A New Year's letter to book friends
Hello everyone, this is Cao Manjun! After reaching 10,000 subscriptions, I have always wanted to write a thank you note to share with you my creative journey.
There just happened to be an Easter egg chapter event on Qidian.com, so I wrote this together with the Easter egg chapter event.
This is a long love letter.
2022 is a very special year for me. I have experienced a lot during this period, especially before December, I was experiencing an unprecedented low period.
I work for a game company. Although it is a small company with only a few dozen people, everyone from the boss to the employees are young. The company atmosphere is very good and we often play games together. There are also some good projects that are on the rise.
I started working here in 2019 and rose from an ordinary copywriter to a team leader. At the most, I managed four people. Although I was a small boss, I could barely be considered a middle-level manager. I thought my career path would slowly move up like this, but the cold wave in the gaming industry in 2022 also affected our company, and layoffs, salary cuts, suspension of projects, and termination of some benefits were a given.
Our company laid off almost half of the people at that time, and the remaining people, especially the copywriters, also left one after another. In the end, I was the only one left to maintain the project packaging work that had not been stopped. Because I really liked the atmosphere of our company, I always organized various activities in the company, such as playing Three Kingdoms and Werewolf together, and having KTV parties on weekends. The feeling of being forgotten by others when they left was very uncomfortable, and for a while I couldn't find the direction to move forward.
So during the National Day holiday, I decided to start a new book, and then this book "I Found Out I Have a Childhood Sweetheart After I Was Reborn" came out.
As I mentioned before, I am certainly not a new author, but a small account of [Watanabe Laozei], a LV3 author who was not very famous on Qidian and had a lot of haters.
But Watanabe Laozei is actually not my first author account. I am actually an old author who started writing books in 2015 and 2016, and it has been six or seven years now.
My earliest works were written under an author name called "Buer Cao Man". Some of the works in it are no longer available. If you like to dig up other people's dark history, you can take a look.
I have loved writing since I was a child.
Starting from primary school, my essays were always evaluated by the teacher and read out in class. My primary school Chinese teacher always encouraged me to become a writer in the future.
In elementary school Chinese class, we were required to write a diary every day. To be lazy, I started using novels as the content of my diary from probably the fourth grade. As for the beginning, I said something like "I had a dream that XXX started to write my ancient debut work."
At that time, my friends loved "Yu-Gi-Oh!". My childhood dream was to build a DM duel school and develop a duel disk (I actually made one myself out of cardboard). As for the content of the novels, they were all very shameful fan fiction, secretly writing about good friends in the class (including girls I had a crush on and cute girls) forming a team to go on adventures together.
This was 2005.
However, such novels were very popular in the class. People often passed my diary around, and I felt very happy and fulfilled.
As time went by, my favorite subject matter gradually shifted from Yu-Gi-Oh to Romance of the Three Kingdoms. At that time, I was a little Three Kingdoms fan in my class, and I liked to brag everywhere that I could play all kinds of Three Kingdoms games and themes (because I had a computer at home, so I actually did it).
Kids at that age were somewhat rebellious, and I was a die-hard fan of Romance of the Three Kingdoms: The Biography of Cao Cao. Gradually, I began to regard Cao Cao as my idol. This was the beginning of my liking for Boss Cao. From then on, all my various IDs on the Internet would include the name [Cao Man].
When I was in sixth grade, I didn’t want to be restricted by the shackles of a diary, so I began to serialize novels in class. I added the names of all my classmates into the original world view, and then put together a fan fiction of Romance of the Three Kingdoms called "Romance of the Four Kingdoms" (however, after constant refinement and remake, it ended up in a mess, and the furthest it was serialized was around 90 chapters).
When my homeroom teacher and Chinese teacher found out about this, she admired me very much and even spent two classes reading the contents of my novel aloud in class. When everyone heard which classmates were killed by me in the novel, they would burst into laughter. But I didn't feel socially frustrated at all. I even felt very proud.
So, during the winter vacation of the sixth grade, the winter vacation homework no longer required writing a composition, but instead everyone was asked to write a novel.
I don’t know if my elementary school classmates hated me. At that time, I just thought I was very handsome.
In fact, I have always been grateful to my elementary school Chinese teacher. Without her encouragement, I would not be who I am today.
Many years later, I finally understood that it is a luxury to have a dream that you have loved since childhood.
Many people don’t know what they want to do or what they like after graduation, including many of my gay friends.
I'm glad I still have it.
This was 2007.
