What do I even say, as you all know, I don't like to talk much, but since it is such a special occasion, I cannot stay silent.
This novel, which I've been writing for at least two years, I did not feel was a burden; I enjoyed the process thoroughly, apart from the ending parts, though, that was a pain in the ass.
I would say I surprised myself by sticking to something for so long, and that too, doing it day in and day out, almost for 600+ days. But I wouldn't say I was a genius or anything, I am simply too enthusiastic about this form of entertainment.
Why is my mind blank, and I have no words to say, damn it?
Anyway, I would say this is a big step, a good step, and it is time to evaluate myself. I would say I'm good at world-building. I would rate myself above average. I would say I am very good at integrating technical details within the novels, though I tend to info dump, and I would say my writing style is quite understandable, hopefully, but I would also say my weaknesses are characters, dialogue, and pacing. News to everyone, I'm planning to start two new novels very soon, so yeah, I will try to improve my disadvantages and set a stronger foundation for those works.
Anyway, before I talk about that, I want to discuss the backlash I faced when I wrote about religious issues. I now understand that my already existing bias might have been amplified by social media, leading me to write such things when pertaining to a religion. I am not saying my community wasn't enslaved by a certain other community or communities; I am simply acknowledging that my work is not fully researched and has the possibility of hurting the sentiments of certain communities in the present.
But ultimately, I request everyone who is offended or hurt to understand that I have a lot more knowledge now and have grown as a person, and I will avoid mentioning such topics in the future as much as possible.
Now, with that being said, coming back to my new novels, as I said, I have two in mind. One is an urban fiction about the entertainment industry, which will continue to be serialised on this website.
Originally, I thought of using the same worldview I had built, like the protagonist would be born in the 1800s or something, where the Indian entertainment industry is the world's entertainment industry, and then I could bring back Hollywood's works into that world. But I read the contract and realised that Webnovel has the power to term that new novel as a derivative product of this novel, so I wouldn't be getting paid as much as I did for this, and the revenue-sharing percentage would be drastically reduced.
Though I could negotiate with them since I would be helping them expand the worldview of this novel, which would, at the end of the day, be beneficial to them, ultimately, I felt it was too much of a hassle. And also, I wanted to write it for a more mainstream audience, and I felt that basing the novel in America would be the right choice.
But that doesn't mean I will not be writing about India anymore. In fact, the second novel is a post-apocalyptic fantasy novel based in India.
I consider this my main piece, so I will be serialising that on my own website, which I have built over the last few weeks or months. The website is ready, and if nothing goes wrong, by the end of the month, I will be hosting it, and everyone should be able to see the novel.
I will post the novel for free everywhere on most fiction sites, and keep in mind, the website is for free consumption. You can read my work for free. I will sustain it through advertisements, cosmetic items, and donations only.
So, my OG readers, if you come across me posting about the novels in the future on Webnovel, please do visit my site and check out the novel.
Oh, and my website will have 10 more chapters than everywhere else, that's one incentive. Anyway, it's free, please come and check it out.
What else, yeah, I wanted to say that in order for the second novel to become a reality, I have to solve some contractual problems, so to speak, which I'm pretty confident will get solved, but you could never guess these things, so hopefully everything goes according to plan.
The second piece of advice would be to write down the character names. I tend to forget events and character names quite a bit, so after writing it for some time, I picked up this habit, so I would recommend people to do this.
The third piece of advice is to stay consistent. This novel wouldn't have gotten 5 million views if I had uploaded four or five chapters a week; consistency is key, especially in this day and age, where your job could be replaced by an AI.
The fourth advice, or rather a tip, would be to put your chapter into a text-to-speech and listen to the chapter you have written. You grasp the narration and the timing of the narrator, you can identify some punctuation mistakes and stuff, along with gauging how easy or difficult it is to digest. It has helped me quite a bit.
Now, what I have shared is what I have learnt. This is not coming from a place of seniority, so come join the Discord and say hi. I try to keep in contact there.
Also, I would like to give a special thanks to some of my readers.
Iron_codex
otakuboi67
its_a_joke
Daoist18ZeNZ
Noclassydrops
0Jomar_0_Mee0
ABHI29
Lucifer_6671
TyrantKing
atreus
Daoist857011
Lucas_Kasa
Balu_vignesh
Joseph_Lydon_6871
ZenithAngel
Daoist35Xky4
jijonagaroor
Lord_Telzekar
Ahtabai44
UnivConnor
Jeevan_Sai_6243
James_Cotterill
Sumanth_Jain
Puneeth_Naag_6118
Matthieu_Artheix_6111
Lazy_sensei8
Chris_Lackman
Tervantas
NITESH_MISHRA_1074
Alexandru_Boitos
Siddhesh_Sawant_2828
Chirag_Singh_1741
Sudhanva_SH
Thank you, guys, for your support. I mean it.
Special thanks to Discord members, Lester, Frost946, Nitish, Atreides, Rexxit, Jeet_1993, Pratham, and Gunpowder Gundam.
Special thanks to Abhi, who helped a lot with his research, and others.
And finally, special thanks to my HOD for being responsible for making me inadvertently stumble onto this journey.
Adios, everyone, until next time.
Man, I have like 8 kilograms worth of notes that I have to pack up and seal away.
