I am starting a new course, to learn how to write a memoir. This will feed into my work on Perfect Girl, to make sure that by learning more about my own world, it will enrich Sarah's and Kirsten's as well.
I found a classmate in the memoir class who spent four years as a United Airlines flight attendant. Bravo! I've already replied to her about Perfect Girl, and hopefully an avenue of communications will open up. She says that her rebellious years were during her stint at United, after being a rather quiet college student at UCLA. That would mean lots of crazy stories to tell - and I need as much as possible!
Let me see what I can make out of this new source of research.
27 September 2005
25 September 2005
As I flew into DC...
Yesterday, in order to come to Washington, DC, I took my first trip by airplane since coming up with Sarah. Even though the trip wasn't on Sarah's airline - in fact, I flew on the largest competitor, American - I had a good opportunity to observe the work flight attendants do. Even the call-outs like "aft door check," "fore door check," and such caught my attention.
On my first flight, taking me from Los Angeles to Dallas - Ft. Worth, there was a tall redhead flight attendant who could've been the real-life version of Sarah - except that she was in her 40s, a genetic woman, and working for American. But she still managed to remind me of Sarah quite a bit. She was a very perky woman too, not hesitating to call first-time passengers "honey" and stuff to defuse tensions.
I wondered if Sarah could get away with calling her passengers "honey." Either she's too timid and suspicious of other people - including her passengers - to do so. Or, even if she does, passengers (especially men) who "read" Sarah's past in her appearance may not take it so well. I do want Sarah to be a friendly flight attendant, much better than your average demoralized United flight attendant. (On a side note, yes, I did find American's flight attendants more friendly, while United has the edge in airplane equipment.) In fact, I want Sarah to be THE reason many business travelers continue to fly United, because of her exceptional service which more than makes up for any serious offenses that her coworkers have committed.
I guess making Sarah say "honey" may be a bit too much. But I do want her to be the first one there whenever a kid starts to cry, a passenger spills hot coffee, or an air rage incident ensues. As I start writing a number of inflight scenes, I'll see what I can do with Sarah. I also better come up with a letter or two from passengers praising Sarah's service.
On my first flight, taking me from Los Angeles to Dallas - Ft. Worth, there was a tall redhead flight attendant who could've been the real-life version of Sarah - except that she was in her 40s, a genetic woman, and working for American. But she still managed to remind me of Sarah quite a bit. She was a very perky woman too, not hesitating to call first-time passengers "honey" and stuff to defuse tensions.
I wondered if Sarah could get away with calling her passengers "honey." Either she's too timid and suspicious of other people - including her passengers - to do so. Or, even if she does, passengers (especially men) who "read" Sarah's past in her appearance may not take it so well. I do want Sarah to be a friendly flight attendant, much better than your average demoralized United flight attendant. (On a side note, yes, I did find American's flight attendants more friendly, while United has the edge in airplane equipment.) In fact, I want Sarah to be THE reason many business travelers continue to fly United, because of her exceptional service which more than makes up for any serious offenses that her coworkers have committed.
I guess making Sarah say "honey" may be a bit too much. But I do want her to be the first one there whenever a kid starts to cry, a passenger spills hot coffee, or an air rage incident ensues. As I start writing a number of inflight scenes, I'll see what I can do with Sarah. I also better come up with a letter or two from passengers praising Sarah's service.
