Written interview with 'the Book Addict 25'

Hello, dear Patrons and (hopefully) future Patrons! I've been in touch with a book reviewer on Instagram and she asked me for a written interview with a 10 questions. It took me a while to answer all of them, but I finally finish answering all of those questions! SO, I wanted to share it with you all on Patreon. Hope you'll enjoy it!

Instagram of the reviewer: @thebookaddict25

Q1. How did you first discover your passion for writing?

That’s a long story with enough content to write a whole book! But if I had to summarize it, it’d go like this: my mother was (and still is) a book lover and wanting to transmit that love to my younger brother and me, opted to read us stories before bedtime. And it worked! Although I’d be incapable of telling you precisely how many books I’ve gone through since then, I can confidently say that it’s a colossal number!

Now, reading guided my foot into the door, but I only started writing much later. Although I had some inclination when I was a teenager, my self-esteem was too low at the time to dare take the plunge. A few years ago, however, after going through and overcoming some tough moments in my life, I felt confident enough to try crafting my own stories. So, I did. I’m not sure about others, but for me, the trigger was wanting to write stories I would want to read myself. In my eyes, so many books are good but miss being great, because they lack a few details, whether it be mishandled romance, weak power system, etc. Some problems are objective and others subjective, but it doesn’t change the fact that it makes me want to fix them. In a way, crafting my own stories is a bit like bringing a version of all those stories to my readers’ view, with my own ideas and sensibilities. It’s both fulfilling and terrifying at the same time, but even though I experienced some difficult moments and almost quit writing altogether a few times, I would risk it all over again in a heartbeat, no matter how many times I would need to. The rewards are truly worth the risks.

Q2. How would you describe your writing style in a few words?

I would use the word ‘planned intuitiveness’. When I was younger, I used to overthink everything to the point of making myself sick, so when I started writing a previous (unfinished) book, I went the complete opposite way and wrote things as it came to my head with so little planning that I ended up giving up on that story, not because it was inherently bad, but because it was too scattered for my taste.

After a few years of experience, I now try to balance planning and intuition as much as I can by outlining the main events in my story while allowing myself to change things that don’t ‘feel’ right as I write. Whether it be characters previously supposed to die but staying alive, the existence of a potential lover for the Main Character that become a secondary character’s lover instead, or the appearance of an entire ‘evil’ organization to explain a small seemingly innocuous plot point, everything can be subject to change as long as it fits in my story and my universe. Order to guide, Chaos to create the unexpected. Balance the two, and you will get a great story.

Q3. How did you come up with the title for your book, "A Knight’s Journey"?

As with my writing process, it’s a bit of an ‘unexpected plan’. Knights, or at least the image we have of them, have always fascinated me. When I hear the word Knight, I envision some kind of Divine Warrior on Earth. Divine because of their absolute human quality like compassion, kindness, and loyalty, which are unfortunately seen as weaknesses by a majority of people nowadays, but what I see as a human’s greatest strength. Of course, their compassion and kindness don’t make them victims, and their loyalty will not force them to go against their inner beliefs. Those warriors are both morally and physically powerful, pretty much the apex of what humans can become. Naturally, that vision is mine and not what Knights were truly like in the Middle Ages. But it’s an image I really like, and that’s why I not only used the word Knight in the title but also as the Main Character’s last name in his previous life. It’s a goal to strive toward along his Cultivation ‘Journey’.

Q4. What emotions did you aim to evoke in readers through your characters?

That’s a difficult question. I have so many things I want to transmit through my characters’ adventures. But if I had to choose one thing, it would be the idea of ‘Courage’. Through Demian, my Main Character, I want to make my readers understand that the journey to transcending oneself (learning a skill, improving a relationship, etc.) is unending and filled with obstacles. You will fall many times, sometimes so hard that getting up feels too difficult, and the idea of ending the whole thing is often almost irresistible. Looking at how long you have to go, what you have to go through, all of that will weigh like a mountain on your mind. ‘It’s too hard! I can’t do it anymore!’ Those words will appear in your head too many times to count.

But the pain is just temporary. After each cycle of falling and standing up, you will grow mentally stronger. After a while, those unattainable mountains will turn into pebbles, and the journey that used to be excruciatingly hard now feels so easy that the process becomes enjoyable. To sum it up, the journey of life is a journey of courage. Through challenges, falling as many times as needed and standing up every time, no matter how hard and painful it is. This is true courage, and this is what I want to tell my readers. Nobody is born strong, and even the strongest people have gone through despairing times that would have broken others. But they held on and overcame those events, and so can you, no matter how impossible it seems. Happiness is born through your own Courage, not given through others’ Mercy.

Q5. How long did it take you to complete the book?

2 whole years! It was quite a journey, let me tell you. From the ‘Universe’ creation to the final editing, it took me 2 years, although the process was a bit… ‘chaotic’? First, when I started writing, I wasn’t doing it full time, so time stretched. I’m also fully independent, so everything had to be done by yours truly (Cover creation, edition, Patreon page, etc.), making it a lot more time-consuming than ‘normal’ contracted authors. Add to that the fact that I’m much slower when writing than a lot of other writers, especially those with decades of experience, and the ‘thickness’ of my book (1200 pages in the PDF version), then you can see why it took me so long. From what I gathered, most authors don’t take as much time as I did. I think it all depends on each person’s specific situation. Now, I’m writing full time, so although it’s a bit scary financially (my only income is from Patreon (5€/Month) and the sales of my book (8€), so I hope many interested readers will help me continue my writing journey), it’s also much more exciting and I have much more time to dedicate to crafting the best story I can.

