I'd like to write a novel, but

“Let’s go on a trip.”

“Again?”

“If I want to write a novel, I need some real-life experience. I can’t write stories just sitting at home every day.”

“Not everyone can write a novel.”

After hearing my husband’s sarcastic comment, I turned on the computer and searched for the name of my old tutor on Google. Nothing. No matter how hard I searched, she was nowhere to be found.

When I was preparing for college, my father hired a live-in tutor. She was a college student from a top university. She was short, had a slim waist, long curly hair down to her hips—just the kind of woman who made people turn around for a second look. She was a good teacher, but every night she went out late and came home at dawn.

When spring came and the trees started to bud, she’d go out wearing fishnet stockings and hot pants, walking around Namsan to enjoy the breeze. Men would whistle at her as she passed by. In the middle of winter, she would wear only underwear under a coat. Sometimes I’d open my eyes as I heard her come home at dawn.

“Ah, it’s freezing,” she would say, taking off her coat and revealing her pale skin.

If we went out together, men would stare at her, wide-eyed. Some brave ones would even try to talk to her. If she liked one of them, she’d send me home first and come back much later.

“Why do you go out so late every night?”

I asked her once, because her behavior didn’t match her elite academic background.

“To write a novel, you need to have a lot of experiences,” she said.

Now that I think about it, her dream was to become a famous novelist. She majored in Korean literature. “Maybe she was planning to write a trashy romance novel,” I thought to myself.

I also want to write a novel like other people, but whenever I think about novels, I think of her. Still, I don’t have enough experiences to write a story. I was born in the middle of Seoul and grew up in a small concrete apartment. I listened to my parents, came to New York, got married, had two kids, and lived an ordinary life under my husband’s shadow. How could a novel come out of this kind of life? I don’t even have a good imagination.

Most good writers were born in the countryside, grew up close to nature, and had a tough life with deep relationships with neighbors—that’s what gives them that special feeling in their writing. I had none of that. At best, I could write two pages. Just like someone said, literature is born from pain.

She said she needed lots of experience to become a writer, and she really lived that way. But did she ever actually write anything? I can’t find her on Google, so maybe all she got was life experience—and nothing more.

With no experience and no imagination, how could I write a novel? Maybe I shouldn’t try to climb a tree I can’t reach. I’ll just try writing little stories about the world around me. A novel? No way…