21 September 2005
Sarah's humble beginnings
I looked over some of my old class assignments. It was interesting reading them, to say the least, and sometimes they looked downright silly. Out of those silly assignments came out ideas for a number of people, including Sarah, who is now the protagonist. Here is what I wrote about Sarah for the first time, as I was asked to write about six different people:
Her finances are a mystery; a laid-off United Airlines flight attendant, she still has money to afford hormone treatments, nice outfits, jewelry, and all. She even drives her own late-model car. She loves to go out often with her old pilot colleagues; she has a strong fetish on pilots, in fact, and it was the reason she became a flight attendant in the first place. Don’t these old pilots, by the way, have their own love interests and/or families, and use Sarah only for cheap thrills? I truly hope not. She loves to travel even now with no job, and spends a lot of money on frivolous souvenirs that only get stuck in the corner of her apartment. Visiting her apartment, one discovers piles of unopened souvenirs from God knows where – and the constant complaints from her roommate regarding them. Her always-long travel talk can get many people energized and interested – and then annoyed and bored as it drones on and on. Possessing great looks that nobody would ever suspect of belonging to a transgendered individual – I never knew that someone with Y chromosome could get such great legs – she loves to primp and show off everywhere, to the jealousy and hatred of many women around her. Strangely enough, Sarah and Kirsten get along very well.
Let's see... a lot of things have changed since then. A lot more may change by the time I finish writing.
I once met, in Berkeley, a pair of transgender women, who were working as Denver-based United flight attendants, on a layover; moreover, I had known for years that most major airlines protect (or at least, used to, when their finances were good) transgender employees. Given my own interest in aviation and my considerable knowledge of United Airlines (from a customer's point of view), making Sarah a flight attendant was a no-brainer. But it seems that just about everything else about her has changed over the past year or so.
At first, I envisioned a very boy-crazy Sarah, making fun of Kirsten about her lesbianism and all. But as I kept working on her, around March, I decided to experiment with a lesbian Sarah, as I tried to write a scene about her coming out to her mother; since this corresponded far more closely with my own experience, Sarah's lesbianism stuck. Now, as I look back, Sarah's pilot fetish has turned into something else entirely - her interest in airplanes and aviation, inherited from her grandfather Warren, who flew F-86s during the Korean War.
On a related note, I had been thinking of a "knight in shining armor" ending, setting her up with a successful male entrepreneur who would pay for her surgery. The ending would have been to have Sarah marry that man, legally, as a woman. I didn't like it, and since Kirsten was languishing without much of a purpose since being "demoted" from the protagonist slot, I re-promoted her as Sarah's love interest. The "knight in shining armor" ending still exists - except that it's now more like a warrior princess. In addition, to marry Sarah to a half-Korean woman, given Sarah's grandfather's service in Korea, seemed only appropriate - and having already written a chapter which takes place in Seoul, now I can give that chapter a much more prominent purpose.
The mystery finance part has been solved; part of it will be her parents' support, and part of it will be the reimbursement she is paid when her first live-in girlfriend, Martha (another flight attendant), is killed on September 11, 2001. Nevertheless, I don't see her traveling or spending as much as I first thought, since now I am dealing with a much longer timeframe (Sarah's first 26 years of life, instead of half a year out of Kirsten's life); the traveling and shopping will take place while Sarah still has her flight attendant job - and during her childhood. But she will still have a tendency to leave her souvenirs stacked up unopened, something I am guilty of myself.
As for the looks department, I decided that Sarah will no longer be a stunning beauty. She'll surely be pretty, but a closer look, plus her 6-foot frame, will give her past away. Moreover, I gave her a horrible high school experience that leaves her a scalp scar for life - I once wrote a lengthy dialogue between Sarah and Kirsten (which will never be used in the actual novel) which brought out this scar - and the childhood memories of both characters. At least she'll have a passable female voice, one Kirsten will describe as a "distinctive, delightful alto." She'll be lucky in that department, unlike many transgender women. (I presume that the alto will sound a lot like my own - I am one of the lucky ones too!) I also decided that Sarah will primp a little less, and the women around her won't be as jealous.
This is it for now. It looks like I have opened up lots of journalling possibilities, including the geography of Perfect Girl (how each of the features cities relates to the story), Sarah's appearance and fashion sense, her relationship with Martha (and a description of Martha herself), a bit about Sarah's family history and parents, and so on. I'll work on these over the next several days (or weeks, if my work and play eat up too much time!).