After entering junior high school, because there was a computer at home, I gradually began to explore unknown areas that I had not dared to explore before when I entered puberty.
I became a otaku, staying at home every day watching anime, the most obscure ones, and the one I got into was "Zero no Tsukaima".
At that time, the Internet environment was still very open, and you could see a lot of pornographic Crystal Palace animations that you would never dare to imagine. However, I have forgotten who my first childhood sweetheart was. I reviewed my shameful animation viewing record, and the most likely one should be the heroine of "Healthy All L Swimming Club" (Growing Plum from the Sky), but it was too far away and my memory is vague.
But in short, there were many pseudo-harem anime with heroes dropping from the sky and killing each other, and the childhood sweethearts who were defeated. At that time, the childhood sweethearts were not as tsundere as Eriri. In fact, they were more like Yamato Nadeshiko, gentle and virtuous but lacking courage and easily shy. Compared with the noisy and trouble-making heroines who dropped from the sky, I would prefer these pitiful characters. I really wanted to reach out and help them, and I just wanted to smash the heads of the slow-witted male protagonists who were very popular at that time.
All in all, during the years of watching anime in junior high school, the concept of "childhood infection" has been deeply rooted in people's minds.
This was from 2008 to 2010.
I didn't create anything new during the three years of junior high school and the first two years of high school. I just occasionally wrote some essays, short stories, etc. This was my way of venting stress.
I mostly read novels, various fantasy online novels, youth pain literature, etc...
When I was in high school, I met a relationship that I had been longing for. I thought our relationship was a natural progression, but I didn't expect that in the end I was just being wishful thinking.
In order to show off to others, I have always created an image of myself as a loyal person. Even when she had a partner, I still waited for her silently. In addition, my grades also dropped a lot at that time. When I was most depressed, I could not talk to anyone for a month, just eating, sleeping and studying.
The only thing that kept me company at that time was my mood notebook.
I record my moods in a notebook.
What I want to say to her, essays, and mood essays.
And any dreams I've had about her.
In the end, as I was writing, I actually started writing novels again.
The opportunity came from watching "The Voyage of the Blue Sky" that year, which is an animation series specially created with Cao Cao as the protagonist.
Then I thought, like him, I could create an original novel about Boss Cao’s life trajectory, which should be a very exciting novel.
I was really trying to do something stupid when I was in my third year of high school. I was even serializing it a month before my third year.
It sounds stupid, but it really helped me.
Helped me through my most painful and pretentious years.
In the end, my performance was pretty good. I was admitted to a 211 university in Wuhan without performing too exceptionally or too poorly.
This is why I love writing novels.
Because in an era when I had no childhood sweethearts and no one to confide my emotions to, my gay friends from childhood did almost nothing except playing games, and I was the most pretentious, awkward, precocious, sensitive, and vulnerable one among them.
To me, novels are my childhood sweethearts and my only loyal influence.
This was from 2011 to 2013.
After I went to college, I actually didn't forget her. I didn't even realize that I was a bootlicker and did a lot of menial things that were not just one-sided.
But as time went by, I gradually let go of it. I gradually started to serialize some short stories on QQ space, sometimes stories that were more youth literature-oriented, and sometimes long serials on the theme of the Three Kingdoms.
As I wrote, I began to feel more dissatisfied with just sharing my stories with my friends. I wanted more people to see my work. After a series of preparations, around 2015 or 2016, I started writing online novels on Qidian.com. At that time, there wasn't even a light novel section, only a fan fiction section.
When I transferred what I wrote on my space to Qidian, I was already waiting for the editor to sign a contract and dreamed of becoming the next platinum god.
Of course, the results are realistic and tragic.
When I wrote my first work, Elegy for the Bronze Sparrow, which had 200,000 words, there were only 20 collections on Qidian. There were almost no book reviews, and there was no contract for short messages on the website.
I believe it is the editor's vision that is bad rather than my work. I have revised and edited my work again and again. I have submitted my work to websites such as jinjiang and 17k, but have never received a single message from a contracted website.
This was my first low point. Every day I would check my collections and read book reviews, and I began to doubt whether the "writing talent" I had shown in my childhood was not worth mentioning at all.
But I didn’t give up completely at that time. If I couldn’t solve one topic, I would just start a new one.
Later, as the Qidian light novel section replaced the fan fiction section, two-dimensional light novels and domestic light novels became the hottest topics at the time. Everyone was looking forward to becoming a domestic light novel master.
I also tried to submit a manuscript. The subject matter was a war between urban supernatural heroes similar to FGO, a grand battle of the inheritance of emperors in Chinese history, and a bit like the later popular Zhenhunjie.
