Progress Report & Notice of a Two-Day Update Delay
Dear readers,
It is now 3:09 a.m. on November 4. As I write this letter, we have been apart for a week. I have missed you.
Since finishing Volume Three, I have enjoyed a long-awaited spell of peace, like a little mole that has finally worked hard enough to gather all its winter nuts and can burrow into the warm, damp den it prepared long ago, settling down to enjoy its winter.
Though this winter is only fifteen days long.
As I promised you last time, I have been working every day on planning the rest of this book. I must admit that this is an enormous undertaking, and completing it within this brief winter really is impossible.
But this work makes me happy. I wonder whether you have heard of a particular frustration that obstructs writing-when an idea takes shape in the mind, the writer has already tasted the pleasure dopamine brings, so when it comes time to put pen to paper, their passion often fades, and they may even lose their drive.
This is because planning is like watching a highlight reel, while writing is not like watching a long video, but like filming one.
It starts not from the first second of the video, but from checking the camera equipment and packing your bags.
When someone is having a wonderful time imagining things, all the logical links in between are taken as already complete. Only when it has to be written out, one Chinese character at a time, do those daunting gaps reveal their true form and become a problem the writer must address.
Heaven have mercy-what kind of willpower must someone who has already enjoyed the payoff summon to rouse themselves again and tackle all that burdensome,