The first volume was finally finished. I looked at the word count in Word. It was 697,860 characters excluding spaces, which is nearly 700,000 words.
I did originally plan to write the campus chapter in detail and seriously, but I didn’t expect that it would end up with so many words.
And in fact, this campus chapter is not a complete campus chapter. After all, it lacks a lot of campus life scenes, and there is relatively little explanation of Hu Lai's campus life except football.
But there is no way, if it is really that much, I estimate it will take a million words to stop it.
It's ok, but not necessary.
After all, this is not a book about campus alone. If I wanted to write about campus alone, I should open a new book instead of doing this in this book.
Therefore, according to my plan, using the two national competitions as the main line and writing a complete story about Hu Lai's growth on campus, I have achieved my goal.
Next is the professional football chapter, which is also the highlight of this book.
I will also try to show you a completely imaginary world in the following stories - to be honest, I don't have much confidence now and I don't know if I can satisfy everyone, but I will try my best. I know it is difficult.
, it’s very difficult, because I saw comments like “It’s completely empty? There’s no sense of immersion” in the feedback more than once.
But I still want to try.
Just like Hu Lai, I don’t know whether my career will be successful, but I have to try. How will I know if I don’t try?
As for why the campus chapter of Novice Village is so long, I have explained it before in Chapter 49 "The Gate of the New World", so I won't go into details here.
In short, after I finished writing it, I looked back at the first volume and felt that it was relatively successful in writing about Hu Lai's start as a player in a realistic and credible way.
I gradually grew from a rookie who was ridiculed and ostracized and knew nothing to a person who could compete with strong enemies and even be chased by strong enemies. I wrote about this process.
Next comes the professional football chapter.
At the end of the first volume, I used the words of Hu Lai's father and Li Ziqiang to tell Hu Lai about the risks of professional football. This actually represents part of my opinion - I did not want to write this book
The kind of thinking that only relies on the passion of middle school students can ignore the existing problems and forcefully exaggerate stories such as "dreams are invincible" and "dreams are amazing".
Maybe it’s because you are older and have seen a lot of helplessness in society, so you are more realistic, right?
It is indeed great to have a dream, but a dream must be put into practice before it can take root. And it is easier said than done to put it into practice? If dreams are so easy to come true, then what is so valuable about dreams?
I did not end up writing the first volume as Hu Lai relied on his championship and performance to convince his father in a few words, and made him agree to take the path of professional football. In the end, the family was harmonious and everyone was happy. Hello, me, everyone.
Well, it's also based on this reason - unrealistic, impossible, and too childish.
After all, I am now the father of a seven-year-old child, and I can somewhat understand the mentality and thoughts of a father.
It is not easy for an adult whose three views have been fixed to be persuaded. I have seen this on Weibo in recent years...
Not to mention that the person trying to persuade him was his own son, a character who naturally asked him, "What does a little brat know?" in his mind.
His own experience also made him not believe his son's vision and expectations for the future, and would only regard them as childish and innocent fantasies, and treat them with disdain from the bottom of his heart.
At the same time, as a very controlling father, he will naturally react violently when his son resists his control.
I know that writing about a father-son quarrel and trying so hard to portray a character who is on the opposite side of the protagonist is not very labor-intensive and will offend many people.
But I still wrote it this way, because Hu Lixin is a character that I really want to portray seriously. I don’t care whether the character I portray is likable or not - his role is not to please people - I care.
The question is whether this person is real, whether he represents a part of such people, and whether he is a living person with his own thoughts in Hu Lai's world.
By the way, Li Ziqiang is also such a character. He was not written to please people, so I did not deliberately portray him in a positive image. As a result, everyone has a lot of dislike for him, which is normal.
Returning to Hu Lixin, I can even say that the focus of the first half of the book, the hidden main line, is entirely the grudges between father and son. It tells how a father with low self-esteem and sensitivity faces his own son, and tells a story about a man who has been in love for a long time.
How can a son who becomes naughty under his father's pressure get along with such a father?
There is a line in Li Zongsheng's song "Newly Written Old Songs" that particularly touched me:
"It is very likely that two men will just look alike throughout their lives. Some are lucky enough to become close friends, and some unlucky ones can only be A and B."
I was just wondering if Hu Lixin and Hu Lai would become like this?
What should you do if you don’t want to fall into this cycle?
In fact, in the domestic chapter of the professional league, the knot between Hu Lai and Hu Lixin will be gradually untied. After all, there is still a career line between the two.