Her finances are a mystery; a laid-off United Airlines flight attendant, she still has money to afford hormone treatments, nice outfits, jewelry, and all. She even drives her own late-model car. She loves to go out often with her old pilot colleagues; she has a strong fetish on pilots, in fact, and it was the reason she became a flight attendant in the first place. Don’t these old pilots, by the way, have their own love interests and/or families, and use Sarah only for cheap thrills? I truly hope not. She loves to travel even now with no job, and spends a lot of money on frivolous souvenirs that only get stuck in the corner of her apartment. Visiting her apartment, one discovers piles of unopened souvenirs from God knows where – and the constant complaints from her roommate regarding them. Her always-long travel talk can get many people energized and interested – and then annoyed and bored as it drones on and on. Possessing great looks that nobody would ever suspect of belonging to a transgendered individual – I never knew that someone with Y chromosome could get such great legs – she loves to primp and show off everywhere, to the jealousy and hatred of many women around her. Strangely enough, Sarah and Kirsten get along very well.
Let's see... a lot of things have changed since then. A lot more may change by the time I finish writing.
I once met, in Berkeley, a pair of transgender women, who were working as Denver-based United flight attendants, on a layover; moreover, I had known for years that most major airlines protect (or at least, used to, when their finances were good) transgender employees. Given my own interest in aviation and my considerable knowledge of United Airlines (from a customer's point of view), making Sarah a flight attendant was a no-brainer. But it seems that just about everything else about her has changed over the past year or so.
At first, I envisioned a very boy-crazy Sarah, making fun of Kirsten about her lesbianism and all. But as I kept working on her, around March, I decided to experiment with a lesbian Sarah, as I tried to write a scene about her coming out to her mother; since this corresponded far more closely with my own experience, Sarah's lesbianism stuck. Now, as I look back, Sarah's pilot fetish has turned into something else entirely - her interest in airplanes and aviation, inherited from her grandfather Warren, who flew F-86s during the Korean War.
On a related note, I had been thinking of a "knight in shining armor" ending, setting her up with a successful male entrepreneur who would pay for her surgery. The ending would have been to have Sarah marry that man, legally, as a woman. I didn't like it, and since Kirsten was languishing without much of a purpose since being "demoted" from the protagonist slot, I re-promoted her as Sarah's love interest. The "knight in shining armor" ending still exists - except that it's now more like a warrior princess. In addition, to marry Sarah to a half-Korean woman, given Sarah's grandfather's service in Korea, seemed only appropriate - and having already written a chapter which takes place in Seoul, now I can give that chapter a much more prominent purpose.
The mystery finance part has been solved; part of it will be her parents' support, and part of it will be the reimbursement she is paid when her first live-in girlfriend, Martha (another flight attendant), is killed on September 11, 2001. Nevertheless, I don't see her traveling or spending as much as I first thought, since now I am dealing with a much longer timeframe (Sarah's first 26 years of life, instead of half a year out of Kirsten's life); the traveling and shopping will take place while Sarah still has her flight attendant job - and during her childhood. But she will still have a tendency to leave her souvenirs stacked up unopened, something I am guilty of myself.
As for the looks department, I decided that Sarah will no longer be a stunning beauty. She'll surely be pretty, but a closer look, plus her 6-foot frame, will give her past away. Moreover, I gave her a horrible high school experience that leaves her a scalp scar for life - I once wrote a lengthy dialogue between Sarah and Kirsten (which will never be used in the actual novel) which brought out this scar - and the childhood memories of both characters. At least she'll have a passable female voice, one Kirsten will describe as a "distinctive, delightful alto." She'll be lucky in that department, unlike many transgender women. (I presume that the alto will sound a lot like my own - I am one of the lucky ones too!) I also decided that Sarah will primp a little less, and the women around her won't be as jealous.
This is it for now. It looks like I have opened up lots of journalling possibilities, including the geography of Perfect Girl (how each of the features cities relates to the story), Sarah's appearance and fashion sense, her relationship with Martha (and a description of Martha herself), a bit about Sarah's family history and parents, and so on. I'll work on these over the next several days (or weeks, if my work and play eat up too much time!).
