Author Notes: Two Days' Leave
In the months after finishing my last book, I first read Robert McKee's Story, a guidebook on the craft of screenwriting.
At the time, this book gave me a lot of inspiration. Later, I read a web novel from 2019, and I felt its plot progression aligned closely with the methods taught in Story.
So, using the techniques mentioned in Story, I wrote an outline. It was a full 100,000 words long, but it only covered half of the third volume, bringing the story up to 2010.
In hindsight, these decisions were mistakes. The storytelling methods in Story aren't as applicable today, and I underestimated the differences between web novels and traditional storytelling. This was due to my own lack of knowledge and limited reading experience.
The result? When my new book was recommended in its initial phase, the pacing still felt too slow, and the first subscription-to-recommendation ratio was 40:1.
Before the book even launched, I considered restarting. I even wrote a new beginning and reworked the early outline. The book was originally supposed to go live on the 1st, but I delayed it for a few days, spending that time debating whether to start over. In the end, I decided to push forward with it.
At the time, I was confident — I believed I could turn things around, and I thought a slower start wouldn't be a big issue.
Since the pacing was slow, I decided to speed it up. I moved up several later plot points, like the protagonist's acquisition of Big Machine, which was originally planned for post-2010. I also accelerated events related to song rankings. In the original outline, Taylor was supposed to break up with the protagonist for a while and only reconcile after the 2009 mic-snatching incident, but I changed that too.
The faster pacing did yield some positive feedback, but it also meant I was burning through future content too quickly, and the story started drifting further and further from the outline.
From that point on, I was mostly writing based on "instinct." I wasn't satisfied with my own writing, and the number of readers kept dwindling. The book's performance was terrible. I kept making adjustments, but nothing really worked.
The truth is, I made the wrong decisions from the very beginning. At its core, it all came down to my lack of understanding. This book fully exposed my weaknesses — the criticisms were valid. I indulged too much in self-satisfaction, the writing was a mess, I lacked control over the content, I added too many random elements, the protagonist was weak, and I didn't consider the popularity of the song choices. All of these issues stemmed from my own lack of awareness.
I'm sorry to everyone who once enjoyed, followed, commented on, or supported this book in any way.
I sincerely apologize to all of you. I'm truly sorry — I owe you all a deep bow.
Everyone's support was already more than enough. This was purely my own problem.
This book will be concluding soon. I need to take a couple of days off to figure out the ending.
After that, I'll be reading a lot more books and taking some time to reflect.
*****
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