Final Words about Yuzu, thoughts, writing advice, and the...future!

If you've made it to this point, either you read the entire novel and enjoyed it, didn't enjoy it but decided to keep reading it out of commitment, or you just skipped to this chapter to read this, either way, I am truly grateful. Any writer's dream is for people to read what they have written; an idea they had been given or came up with, decided to put it to paper and publish it. Exposing themselves and their work to criticism, scrutiny, joy and on the hopeful occasion, inspiration for the next writer or simple pleasure for the avid reader.

 I was writing another novel at the time I started Yuzu and had been on Honeyfeed for a couple of years, reading, seeing the contests of becoming a light novel writer motivated me to start and I thought, "Why not?" and so, a couple of years ago, I started one, a story. I never finished it. 

It's funny because I had just finished watching Bakuman, an anime about writing and manga, which I'm sure is the reason most of us are on this website and became inspired to write a story myself. Since I always loved to read. It's a natural progression or at least it seems like one to me. Anyways, I came up with like, maybe, 30 different ideas for a story and went with one and wrote about 3 chapters. I showed my brother, ecstatic after having written, technically, my first portion of a novel. I told him to read it, even though he's not a huge fan of reading, and after he came back to me in my room, the first thing he told me was that it was "trash" and it sounded too much like "me". 

Obviously, it hurt. But behind that, was a very valuable lesson I took as a writer, which was to let the characters breathe and not to insert too much of your opinion into what they do, say or how they interact in their world. Because essentially, we're just the storytellers of their lives. Not the other way around. It goes without saying that our ideas, beliefs, interests, and influences will shape the nature of our story and it in turn makes what kind of story we will write, that much is true. But what I am referring to is not to let your personal voice overshadow the writing voice, which is the style of your book, novel, comic, article, whatever piece of literature you decide to write. From that point, is when I started to write a novel I am still working on, where I truly started to understand what it meant to be a writer. 

The next year, the contest passed me by, and I was virtually inactive until the following year, when the contest came about again. I always had this idea to write a story such as Yuzu, and when I had the opportunity to write it for this contest, I thought it was perfect timing. I stopped writing my other novel and I started Yuzu. I thought I would finish this story really quickly and get back to my other book that I was writing, but the world of this one captured me. 

Actually, I started way too late for the contest and after reading some other submissions and seeing the pacing of my story, I thought that it would be better if I just wrote it at my own pace, publishing it as often as I could. It did wonders for me. I was able to apply myself and by having a deadline, it made me write more often than I had in the past year. I realized the contest and the idea of winning something like that wasn't important to me, not as much as writing a good story that people would enjoy reading. I think I achieved that. Regardless of the views, comments, responses or lack thereof. 

The idea of a person traveling the world looking for fruit and finding something more, interested me and I wanted to see where I could take it or rather, where the story would take me.

You'll know if you've advanced as a writer when you can go back and read old stuff and thoroughly enjoy it, as if you had never written it. Because to write to your own taste and surpass your former self is what it means to improve, which is a totally different thing than what it means to try and impress. And there's steps, right? Or at least I felt those steps as to how I knew I was getting better.

At first when I read old work, I wanted to skip it. The idea of reading it became hard and tasking because I found so many things unenjoyable about it. Not the technical ability or the writing schemes, so on. No. That's not how I measure something as being well written. All it has to do, is, be interesting. It's subjective what is and what is not to me, but if something has that spark to it, you will feel it. It's more of an intuition than any writing skill. I personally am not a fan of many fantasy types of stories, but I've read plenty that were interesting, why?

Because they were interesting. 

A cool character, a nice atmosphere, a slick style of storytelling. All it needs is a good quality that people can enthrall themselves into and you have a reader who is willing to follow characters that you've written.

The second step is when you read it and don't immediately stop reading or want to skip over it but start to notice the more "technical" things. Showing, not telling. Finding a better way to say certain things. Cutting out unnecessary or repetitive dialogue or descriptions. The advancement of the plot, the payoff to foreshadowing. Better choice of vocabulary, knowing what you are trying to convey. These things become very apparent, and you are more able to correct them.