20 September 2005
Kirsten, the starting point
The origin of Perfect Girl goes back to a character development course I took just over a year ago. At that point, my goal was not to write about Sarah's life story, but rather to put myself back in San Francisco and Berkeley, and see if I could make a better story than what I experienced myself. Since I was going to be the main character, I had to create a character who was very much like me, but not an exact carbon copy of me. As the story transitioned into Sarah's story, Kirsten remained an integral element, becoming Sarah's love interest and eventual spouse. She's evolved over the past year or so, and I want to review her now, to see how far I've taken her so far, and what else I can do with her from now on.
Originally, I envisioned Kirsten as being born from a GI father and his Korean wife. Although she was supposed to be a native Southern Belle, hailing from Anniston, Alabama, I changed the story later on; now she's born at a US Army hospital in Seoul in 1979, and arrives in Anniston a month later. Kirsten grows up like any other Southern Belle, splitting her time between home, school, and church, in a strict, conservative setting reinforced by her abusive father. Like me, Kirsten is a lesbian, and that makes for a lot of confusion as she grows up into her teens and faces the conservative society surrounding her. She somehow ends up going to the prom with a guy, even though she doesn't have anything going on for him.
Kirsten somehow makes it to UC Berkeley, which brings her to a much more open society of the San Francisco Bay Area. Confused and scared at first, she goes into the familiar conservative setting, by becoming a part-time Mary Kay saleswoman, but she is forced to quit when she comes out for good. Her contact with her father is also cut off at that time. Despite this turmoil, she adapts herself to the brave new world of Berkeley, makes new friends (including Sarah), and finishes UC Berkeley with a degree in English. She ends up staying in Berkeley, working as an executive assistant for a right-wing ideologue in San Francisco, a job that really stresses her out. (At least since she is far more attractive than I could ever be, she keeps the job, as much as she hates it.)
Sometime in 2004, Kirsten loses her job when her boss is jailed for trying to molest her at work. (I don't know if I want to keep this portion of the story.) A frantic job search lands her as an assistant for a Los Angeles entertainment executive. Using this position, she writes a sitcom in her spare time, and sells it; it's a hit, and she makes it rich, being able to buy a BMW, then a condo, and with money to spare for even Sarah's surgery. Now, as Perfect Girl ends, I envision Kirsten getting a love call from BBC to write an American-style sitcom for them, so that Kirsten and Sarah can move to London in hopes of finding more tolerance than they could in America. Meanwhile, back in Anniston, Kirsten's parents have divorced, and Kirsten's mother chooses to move to Los Angeles. She and Kirsten both return to her maiden name.
Again, I envision Kirsten as being very attractive - attractive enough to consider a modelling career, which goes nowhere due to her mixed-race background. That becomes another source of conflicts. Her buttoned-up appearance - she always dresses in Ally McBeal-type miniskirt suits and full makeup - won't go well with the casual-looking progressive friends either. Speaking of being progressive, her politics will be opposite of her San Francisco boss's, causing even more conflict. There is even the issue of religion; raised in strict Baptist setting, Kirsten ends up becoming a Goddess woman. These are conflicts that - with the exception of modelling - make up my own life as well.
In fact, Kirsten is a mirror image of me. She has taken my middle name, for starters. Like me, she is half-Korean, likes to write, grew up in a conservative setting (ethnic communities of Southern California, in my case), is a proud lesbian, went to a college in a liberal setting (I spent my college years in New York City), sold Mary Kay cosmetics, lived in the Bay Area, loves wearing miniskirt suits, and drives a BMW. There are lots of differences between me and Kirsten as well, but the similarities are what make her so special, as my first-ever character, and as my mirror image.
This will definitely be a character that I'll be recycling in slightly different forms, with different names, in my future stories.
