swear at people who agitate me for whatever reason (I am not a people person and I'm aware prejudice is very alive and well in S. Korea. P-P-A-P that together and I say things that can shock a right-wing, war-hardened sailor (I know this because I've done it and that sailor was floored and aghast. Can't repeat it to my parents (or Human Rights Watch) but I got my point across succinctly and quickly - and that was with no swear words))
'Das about all I need. I don't really plan on having a "Super Happy K-Pop!" trip to Korea, I just don't wanna write my book in America for a litany of reasons and would like to go outside the country - especially since I literally can speak & understand 5+ languages and I'm pretty knowledgeable about different world cultures so I might as well. I'm the only person in my immediate (and probably extended) family who has not been to another country (or from another country, my dad and his side of the family is from Jamaica). S. Korea is quiet and calm enough a choice. And the language is easiest for my brain to lazy read because of their alphabet and how legible it is.
This means I just need a comfy apartment that I will be in roughly 24/7 that is quiet, not rifled with problems, has a window so I can see the sky/natural light, doesn't have to be gargantuan but it can't be Prison Pint Sized, and I'm not bothered. At all. (Unless emergency. Asking me why I exist in their building - or why I exist at all - is not an emergency.) I have two friends in S. Korea who are natives and they're free to bother me whenever, I told them so, but that's all. When I'm writing, I'm basically a cold-shouldered dick to anything that is not about health, death or food interrupting it. I don't kid around about being distraction free, I'm literally going on the other side of the freaking planet for it. The only reason why I'm not shoving myself out into the countryside of S. Korea is because I still want some American-esque bathroom amenities, which is more in the city, and I'm living between the houses of my two friends so I know exactly whose door to bang on if things go left and remarkably stupid in Korea. I'm going in the summer (June to August) so I also don't have to worry about freezing - I just have to worry about melting. I already plan to bring a dehumidifier or buy one when I am there. The kind that can quietly suck the ocean out of the air and just give it to my friends when I leave the country.
I have amassed a litany of info and research for my book Soaring, which is slated to be an Alternative History Fantasy Sci-Fi work of potentially several books. For the work - which I got the idea of when I was working in the Library of Congress and a little before it, so about 2013/2014 - I had to bone up on a lot of world history circa 2008/2009-2015 ... and the historical events that led up to those events. From books to articles to documentaries to films to comics to graphic novels to personal accounts to video games, I had to learn a lot about a lot. Many historical pains, long-standing beefs and squabbles of time - of multiple countries, massacres, cover-ups, movements and more. Holy cannoli, bro.
Obviously working at the biggest library in the world in their stacks and acquisition departments gave me a massive head start and a gigantic pile of rare books and materials to work with and build a foundation. (Because I was working on them. I literally was snapshotting books left and right as my "To Read Later" pile or whole passages because I knew LoC was probably the only place that had said book in any grade of availability. Or I read some on my breaks and lunch.) I processed books, such as the UN Testimonials about North Korea, complete with hand drawn pictures from those actually detained, a book I would have not known existed unless it literally crossed my processing desk. I looked at wide swaths of stacks, such as the "Israeli section" (my name for the books in D to DD class, which covers everything Israel, Holocaust and a massive bit of the Jewish identity, I had to do shelf-reading/de-acidification verification there). I've had to process books I didn't know existed, like the big ol' Palestine Pile, the bundle of books that got lumped onto me because "You speak a lot of languages" and no one felt like hearing the whinging of the Israeli Division librarians (there's an entire story behind all of this that is part comedic and part maddening) so may as well lump it onto me, the grunt that can "speak a lot of languages" and "good with different people". There's a lot I saw, basically.
I strive to make characters that seem real and their authentic selves so that means a lot of reading/watching of Holy Sh#t, What The F#ck: The Academic Edition - and then weaving in humanness in all of that to make a person. We're all a sum of our experiences, I believe, so it's all important. Problem for me is a lot of people had a lot of experiences and those many experiences can drop a jaw quick. And they come in different languages. And there are a lot of different countries. And governments. And politics. And movements. And holy crap can ppl just get along?
In research, I learned there's a lot of slight of hand when it comes to data. For example, there's technically over 200 countries - but some sources will just say 193 because they don't include nations like Taiwan or Palestine, which then I discover, get agitated and then have to find a different source that does the full 200+, while also looking at the data of the source I am staring at to see what other bs they did and why. It's like I follow one string and it splits up into a whole spider web of lines that just adds stacks to my research pile. And when current events occur (for example, Ukraine/Russia and Palestine/Israel), that means more info tumbles out for me to look at, cry at the amount of it, and collect.
It's a lot.
I even have, for example, a VR experience of the Aleppo bombing, which puts you in the center of the event, so you can get the idea of what it's like to encounter a bombing like that - something that I, as an American, am not super likely to experience (I am a Black American tho, so bombings in my community do happen. Ask White people, they're the ones planting them. Such as MOVE in Philly, and the countless Black church bombings that spans literal decades. They're not the same as a carpet bombing in the Middle East but there are some serious similarities, especially on a psychological and political level.) There's another VR experience that is of the British blitz over Germany, something that my grandfather is more likely to have experience since he fought in WWII but not me because WWII happened about 40 years before I was born. Then there's the test nuking of the Marshall Islands, as well as noting the fact people lived on those islands and did not consent to being a test nuke place (seriously, who would?), another VR experience. Oh, and the inside of Anne Frank's house. She's not a character in my book (other ppl existed during that time, hello), but the layout of the house is a snapshot of that time. There's also a VR example of Swedish Parliament I'm yet to look at - because I need to familiarize myself with what the inside of other governments look like since this is a book that involves the world. And space, because of course space is involved.
