Author's Afterword

Dear Readers,

Uhh, I know most people don’t read the afterword, myself included. *spank* Feel free to read only the first three paragraphs (excluding this one) and skim or skip the rest. lol

Thank you for reading to the end. It means a lot to me that there are some people who stayed interested enough to finish reading my story. If it’s an obligation read, I hope I didn’t bore you too much.

If you’d like to share feedback or critiques, please feel free to do so in the comments or dm. No matter which stage you’ve read until, you have my sincere and heartfelt thanks. *bows*

I want to thank Honeyfeed and MyAnimeList for hosting the contest. If it wasn’t for the contest, I wouldn’t have finished something longer than a short story. I learned a lot not just about writing, but about getting an artist for the cover, hiring editors (don’t blindly trust them!), pushing myself with a deadline, establishing writing habits, and much more. These lessons are worth more than the prize awards.

I first saw the ad for the contest on MyAnimeList in the first week of June and began coming up with ideas.

On June 11th, I started to put words on the page and wrote every day until August 8th. Yes, I kept track. Lol There were a few days when I felt like I needed a break, so I rested on some days to avoid burnout.

I knew I wouldn’t make it if I wrote willy-nilly-whenever-I felt-like-it. From my previous NaNoWriMo experiences, keeping track of my daily word count was the best motivation to reach my writing goal.

After I finished my story, I thought I’d have plenty of time to edit it for the deadline. I was wrong.

The truth was, I’d never completed anything longer than a short story before. Somehow, my story ideas always started out as something simple, then it ballooned into a saga. I gave up partway because the story was too massive. I lost interest in them. I lacked the discipline to keep at it.

Having a three-month deadline with a reasonable word count range, the contest became my training ground to force myself to bring my story to an end. Not only did it teach me writing discipline and habits, it also taught me how to pace myself, discover a new writing method, and most importantly, that I can trust my instincts to guide my writing.

It also taught me that editing takes a long time. I thought editing would be fast and easy. It certainly was for short stories. However, after a few days, when I still hadn’t made much progress. I knew something had to change.

Thankfully, I got a wonderful advice from Steward McOy on the Honeyfeed discord. By using text-to-speech, my editing sped up by 20-30%! Isn’t that amazing? Thankfully, MS Word has it built in, and I can even adjust the reading speed. After I got used to the normal reading speed, I made it just a bit faster, thus once again speeding up the editing process. Hurray!

When I started the story, I knew I would have trouble coming up with names. It would take me days just to brainstorm names that would fit my characters. I can’t write if I don’t have the names right. I didn’t have the luxury of time with the deadline. I needed to start right away.

I took inspiration from the anime Maoyu (Mao Yusha, Demon King and Hero) and adjusted it to the prose format. I was greatly surprised when I found out that Maoyu, in its original written form, only had dialogues and barely any descriptions.

In the beginning, I wasn’t sure who the Witch was. I couldn’t capture her mental state and personality clearly. The only thing I knew was that I wanted her to be a competent female who can defend herself. I was already writing the pick-up scene for comedic purposes, and it just fit right in.

Originally, the story line didn’t have the dream sequence. When I wrote the ending, the dream sequence at the end came to me, and I realized that the whole story is a dream.

And the dream loops around, garnished by inception.

The Witch dreams of her adventures when her real body is comatose. Inside her adventuring dream, she dreams of her comatose body.

It’s a never-ending dream until the day she wakes up, whenever that is.

So, I went back and added in the snippets of dream sequences throughout the story. I thought, wow, it totally fit right in with the characters having titles only. Because it’s a dream, things often become generalized and details become fuzzy.

And I thought, wow, that’s so cool that my discovery writing showed me that this whole thing is a looping dream!

Until two days ago.

I thought about it with a mind less clouded by amazement. And I realized. The protagonist waking up at the end and realizing that everything is a dream is such a cliché!

… I can only hope that the looping and inception part is what sets my story apart from other “it’s a dream” stories. X_X

The initial concept for the novel was an anti-harem comedy. The Witch has zero interest in romantic or physical attractions. As a matter of fact, she’s incapable of them because she doesn’t have a heart.

However, the Succubus, the Scholar, the Paladin, and the Fleur keep trying to win her over—cooking tasty meals, giving her flowers, taking her to breathtaking views, etc.

To all of these, she has zero reactions whatsoever.

Of course, being anti-harem, there would be no fan service and the Witch won’t fall in love with any of them in the end. It’s just a small protest of mine because I’m so sick of certain harem tropes.

The silliness in trying desperately to do the impossible while also one upping each other was what I originally planned… except the story didn’t want to go that way. lol

I never knew I was so terrible at writing romantic or lovely-dovey stuff.

Partway through, I realized I can barely make sparks between the Witch and the Succubus. Therefore, I definitely won’t be able to handle multiple romantic interests. Maybe in the future, when I get better at writing characters, I’ll revisit this anti-harem concept.

I created the characters based on the stereotypical harem interests.

Scholar, the glasses wearing handsome smart guy.

Succubus, the flirtatious playboy playgirl and the yuri one, except it didn’t turn out yuri… though the Witch honestly doesn’t care about Dephinicus’s gender as long as it’s Dephinicus.

Paladin, all-rounder, normal, good guy with some oomph.

Fleur the pretty, gentle, always smiling, and the supportive one. I wanted to add some gender identity diversity… not sure if I did it properly though… I’m sorry if I offended anyone!!!

So as you can tell, the final product is completely different than the initial concept. I just went with the flow and wrote whatever came to mind. I think it turned out better this way.

If you’ve read through all my ramblings, you’re amazing! Thank you very much for staying, and I hope that you’ll be safe and healthy wherever you are.

May happiness always accompany you,

Joy always finds you,

Strength and wisdom never leave you,

And may you find preciousness even in the most mundane things.

Sincerely,

Westshore

P.S. A little advertising to show my gratitude for Steward McOy. If you want to read about a story with a magic-wielding cat boy, I recommend you check out his contest entry, The Cat-Eared Historian Mage on the Crumbling Planet. Kitty ears, awwwww