I finally received a text message from the website. I still remember that it was probably during my junior year in college. I was so happy that I read the message word by word, added the editor as a friend, filled out and asked various questions. I was happier than when I got the 10,000-subscription badge now.
Of course, the ending is realistic and tragic. The data of the work I signed was not much better than before, and it was discontinued before it was put on the shelves.
At that time, when I was young, I only thought that if I signed the contract, I would get recommendations and soar to the sky. How could I have imagined that signing the contract was just the first step in the long journey of writing online novels
This was from 2013 to 2016.
During this period of failure at the bottom of society, I also met many authors who had the same dreams as me. I made quite a few author friends at that time, but those netizens basically no longer update their posts. Or maybe they changed their usernames and I can’t recognize them anymore, haha.
The road to writing is always lonely.
"Reiner and His Valkyries" is my first V-Chapter work to be released. The theme was inspired by a very famous RM game "Wasteland Story". A remake will be released soon. The first order of this work seems to be in the single digits. I didn't pay much attention to it. I was already a senior at that time, and I was busy looking for a job while writing novels and updating them.
Finding a job was not easy. My major was electrical engineering and automation, and many positions required working in a hydroelectric power station in the remote countryside like Liu Cixin did. I didn't want to do this kind of job with a foreseeable end. In the middle and late stages of job hunting, I changed my plan and started trying to apply for jobs in the gaming industry.
But after all, kids like us who were born in county towns had no guidance from others in career planning, and we didn’t work hard enough to plan ahead. In the end, I got a job at a game company in BJ to do game reviews, which is actually a combination of testing and operations. The internship salary was very low, only 4,500, but I would report 6,000 to my mother because I also have income from writing novels.
Although the subscription income is very low, I can get a guaranteed 1,500 yuan thanks to the creative incentives (180,000 updates per month).
Although the work was easy, it was an 8-hour work system. It was not easy to write 6,000 yuan a day, not to mention that I had to commute dozens of kilometers to work every day, from Changping to Haidian. I lived in Shahe at first.
The CP area of bj is really shabby, even shabbyer than my hometown Huangmei County. There is not even a street light on the road.
I dare not spend money carelessly, because it is difficult to live in BJ with this little money. My colleagues often have dinner together, but I always say that I don’t have time to go because I am busy writing, and I want to save the money.
At that time, my family was still in debt, and I paid my college tuition with an interest-free student loan. I wanted to help pay off the debt and share some of the pressure.
At that time, the salary was around 6,000 before tax, so I could save 3,000 yuan every month.
However, after seeing my living environment and salary in BJ, my gay friend who was studying in BJ immediately became determined to take the postgraduate entrance examination.
He felt that we had worked hard to make it out of the small town, and had gone through untold hardships to get into a 211 university, but in the end, we burned our youth in such a moldy rental house, staring at the white ceiling with nothing on it and thinking about life.
He said he didn't know what I was looking for and that the conditions were no better than going to a hydroelectric power station.
Yeah, what's the point
Whether it is a game or a novel, being able to pursue your dreams seems to be a wonderful thing.
But is there anything more attractive than money
It seems not.
But I have a very stubborn personality, or you could even call me a face-conscious person.
The more people think it's not possible, the more I will stick to this path.
The first two years of my work were a period of accumulation for me in the gaming industry. Game review is a very leisurely job. I usually test game bugs and play STEAM games when I have nothing to do. The company reimburses me.
During this period, I came into contact with many independent games and wrote many review reports.
As for novels, I made a promise to myself that I would finish the books before putting them on the shelves. Starting with "My Childhood Randomness Is Not a Goddess", I gradually mastered the skills of signing contracts.
Open a new pit, go to external sites, and study the routines.
Shuke, Polobao, and even Ali Literature Network have all used small accounts to open pits.
Of course, none of them are popular, and they are all destined to fail.
In fact, fan fiction of light novels has been very popular in the past two years and has attracted a lot of attention, but I was too proud to write original works, and I didn’t have the writing skills, so in the end I got what I wanted.
So I envy those writers who became famous at a young age when they just started writing books. I don’t have such talent and ability, so I can only write silently.
With a passion.
The first order of "Childhood Taming" reached 20, which is a great double-digit breakthrough.
Relying on these 20 first orders, I quietly wrote until I finished one million words.
Although not many people are willing to pay to read this book, there are many readers who are willing to join the group.