And that's just what I've found in just VR alone. A relatively new technology.
Then there is collecting and reviewing source material in their home languages. I know several languages but I don't know them all. There are a lot of things in English but some things simply doesn't make it over the language barrier - either on accident, or on propagandic purpose. (Thanks, China. Because I apparently need a headache from the linguistic version of Catch Me If You Can. And where the heck is Naomi Wu & her gf?). This means I have to use my multi-lingual skills to read transcripts, personal accounts and hear what was actually said (while the translator gets extremely "creative" with interpretation and I compare/contrast) so I have as thorough an understanding of the situation as possible. And get more sources and research that adds to my pile, thus I crey, I crey muches. I had to do this in Korean with the Sewol and Gwangju Massacre (they have a virtual museum for Gwangju history. Some parts are in English, others are not, I read it all). I had to do this in Chinese with damn near everything. I had to do this with so many of the languages I knew. And I grew up around a lot of languages because I grew up in the inner city and not the middle class or above so that helped a lot. I don't stare at Spanish or Yiddish lopsided because I already heard these languages (and been around the people) growing up. Heck, my mom speaks German because she spent the first 5 years of her life in Germany (remember, my granddad was in WWII punching Nazis (while dealing with the segregation due to the American counterparts of the Nazis, the general White American population, because racism)). This means I have methods and workarounds for languages I am not so good at.
I have been doing it fairly single handedly because I'm usually very secretive about my books for artsy-fartsy reasons. It isn't that I think anyone would steal the story (I'd actually like to see them try, most people give up just writing a plain novel. This one has historical components and over 200+ characters and innumerable moving parts in terms of character & plot dynamics), it's because I have Artist Feelingz. Most probably wouldn't understand if I explained it anyway because I would most likely start speaking at the speed of light, probably do interpretive liturgical-style dance throughout parts of it, show a confusing jumble of memes from gods know where on the planet, crack quick jokes in a mash of random languages and act out scenes in random spurts all around the person in complete 360 mode (complete with nearby things grabbed as props and/or hyper dramatic arm flails), and have them all wondering if I'm doing okay.
That's how my cat would look at me when I explained the stories to her. And she's used to my ramblings.
I also don't want to make any international friends I have feel like I'm using them purely as research hulls. That's not good friendship, that's being a horrible person. Plus, they're just one person, thus one perspective. Most people don't have a hyper academic, metacognitive perspective about their lives, nation and history. That's why museums and books and such exist. Plus, some of these friends have lived through some of this so it would be extra messed up to ask. Thus I don't. I don't need to ask my Korean friends about the Gwangju massacre, I don't want to ask my Palestinian buddy who likes candles and bubble baths about how living through bombardment would make him feel (because no one should have to ask that, take a wild guess how being randomly bombed would make you feel and apply it). I sincerely despise when people ask me historically prickly questions like that out of the clear blue sky about my existence as a Black person, why would I throw that onto someone else and then say we're friends? That's not how a friend acts, that's how a narcissistic, myopic, selfish, self-centered and heartless piece of sh#t acts. I have research, diverse academics and countless accounts of people who already openly talked about their experiences ad nauseam that I can look at, no need to fry people I actually want to keep. I do bear them in mind at least briefly when I make the characters I do but in the end, it is still my work and my characters are indeed built to be complex. I do not need backseat driving for any of my stories, just data.
The hardest info for me to look at and research, obviously for me, is Black history. Because whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Part of why I don't want to be around people is I don't want to be Angry AF because of a passage/scene and now someone unfortunate in Korea gets their day turned upside down because Today Was Not The Day. I know my Black history well (far better than Black folks who tell me I'm not Black for liking Black created things like Rock music and video game consoles (look it up, we invented both)) but I'm also a Black American, my experiences are not the entirety of the pan-African global experience. I'm just one person in the diaspora. And even my experiences aren't exactly Standard Black American (one side of my family is from another country, for example). All the same, still hurts an awful lot because Black history is indeed my history and it's more than just numbers or personal accounts of people I've Never Met, it's people who look like me and have stories like mine. Then there's the ever over-arching wound that is anti-Blackness that I'm basically going to be deep-sea diving in. Yeaaaaaah, I rather stay in and stay away from ppl. It's for the best. For society. Even in the market, I plan to go deep at night and be a ghost through the aisles as I refresh my fridge and pantry.
I even have music and stuff accrued for writing Soaring. It's basically Linkin Park, which provided a lot of the musical backdrop of the plot, Serj Tankian, Fall Out Boy, Muse, Lupe Fiasco ("All Black Everything" and "Words I've Never Said" also helped with the musical backdrop of the plot. As did Friend of the People EP) as well as a litany of music from around the world and random songs that I would like to listen to on repeat for 3 months straight, from popular songs (or popular in their own nations) to little ditties I came across in my research that I went "Wow, I really like this." I need to compile them into the Soaring Playlist (which already is looking to be at least a hundred hours deep), but it's there.
Soaring already has its own Masterbook, and I have to compile my character sheets together (and perhaps digitize them for easy searching because some characters got two separate entries for them when it should be one entry per character). In 2024, I'm really going to have to super kick that into gear so when I go to S. Korea, all I have to do is write.
Which I do look forward to.
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