I relocated to Berlin, Germany in the summer of 2018.
During my German A1 course, the teacher was hosting a session on German art. We were shown different paintings, and only the Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Fridrich caught my attention.
The man in the painting looks like a fine gentleman with a stick, standing on the rocks and gazing toward afar indefinitely. It gives a rather serene vibe, and this image left a mark in my mind.
Most importantly, I see myself in it.
Just gazing afar, surrounded by the calmness of nature, appreciating the magnificence discovered along the journey.
This is me.
How it started
I have always wanted to leave Hong Kong and live aboard. People in my home city should be able to somewhat understand this idea of leaving - not just for political reasons, but also for simply having a life.
Before this, I had a couple of years of full-time working experience in Hong Kong. That gave me a flavor of what it means by southeast Asian working style: the capitalistic way of thinking, workplace rules like never questioning your boss's decisions, and - most importantly - busting your ass and getting stuff done efficiently. I started with a rather administrative position in a small eCommerce company. This summer job gave me a small edge to start working in a mobile app game company as my first full-time job after graduation. After spending a couple of years there, I was bored by the day-to-day routine as it is mostly basic data entry. I had a sense of crisis because my job is very replaceable since it is merely copying and pasting things. In the meantime, I was also exposed to a fair amount of data which starts making me wonder how one gets value out of it.
Driven by passion and fear, I managed to land myself in a junior data analytics role in a rather famous food delivery company. Given the stage of the company, what was available for me was mostly commercial onboarding. While I look back today, no one actually had proper technical knowledge or know-how to onboard me properly. I was essentially thrown under the bus on day 1 and was given no choice but learn on the fly.
Some say the best way to teach someone to swim is to throw that person in the water right away - he or she would either drown or be forced to learn to swim. It was pretty much the case for me. I kept telling people those days: if you got thrown into a lion's den, you either die or survive. I survived.
The company I worked for had its headquarters in Berlin, which was partially why I chose to work there. It could be my own BBA education helping, I learned how to pitch myself to the recruiter and hiring manager in Berlin.
Somehow, I made my way to Berlin - with my own hands.
When it comes to writing
It is probably not very common to have someone from Hong Kong writing novels for 10 years.
Since 13, I started writing my first novel in Traditional Chinese, which was my mother tongue. Back in those years, novels in Traditional Chinese were largely from Taiwan. Those were mostly available on various online platforms for free. I was impressed by the idea of creating universes just with words as a teen, and I tried to do one myself.
What I didn't know is, that I went for 3 years straight up for the first story.
It was just the first draft. I spend a year afterward revising it. Then I was grossed out by the disorganization of the story, and basically re-wrote 60-70% of it for another year. In a nutshell, I spent 5 years in total on my first novel.
The title was 《異世龍皇傳》 - it is so very difficult to translate it into English without sounding lame, so I would just leave it as Traditional Chinese.
The illustration I asked my friends to help draw the cover, the title is 《難以割捨的思憶》. It can be loosely translated as "The Unforsakeable Memory".
Now I look back, this story was compiled with a lot of elements I found in my teen days: school life, my first existential crisis, my projection of love, questions about life, Hong Kong memories, video games I played (e.g. Little Fighter 2, Devil May Cry series, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky series, etc.), all sort of animes (e.g. Gurren Lagann, Black Lagoon, etc.), the Taiwanese net friends I had back in those days, and also my brief understanding of Christianity.
Afterward, I attempted to participle in a couple of writing contests. And there came other stories, most of them are not quite up to the standard I wanted for myself, only one story I am rather happy with 《第十三人－The 13th》.
This story was more under the influence of my Christianity beliefs, mixed with the Matrix style of cyberpunk expression with certain military elements. In my limited exposure, it is a rather bizarre combination in Traditional Chinese literature at least.
Having the experience from the first novel, I strongly felt the importance of planning ahead for a story. I tried to design the characters, the world they are in, the basic plots, and the key message of the story. With better planning, the skeleton of the story was way better than the first one. Also, this story was a rather short one as well so it is easier to handle.
After several uneventful stories, there comes my last unfinished trilogy: 《肋骨》(i.e. The Rib).
Thanks to Peter Jackson, the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings movies were quite a hit back in those years. I was inspired and I intended to follow through. Having the 2nd story done rather good with planning, I invested even more time and effort since this is an even bigger scale project. On top of the theme, characters, and plots, I also drafted a map of plenty of locations of interest. Then, I enriched the locations further with people of different races and the history behind them.
I wasn't patient enough to 100% finish the planning properly - I just started writing with a half-done world setup. It was okay for the first book 《晦褪日晝》. But then I started the second book 《東方夜暮》, I started struggling with "filling in the blank" for the details as those were not well designed ahead.
Since I just graduated with my degree and started working full-time, the energy and spare time required for writing novels diminished dramatically. I couldn't have juggled that many balls in my life at the time being, so I had to leave writing behind and focus on my career.
8 years later
Some may call it destiny, some may call it the universe, some may call it God - regardless of how you name it, it brings me back to writing after 8 years.
I feel like a wanderer, circling back to a place that I have been before. But this time, I have a bit more experience, which allows me to handle myself a bit better this time. Now, I have a better idea of where I want to head, and what I want out of it.
If you are reading this, you are probably someone I came across in this journey somehow. Here is an invitation, asking you to accompany me for at least some brief moments on this pathway.
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