For example, when Loli first read my book, she was a high school girl in Shanghai who had just graduated from junior high school and was undergoing military training in her first year of high school. Now she is about to graduate from college.
Some readers are only active for a period of time and then disappear from my online literary life, but when his ID appears in my book review area, I can quickly remember the traces he left on my side.
Many readers in the book club have watched me get to where I am today, especially those guys in Group 2 who have a group title. I am really grateful for everyone's company.
Frankly speaking, many of my previous works have some literary problems or thunder points to a greater or lesser extent, and some of them do have some problems of deliberately disgusting readers. I admit all of these. There was an unresolved plot in "Yesterday's Love Song" that was captured and exaggerated by someone and posted on forums such as YY Novel Bar. As a result, I did not become popular, and "Watanabe Laozei" has been labeled as a cuckold author.
I really didn't understand it at that time. When I saw people scolding me, I was often so angry that I wanted to cry. I was depressed and couldn't sleep all night. I almost didn't insist on finishing "Love Song".
But I always remind myself: You can't be defeated by malice. If you give in and compromise to them, you will lose completely, because you will let down those readers who have always loved and supported you. You are sorry for them, and even more sorry for yourself and those characters in the novels that you love deeply.
So in the end, I insisted on completing "Yesterday's Love Song" normally (although I still feel sorry for some people because I haven't written some extra chapters).
"Yesterday's Love Song" was my work with the highest average subscription before "Rebirth of Green Plum" appeared. It should have 800 average subscriptions now.
However, it is very difficult to complete a work that has poor performance and no one reads it.
Maybe you can stick with one.
But two, three, or even more
If failure can be considered an achievement, I think I deserve an award.
There are a total of eight or nine flopped works under the author account of Watanabe Laozei, and some of them do seem to have been completed very quickly (but I really can’t write a story with only a female lead for long).
"Love Song", "Dream Maker", "Sense of Existence" and "Childhood Infection" have all reached one million words and were completed normally. The first orders for the latter two works were 20 and 34 respectively, not to mention the 7 first orders for "War Girl" in ancient times.
I have always been a person who will shine with a little sunshine. If readers say in the comment section that they like my work, I will be happy for a long time and want to work hard to write it well for them and meet their requirements. So as long as there is such encouragement in the comment section, it will be easy for me to persevere until the end of the book.
Persevere until I see the ending of the story characters, and persist until the remaining readers join me in shouting "The End!"
I think this is a very romantic thing.
Just like once I decide to play a story-based game, I always want to see the ending of the story myself.
Have a beginning and an end.
Life is hard enough, don't abandon them in novels.
In terms of career, I moved from BJ to Shanghai, from Shanghai to Changsha, and finally decided to develop in Shenzhen.
I changed my job and became the copywriter I hoped to be. This was also my career plan, to enrich my gaming experience and become an expert in copywriting.
I am gradually making progress in this area.
To prove the level of your copywriting skills, you need a lot of projects and portfolios, so I have always had a regret that I don’t have a high-quality work.
800 may sound impressive, but it is nothing to Dianniang.
By the way, when I was writing the love song, I finally made up my mind to delete all her contact information and cut off all contact with her.
No longer actively pursuing stable intimate relationships, nor expecting stable intimate relationships.
This actually happened in 2021
Looking back on it, it’s incredible.
This is from November 2017 to November 2021.
Before I started working on "Reborn Green Plum", I never imagined that it would bring me greater success.
The most I hope for is a breakthrough of a thousand jun, so when my boss asked me to study AI painting, I also added some color to my novel.
As for the subject matter of the story, after trying many, I returned to the childhood love that I am most comfortable with, that is, the era of "Childhood Love", which can also be regarded as a return to nature.
I yearn for a love that grows over time, and companionship is the most lasting confession of love.
I consider myself an honest and good person, so the male protagonists in my works will not behave like scoundrels or scumbags, most of them are quite polite.
There is not much to say about the content of the story, except that I don’t have a childhood sweetheart. Unlike Mei Fang, I fail in everything I do and dare not try. It’s just my own life.
I am a nostalgic person. I always remember many things from the past and I can even call out the names of my elementary school classmates as soon as I see them.
So this book is, after all, just trying to make up for my own frustration.
In the early stage of the book, the book review area was closed, and the number of collections increased by a few every day. I even had the urge to apologize to the readers before the book was put on the shelves.
But fortunately I persevered.
Editor Lu Ming is very caring towards me and provides me with various writing suggestions. Whenever I have questions, he always gives me feedback as soon as possible.
