Finished Book Remarks

I'd finally finished. When I typed the last word, I sat there stunned for a full half hour before I began writing these closing remarks.

1.65 million words. I believed I'd written a complete story. As for how good it was, I'd leave that for the readers to judge.

I couldn't say writing this book had worn me out. It felt much the same as ever. After returning to Dian Niang in 2015, this was the ninth book I'd completed.

Over these nine years, my writing had gone through plenty of ups and downs. I'd had my highs, as well as absolute lows where I couldn't even secure a contract at the start.

I'd been in the business for twenty years, and of course, the ten books you see now weren't all I'd posted online.

But often, when you're writing, you can lose perspective.

The severe brain fog after I got COVID nearly left me half incapacitated. I'd suddenly write some really toxic stuff.

And every transition was a painful process. For example, this master-disciple story was my first time writing that kind of book. I had to admit that, as I wrote, it got away from me. I felt the biggest problem was that I couldn't keep the focus on the protagonist. Often, the disciples were so strong that they stole the spotlight.

As the number of disciples grew, I clearly lacked the experience to balance how much space each one got.

Honestly, it was a bit of a mess.

That was reflected in the subscriptions, too.

Ordinarily, most writers would probably have had a complete meltdown.

But as someone who'd just gone through a first-day subscription count of 200 last year, I guess once your baseline gets dragged low enough, your resilience gets a lot stronger. In the