Part 2. Epilogue.
Part 2. Epilogue.
Hello~
It's Pereru!
Having reached 165 chapters now... it's... a strange feeling.
Out of all my works, the only one that ever passed 165 chapters was A Trivial Day.
I had a lot of thoughts while writing all this out.
I've never worked in any writing-related field, you know.
Creative writing? Please. I've never even gotten a perfect score on a dictation test, hahahaha
My vocabulary is seriously lacking too, so when I write, I keep a notepad file open.
For example, here's just a small portion of it, hahahaha
『Original, unconventional, not bound by form.
Notion. Hostility. Bystander. Skill. Record. Censure. Vulgarity. Conservative.
Break through. Roughly outline the progression. All over one's face. Tolerance.
Fiercely. Sense of momentum. Deceive. Narrow-minded.
Bring to public debate. Mire, successfully, armchair theory, either-or choice.
Mind map. Achromatic. Sprawled about. United as one. Humane treatment. Mutter.
Established fact. Devout. Revere. Devote oneself. Be promoted.』
There's more, but... hahahahaha
These are words I've collected since I started writing this novel, hahahahahahahahaha. Embarrassing, honestly.
'Why Am I the Princess' was something I started writing as practice so I could finish my debut work.
I only set up a bare-bones outline and started writing it purely for my own enjoyment.
But I think that purpose got a little shaken along the way.
How should I put it... maybe I should call it pressure?
Trying to post novel chapters while swamped with my day job—I was seriously running on empty.
One week I averaged three hours of sleep a night just to get a chapter up...
Let me briefly explain how I write...
First, I just write whatever comes to mind.
Then it goes through five rounds of editing.
1. Adding content.
- Usually, I read through everything I wrote over the past 24 hours and add to it.
2. Cutting the drag.
- After step 1, while I'm at my day job, I edit by imagining scenes on my own. Normally, if I've written 6,000 characters, I'll ruthlessly cut about 2,000 characters of boring or draggy material. I delete a full third!
3. Adding content while imagining the scene.
- Similar to step 1, but after some time has passed, I add scenes and dialogue to bring out as much detail as possible.
4. Final edit before handing it to the editor.
- As a finishing step, I add any content I thought of that day and refine the details. Then I send it to the editor!
5. Final edit before posting on Novelpia.
- Steps 3, 4, and 5 eat up a ton of time. The final edit alone takes about an hour to an hour and a half.
I know better than anyone how much I'm lacking, so I think that's why I invest even more time.
The reason I'm telling you all this is...
Lately, draggy scenes have been going up as-is more and more often.
I couldn't invest the time...
I was skipping steps 2 and 3.
Even knowing it wasn't fun, I couldn't edit it.
Because if I deleted that content, the backlog of chapters I'd stockpiled would get thrown off.
I would have needed way too much time to revise everything.
Did I lose my passion?
It was absolutely never that, but I was seriously, critically short on time.
To the point where I wondered, '...Is this even okay?'
Two weeks ago, I think it was. I was only getting two to three hours of sleep a day.
On top of that, my editor got a job and quit... heh.
I was just too busy.
Then my projects all wrapped up.
My day job hit its off-season like the old days.
Finally, novel backlog!!! That's what I thought... and then I got injured.
Haaaah...
In the end, I rested for two days and watched Baek Jong-won's Alley Restaurant.
It was the Jeju pork noodle soup episode.
Baek Jong-won said something like this.
People come to that restaurant thinking about Jeju pork noodle soup.
But after they eat it, they leave thinking, 'This isn't Jeju pork noodle soup.'
So many readers came to 'Why Am I the Princess' thinking about the fast pacing and healing vibe, and here I was, dragging things out with ambiguous content that wasn't healing at all.
Just because I didn't have enough time...
That wasn't 'Why Am I the Princess.'
I have this principle that even if I can't deliver perfection, I have to deliver on time, so I was frantically posting chapters almost like it was a compulsion.
Since I know my own skill level better than anyone, rather than promising some impossible 'best chapter ever,' I think I just wanted to be someone who shows up every single day.
That said, I've never once half-assed it.
Like I said earlier, I'm never satisfied myself, so editing alone eats up close to three to four hours.
There's no way to prove my editing process, but my vocabulary is so poor that without editing, I think it'd be unreadable. Heh...
In short... I knew it myself.
That it wasn't fun.
Before I started writing 'Why Am I the Princess,' I made a promise to myself.
The promise was:
'No single episode will go longer than three chapters.' That was the rule I wrote by.
While I was running around frantically, I broke that rule...
Even I, the one writing it, wasn't having fun, so how must the readers have taken it... I completely understood every bit of that reaction.
So if you look at the latest chapters, starting from a certain point, I started speeding through the episodes and got myself back on track!
Part 2 really seemed to have one incident after another.
I'll admit it. I acted in a way that didn't suit the name Pereru.
Pereru.
I absolutely despise frustration-baiting.
I prefer light reads, and I love works that leave a lingering impression.
What Pereru loves even more is when the protagonist's right- and left-hand men are strong as hell—that's when I get genuinely moved.
While I place great importance on the chemistry between the characters living in my imagination, I also love 'Throughout Heaven and Earth, I Alone Am the Honored One' types.
But.
What Pereru loves even more is when the protagonist's right hand and left hand are strong as hell—that's when I get genuinely moved.
When they fight each other over some petty reason and the chemistry is off the charts, I sit there by myself feeling absurdly proud.
I love a grand, chest-swelling showdown between the right hand and the left hand so much it makes my seat damp!!!
Lately I haven't been able to work on the novel, so I thought I'd lost my touch...
Heheh.
Touch? Please, what touch does a rookie even have to lose? Ridiculous, right?
Part 3.
Please look forward to it.
I'm going all-out.
I'm going to write the kind of story I love.
That's the direction I think Pereru should take.