My former readers continue to support me.
Obviously I have always been such a loser.
But I still have readers who like me.
That's the joy of writing fiction—
There will always be someone who likes you and can resonate with you.
So, the time finally came in December 2022.
The story seems to be heading down a path full of regrets, both for me and for Leo Messi, who I have been following and watching his games since 2010.
I am not a veteran football fan, but I will follow the information about Messi and watch his important games, whether for the club or the national team.
I like Messi's personality very much. He is from Argentina, plays football well and is a good person.
But every time I look at Messi, I always see all kinds of regrets.
Watching him transform into the director of an orphanage in the Champions League, carrying Barcelona forward alone, but encountering countless reversals;
Watching him in the 2014 World Cup final, when he was only one step away from the World Cup trophy, his breath touching the World Cup trophy;
Watching him miss the crucial penalty kick in the America's Cup final, looking up at the sky with regret and tears;
Watching him chasing Mbappé in 2018, all I could see was my younger self;
Watching him being abandoned by his beloved Barcelona, he ultimately failed to fulfill his promise of one man, one city, and never had the most splendid farewell performance of the King of Camp Nou;
In fact, it's not just the coal boss, A Kun, and the angel. Their dreams have never been realized. It's so heartbreaking to see them crying.
Even a great player like Messi is full of regrets. I couldn't fall asleep for a long time after watching the game against France in 2018.
Because I thought this was his last masterpiece.
Just like my mindless pursuit of the dream of writing online novels, I will never achieve it.
However, all the hard work and efforts actually paid off, just like an adult fairy tale.
However, everything was realized in this fantastic December. Both Messi and I achieved our own perfection.
Of course, my insignificant little achievement is definitely not worthy of being compared with Boss Mei.
But this December is really a dream for my online writing career.
For the first time, a milestone was reached.
This means that my work has truly gained a certain degree of widespread love and recognition.
You don’t know how many times I’ve dreamed of waking up to see 99+ recommendation votes, or seeing over 100 new additions to my daily collection.
A small adaptation of a quote by football poet He Wei:
Why do we love the online literature industry so much? Because it carries our beautiful wishes that can never be realized in real life.
This is a feeling that cannot be simply explained by the word "cool".
For me, the hardships in life can be filled by writing, and can be made up by your support and encouragement.
For you, I hope my work can bring you a yearning for a better life and make up for the regrets you had in your youth.
Let you find a little comfort in this not-so-beautiful world.
I still like reading your book reviews, and I read almost every one of them carefully.
I see that many people resonate with me, many people lost his or her childhood sweetheart.
We could have maintained a good relationship, but now I wish I could travel back in time and give myself a beating.
After all, it is the ignorance in youth that is most regrettable.
Looking back, I don’t know what stupid thing I was doing.
But that's life.
Looking back on my creative journey now, it is still a very dreamy journey.
For seven years, even seventeen years, my inextricable bond with novels has brought me to where I am today.
I have experienced so many setbacks before finally having this book of yours.
The pitfalls and lessons accumulated from every failed book became the big pitfalls that the book "Reborn Green Plum" avoided when creating.
Of course, there will be new pitfalls all the time, but I think I have managed it pretty well so far? (My own feeling)
There is no doubt that the characters I designed in the past are deeply imprinted in my mind, becoming some elements of the new book and part of the design inspiration for Yuanyuan, Youxi, and even Mei Fang.
The above are all the stories that have happened to me and online novels so far.
If you readers want to get involved in the field of online literature, this article of my mental journey can be regarded as a very complete comparison.
Of course, I am also very clear that I have not yet achieved success, so it is not my turn to be complacent.
The book "Reborn Green Plum" still has a long way to go. It has been a bit watery recently because I'm busy with overtime. I will slowly make the main storyline sweeter in the future. The outline is already there.
Honestly speaking, I have almost written 7,000 words now. Damn it, I don’t usually work that hard when I write, and I become really pretentious.
I only post a pretentious article like this once, mainly for the benefit of everyone, hahaha. They are just some random things I wrote, so you don't have to take them too seriously.
That’s about it. The New Year is coming soon. I wish you all a happy new year and all the best in advance!
Thanks again for reading this.
Thank you for reading my book.
Thank you for liking me.
Both this book and I will continue to accompany you in the coming year and help you realize your childhood dreams.
In 2023, please continue to give us your guidance.
by Cao Manjun
Everyone who comments and interacts in this chapter's Easter egg chapter can enter a draw for a point prize, up to 6,666 points!
(End of this chapter)