2018 has passed, so let's do a simple summary.
For an author, the happiest and most fulfilling thing is having the confidence and passion to create better works, being able to find shortcomings in writing, and coming up with some good solutions. For example, I used to be best at repeated questioning-style outbursts and writing grand climaxes, but I didn't use a similar writing style in Mysteries. This was partly due to self-restraint and partly due to the limitations of my own worldview. Overly explosive emotions are rather incongruous. Therefore, I hope to find a good way to combine repeated questioning-style outbursts with calm and objective descriptive rendering in my next work after Mysteries.
The Mysteries was uploaded in April, and nine months have passed since then. I've written a total of 1.798 million words, which rounds up to about 200,000 words per month. It's not a lot, but it's stable, a steady stream of words. I'm not a particularly quick-witted author, nor am I as young and active as I was a few years ago. I need a lot of time to come up with ideas for each chapter. Writing two chapters a day often leaves me with writer's block, leaving no time for rest or reading. Three chapters are even more difficult. Plus, I'm also working out, so extra chapters are extremely rare.
In this situation, my primary concern is quality. People gathered here because the book is good, not the other way around. Before starting the book, I talked to some friends about writing a fantasy story with a British flavor. Their reactions were all consistent: selling the film and television rights would be very difficult, almost impossible, and that would be a huge sum of money. I like money, and I think no one dislikes it, except for Jack Ma. But as an author, my goal is to create the stories I want to tell and express, so that I can earn money because of the high quality, not to create a story that makes money. The focus and the relationship between these two aspects absolutely cannot be reversed.
I'm so happy that since the book "Mysteries" was published, it has been well-received by everyone, and more and more people are enjoying it. As a result, I've been able to earn some money, which is the best outcome.
By the way, on the last day of 2018, we achieved the feat of winning the Hundred Alliances Tournament. Actually, I had never thought about it before, nor had I ever called for it; it just happened naturally. Because of the Mysteries, well, it's not badly written. That's the logic I wanted.
Thank you to every patron, thank you to everyone who gave a reward, and thank you to everyone who subscribed. Also, thanks to everyone's enthusiastic voting, Little Klein is the most popular character on Qidian in 2018!
When the moderators and group leaders asked me what I wanted to compete for, my first thought was the Author ranking. Later, under their encouragement, I studied the rankings and decided to compete for the character ranking instead. Firstly, the previous participants were very competitive, and competing for the Author ranking would be a significant burden for everyone, costing a lot of money. Secondly, I found that the character ranking was actually more cost-effective than the Author ranking. The Author ranking only gives you a golden keyboard, while the character ranking gives you exclusive broadcast splash screen recommendations, which is equivalent to a big promotion. I'm that kind of pragmatic person.
Well, it's 2019 already. I'll be updating three times today. Thank you to all the patrons, thank you to everyone who voted, and thank you to everyone who subscribed. Also, please give me your monthly votes! The higher my ranking on the Little Klein fans, I think everyone appreciates value.
The first update is out. See you tomorrow at the same time. Please vote with your monthly tickets!
Also, Happy New Year everyone!