The third is interesting because ironically, after being able to understand what makes "a good story", technically speaking, you start to disregard the formality of it and write to your tastes. Understand what kind of books you like and what kind of stories you would want to read. Now you have the ability to make it reality. You see the skills as tools, not defining characteristics as to what will make a story great. You'll understand that it is subjective and not everyone will enjoy what you have written or see the greatness in it, but you will. Forming an identity as a writer.

The fourth is saying, "I would buy this book" or becoming a fan of your work and confident in what you have written or what you will write. You know what you do well. The audience you are trying to reach. The style of writer you are. And notice, none of these things equate to monetary success or fame. It's impossible to know that. And the ones that do, are lucky. But, when you notice these things, you will have assuredness that you can write anything you want and be able to capture the attention of the people you want to read it. Regardless of its "success" because like we established: everything is subjective when it comes to creative writing.

To enjoy something you have written and do it your way, not be original, because nothing is, but rather accomplish telling the story and ending it in a way that satisfies and makes sense to you. It's a great achievement. Many people speak, dream and lament over writing or not writing a book, but what separates the dreamers and doers are the ones that finish and see it through. 

Anyone and everyone can be and is a writer, but not many are authors. The only way to know if something is a story or not, is if it is concluded. I hope many people share that feeling of completing something they have worked really hard on. It's one of those things that are the true pleasures of life. I know not everyone has the opportunity to write a book due to life circumstances, so I feel lucky to even have gotten this far and the fact that people actually read Yuzu, some people until the very end, makes me feel elated with joy and gratitude for their viewership. 

Yuzu to me is special because it is the first novel that I've completed; and I told it the way I think it should've been told. I improved my ability to write, developed deeper storylines, added different themes and concepts, character development, many things. Obviously, there are things I would still like to improve such as scene setting, and certain ideas and plot points being explained more profoundly, to make it have that "ah" moment, or it having those deeper call back points. 

There's a lot more to tell with a story like Yuzu and in the future, I'd definitely like to continue it; just to see how far I can extend my ideas. I also believe that I will add a prologue and an epilogue to give certain things more depth to the things that I know but didn't write. But if I was to never write anything else regarding Yuzu, it ended in a way that I find pleasing and worth the read in my opinion. Whether you like it or not, agree or disagree, that is your choice. But what matters is that I completed it and got the opportunity to tell a story as fun to write as this one.

It's likely that I will edit it and change some things, nothing major, but possibly add more details and synthesize the story a little more. To make it even more cohesive. My dream would be to do that and actually publish it as a hard copy book and put it on some other web novel sites, maybe even turning it into another form of media such as a comic or live-action show or film. But I also think a book is the perfect medium for it. I now have more time to read some other stories on here and every time, I find something more and more interesting, which is something every writer should do: read. 

It's impossible or at the very least naive to believe that you have the best ideas. You write the best. No one writes as interestingly as you. If you believe that, not only are you limiting your own entertainment, but your own writing. It will suffer because you will have only ever thought that you were the best there ever was. Read others stuff. See what others do better than you, maybe you do some things better than others. Everyone has different goals and parameters as to how they measure themselves as writers. Some compare themselves to the "greats" (quotations because greats are subjective as always, but popular thought), some want money, views, respect, enjoy the craft, and others like me, just want to get better. 

I never want to write the same story twice.

That's just a personal goal and idea that I have. I believe it was Radiohead, a cutting-edge band, that said when you figure something out, it doesn't work anymore. You can of course still enjoy it, feel nostalgia from the times that you created it, but that feeling is lightning in the bottle.

 I can't write Yuzu again. But I can continue the story. I could write something else. Try writing about an unfamiliar subject, different writing perspective, improve my ability so I can recapture that feeling that I felt while writing this, but in a different way. Life has an interesting way of giving us the same things wrapped up in a new experience, changing the way we look at it. Even though, nothing really changed at all.

Maybe one day you'll see Yuzu in a bookstore or someone reading it outside in a park, on a television or drawn out as a manga or something. Maybe it'll only ever be read online for the few that come across it, but one thing that I think will always be true is that if you happen to cross paths with it, 

At the very least, it will give you something to think about.

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Thanks for reading!