What did Utsudo want to be before becoming a novelist?In elementary school, Hoshin Engi made her want to be a manga artist; in junior high she switched to wanting to be an illustrator, while writing novels all along. After her mother passed away in her senior year of high school and she got into university through early admission, she wrote the 350,000-word Deadly Partners, which unexpectedly became the start of her novelist career; her debut work was Otaku Mage. She says her true dream is to be someone who passes on stories.

Translated from Utsudo’s original Chinese column.

Before becoming a novelist: dreaming of being a manga artist

　　Let’s go back to my elementary school days.

　　As a kid I was a TV child, often watching anime on TV but rarely reading manga. Later, thanks to my classmates’ corrupting influence (?), I fell in love with my first Japanese manga, Ryu Fujisaki’s Hoshin Engi, then followed the anime too. After that I started consuming tons of Japanese manga and anime and was deeply captivated.

　　Back then I thought: ah, when I grow up, I want to be a creator who can make something this amazing —I want to be a manga artist!

　　But at the same time, I was already writing novels. Around third or fourth grade, I wrote a novel of over 100,000 words, just very casually, full of all sorts of emoticons. It’s way too much of a dark past, so let’s just forget it XDDD

　　

　　Then, with the fantasy of becoming a manga artist, I started drawing manga in notebooks, and even properly bought manga-drawing tools and professional paper. Just holding them made me feel so cool XD

　　I had an allowance back then, but of course not much, and I had to agonize between snacks and showing-off (?) tools. For an elementary schooler, what torment!

　　But buying professional gear doesn’t mean much if your skills don’t improve. Maybe I just didn’t have much talent — I drew and drew but never finished anything. Plus I always started with huge epics without planning, so of course my works died young QQ

　　I still have my manga, but it’s the kind of dark past that makes even me blush to open, so skip!

My junior high dream: becoming an illustrator

　　Next came junior high.

　　Maybe realizing I wasn’t suited to the long haul of manga, I started wanting to just draw pictures — a single image, which is more like illustration. That’s right, this was my next dream —becoming an illustrator!

　　At the same time, I kept writing novels online on and off, tried short pieces, and eventually completed my first short story with a proper beginning and end.

　　Back to illustration: in junior high, I loved doodling whether in class or on breaks — in class in my textbooks, on breaks in sketchbooks from the stationery store. Classmates liked to gather around to watch me draw, followed by a wave of reservations.

　　Like whose turn the next picture would be, or giving them the ones they liked, which they’d put under their desk mats or take home to keep. I was really happy back then — it satisfied quite a bit of my vanity XD

　　Though a few years later I happened to see the pictures I drew back then…

　　Uh, classmates, were you just being especially nice to me (covers face

How I became a novelist

　　In high school I still wrote on and off but drew less, and the dreams I’d clung to faded without my noticing.

　　Schoolwork was heavy then, and every day I was preparing for endless tests. In my toughest year, senior year, my mother fell ill, and I also faced the entrance exams. Dreams had to be set aside.

　　Later, my mother passed away, the exams were over, and my place at university was confirmed.

　　Since I got in through early admission, I had several months of free time while everyone else prepared for the general exams. So I decided to seriously write a long story — to record my longing for my mother and my once lost and confused self. I wrote about 350,000 words and finished it during the winter break of my first year of university.

　　The story Deadly Partners unexpectedly became my path to becoming a novelist. I submitted it and quickly got a contract, but it was shelved for four years before finally being published. Instead, Otaku Mage, my second long series contracted with Mikazuki, became my debut.

　　By the way, I got the rights to Otaku Mage back a while ago — time flies XD

　　I’ll revamp it and add the three volumes’ worth of content that was cut before, maybe with some illustrations or four-panel comics, and present it to everyone in its complete form. Stay tuned >w<

　　In university, though, I bought a drawing tablet on sale, and besides novels I drew a lot during that time. I drew plenty but didn’t improve much — maybe I really lacked talent. But I was having fun back then, and often drew until it got dark without realizing.

My true dream: being someone who passes on stories

　　Ever since I connected with publishers, my dream quietly became being a novelist, and before I knew it I’d come a long way. I’ll keep pursuing this dream, though I might add some skills and more identities — YouTuber, illustrated-essay author and so on.

　　Only now do I understand that what I want to be isn’t just one identity, but someone who passes on stories.

Passing on my creations and sharing them with everyone— I think that’s my true dream, and I’m still living it out to this day.

　　Keep going, fellow creators —this is for me too XD

FAQ

Further reading (in Chinese)

• Previous: #62 (in Chinese)
• Next: #64 (in Chinese)
• Start from the beginning: #01 — Utsudo’s debut
• Column introduction
• Utsudo’s books

About the author

Utsudo is a Taiwanese light novelist and novelist VTuber with more than ten years in the industry and 40 commercially published print books. Her novel 《遺失的情書》 received a 2022 Ministry of Culture youth creative award. The 《嘿！聽說妳在鬼島當作家》 series records her experiences as a novelist in Taiwan.

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