As for Sarah, the reason for her existence at first was to provide a "best friend" for Kirsten, and to provide a transgender perspective that Kirsten could not provide. Somehow, the story evolved, and Sarah has now taken over as the main character...
Originally, I envisioned Kirsten as being born from a GI father and his Korean wife. Although she was supposed to be a native Southern Belle, hailing from Anniston, Alabama, I changed the story later on; now she's born at a US Army hospital in Seoul in 1979, and arrives in Anniston a month later. Kirsten grows up like any other Southern Belle, splitting her time between home, school, and church, in a strict, conservative setting reinforced by her abusive father. Like me, Kirsten is a lesbian, and that makes for a lot of confusion as she grows up into her teens and faces the conservative society surrounding her. She somehow ends up going to the prom with a guy, even though she doesn't have anything going on for him.
Kirsten somehow makes it to UC Berkeley, which brings her to a much more open society of the San Francisco Bay Area. Confused and scared at first, she goes into the familiar conservative setting, by becoming a part-time Mary Kay saleswoman, but she is forced to quit when she comes out for good. Her contact with her father is also cut off at that time. Despite this turmoil, she adapts herself to the brave new world of Berkeley, makes new friends (including Sarah), and finishes UC Berkeley with a degree in English. She ends up staying in Berkeley, working as an executive assistant for a right-wing ideologue in San Francisco, a job that really stresses her out. (At least since she is far more attractive than I could ever be, she keeps the job, as much as she hates it.)
Sometime in 2004, Kirsten loses her job when her boss is jailed for trying to molest her at work. (I don't know if I want to keep this portion of the story.) A frantic job search lands her as an assistant for a Los Angeles entertainment executive. Using this position, she writes a sitcom in her spare time, and sells it; it's a hit, and she makes it rich, being able to buy a BMW, then a condo, and with money to spare for even Sarah's surgery. Now, as Perfect Girl ends, I envision Kirsten getting a love call from BBC to write an American-style sitcom for them, so that Kirsten and Sarah can move to London in hopes of finding more tolerance than they could in America. Meanwhile, back in Anniston, Kirsten's parents have divorced, and Kirsten's mother chooses to move to Los Angeles. She and Kirsten both return to her maiden name.
Again, I envision Kirsten as being very attractive - attractive enough to consider a modelling career, which goes nowhere due to her mixed-race background. That becomes another source of conflicts. Her buttoned-up appearance - she always dresses in Ally McBeal-type miniskirt suits and full makeup - won't go well with the casual-looking progressive friends either. Speaking of being progressive, her politics will be opposite of her San Francisco boss's, causing even more conflict. There is even the issue of religion; raised in strict Baptist setting, Kirsten ends up becoming a Goddess woman. These are conflicts that - with the exception of modelling - make up my own life as well.
In fact, Kirsten is a mirror image of me. She has taken my middle name, for starters. Like me, she is half-Korean, likes to write, grew up in a conservative setting (ethnic communities of Southern California, in my case), is a proud lesbian, went to a college in a liberal setting (I spent my college years in New York City), sold Mary Kay cosmetics, lived in the Bay Area, loves wearing miniskirt suits, and drives a BMW. There are lots of differences between me and Kirsten as well, but the similarities are what make her so special, as my first-ever character, and as my mirror image.
This will definitely be a character that I'll be recycling in slightly different forms, with different names, in my future stories.
As for Sarah, the reason for her existence at first was to provide a "best friend" for Kirsten, and to provide a transgender perspective that Kirsten could not provide. Somehow, the story evolved, and Sarah has now taken over as the main character...
19 September 2005
A separate blog for Perfect Girl
I decided that having one blog discuss both my novel and my politics would be too much, especially since I intend to do my journalling/brainstorming on the blog.
Now, anything literary, or remotely related to my novel, will have a separate blog, here, for more dedicated discussion.
I hope to make this blog as lively as my main blog.
Now, anything literary, or remotely related to my novel, will have a separate blog, here, for more dedicated discussion.
I hope to make this blog as lively as my main blog.
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