The new book has reached 100,000 words, and suddenly there are a few things I want to talk about.
My father passed away last June.
My emotions were all over the place at the time. All I could do was keep writing while taking care of his funeral arrangements, trying to numb myself.
As it happened, our new home needed renovating, so I threw myself into that wholeheartedly.
During that time, I was constantly in a daze.
I even envied the protagonist of my old book, Rekindling the Years of Youth. Not because he was reborn, but simply because of his previous life.
At least when his mother was seriously ill, he could borrow money, and three girls silently supported him from behind the scenes.
And in the end, his mother's illness could be treated.
But my father was gone just like that.
Looking back, I realized that perhaps I wasn't even as well off as the protagonist in his failed previous life.
That thought haunted me for a long time, and for a long while afterward, I couldn't bring myself to write the side stories about the three female leads' previous lives.
Sometime around the end of last year, I suddenly felt that nothing mattered.
Everyone dies eventually, anyway.
Around that time, updates to the old book became sporadic, and a lot of readers cursed me out.
But it was different from being cursed out while I was writing Ten Years Against the Current.
Every day, I looked through the comments in the author backend, completely detached from my emotions. It felt as though they were cursing someone else, not me.
That feeling lasted until March or April of this year.
The renovations on the new home were finished, and several of my roommates from faraway Guangzhou moved to Hangzhou to live with me at my invitation.
With friends by my side, that feeling seemed to fade a little, and life gradually regained some vitality.
Around then, I gritted my teeth and finished the main story of the old book.
I can't say I was satisfied with the ending, but at least it was passable.
Then there were the old book's side stories. I had spent a long time thinking about the plot of the three female leads' previous lives and the approach of interweaving their three storylines, as far back as last year.
Back then, just thinking about writing it that way had me buzzing with excitement.
But later, I became numb to life and never picked up my pen again.
Starting this new book is, in a way, my own explanation and accounting to myself.
I'm going to die someday.
But if I can't leave anything behind, I'll always feel like I came here for nothing.
My father was just an ordinary man. He wasn't able to leave anything behind, but he left me in this world.
So perhaps I ought to leave some marks on this world in earnest, to prove that bringing me into it was a pretty good idea after all.
The new book was started a little hastily.
But I chose the date deliberately.
Its original title was Yunshen Knows Summer, so I chose the day of the summer solstice.
As luck would have it, that day also happened to be Father's Day.
And the date was roughly the first anniversary of my father's death.
When I came across that day while looking through the calendar, I felt an inexplicable certainty in my heart.
This was the day.
So although I should have waited until I finished the old book's side stories before releasing the new one, I ended up releasing it on June 21.
I really like the new book's premise.
The landlord-and-tenant relationship, combined with the link formed by three superpower golden fingers, gives me a great deal to work with.
If Senior Sister, Shut Up was the pinnacle of my personal inspiration, Ten Years Against the Current the prototype of my creative framework, and Rekindling the Years of Youth the point when my writing techniques matured,
then this new book should be the perfect fusion of my personal inspiration and my creative framework.
At least so far, whether in its presentation of the characters or its control of the story's pacing, the new book represents the peak of what I'm capable of right now.
Over these past two-plus weeks since starting the new book, I've gradually come to understand what I want.
I used to keep regretting how Ten Years Against the Current went off the rails, and wondering why I couldn't have written Years of Youth a little better.
If my results had been a little better, might I have earned a place among Qidian's great gods this year?
But now I don't want to dwell on any of that anymore.
All I know now is this.
Writing books makes me happy.
I've written the old book's side stories with tears streaming down my face, and I've also burst out laughing for no apparent reason while writing the new book.
Whenever I think about how readers will react when they reach a particular scene, I feel even happier and more pleased with myself.
Perhaps that's what I should be pursuing.
Just like what my father said to me when he was lying in his hospital bed.
He said, "Good thing I didn't stop you back then. Watching you write novels now, you should be a lot happier than people who go to work."
Yes.
It's not that I make more money than other people.
I'm just happier than they are.
Everyone has to die someday.
So let's make ourselves a little happier.
If reading the novels I write can bring you all a little more happiness, then that, too, gives meaning to my writing.
That's all.
Mizhiji bows in thanks.
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