Leave request and one-year summary
Today, I have finished updating two chapters, so I will take a day off...
I came to Shanghai these two days to participate in a Qidian event, which is about some gold or something... I could have brought a notebook and squeezed in time to write, but I wanted to take two days off during this time to rest - in fact, I could have chosen not to go to the event, but I agreed to go just to get out and take the opportunity to change my mind.
At least I finished writing the Hong Ling line in the previous paragraph, so I didn’t get stuck in the middle…
This book was published on December 26 last year, and today is 21 days away from its one-year anniversary. It is the only book I wrote that spanned a year, besides Ask the Way. It is currently my second longest book and will probably become the longest.
With over 2 million words in less than a year, it seems that it is not too slow, it seems to be okay...
In short, writing a book for a long time is very tiring, just like a marathon. It is easy at first, but sitting there writing every day, without weekends, the more you write, the more tired you become, the more your brain becomes stiffer, and your body and mind are completely exhausted. Now that I am older, the period of weakness has come earlier than before... What a tragedy.
This book is longer than the others, so it is impossible to finish it like the other books. It is better to take more rest, go out for a walk, and get into a better state so that you can present more exciting content.
Therefore, I took two days off on the 67th.
And it is very likely that the number of leave requests will increase in the future, so I apologize to everyone in advance.
I won't fight for the monthly tickets for now. I have already taken a leave and I have no face to ask for them. At the end of the month, there will be double the salary. I will try to add more chapters and ask for votes then. If not, forget it.
Oh, by the way, there will be a Wanzhuang extra chapter for the Filling the Gaps Festival on the 8th, which has about the same number of words as three chapters of the main text. If you are interested, you can pay attention to it. I think Wanzhuang and Qing'er in the extra chapter are very cute.
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Also, since it’s almost the anniversary, let’s also do a brief summary.
I wrote this summary sporadically a few days ago, please don’t blame me for finding the time to write this… cough…
I don’t know if readers can feel it, but from a writing perspective this is probably the book with the biggest change in my style…even more than the previous book where Qiuqiu was the only female protagonist.
Because Qiuqiu still takes love as its theme, and every book before it is about love, no matter what the main plot is. But this book is not...
Before the book was published, I said that the proportion of emotional scenes would be reduced. Many friends said that they didn't feel it later. They felt that there were still a lot of emotional scenes, but the nature was really different. Because this book does not take emotional scenes as the core and does not exist to promote the plot. The story is mainly driven by the protagonist's own experiences, and emotions are used as additives.
In other words, removing these emotional scenes will basically not affect the main plot (whether it will be good after removing them is another matter). This is the goal I wanted to achieve this time, and it basically went according to plan very successfully, and it was even able to deceive the senses of many readers.
Of course, there are also keen readers who have noticed the difference. If you think it is better, I will be very happy to make you more satisfied. If you think it is not as good as before, I can only say sorry that I cannot meet your expectations.
After all, as a writer, you should try different writing styles and break through bottlenecks before you get too old and lose your spirit. Regardless of success or failure, you can tell yourself that you have tried your best instead of just resting on your laurels and rehashing old works.
In the end, this book became my best-performing one, which is also a recognition and encouragement from readers for this change. It can be regarded as a successful attempt. Thank you everyone.
Especially in the early and middle stages, when the style was more like Jianghu, the feedback was the best, which was very unexpected to me. I have said before that I thought that kind of old-fashioned Jianghu style was outdated and might not have any results, but it turned out that everyone liked it very much... There were also countless people who didn't want to read about women at all, and only came for the Jianghu story, but when it came to women, they were annoyed and didn't want to read anymore. This is the first time in my many years of writing career (there have been times before, but not so many).
Of course, the harem is still the main theme. Only with iron blood and tenderness can the world of martial arts be complete... In the end, some of these brothers gave up, and some were even scolded away. I could only cover my face and laugh and cry.
Unfortunately, the Jianghu story will not last too long, and it will soon turn to the world and fantasy. Although it is an inevitable process according to the plot, there are still many brothers who are reluctant to give up and want to see the previous taste.
Scratching my head, it’s okay, I might write a purely low-level martial arts novel when I have the chance, I’ll consider it then.
Speaking of this, I wonder if some of you who always like to say “the books don’t have the flavor of the previous ones” have understood that this book is written just to not have the flavor of the previous books, so you… You usually complain about the taste of other people’s books. Some people pursue a different flavor in each book, but they complain that the taste is different from the previous ones. Why bother… As for not liking the taste of this book and feeling that it is not as good as the previous ones, that is normal. It is normal for everyone to have different tastes and prefer a certain book. But those who say “I don’t like it, it’s bad” should hold back. You are not children anymore.
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Of course, if we talk about the specific content, then the writing is indeed not without problems. There are often some criticisms, some of which are indeed reasonable, and some are unreasonable. I responded to some of them, but not to most of them, because I really don’t have the energy to be as angry as before.
The most significant part is the one about Lao Xia's death.
I didn't understand it at the time. From the beginning to the end, the character was portrayed as "because he doesn't take the people of the world seriously, he will eventually die at the hands of the people of the world." He is also a selfish and incompetent ruler, the source of chaos. The whole book basically has nothing good to say about him. All the supporting characters are scolding him, his daughter is scolding him, and the protagonist is against him. Apart from being able to fight, he has no other style to speak of. Even his speech is in the style of a middle school student. He was completely written as a big naughty child. This is a villain who messes up the country. The protagonist said to his face, "You will die at the hands of the people." The attitudes of the author and the protagonist are very clear...
