I took a look at the novel's page today and realized it's already reached 400,000 characters in length.
I was a bit surprised, and it made me feel quite sentimental.
The book's performance has been quite good, surpassing my expectations, whether compared to my previous book or my own personal hopes.
Of course, it has its shortcomings as well.
First and foremost, my writing speed is too slow. I'm very frustrated about this myself. Despite sitting in front of my computer for over eight hours a day, I can only manage to produce two chapters. It's simply not good enough. I suppose the only way to improve is through practice, so I hope to get better over time.
I had stockpiled a few chapters before the novel went premium, thinking I could continue to write and save chapters for a rainy day. Instead, my stockpile just kept dwindling the more I wrote. Now, it's completely gone. I'm essentially publishing chapters the moment they're finished.
This makes me very anxious. If I need to make revisions for any reason, what happens to those who have already read the chapter? Ask them to read it again? I'm sure no reader would be willing to do that.
I have some family matters to attend to next week, which means I won't be able to focus on writing. So, I have to apologize in advance: for the next week, updates may be unstable, with only one chapter per day.
The novel is about to enter its next major plot arc, so I need to spend time organizing the detailed outline. At the same time, I also need to make time for studying and taking notes.
I plan on making this a longer novel. After all, it's hard to call yourself a true web novelist if you haven't written at least one book that's over a million characters long.
I've seen some readers comment that the pacing is slow and that I'm holding back the protagonist's power progression too much. To be honest, when I read novels myself, I enjoy seeing a protagonist struggle to survive during their weaker phase. Once a protagonist becomes invincible and starts steamrolling everything in sight, I tend to lose interest.
There was one particularly interesting comment that said the first hundred chapters were just about fighting with small-town tyrants. Even I had to laugh after reading that.
The pacing will pick up in the future.
Finally, thank you all for your support.