But it’s not just about having a successful career that will relieve your heartache.
I can’t spoil it now. I can only say that not long after I started the book, I had already thought up the plot of the father and son reaching some kind of reconciliation. I even named the specific chapter and was waiting for it.
It's time to use it.
That was a big climax in my mind, and it was a scene that I sketched over and over again in my mind.
I look forward to writing it out for everyone to read.
Even when this book was just put on the shelves and the results were not good, what kept me writing was that I wanted to write that picture, that story, and that chapter title for everyone to see.
Okay, that’s all I have to say about the first volume, and what follows is my thoughts on its release.
※※※
This is a late review.
According to convention, every book should have a testimonial when it is put on the shelf.
Each of my previous books also had this kind of acceptance speech.
But this book doesn't.
Why not?
In fact, before this book is put on the shelves, I do plan to use my acceptance speech to chat with you.
But reality is always full of surprises.
On the morning of May 1st, the day it was launched, I had just turned on my computer, and the Swans speaker, which had been in service for eight years, suddenly emitted a continuous burst of harsh high-frequency electronic whistling sound, which scared my wife awake even before she got up.
And after I restarted and cut off the power several times, I had no choice but to admit that this speaker was completely broken and I had to buy a new speaker.
In fact, buying a speaker is not a big deal. If you go to JD.com, you can place the order in the morning and it will arrive in the afternoon. You can definitely get it replaced the next day at the latest.
But this seemed to be a very ominous omen, as if the army was about to set off, but suddenly a gust of evil wind broke the flagpole...
The results of my book after it was put on the shelves were not very good, and can even be described as "horrible".
Although I said before I started the book that I didn’t care much about my grades, would I still be angry if my grades were good?
In particular, the various data of the public version of this book - collections, recommendation votes, and the number mentioned in this chapter - all look pretty good, which seems to indicate that everyone has accepted my attempt this time well, and the results after it is put on the shelves are worth it.
expect.
It was under such a psychological expectation that the subscription results of the first chapter of the new book gave me a head start.
The first number I saw was a little over a thousand.
Later, 24 hours later, I took another special look and found that it was a little over 1,500.
When was the last time that my new book had such a poor performance on the shelves? Before that, "Legend of Champions", which had the worst performance among all my books, had a lower first-order result. Maybe?
Even though I was mentally prepared and expected that the score of this book would be worse than my previous books, I didn't expect it to be this bad.
First order of 1,500 within 24 hours...
I began to have doubts about my previously confident ideas.
Is my writing not good enough?
Was my false idea wrong from the beginning?
Was my previous pace too slow?
Is there something wrong with my control of some plots?
Yes or no……
I have many ideas and am very confused.
There are also some people who sarcastically say that I don’t know how high the sky is and want to get rid of real football. I really don’t know how much weight I have. Do you really think that my achievements and popularity over the years are all brought to me by myself?
Some people also left messages in the book review area asking me, as a platinum author, if I don’t even have high-quality products, is it embarrassing?
In short, the whole day when it was released on May 1st, I was confused and my mood was at its lowest point.
Naturally, I wasn’t in the mood to write any acceptance speech.
In the face of such dismal results, what else can you say? What other words can you say?
It wasn't until an author friend who published the book at the same time as me came to ask me about my results the next day that I realized that the scores of many authors listed in this issue were far lower than my expectations and estimates.
It is known that something happened at that time, but we don't know whether it was because of the impact of this incident.
It was only a long time later that I found out that starting from this year, every new issue of the book was released. The results of the public version seemed to be very good, but as soon as it was released, it was cut in half as expected by the author. Are there any free and
I don't know the impact of piracy.
At that time, this author friend and I could only choose to comfort each other.
I said to him: "Don't worry about your grades. Just calm down and write a good book. Now that your grades are like this, the only thing left to do is write a good book."
He agreed.
But I quickly realized a problem: "But how can such results prove that we believe that 'writing well' will definitely result in a 'good book'?"
The author friend was also stunned. After a long time, he sighed: "That's right. I always feel that my writing is quite good. I am very happy and passionate about writing, but the feedback on my results after writing is
But he told me that’s not the case…”
This is a very scary thing for us, that is, when the writing concepts, skills, and experiences that I rely on are not recognized, and when what I think is "good" is no longer "good", I
How do I continue to write? What can I do to convince myself that I am really writing towards the "good" side, rather than writing blindly?
I don't have an answer.
I also thought about whether I should speed up the pace and write the rest of the content according to that refreshing rhythm?
