Heartache Contract

Writing Heartache Contract was, for me, a prolonged and profound form of spiritual torture. Shaping every word felt like personally dissecting a grand tragedy. I had to stay perfectly clearheaded to control the most intense emotions. This sense of being torn apart was like playing both executioner and victim at once.

My state of mind while writing took several specific forms:

Physiological empathy: When describing a five-star heartache attack, my own chest would feel genuinely tight and sore. When writing Shen Wei breaking down in an empty room, my throat would unconsciously tighten.

The difficulty of detaching my perspective: I had to keep switching between the cold detachment of an omniscient viewpoint and the burning intensity of a character's perspective, like working with a scalpel in one hand and a branding iron in the other.

The vertigo of moral questioning: I had to confront the almost paradoxical creative ethic of using the most exquisite prose to present the cruelest aesthetics, like walking a tightrope at the edge of an abyss.

Emotional metabolism disorder: After writing a pivotal scene of intense suffering, I would enter a hollow period similar to postpartum depression. I had to force myself to reset my nerves with Bach's Cello Suites for Unaccompanied Cello.