After finishing the second volume, I checked the word count using WORD and found that it was 864,000 words.
A bit more than the first volume.
This ending came to me when I was writing the last part of this chapter.
Regarding the question of how to end this volume, my wife and I had a conversation, and we originally had a scene in mind.
But the specific chapters are written down, and I think it would be better to end it here.
So it ends here.
Use an award ceremony and a thank you speech.
After all, for Hu Lai, this is a stage in his career and a summary of his past football career.
Before moving forward, we must resolve the problems left over from the past and let go of the burdens we originally carried. Only in this way can our footsteps be light and strong, and we can walk faster and better.
So I chose the symbolic scene of the award ceremony as the end of this volume.
Sometimes, writing a book is like this. When you start writing, you may only have a very vague intention, and many things just come out of your mind as you write them. Of course, are there those things that are clear from the beginning?
An author who has everything figured out? There must be some, but I'm not that kind of person.
I am a writer who is not good at writing outlines or detailed outlines. Many times if I am asked to write a detailed outline, I will feel that the book cannot be written at all. But if I are asked to start writing the text directly, many times I will be distracted by my thoughts.
I was moved by the content that suddenly popped up.
The main content of the second volume is the first two seasons of Hulay's career, which is the beginning of his professional football career, but the main line is the relationship between him and his father.
Only this was decided before I started writing the second volume.
The plot of avenging my father in the Football Association Cup final was gradually taking shape in my mind before I wrote the second volume, so I had already thought of the chapter title before that, so I used the name Hedgehog Band.
The lyrics of that song.
Because it really fits what I want to express.
The grievances and grievances of the older generation are resolved here by the young people.
Regardless of whether they are successful people or people who are doing nothing, people of the older generation will eventually grow old, and their things will also grow old with age.
Just like the law of development in this world, a generation, even the mainstream generation in this society, will eventually grow old. What will accompany them as they grow old are the so-called mainstream thoughts and concepts that their generation adheres to.
, lifestyle, principles of doing things...
Many things will grow old, become no longer important, and disappear.
And young people, those young people who are looked down upon by the older generation will gradually grow up and become the mainstream of society. The young people's code of conduct and way of thinking will gradually replace the aging generation.
It goes on like this, generation after generation, over and over again.
The whole society will progress because of this.
Otherwise, no matter how powerful and correct the older generation is, if they never grow old, how can the world continue to move forward?
I symbolized this principle in a football match and Hu Lai’s buzzer-beating goal.
Hu Lixin, the father, has always regarded himself as his father. He always felt that Hu Lai was still his son, a little kid who didn't understand anything. Even though his son was already a star with many fans, in
Even though he is an adult who has achieved certain achievements in professional football, he has not changed his mentality.
Just like the Pug Gang sang in "The Second Half of the Ninth Inning": Maybe I am an inconspicuous star on TV, but in their eyes, I am just a child who will not grow up.
This is not a special case of Hu Lixin, but a common mentality of countless parents and elders.
They always feel that they have eaten more salt than your kid has eaten, and they have walked on more bridges than you have walked. What scenes have they not seen before? Do they not have more experience than you?
But today’s world is completely different from the ancient times when carriages, horses and mails were very slow. Today’s society is developing and changing rapidly. When we look back on ten years ago, we will marvel at how fast the world has changed, not to mention how fast it has changed.
It takes ten years and a lifetime.
Therefore, Hu Lixin's inherent experience made him stagnant and unable to get out. For a while, he was unable to accept his son's rapid progress. He was always worried that it would be a flash in the pan, and he was always afraid that one day he would wake up and find that everything was back to where it started - why is this happening?
Mentality? This is inseparable from his original experience.
Wasn't all his hard work and dedication shattered by Wang Xianke's kick?
This is his personal tragedy, but it is also the tragedy of that environmental era.
I saw that many readers scolded Hu Lixin for being unqualified as a father and a husband...I have to say that what you said is correct. Hu Lixin is indeed such a person. I also deliberately wrote in this direction.
.
He is not the kind of person who has the aura of a protagonist and can fight against repeated defeats and finally counterattack.
Maybe one blow is enough to make him fall down and unable to get up.
It is precisely because of this that he is so dismissive of his son that he is disgusting.
The best way to solve this mentality is to let him see with his own eyes that no matter what difficulties he encounters, his son can face them head-on and defeat them.