Q6. How did you approach editing and revising the manuscript?

As I mentioned earlier, I’m fully independent, so editing and revising have to be done by me. Just like my writing process, the process is fluid, but if I had to divide it into steps, it would go like this: First, finish a chapter. Second, use Grammarly, which is an AI tool to correct grammar mistakes, on the whole chapter. That step can be tricky for those like me whose mother tongue is not English, since AI tools are not only somewhat inaccurate, but they can also remove some words they consider unnecessary, but in reality, add a layer of meaning to your text. So, use it smartly. Third, I post free chapters every week on a few platforms (Royalroad, Webnovel, Scribblehub, and Wattpad), and I’m super lucky to have a few dedicated readers who, just because they enjoy the story so much, help point out the mistakes I made. Once I correct those, there aren’t many, if any, of them left. The last step, at least for Book 1 of ‘A Knight’s Journey’, occurred when I finished writing around 2/3 to ¾ of the book. At that point, while still writing the end of the book, I also reread every single chapter to see if I wanted to modify some things, using Grammarly in case the software caught some new mistakes, and corrected everything. Once every chapter was free of mistakes, I fiddled with the AI tool of Canva to get some visual assets, then used them in photopea (A free equivalent to Photoshop) to create the current cover, and after using the editing tool from Campfire (website I use to store my manuscripts), the eBook was created!

It wasn’t easy and I fumbled many times, but now I’m able to do many things that I wouldn’t have if I went the ‘normal’ route, so I’m glad I did it that way.

Q7. What part of the writing process do you enjoy the most?

Besides editing and revising, I enjoy everything else. But if I had to be super specific, it would be the Main Character’s interactions with his loved ones. I don’t know why, but it feels so easy and natural to write. It’s as if I’m not the one typing, but am instead guided by some higher presence in a trance-like state. When that happens, hours can pass by, and I would only feel like a few minutes had gone by. Now that I explain it, I realize it sounds strange, but I assure you it’s the truth! The mind is truly a magical place!

Q8. How has writing and publishing this book changed you personally or professionally?

Those 2+ years of constant challenges remade me almost completely. Not that my core personality changed, but my Inner Strength grew to an unbelievable degree. Because of how differently I saw the world, I always had difficulty integrating with the ‘system’. I was a kind of social outcast, if you will. Although years of working on removing those self-deprecating thoughts like ‘I’m worthless’, ‘Nobody cares about me’, etc., helped me get a lot better, writing a book and publishing it was still a colossal challenge. I had to deal with criticism from a few of my family and random strangers on those platforms I post my free chapters on, ‘financial doubts’ (Is it viable financially?), ‘skill doubts’ (Are my writing skills good enough to continue?), etc. I compared pretty much every part of my writing journey to all those successful authors, which made me feel terrible, especially at the beginning when I had little experience writing. I was slower, earned no money, made so many more mistakes, and my story (in my mind) was both a lot less exciting and with themes too controversial (Blood-related Romance) to make it work. Many times, I thought about giving up, but I never did. What kept me going was this question: “If I stop writing, what am I supposed to do instead?” After 30+ years of life, I had finally found something that I was enjoying so much that hours spent on it felt like minutes, and it was also (potentially) financially viable. Knowing the alternative, which was finding a job I despise to earn money I’d spend on things that would be used to distract me from the emptiness of my life, my reaction was always the same: Persevering! I had the firm belief that those painful moments would end, and I would get the reward for my perseverance. Now that I have published my first book and started writing my second one, all those doubts have vanished, and even if I had to go through the same process again, I’d be able to deal with all those difficulties easily. I’m still not earning much, if anything, from my book, which hopefully will change in the next few weeks, but my personal growth is already an incredible reward.

Q9. If you could tell your younger writer-self anything, what would it be?

Every master starts as an apprentice, so don’t be scared of making mistakes. Practice makes you grow faster than theory, so write as much as you can. Reaching perfection is impossible because perfection doesn’t exist. Beauty lies in those small flaws that make us and our creation human, so keep writing with your Heart. Success is different for everyone, so define what success means to you. If you (mostly) enjoy the process and your intuition tells you it’s right, then you picked the right path, and you’ll eventually get to where you’re supposed to be and do what you’re supposed to do.

Q10. How do you handle criticism and reviews, both positive and negative?

In my experience, those are the highest hurdles in the writing process, at least when you begin writing your first book. Even the tamest criticism can destroy one’s motivation to write further, depending on how sensitive the writer is. After all, creative people tend to be more sensitive than the average person, which is why they instinctively want to create in the first place. I’m not sure about everyone else, but I subconsciously linked my work with my self-worth. In other words, if someone said that my story was bad, I took it as if I, myself, was bad, which is the worst thing to do in that case. It’s something that happened a few times since I received some harsh comments from the readers on those free platforms I mentioned previously. The hardest to bear, I think, are not the insulting comments but those genuine, or what you feel are genuine, criticisms/reviews. Because insults are aimed at you in particular, it’s (relatively) easy to dismiss them as trolls. But targeted comments on your novel can be painful if you can’t accept that it’s okay to make mistakes. If you asked me how to deal with it, I’d say it’s a process. Remember that it’s fine to make mistakes. People are not out to get you, and most of them even want to help you get better at writing. No story is perfect, after all. Also, remember that if your story is liked by everyone, that means no one really likes it. Because everyone’s taste is different, some people will enjoy reading your book while others won’t. It’s life, and it’s fine that way.

That’s more or less my thought process when I read those criticisms/reviews.