January was a busy month due to the company's annual meeting and family matters. In addition, I often experienced writer's block and had to stay up late to catch up on my drafts. I also got sick twice, once with gastroenteritis and once with a sore throat from a recent cold. Therefore, my updates this month were not very stable, with several chapters missing and occasional delays of a minute or two. Of course, these were only occasional. Most of the time, the update was a few minutes late because the Qidian backend kept freezing, and the updates wouldn't load, forcing me to revise the chapters and resubmit them before they could be successfully updated (sarcasm intended).
I checked, Mysteries's almost two million words long. This is probably the book I've written that has reached two million words so quickly without me even realizing it. There's still a lot to write and a lot of plot to develop, so I don't need to rack my brains too much. I can just lay it out layer by layer according to the established structure.
Of course, this doesn't mean that writing wasn't difficult. After more than seven years of writing, it was only with this book that I truly summarized many vague ideas into my own experience. Unlike before, when creating, it felt like being stuffed into a sack, in complete darkness, struggling and groping slowly, always stuck in place, or like a novice driver on the road, driving cautiously, tense, sweating, only able to focus on what was in front of me.
In summarizing my own experiences, one key point is "gentleness." Yes, this single word, though only two, is a culmination of countless words and plot developments. It means that the transitions, developments, and outbursts of the plot should not be abrupt. Even if you want a dramatic climax, there must be some subtle foreshadowing beforehand, making it seem unexpected yet logical, prompting the reader to exclaim, "Wow, that's a surprising development!" rather than, "What the heck?"
With the word "gentle" in mind, when I reread the previous books, I could clearly feel that some of the plot was handled rather stiffly, and a few were even quite awkward, as if they had to develop in this way to advance some plot.
So, I'm a typical writer who gets slower and slower as I write. When I was writing the first few hundred thousand words of "Destroy the Luck," I could work during the day and start writing at 8 pm. I would open Word and get to work, and I could finish 6,000 words by midnight. When "Arcane" was released, I could write 15,000 words a day for the climax. But now, I find it difficult to write 6,000 words a day, and 9,000 words would be unbearable.
On the one hand, I do have to admit I'm getting old, no longer a young man in his twenties. On the other hand, while I type quite fast, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to develop the plot smoothly. Combining the established structure and the rough outline I've drafted, I come up with various possibilities, then eliminate them one by one, finding the smoothest and most comfortable one, and finally settling on it. The intervals between each two plot segments are the most painful to write, and that's where I get writer's block the most.
The third book is the most difficult one I've written so far because its style is different from the previous two. It's set in a Travel's world, where you constantly say goodbye to familiar people and meet new ones. This means that after painstakingly establishing a few decent supporting characters to keep the plot from becoming monotonous and empty, you have to temporarily abandon them after a few episodes to build new ones. This is a very painful process, and of course, it's also a challenge for me.
Furthermore, I will gradually unfold the storylines of the various members of the Tarot Club, which will be another challenge. I hope to do so in a way that doesn't overshadow the main story while still being very engaging.
In summary, let me outline the update plan for February. With the Lunar New Year approaching, there are many trivial matters to attend to. After writing for almost 10 months, I've accumulated a lot of fatigue both physically and mentally. I plan to take a break during the Lunar New Year period to adjust my state. Therefore, from February 2nd to February 12th, there will be only one update at 12:30 PM. Regular updates will resume on February 13th.
Rest is for going further, and I hope everyone can understand. Well, there's still a lot of the pre-planned plot in Mysteries Light, and I don't think it will end in 2019. We still have more than a year, so taking it slow and steady is the best approach.
Finally, since we've already gone too far, let's continue. February 1st will be a regular update, same time as always. Please give me your guaranteed monthly votes~ Let's wish the evil god, Kesong, a happy new year~