So in such an FA Cup final, he witnessed his son face the nightmare of his past, and then completed a hat-trick with a wonderful upside-down golden hook, knocking the high-flying winner of life off the clouds and into the mud.
Complete a young generation to replace and surpass the older generation.
At that moment, his mentality changed.
The solid shell that once enveloped him also had cracks.
He realized that the so-called strict protection he had given his son was wrong, or...failed.
He once thought that as long as he kept his son away from the football that made him become the bad guy he is today, studied honestly and went to college, and followed the path that everyone else was taking, he could ensure that his son would not make the same mistakes in his future.
From a father's perspective, his idea is actually right.
But from Hu Lai's point of view, the son's resistance and rebellion are naturally correct.
There are so many things in this world, how is it possible that everything can be divided into right and wrong?
After I made money by writing online to support myself, my dad still lamented that he still needed to have an iron rice bowl: He spent a lot of effort and human connections to provide his biological son - my dad and my mom reunited.
In terms of family, he and his ex-wife have a son - they have arranged for a job in a state-owned institution, with a salary of 3,000 yuan a month. The income is not too high, but it is stable and the work is free.
In the eyes of people my dad's age, they have come from the iron rice bowl era of state-owned enterprises. This job is envied by many people and he had to spend a lot of favors to get it. He has always been proud of it and feels that he
He has arranged a good job for his son, and he is considered a competent father.
Of course, in fact, the money I earned from writing books was much more than the dead wages of that public institution. Now he gradually stopped talking about iron rice bowls, establishment... and so on.
But can you say that my dad’s ideas are ridiculous?
When the economy goes down, I don’t know how many people think it is a dream to have a job that guarantees income during droughts and floods.
If I hadn't caught up with the explosion of online literature by chance, would I really be able to support myself and my family by writing books?
At that time, as a person with low emotional intelligence, not good at dealing with people, not knowing how to get into trouble, and offending many people with his bad words, how much better can my living situation be than that of my brother by working for others?
But can we say that my father’s concept is right?
Given the tide of this era, how many young people will still stick to the establishment with limited quotas, waiting to die in a lifeless work environment until they retire?
Anyone with any ideas will choose to leave.
During the Spring Festival of the year before last, I returned to the state-owned enterprise compound where I lived when I was a child. In the compound, which used to be so glamorous that everyone around me was envious of it, the buildings were dilapidated and inhabited by old people. There were not many young people in sight, and it was very lifeless.
I think even if I had not written a book, I would not have been able to live in this place for a long time.
Regardless of whether they have the ability or not, young people will always choose to step out of the places they have been familiar with since childhood and step into the vast world, from rural areas to cities, from small cities to big cities... to see and experience, whether they fail or succeed, is a personal wish.
Strong push, or the tide of the times... these things will happen, regardless of personal preferences and will.
Returning to Hu Lai and Hu Lixin, it is the same.
Hu Lixin's arrangement for his son is the optimal solution based on his experience and concepts.
Hu Lai's resistance and dissatisfaction with his father are based on his ability (plug-in) and what he considers to be the best route.
There is no right or wrong, and Hu Lai's current success cannot simply be used to completely deny Hu Lixin's persistence back then.
Of course, now that Hu Lixin has seen his son defeat his former enemy with his own eyes, the knot in his heart has been resolved, and his opposition to his son's actions is no longer so strong.
He may still be worried about his son's future, but he also knows that his son has grown up, and no matter whether the future is good or bad, it is up to him to solve it himself, not for the father to do it for him.
To put it bluntly: his son’s annual income is already over one million, which is many times more than other children from ordinary families. This doesn’t make him, a father, feel at ease. What about the parents of other ordinary families?
what to do?
As for Wang Xianke, it is clear that he has not reached his end yet. Hu Lai's revelations only sounded the first alarm for his originally calm and smooth life. He has not yet reached the end of his rope.
In my plan, the end of the second volume is not to beat Wang Xianke to death with a stick. The core of the second volume is the resolution of the conflict between Hu Lai and his father Hu Lixin. For now, it is basically resolved.
No matter what happens to Wang Xianke, Hu Lixin is no longer worried, and he can put aside the baggage of the past and move forward like a normal person.
But just because Hu Lixin has given up, it doesn't mean that Hu Lai has given up.
He took his father's burden and carried it on himself, intending to fight Wang Xianke to the death.
This is the story of the next volume.
