In Retrospect: GWC '24
Stories behind the stories, and what I earned from GWC '24
“Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever” - James Joyce, Letter to Fanny Guillermet
이미 노트에서 한 얘기이긴 합니다만, GWC ‘24 이후로 영어로 뭘 쓰자니 힘에 부친다는 느낌이 있네요.
Surprised? What I wrote above means: Although I already said it in a Note, I feel too tired to write anything in English after GWC ‘24. The side of my brain that covers English is demanding a good rest. I am trying to get back to writing, and my impression is that this fatigue has to do with the English language rather than the act of writing in se. For instance, my Russian is much worse than my English, but articulating a sentence in Russian seems to be less stressful for me than in English, as of now. Это может быть хорошим шансом попробовать написать рассказ на русском языке. See?
However, мои дорогие, уважаемые читатели, or my cherished, respected readers have read my GWC ‘24 stories in English, and I believe this retrospection should accordingly be composed in English too. So, enough Korean and Russian. Let’s get to the stories behind the stories.
For those of you who are not familiar with my background, my first language is not English and I do not reside in an English-speaking country. I began to write in English only last year. The reason why I began to write short stories in English was that not a single piece of literature I wrote in my native tongue had been accepted for publication. Never. In case you want to know the rest of the story, please read the essay below.
I Began to Write Since I Failed to Become a Writer
I began to write since I failed to become a writer. This sentence requires two extra adverbial clauses to clear things up: I began to write in English since I failed to become a writer in South Korea.Requests of Literary Exile is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
After less than a year of writing in English and submitting abroad, short stories, short plays, and an essay I wrote have been published in the US and India. In addition, two stories and a poem are scheduled to come out in the UK and Spain this month. It has been a wild, exciting ride.
Along with my passion project of translating Classical Chinese poems into English, this was what brought me to Substack: I wanted write about my experience as a writer to whom English is not a naturally acquired language but a learned language, and what this experience has done to my psyche and life. As the title of this Substack goes, my intention was to describe my “requests of literary exile”, or my asylum-seeking process in the Anglophone world.
It was only after discovering
and his that a simple idea crossed my mind. I could also post short stories on Substack. Stories that I wrote in English themselves were my requests for the literary green card after all. I also thought that participating in a short story competition on Substack would be a great idea. I wrote a flash fiction called “A Language to Argue”, cut it down a bit to meet Scoot’s 250-word criterion, and sent it right away. The first version I wrote was around 300 words, and I had to get rid of some descriptions that I fancied.I belong to those writers who love to recycle. I almost always submit my pieces to multiple outlets. I submitted the original version of “A Language to Argue” to magazines, and it got accepted. I will let you know on Note later when it comes out.
Meanwhile, you already know the other side of the ALtA’s story. I got an email back from Scoot. I felt super excited and happy, naturally. Back then, Requests of Literary Exile had only two subscribers. The very incidence that someone on Substack cared to read what I wrote and liked it was so satisfying indeed.
That was how I ended up writing three 2000-word stories with my wonderful fellow participants,
, , , and . I call them wonderful not as an empty praise. I truly want you to go check out their stories and I am confident you will like them. I am going to present you my favorite stories from them later, but for now, let me write about my GWC ‘24 stories first.Howling
What was left of the dead yak’s leg was swaying in the icy blast of Khuvsgul. Before coming to far northern Mongolia for the second time, Chaeyeong had not known that the body of a once-living animal could creak like an old log. She had not seen any carcass during her first visit in the summer. Now she was getting accustomed to running into dead livesto…
“Howling” was the first story I wrote for the competition. It was required that I write a story with a chase scene in it for the first round of GWC ‘24, and I made a mother chase after a wolf mother in the northernmost region of Mongolia.
Since last year, I wanted to write a hunting story. The problem is, I have never hunted any animal (unless running after dragonflies, spiders, and mosquitoes counts) or shot a gun in my life. Last winter, I was invited to a boar hunt and thought I would finally write a boar-hunting story. In the end, the hunt never took place. Hopefully, I will get to write a boar-hunting story next spring after a real experience.