For some reason, such a person would be regarded as a positive character who must die heroically. I have never written about the collapse of the guardian god's character... Even those who could not bear it anymore and started an uprising were scolded for following the example of a mantis.
I was furious at the time, thinking that I clearly wrote "one", but they insisted that I wrote "two" with a broken horizontal line. Isn't this weird? Thinking back, it may be the author's fault that it caused such a big controversy.
The villain should not be given an overly complex spectrum. For example, he is not bad to Changhe Wanzhuang and they are from the same hometown. This makes the villain not antagonistic enough and the emotions do not match, which subconsciously brings positive halo and expectations to readers. This is also the disadvantage of being too literary. I always think that the strong should be complex and three-dimensional, but in fact, emotional feedback may be more important. In addition, "Yu Tianxia" was backfired and his practice fell sharply. Maybe the concept is relatively vague and not intuitive, which also leads to the feeling of Gojo Satoru, who died too quickly. Then I wrote slowly, which led to the foreshadowing in the early stage being forgotten. This can only be blamed on my slowness.
When I think about it this way, I feel relieved. Indeed, I have more problems.
Of course, I don’t agree with you saying that I patched up the later part. I did lay a lot of groundwork in the beginning. It can’t even be called groundwork. It should be said that it runs through the whole book… The so-called “patch” is just summarizing the previous part and emphasizing it again…
Another issue, for example, is that the heroine's combat power increases too quickly. Many people have mentioned this before and after, and basically every heroine has been criticized... I think this is really not my problem, maybe it's a bit of misunderstanding - because times have changed, everyone is upgrading faster than their predecessors, that's a must.
In the era of great strife, gods and demons revive, dragons and snakes rise from the land, and both the frequency of fighting and the emergence of good fortune are concentrated now, far exceeding the previous peaceful era. If they are still at the same speed as their predecessors in the previous era, it can only prove that they are a group of idiots rather than the male and female protagonists. Even Changhe's cultivation speed is most affected by this factor rather than the Heavenly Book. He actually avoids the Heavenly Book.
For example, in terms of the understanding of higher cultivation, Zhuque and Xuanwu only knew that there was a control in the early years but did not know why, and they began to explode after searching Xuewu's soul; now there are more gods and demons, and the important characters can basically know it. This is a strong contrast between the past and the present. The era was divided before, but now it is not divided. Therefore, not only the heroine, but also Cui Yuanyong, Han Wubing, Situ Xiao and even Chi Li will be faster than their predecessors, because that is in line with the rhythm of the times, and the Heavenly Ranking will also generally break the control, which is also the rhythm of the times.
It's not that if the protagonist becomes strong, everyone will become strong too, but because the protagonist lives in a time of changing times, but the focus is not on others. The first thing to be assumed is that everyone is striving to make progress instead of going offline.
As for the individual characters, is there a lack of self-consistent logic and sufficient foreshadowing? Yes, everyone knows about them, so I won’t list them one by one, but people often say that “everyone finds reasons to improve”… Please, as long as you want to have more roles in the future, which book doesn’t find reasons to improve and the speed is much faster than the predecessors… This doesn’t need to be explained, others can just give a reason, I tried my best to make it reasonable, and gave the foreshadowing process from the world situation to the individual, but I still have to keep talking about it, and every time the perspective changes to a female protagonist, I talk about it again and again, which is really a bit unbearable.
Do you all want the kind of work where the protagonist moves forward alone, and then suddenly looks back and sees that all the people he once dated are far away and can't keep up, and then they are offline and disappear. This is the most reasonable, right? I'm so happy to want this kind of work. How much difficulty has been reduced...
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I won’t say much, I can’t stop talking once I start.
I won’t talk about other minor controversies, as they are all my fault. I would like to apologize to everyone for my lack of consideration or poor writing skills, which failed to meet your expectations.
In general, I have not deviated from the original intention of my plan up to this point. Although there are controversies, this book is actually less controversial than the previous ones... Many brothers also told me that they particularly like the male protagonist in this book, and think that Chang He is heroic and brave yet smart, which is very much to their taste. I am very pleased that everyone likes it, and personally I am generally satisfied with it.
As for the sequel, it depends on how it is written. For example, although there is no criticism for the content after the gods and demons appeared, I feel that it is a bit weak, not interesting, and there are some places where I look back and see that there are MD grammatical errors... This is not good, I hope it will be better after a break.
Everyone says that if you slow down, you will be constipated. I know that writing 10,000 words a day will make it more coherent and those forgotten things will disappear, but I really can't do it...
There's really no way. I'm an old and weak man. I really can't maintain my condition. I'm very tired. Please forgive me.
Whenever I feel like this, I doubt how many more years I can write. My physical condition is too poor... I really envy those strong men who are older than me but can still read 10,000 pages a day. They are so damn strong...
Well, let me summarize it here first. It seems that I can write a lot less in the postscript of this book. When the time comes, I will be lazy and just say that half of the content can be found in the one-year summary~
(End of this chapter)