In fact, I have thought of some solutions on how to solve Wang Xianke's problem, but I am not willing to repeat the approach of Hu Lai and Sun He. On the one hand, the solution is too simple - of course, Sun He, as a small BOSS, can handle it so easily.
That's right, it's not worth spending too much words on him, so I just beat him to death with a stick.
But Wang Xianke can't do that. He is the ultimate boss in the country. I mold him into a winner in life, a person with some weight in Chinese football, and I don't want to be defeated so easily in the end.
Moreover, deliberately kicking a teammate is really evidence of free will and lacks real evidence. Even if the former teammates are found, it can only prove that such a thing happened, but it does not prove that Wang Xianke did it on purpose.
If he himself does not admit it, no one can convict him.
So I chose to solve this problem in another way.
For Hu Lai, it no longer matters whether Wang Xianke pleads guilty or not, and it doesn't even matter whether the public thinks Wang Xianke did it intentionally.
It was more important to him that Wang Xianke was completely finished.
But how to make Wang Xianke completely finished?
As Hu Lai said: See once and fight once.
This kind of beating is not only about defeating him on the court, but also an all-round attack on him.
But since it involves spoilers, I won’t go into details here.
Anyway, it is definitely not the kind of way where a former teammate falls from the sky and accuses Wang Xianke of intentionally hurting Hu Lixin, and then fans across the country revile Wang Xianke.
After all, if it is just like this, it is far from a real blow to Wang Xianke. He is now a successful head coach. As long as he can still lead the team to win victories and championships, this kind of moral accusation will have a negative impact on him.
Really limited.
In short, that’s all I have to say about Wang Xianke, just wait and see in the third volume.
※※※
The change in the relationship between Hu Lai and Hu Lixin is the theme of this volume. No matter how much money Hu Lai made, how much he pretended to be, how many championships he won, how many flirty things he said... this
The core of the volume is still this.
It is a process from confrontation to gradual reconciliation between father and son.
Of course, they haven't completely made peace yet, but a turning point has occurred.
Comrade Xie Lan finally saw the dawn of hope after all her efforts, and I am happy for her.
The two men were able to move from confrontation to reconciliation, and this woman was indispensable and the most important contributor. She was the number one contributor.
I particularly like Xie Lan in my novel.
I have written many books and about the mothers of many protagonists, but this one is my favorite and the one I am most emotionally invested in.
It’s not just Xie Lan, Hu Lixin also put a lot of emotion and writing into his creation, and there are many other characters.
There is a lot of content that some readers may feel is enough to scan at a glance, all to create these characters and have them shape this fictional world.
Still the same problem, if someone thinks there are too many things besides football, including water, then it means you are not the audience of this book.
I have repeatedly emphasized before that I do not want to write about one game after another, and the plot is completely divided and promoted based on the game schedule.
In addition to competitions, I will write a lot of off-site content, write about plots where the protagonist is not pretentious, and write about characters who may only have a one-time relationship with the protagonist, or have never even met.
I know that mainstream competitive sports are still one game after another. Games are used to create conflicts, shape characters, advance plots, and show off and slap faces. All content is centered around the game. It may be okay in the early stage, but it will be basically the same in the later stage.
It's just one game after another.
I have written this kind of article before, and I have written a lot, but I don’t plan to write this book like this. I want to try another way of writing... It’s not called a new approach. To me, this is just a return in a sense.
.
Whether it's "Do You Care If I Play Football" or "We Are Champions", it's the same approach. Especially for the latter, I didn't divide the plot according to the professional football season. All considerations and content are just to serve the plot, and
The plot does not serve the schedule.
For the sake of plot development and considering the rhythm of the conflict, I can discard some completely unnecessary content, mention it in passing, or not mention it at all, or put it later and write it in retrospect after a big plot is over.
Let this book be more like a book, rather than a guidebook for football games.
This way of writing also allows me to find more fun than before, so I have been very happy writing this book so far. No matter whether my grades are good or bad - when my grades are bad, as long as I am addicted to writing, even the writing itself
It's very painful, but my heart is full of energy.
Before writing this book, I talked with Editor No. 72 (the author of Fake Hero, Judgment and Skywalker) about my thoughts on the new book. He asked me to write what I wanted to write, and maintaining the joy of writing is the most important thing.
Yes, if this way makes me happy to write, then use this way.
I listened to his suggestion and decided to write the book "" in a fictional way and write more about the parts outside the football field.
Some readers complained that this was an urban book, but I think sports is originally a subject matter in the urban context.