A Long Cold Shower
Jonah was lying on his back, curled up in the shower booth. It was not a heart attack as he had been expecting. It was a stroke. It could not have happened at a worse time, as his wife Natasha was not home. After his fortieth birthday, Jonah had never taken a shower or bath when he was home alone. He even refrained from using the toilet unless absolutely…
It was tough writing “A Long Cold Shower”. The criteria for the second round were to write a “canned” episode with only one character confined to a single setting and make readers feel the urge to leave. As many of you might already know, I somehow ended up not remembering the latter criterion. Only after reading a Note of
and feeling that something was wrong, I rushed to write a new story. Frankly speaking, I am least satisfied with “A Long Cold Shower” among my GWC ‘24 stories.In case someone wants to know what I had written before literally squeezing “A Long Cold Shower” out of my head in a day, it is a story about an old stationmaster on the last day before the train station closes down. I am thinking of turning it into a short drama and submitting to magazines and theaters.
The Scetis Valley
Deep in the Scetis Valley lived two sinners, where the demons whispered by night and solitude reigned by day. Their names were Euprepius and Theophilus. They hardly talked to each other and kept silent for days, months, and years, since Euprepius was especially not prone to talk to Theophilus.
The last story, “The Scetis Valley” is my favorite. I knew the scoring criteria and kind of knew in advance how this story would be evaluated. As
commented, this story does not follow many conventions of modern short stories. I wanted to conduct a literary experiment, but not in the sense of making it “experimental” as many contemporary readers would presume. Instead of pushing the literature forward, I wanted some writing styles from the times when people had no idea what a novel is. However, this is still a modern piece, in a strict sense, in the ways it treats its characters. This mixing process was fun indeed.Now to my favorite stories from my fellow participants!
How does one not love a pink-socks-eating monster under your bed? I genuinely admire
in that her writing makes her readers happy. This is something I should work on.
I think
quite often shows sparks of esprit in her stories, and the sparks are so evident in the story above. I do not want to reveal anything before you get to reading it yourself, so please go ahead.
I am someone who grew up repeatedly watching the movies Mummy and Mummy 2 almost every weekend in my boyhood. I watched them so many times that later the video reels were all scratched and the TV screen would be full of noises. (Yes, “video reels” used to be something physical back in those days.) So I might be a bit biased, but
Finally, I cannot help but praise this story by
. I will quote here what I wrote before: “This short tale of Eric Falden radiates solemn heroism of Norse mythology. Eric’s heroes venture against their destiny not because they know there is a chance; they sail against their doom despite that there will be no chance. Yet, the heroes in this story are not mighty warriors, but such little people, whose hearts safeguard compassion to the end of the world—a feat which makes me like Eric’s work even more.”Finally, this is the part which I wanted to write the most. What did I earn from GWC ‘24?
First, the feedback.
and sent me such detailed feedback to each story I posted. Their comments were eye-opening, and I believe they provided me with much more helpful comments that I could have imagined. Here is an example of what we could receive as participants of GWC ‘24.
Second, I feel so good that I proved something to myself. This might sound odd, what I feel most happy about participating in GWC ‘24 is in that I found out how fast I could write in English. Normally, I write a 2000-3000 word story in a month when I write in English. This has kind of made me feel bad since I want to write in English as fast as in Korean. It seems this was merely a psychological restraint that I put on myself. Hey, I could pump out a 2000-word story in English in a few hours! All I needed was a deadline.
Last, I am so grateful for the wonderful community I found through GWC ‘24. Warm-hearted people who cared about what other people wrote. Had it not been for GWC ‘24, I would not have found them so soon. Thank you again,
, , , , , , and all who read our stories. A special shoutout to , , , , , and !For the coming weeks, I think I will be focusing more on essays here, posting every Tuesday. Then I think I might post for
and Thorny Thursday. Although I am not certain what I will be writing, I will be posting at least once a week.This must be the longest post I have written on Substack. Thank you for reading, and enjoy your Tuesday!
I get a “writing hangover” after long stints of writing as well, even though I’m writing in my native language! I hope you’re able to have time to rest and come back to English writing refreshed. When you do, I’m looking forward to reading more of your stories!
No, I completely get it. The competition proved something to you. I was the same. Usually, I can't write/make things to prescription but this was accessible. You've done an amazing thing writing so much fiction in English and it has been wonderful getting to know you. I can't wait to see what else is in store, Hyun Woo.