Thoughts, and a Little Explanation...

Lately, quite a few readers in the group had started complaining that I was padding my writing, that there was nothing new, the plot was boring, and the supporting characters were bland... Well, even though I still firmly believed it was rich writing, attention to detail, vivid description... But...

All right, I admitted it. I had indeed been a little stuck lately.

When problems arose, I had to actively analyze the reasons. So, with the enthusiastic help of many fellow readers and some self-reflection, I roughly understood why this had happened.

First, it was naturally a hardware issue. After all, I was no great master. As the work entered its later stages, the worldbuilding became fuller, the characters grew more deeply developed, more and more foreshadowing had been laid down, and the protagonist became stronger and stronger, making it harder and harder to come up with interesting plots—because I could no longer let my imagination run wild as I pleased.

Perhaps that was one of the important differences between a small-time author and a master.

Second, my vacation life had been a little too busy. This vacation, I had signed up for driving lessons and was learning to drive. Honestly, that was not easy to deal with...

And quite a few readers probably knew that my parents were both strongly against me writing, so whenever I wrote during vacation, I had to hide under the covers in the middle of the night and write in secret. Once or twice, I had fallen asleep without realizing it halfway through writing...

Then, for some reason, over the past two days my parents had started introducing me to girls from their coworkers' families whom I had never even met, urging me to hurry up and date, then get married after graduation. As if