Because the stories of sports competitions always take place in a modern urban background, and the people in them cannot escape from this urban background. Therefore, when writing about sports competitions, how could it not be about the city, and how could it not be about the environment in which he lives?
As long as sports competition remains the core theme, the protagonist's way of success is still sports competition, and the resolution of plot conflicts is still through sports competition, then it won't be considered a deviation.
On this basis, why not add more off-site descriptions?
The key is still one point: do these added things look good?
Are the off-screen scenes engaging and engaging, are the stories of the supporting characters touching people's hearts, and are the descriptions of the world and environment realistic and believable?
These add up to the final criterion – does it look good?
If it looks good, is there any problem?
If it doesn't look good, something is definitely wrong. Even if it's all about the game, if it doesn't look good, no one will watch it.
Based on this idea, I will try my best to write the rest of this book according to my ideas.
If you really can't accept this approach, feel that there is too much outside the game, and feel that the content of the game describes too many people other than the protagonist is watery, then my very sincere suggestion is to let each other go, and there is no need to write a book review in the chapter.
Please tell me how to write it.
I understand what you are saying. Speaking of which, the average subscription for "Heart of a Champion" is almost over 10,000. There are not many sports and competitive books that can achieve an average subscription of over 10,000. This shows that I can still write books that meet the psychological expectations of most readers.
Of books, right?
But as I said in the preface, this is a willful work, and I really don’t expect it to be recognized by everyone.
As I write this, I am already very happy to have achieved such results.
Seventeen years ago, when I first posted "Do You Mind If I Play Football" online, I said I hoped to find like-minded people.
Seventeen years later, I posted "" on the Internet, hoping to find people who could relate to the story after reading it.
I didn’t expect that I would be able to write a work that would go viral all over the internet and cover all readers without any blind spots.
Sports is inherently a niche, and my way of writing is even more niche within a niche. I know all this - before I started the book, Butterfly Lan asked me what I was writing about in my new book. After I told him the general idea, he
He said: Damn it, you are a niche within a niche, and your results may not be very good!
Of course I know, that's why at the end of the first volume, I felt elated that I had ordered 3,000 yuan.
I just want to write about football for seventeen years, and it is inevitable that I will have some aesthetic fatigue - in the last book "Greenery" I found that the happiest part of writing was the interaction between Gao Zheng and Sister Feng - so I want to
I have rediscovered the original impulse and fun that I had when I decided to write the story of Zhang Jun and Sophie in words.
The purest desire to talk is to tell you the feelings and thoughts I have accumulated bit by bit in my heart through the stories and characters I have conceived.
This book is such an opportunity for me to start over.
Good grades are of course important.
But the most important thing is to write a work that satisfies me and can give an explanation for my seventeen years of online competitive writing.
To be honest, I don’t know how long I can continue writing. After all, at first I thought I wouldn’t be able to last ten years. I remember that when I wrote “The Winner Takes All” in the tenth year, I summarized the ten years and gave
Everyone said that they hope to be able to write about the second decade and then summarize the past twenty years.
Looking at it now, it should be no problem in twenty years, but I really don’t know in thirty years.
After all, I am getting older, and both my body and my brain have passed their prime. Like Hu Lixin, I am slowly failing to keep up with the times. Maybe I may - no, I should definitely - be eliminated.
, was replaced.
One hundred percent I will grow old.
Will I still be able to write something that continues to resonate with everyone, will I still be passionate about writing, and will I still have a lot to say about the world?
I have no idea.
I was a little sad when Lao Mao retired some time ago. He used the lake outside the window as the title in his postscript. I have been to his house and seen the lake. It is indeed beautiful. I can look up at the beauty outside the window while writing.
The scenery is happy.
So I started to collect the photos of snow-capped mountains outside my study window that I had taken before. They were all the scenery I saw through the window glass while I was writing. I planned to write a long article using the mountains outside the window as the title when I retired.
Postscript.
When the time comes to look back on my career, I will realize that there are a few books that are the most important to me, and that I can explain to myself and you, then I will be extremely happy.
And "" is the book I hope to put on the list.
Thank you all for listening to my ramblings.
Originally, it was, but how I wrote it was like a reflection after finishing the book...
In short, Hu Lai's story is still in progress and has not ended. Please look forward to the next story.
I will do my best to write it.
In my way.
Finally, I will give you some pictures of the mountains outside my study window, which are included in the Easter Egg Chapter.