I quickly rejected this idea, because it would not make the book better, but would make it nondescript.
Later, the new speakers arrived, and after a lot of trouble, I connected them to the computer, turned on the music player, and listened to the songs I had to listen to to code, trying to calm down my emotions.
I told myself, since the results were like this, and I didn’t know if my good writing was really good anyway, I would just finish the book according to the original plan and rhythm.
Even if the results of this book are not good, at least I can tell the story and words in my heart completely, and leaving such a story can be regarded as an explanation for myself.
The only thing I'm worried about is that because my grades are so bad, I won't be able to stand it at the starting point and will have to finish it ahead of schedule.
But my editor-in-chief, Chang Tian, is a good person. He is actively helping me promote the copyright adaptation of this book, hoping that this can alleviate the regret of unsatisfactory electronic subscription results, and he has neither directly nor tactfully told me that he hopes that I will
Finish this book as soon as possible.
Therefore, since I am not worried about finishing the book ahead of schedule, I will write it well according to my definition of "writing well".
I wrote about Hu Lai's first national competition according to the plan and the existing rhythm. I did not write that he won the championship in the first national competition and then soared to the sky. According to the original plan, Luo Kai went to the professional team and Hu Lai stayed.
On the high school team.
It is written that Hu Lai is a sophomore in high school. After hard training, he can take the lead and become the leading shooter of this team. It is written that he killed everyone in the Anton Cup to show the results of his hard training.
I wrote that he participated in the second national competition. According to my outline, he made it all the way to the finals and became the national champion, breaking Shuguang High School's dream of three consecutive championships and defeating Chen Xingyi.
It is written that even if he won these championships and honors, he could not change the conflict and relationship between him and his father. In the end, he could only choose to leave home without saying goodbye and continue to pursue his dream.
There is not a chapter in this chapter that I changed from my original plan because I was worried about grades. Basically, it can be said that I wrote the campus chapter completely according to my original ideas.
I no longer check the subscription results. I open the author backend every day just to upload new chapters or correct typos in old chapters.
Why are the grades bad?
I don’t know, and I don’t want to study it. Maybe it’s due to the general environment, or maybe it’s my own problem: maybe it’s because I chose to write about such a niche subject in a niche way, or maybe it’s because
My early pace was too slow, my emotions were too depressing, and the protagonist was too aggrieved...
It may be caused by one of these reasons, or it may be the result of a combination of all factors.
In short, the results are just like this, just do whatever you want. I just immerse myself in writing a book and just use it as a single machine to write out the stories in my heart.
Under such circumstances, Qidian gave me a big recommendation, and then I discovered that the score of this book had been slowly rising... and it was almost reaching the high-quality level.
From the first order of 1,500, the average order was 1,200, gradually increased to the current average order of almost 3,000, and the highest order is almost 4,000.
And there’s one more thing – the highest and average order numbers in this book are not far apart, only a few hundred.
What does this mean?
This shows that although there are not many people reading the book, the readers who followed the original subscription and subscribed to v did not lose much. They all stayed and kept following updates!
This is really a great encouragement to me.
I don’t know if everyone in front of the screen can understand how I felt at that time. It was like I had been trudging alone in the darkness with my head down for a long time, and then with the help of a little light in the sky, I was surprised to find that there were many people walking with me all the time!
Then, on the second day after the big promotion, Hu Lai's story crossed the 3,000 order line and entered Qidian's premium channel.
At that time, I thought, I would write a testimonial for the launch and share with you my journey in the past two months.
Now it seems that it is quite rude for a platinum author to say so excitedly that his book has passed the quality line.
But after these two months, I feel that I still have reason to be proud of my current results.
I adhered to my original intention, I just took it so slowly and wrote two updates every day, and my grades actually got better little by little?
This book that was almost sentenced to death seems to be able to breathe again?
I don’t know if this result is a reason why it won’t be terminated early from the perspective of website management.
I don’t know how shabby this grade actually looks in the eyes of others.
But anyway, I am happy and satisfied.
I have completely finished the first volume of this book. Having such a result when I finished it is a reward for me.
I accept it gladly and accept it calmly.
The above is the late release of this book. I will continue to uphold my original intention of writing this story, write this story, write it completely, write out the joys and sorrows of everyone in the book, and write about their lives.
, write a world.
Again, thank you for continuing to subscribe to this book, thank you for coming to support me, and thank you for joining me in witnessing the growth of Hu Lai and the birth of this world.
