An Afterword of Sorts

Hello, this is the author Supersession. Sorry for using such a boring opener, I swear this afterword will get better soon.

First of all, if you enjoyed Why I Write and would like to check out projects I’ll be up to in the future, please consider dropping me a follow on my brand-new Instagram @supersessionwrites. While it’s merely a barren account for now, the plan is to release a high-quality Light Novel by the start of 2022 loosely based on Kitazawa High School and to eventually transition into a proper author’s Instagram with regular posts.

In the LN, there’ll be professional quality CGs from an anime studio, typesetting, as well as writing (although this part’s not professional) from yours truly, so I hope you’ll give me a chance to make my dream less of a financial disaster.

Now that the self-promotion is out of the way, I’d like to talk a bit about writing in general. Why I Write, as you may have guessed from the title, was initially planned to be a light novel that satirized the process of writing an LN. A book about a book. The original premise included a schizophrenic Mizuhara Kohei hallucinating Yukimura Kiku and Tsujimoto Mari as a coping mechanism for his loneliness in school—unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps), I eventually discarded that idea and took Why I Write in a completely different direction.

In Chapter 7, Kohei was supposed to fling himself into the bathroom and realise Yukimura had vanished—an event that would have established he was an unreliable narrator. Unfortunately, around the time that chapter was supposed to be published, I began to receive a lot of feedback from other authors on Honeyfeed (some explicit, some implicit) that my constant 4th wall breaking and style of humour was incredibly arrogant to the point it made them drop the book. That was definitely not my intention. I actually thought it’d come off self-deprecating, considering I purposely chose to write in a LN style while bashing LN authors... but apparently I missed the mark. If you were one of those people and somehow found your way to the afterword, I sincerely apologise.

After realising how much anger my book was generating, I took my plot in an entirely different direction, pantsed my way through, and the result is a book that’s an amalgamation of two ideas that were never supposed to be put together. Yet somehow, I feel like I managed to end it on a decent note. As a relatively famous YouTuber would put it, Why I Write is like a flaming car crash that somehow perfectly parallel parked at the end. And just like a flaming car crash, I don't really want to touch it anymore. I'd actually like to pretend it never existed.

So, is this the end for Why I Write? Will there be a Book 2? While there won’t be a direct sequel unless I somehow end up winning the MAL contest, the adventures of Kohei and Yukimura will continue in spirit in my other LN project (which I need beta readers for, so you might be able to get it for free). Their names might not be the same, but... you’ll definitely be able to recognise them, I assure you of that.

I also wanted to add in my thoughts on a plethora of different things, like self-insert main characters, overpowered protagonists, harems, et cetera, but I feel that this afterword has run its course. I don't want to write a dissertation, to shamefully quote from my own writing.

Last but not least, if you’ve actually read till this point, thank you. From the bottom of my heart to the depths of my soul, I want to tell you that I’m immensely grateful. Whenever I tell someone in real life that I’m writing an anime-inspired story, their eyes give me a quick ‘I see’ and then they change the subject. It’s as if anime is taboo—on the level of being a criminal, even. If not for the constant support of readers, I would definitely have chosen to drop this project.

You are the reason I write. There are no good synonyms for thank you, so once again—

Thank you, and see you in another place!