Written for you, and for "him"
(Dear readers, same as always: this chapter is the customary end-of-volume rambling. It has no bearing on the plot, so feel free to skip it.)
As I began writing this afterword, the story of Volume Three officially drew to a close.
I have a habit-or perhaps a little ritual.
Think of this book of mine, and the protagonist I write, as a person who is growing up.
Then each volume's afterword is a photograph I take of "him."
It captures what he looks like at that moment, along with the ways I, his "old dad," have grown while raising him, and the experiences and thoughts I've had along the way.
After finishing Volume Three, the biggest change in me was that I seemed a little less fixated on word counts and chapter counts.
Before, I seemed to have something of a compulsion.
I always felt that unless a volume had over a hundred chapters and two hundred thousand or so Chinese characters, it wasn't complete enough, or didn't show enough sincerity.
But looking back now, that way of thinking was really a kind of "greed."
To reach those numbers, I would deliberately pad out parts of the plot and add unnecessary complications.
Actually, looking back at Volume One, the Encounter Volume, and Volume Two, the Migration Volume, I felt they were pretty decent.
I even felt there were plenty of things I could have explored but hadn't written.
For example, the Encounter Volume could easily have included more stories from the protagonist's previous life, such as the scar behind his ear and the painful memories behind it, laying stronger groundwork for the future side story, the Previous Life Arc.
(Don't worry, that's not an empty promise. I will definitely write the Previous Life Arc.)