Does getting accepted on your first submission mean you’re a genius, or is that overconfidence?No. When a major publisher picked up Deadly Partners, which Utsudo wrote in her first year of university, she once thought she was a genius — and only later realized it was just luck. She believes authors who keep publishing don’t turn out a masterpiece every time; rather, each work maintains a certain quality. In any profession, you need to learn humbly and keep improving.

Translated from Utsudo’s original Chinese column.

I once thought I was a genius

　　　Everyone is more or less a bit narcissistic, and in the novel world you’ll find it’s even more so.

　　Let me use myself as an example. Thinking back, my debut long work Deadly Partners, which I wrote in my first year of university, was immediately picked up by a big publisher I’d long admired. I was so shocked that I even wondered if I’d been targeted by a scam ring.

　　At the time, friends and family, as well as friends who also wrote, all thought I’d surely rise straight to the top and become a famous author — and so did I.

　　Back then, I truly thought I was a once-in-a-century genius.

　　I felt great about myself, like the chosen protagonist of a story, crushing everyone with innate talent from the start — first conquering the Taiwanese market, then the Chinese-language market, and finally venturing internationally to become a worldwide bestselling author.

　　Of course, later I ran into all sorts of harsh realities. Slap after slap, I came to deeply understand that I’d just been lucky and happened to hit the right direction — it had nothing to do with genius XD

Overconfidence common in the novel world

　　Maybe it’s because novelists create a new world, and if this entirely personal fantasy is objectively accepted — say, signed by a publisher,　　or loved by many readers — what a sense of accomplishment that is!

　　Because of this, observing along the way, I’ve found that overconfident people often appear in the novel world…

　　I won’t discuss those with big heads whose ambitions outstrip their actual work. I’m talking about writers who have actually debuted — and not about fame, just purely about “overflowing confidence.”

Continued publishing depends on consistent quality

　　Frankly, works published on the market should basically all have passed a certain bar that makes investors willing to fund them. And authors who keep surviving in the spotlight must have some distinct strength that lets them keep publishing.

　　Say a work needs an overall score of 85 or above to reach the publishing bar. Apart from especially outstanding works, the vast majority land around 85.Being called an expert in a field isn’t because every piece they produce is a masterpiece, but because every piece is at least of a certain standard.

　　In other words, an author may publish many, many works, among which there might occasionally be a gem scoring 95 or near 100 that becomes their breakout work. But being able to keep publishing means their works maintain a certain level of quality, building a reputation until an exceptional work comes along and gives them a chance to hit it big. In today’s world, though, it’s also quite possible to stay middling your whole life.

　　A so-called genius would write one book and become famous worldwide, then lie back and collect all sorts of rights and adaptation fees — ahem ahem ahem, okay, that’s too unrealistic, rejected.

　　Plus, with the book market in a slump, achieving that is just too hard.

Stop learning and you decline

　　Yet some authors think readers just don’t appreciate or accept their favorite works, or even think publishers are out to get them, or feel they’re already so good they don’t need to improve — without noticing they keep writing similar things, with quality steadily declining…

　　Actually, I think in any profession you need to learn humbly and keep improving. Every skill has room to grow; learning is endless.The moment you stop learning, you start to decline.

　　Besides, true geniuses are extremely rare. If you really were a heaven-sent prodigy, then even with your very first book you’d probably move almost every reader who read it, so much that they couldn’t sleep without writing a recommendation, then sweep every major ranking with rave reviews, jump to the big screen, and become internationally famous —

　　But such people are truly rare — the odds of being hit by comets twice in a row are probably higher. Wake up — you’re really not a genius. And of course, neither am I.

　　But you can still build achievements througheffort— right?

FAQ

Further reading (in Chinese)

• Previous: #80 (in Chinese)
• Next: #82 (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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