[One Thousand Characters a Day] The More I Write, The More I Become Myself <4>

Editor's NoteOnce you realize the essence of writing, even if you think you have nothing to write, the moment your pen touches the paper, you find yourself overflowing with things worth writing. Today, even a single line is enough. Record who you are, when and what makes you happy. Writer Son Hwa-shin confesses that as you accumulate writing experiences, you learn how to live authentically. Writing also helps heal a heart stained with wounds and frees you from inner pain. Writing is about finding the center of gravity in your life. Even as the storm of life shakes you this way and that, a 'writer' can find their own balance. Word count: 932 characters.

Until now, I have never attempted writing from the depths. Even now, I want to boldly bring forth the fears and madness within me and try writing. If I never even looked at the black paint on the palette, now I want to touch that color. This is how a new style of painting is born. If the black paint called anxiety coils inside me, then I write with that anxiety. Not about anxiety, but with anxiety.

Inside me, there are vile, selfish, and ugly things. I have thought of these as my weaknesses. Since these weaknesses are not even welcomed by myself, I only considered them as things that scratch my heart. But I am a writer, aren't I? Remembering this, I came to think that my weaknesses are no longer useless burdens but excellent materials for my own creation. Moreover, the weaknesses I think I have are also universal human weaknesses. They are the 'black paint' that everyone has as a human. It is when I, as a writer, write with that paint that a piece deeply portraying human existence will be born.

The more I write, the stronger I become. Because the more I write, the more my weaknesses feel like they are not weaknesses. How can someone who thinks they have hardly any weaknesses not be strong, not be confident? I realized that I become strong when I understand and accept myself. That is what human maturity is.

So I will more actively use my traumas, anxiety and emptiness, sadness and pain, depression, wounds and regrets, burdens, and so on as paint to write. My darkness might become a faint light that illuminates the path for someone else who is also in darkness.

Isn't art only about what looks good? Just as ugliness has its own aesthetics, writing can be done with human ugliness. Writing that only contains a bright world lacks the kind of mystery that blooms between the lines.

- Son Hwa-shin, The More I Write, The More I Become Myself, Dasan Chodang, 14,000 KRW

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.