It’s the last day of January, and the Chinese New Year is just a few days away. I would like to wish you all a happy New Year. I wish you all good luck and good fortune in the Year of the Dragon!
…
Looking back on the past year, I wrote three books with three to four million words, and I have a lot of emotions.
Starting from the end of 2022, I quit my job as an Internet product manager with a monthly salary of more than 20,000 yuan, moved south from BJ, and settled in Guangdong to write articles full-time. It can be said that I was completely not understood by my family.
After all, I am in my 30s, I have a family to support, my two sons have to go to school, I have no job, and I want to realize my literary dream when I was young. I look stupid no matter how I look at it (don’t laugh!!).
None of my relatives or friends thought I could succeed.
My wife was clamoring for a divorce, and all kinds of relatives came to try to persuade her, both covertly and overtly. At that time, I deeply understood what it means to be "the icing on the cake is more than the icing on the cake"!
What is meant by "your dream is just your dream and has nothing to do with others"!
At that time, what supported me was the arrogance in my heart that "don't bully young people who are poor". I firmly believed that I could succeed!
So I resolutely sold my only home, paid off the mortgage, and started working full-time.
However, reality is not a novel, and arrogance cannot solve any problems!
Although every day, apart from taking my children to school, doing laundry, cooking and washing dishes, I just code!
I will never sleep until I have coded 10,000 words!
Try to achieve success with hard work.
But my first book was still miserable. It reached 300,000 words and was published on the shelves. The first order was 20;
The second book is better, with 180,000 words on the shelves. The first order was 200, and the final order was 1,200;
And this one is the third one.
When I started the book, the editor said that the upper limit was 1,000. Naturally, I felt very desperate. However, I thought that I had made some progress since I had written so many words, so I decided to continue writing.
Sure enough, when it was 100,000 words, it had 2,800 collections and only 500 readers. The editor felt that it didn’t have much potential, so he arranged for 120,000 words to be put on the shelves.
At that time, I thought that if I had 300 first orders, I would be able to keep writing, even if the final copy had 1,500 average orders.
As a result, an accident occurred!
Thanks to readers for their support, this book actually received an initial order of 1,200 with a collection of 2,800!
This collection ratio directly shocked the author circle!
Later, when the book had almost 500,000 words, it got the high-quality badge. Now it has more than 4,000 words, which is considered a small high-quality product.
During this year, there were many months when my manuscript fee was less than 3,000 yuan, and even the lowest month was only 470 yuan, but I still persisted in writing.
To this day, although it is not yet a success, at least my family has no objection to my writing.
I can also afford the school fees for my two children and pay the rent.
So I think, life is like this, there are always twists and turns, but as long as you insist on walking on the right path, there will always be a dawn.
I like Taizu very much, so I quote one of his poems for everyone——
"Be confident that if you live two hundred years, you will be like water hitting three thousand miles!"
In the new year, I hope you and I can encourage each other!
——Poor tactics and rich firepower
