This is a chapter for Qidian's Dragon Pearl event. Gouquan would like to wish you all a happy New Year in advance.
May every author you follow update twenty thousand Chinese characters a day in the new year!
I thought it over and over but couldn't figure out what to say, so I might as well look back on the past.
I've always felt very lucky. Making a living writing novels was something I decided on back in middle school. In fact, I wrote a xianxia novel of over two hundred thousand Chinese characters on Qidian while I was still in middle school, updating four thousand characters a day without missing a single day. Even now, I think it was actually pretty decent? (Scratches head.)
Unfortunately, though, both of my contract applications were rejected, and the only two comments were both ads. A wise person knows when to change course, so after finishing just the first volume, I decisively wrapped up the rest in outline form.
I won't tell you the title, because it was so long ago that it seems to have vanished by now.
That was probably the only setback in my writing career. That experience taught me the writing technique of "padding the word count," which led to very unimpressive Chinese composition grades throughout middle and high school. I'd reach eight hundred characters without even finishing the opening, and I often ran out of space on the page... My teachers would frown at my "unconventional one-sentence-per-paragraph format."
You know how it is: the more you lack something, the more you want it. So even now, I still dream of writing xianxia. A dream from my younger days, perhaps?
Before starting this book, I actually agonized for a long time over whether to open with a light-novel-style xianxia