(Written: 2025. 04. 13.)
It's been over two years since I began writing VHS, and in this period I've learned a lot. Not just about writing and adjacent topics, but myself as well.
But in the process of trying to incorporate some life lessons into the story, I can't help but face myself in the mirror and how I fail at the exact advice I'm giving out.
It makes me a hypocrite, plain and simple. I understand, giving advice is easier than acting upon it.
I started out writing with the desire to write something as RI is. But the thing is, no matter how I try, no matter how anyone would try, it would not be like RI. I'm sure the differences are obvious to you as a reader, yet they weren't intentional, I'm not deliberately giving the story a different spin or flavor.
Yet, that's what happens, not because that was my goal, but simply because the author is different. The best anyone can do is swim in the same waters.
Even my methodology is different. I tried creating the outline of the story, working out the characters and plot lines in advance, like GZR does.
That's just not me; I feel immensely restricted and at a writers block when trying to figure out stuff in advance. In my view, this is true even in a broader sense. (Our world itself might be deterministic, for all we know, but it remains unpredictable full of the unexpected and unforeseeable. So why force ourselves into the delusion predicting it?)
Writing an outline is a different skill than writing the work. One is planned design the other is natural flow.
There is another realization; I don't like writing. Writing is hard and my motivation is the completion of work. I like "having written", rather than being in the moment of writing. This is another big difference to GZR.
Still, this work is calling to me. I cannot abandon it.
I might be aloof and detached most of the time, but once I decide something, that is how it will be. In that regard I'm very stubborn, just like GZR.
Now, I have no more excuses after even quitting my job last year!
It has to be done.
This has to be written and it will be written!
...
The upcoming part is particularly complex and I planned to lead it to include many threads, tying the multiple perspectives into a great event.
But as you could see from the release "schedule", its planning has stumped me.
So instead of delaying further, I will just do it. I must short circuit the perfectionist pursuit, discarding my own high expectations; it will just turn out as it may.
Writing is the essence of writing, there is no substitute.
End of rambling.