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Jean Kyoung Frazier
Jean Kyoung Frazier
Jean Kyoung Frazier's Writing Routine:
Jean Kyoung Frazier's Writing Routine:
"This is why, in some ways, I feel like I’m not meant to be a full-time writer—I just like doing a lot of things, being busy, not just writing. I was writing the book when I was working a full-time job—a couple jobs, actually. I would have to get up at 5 a.m. to work on it. I would sit in this fold-out camping chair I had, and I would tinker. I honestly don’t really remember too much of it other than getting up every morning and really trying, if not to write, then to at least look at it and think about it. I always think that’s important—opening the Word document every day and living in it for a little bit."
Pizza Girl, 2020
Read Apr 2024
Why I Chose Jean Kyoung Frazier:
Why I Chose Jean Kyoung Frazier:
Jean Kyoung Frazier is the author whose debut was most recent out of the eight selected for this project. She’s only published one novel so far, which came out in 2020, entitled Pizza Girl. I bought her book on a whim at a local bookstore, thinking the premise seemed interesting and wanting a break from the very intellectual and dense books I’d been assigned to read for school recently, and it ended up being one of my favorite reads of the year. Pizza Girl tells the story of an unnamed protagonist who is eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery driver. After fulfilling a special order for a woman named Jenny, the protagonist becomes enamored with the woman, and their two lives begin to come together in unexpected ways. I sped through the novel, wanting to spend more time in the protagonist’s head and wanting to find out how the story would end.
Frazier’s writing is funny without trying too hard, which is a very difficult balance to strike. Her protagonist is blunt and to-the-point, which leads to descriptions that are so unique and unusual that they stick in your brain long after closing the book. I often marvel at authors whose work makes it seem as though it flowed out of them, and Frazier’s writing feels like that to me. From her word choice, to how well she brings the reader into the brain of a fictional character, her writing is memorable, accomplishing being simultaneously unique and relatable to many readers.
Passage from Jean Kyoung Frazier's Writing:
Passage from Jean Kyoung Frazier's Writing:
"I wanted to be the type of person that walked with their back straight, the dirt under their fingernails pure. I didn't want to be a chain saw, I wanted to be a plastic baggie. No shredding, just holding" (Frazier, Pizza Girl).
Writing Data:
Writing Data:
10
10
how I felt about the quality of my writing over the course of the four days, out of a possible maximum of 20 points
738
738
average words written per day
38.75
38.75
average minutes spent writing per day
How the Experiment Went
How the Experiment Went
Part of the reason that I chose Jean Kyoung Frazier’s writing routine to attempt for a week, aside from having read her novel Pizza Girl and falling in love with her writing, was because she is an author I feel very connected to in terms of her newness as a published author. Her novel came out in 2020, and she began writing it while working on her MFA. As she states in her writing routine, much of her novel was written while she was working full time. She didn’t have the privilege to devote full days to writing, because she had to support herself. I feel discouraged sometimes in my writing because I am also a full-time student, so it’s hard to find the time to devote to something that isn’t being assigned to me. There’s always something more I could be doing when I decide to write, but I decide to write anyway, and that’s what stood out in her routine for me.
Of the four days that I followed Fsrazier’s routine, I did my daily writing as early on in the day as I could. For three of those days, that meant getting up to write at 7 AM so that I was able to finish my daily minutes and eat breakfast before heading to my first class. For one of those four days, I opened at the cafe I work at, so I completed my writing as soon as my shift was over. I generally liked this routine because it made it so I didn’t have the fact that I would have to write later in the day hanging over my head. Sometimes, when I’m in class or have had a long day, the idea of writing after going through the mandatory commitments of my day-to-day life is extremely daunting, so getting that out of the way first allowed me to compartmentalize the process of writing and not have it interfere with my day.
While the routine seemed to suit my needs fairly well, my daily ratings were pretty low on average. I think this can be attributed to the fact that during this week, I was working on a very pivotal scene in the novel, and I just couldn’t seem to get the characters to do what I wanted them to. My daily rating out of 5 was all 2s and 3s for the four days this week, coming to a total of 10 out of a possible maximum 20 points for the week. However, I still think that the writing I was able to get done will provide a great first draft for when I go back and revise the novel later on, so I still think I was able to get a lot of great progress using this routine.
To the left is my data for this routine. Over the course of the four days, I wrote 7.55 pages on my computer. On average, I wrote 738 words per day. I worked an average of 38.75 minutes per day. Overall, I really enjoyed the way that this routine allowed me to separate my writing time from the rest of my day, and though this week received lower scores than others, that is due to the challenging scene that I was approaching as opposed to the routine itself.
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