[Daily 1000 Characters] Writer's Routine <8> - Jo Haejin's 'Life Is Composed of Small Things'

Editor's NoteAsia Economy provides daily 1,000-character transcription content for the 'One Day Ten Thousand Steps, One Day One Thousand Characters' newsletter readers. The transcription content is carefully selected according to themes on a daily and monthly basis from Eastern and Western classics, Korean literature, notable columns, and famous speeches. Today, we quote from Jo Haejin's ＜Life Is Made Up of Small Things＞, part of ＜Writer's Routine: A Day Writing Novels＞, which captures how young novelists live their daily lives and organize their minds before writing. Character count: 861.

When I meet people at book talks or lectures who say they like and read my novels well, I feel as if I have gained the whole world. I have been lucky enough to be invited to several award ceremonies, where my name was called and I received words of praise. But once I leave those places, especially on nights when I am alone and intoxicated, I tend to enter again the merciless and harsh world of self-talk. The self-talk of regret passes through a tunnel of long sorrow and condenses into guilt. In the empty temple inside my heart, trials condemning me are held from time to time, and I sit in the defendant's seat with a humbled face, having given up on petitions or appeals. But in fact, I know very well that those trials are made of clouds and have no substance.

Stop hating me...

Another good friend of mine worries about me like that. "No one remembers, people care less about others than you think, maybe it's an obsession that everyone has to like you," the friend's advice continues, and none of it is wrong.

Fortunately, I am getting better.

As the time spent reading and writing novels grows longer, I have come to think that the discord with myself might be a somewhat complex form of self-protection. By first imposing cold gazes and painful words, created purely from imagination, upon myself, I have built a protective shield as strong as armor. The court in my heart ultimately arises when I lose tender feelings toward others, which also makes me feel ashamedly awakened. One of the reasons I pursue literature is actually to not lose tenderness toward others, and if I only pretend that through sentences but forget it in reality, it would be a great misfortune for myself more than anyone else. Now I know that fact very well. That is also the leisure that age has given me.

- Jo Haejin et al., ＜Writer's Routine: A Day Writing Novels＞, &(And), 15,000 KRW