"Дневник одного писателя" часть 1я 2007-2026

Summary

The narrator, Count (Graf Vokrich), looks back on nearly twenty years of writing, from childhood play and fan fiction to publishing his first book, Starfighter: Heart of the Pilot. His story illustrates how a writer’s process can change through trial, failure, and practice. He emphasizes that his experience is personal, not a universal formula.

Creative Journey

• Early imaginative play: As a child, he invented plots and acted out every character alone. Books, films, and cartoons introduced him to stories, but Pac-Man World 3 was the first game that made him feel immersed in a coherent world.
• From drawings to fan fiction: Inspired by the game, he drew characters, began seeing plots in the images, and made a comic. He later shifted to a handwritten, illustrated manuscript that grew slowly over several years. He didn’t yet think of it as a book or plan to publish it.
• Worldbuilding and influences: After getting internet access, he absorbed a wide range of books, films, games, anime, and other media. He developed a board-game setting that eventually became the foundation for a major fantasy project. Early versions were overloaded with borrowed ideas and fantasy elements; he later recognized the need to remove material that didn’t serve the story.
• Learning through rebuilding: After accidentally deleting years of notes, he reconstructed the world from memory. In the process, he recovered what mattered most and left behind unnecessary details. He later used a similar approach when a story stalled: break it down, keep the strongest parts, and assemble it again.
• Testing a story with a “pilot”: Before writing the larger series, he drafted a standalone pilot chapter to test the setting, atmosphere, characters, and their interactions. It helped clarify the project, though writing without a detailed plan led to repeated rewrites.
• Developing a writing practice: Early on, he wrote mainly when inspiration struck and often drafted without editing or organizing his process. After a difficult period, he began outlining more deliberately and adopted his “brick method”: write every day, even if only a little, to build a habit. He completed a plot outline, revised it, then drafted and edited the book.
• Experimenting with form and genre: He chose Starfighter as a simpler project for practice before returning to his more ambitious work. He wanted experience combining different genres and learned that short stories can be especially challenging because their limited length leaves less room for lore and subplots.

Advice and Lessons

• Enjoy the act of creating, not only the goal of finishing or publishing a book.
• Keep backups in several places. He now uses a cloud copy, a flash drive, and a computer copy.
• Remove worldbuilding details that don’t contribute to the story. Don’t add fantasy races or lore just because they are familiar conventions.
• Use an outline or other planning method if it helps, but treat it as a tool rather than a rule. A plan can reduce rewrites, but it won’t eliminate them.
• Consider a pilot scene or chapter as a practical test of the story’s premise, mood, characters, and world.
• Build a sustainable writing habit through regular practice. His “brick method” is to write daily, even if the amount is small.
• Don’t rush publication. Invest time in the cover, choose a pen name carefully, and arrange thorough proofreading. He regrets using a quickly generated cover and relying on his own proofreading, since authors can overlook errors in their own work.
• Make important elements of the story clear enough for readers to understand. Excessive subtlety or withholding lore can leave readers confused.
• Treat reviews as subjective opinions, not objective verdicts. He values varied responses and says the most important measure for him is whether he still likes his own book.
• Compare your progress with your past self rather than with other writers, and keep going through setbacks if writing remains meaningful to you.

The narrator also describes losing momentum, abandoning drafts, feeling discouraged by criticism and life pressures, and repeatedly changing his methods. His central conclusion is that persistence and a genuine desire to write matter more than following a supposedly perfect system. At the time of the video, he is rebuilding his daily writing habit, working on the next Starfighter installment, and considering professional cover art and submitting a finished book to a publisher.

Creators and Contributors Mentioned

• Count / Graf Vokrich — narrator and author of the video and books discussed.
• Yuri Okunev — mentioned as an example of a writing-education channel.
• Will Smith — his biography inspired the narrator’s “brick method.”
• The narrator also thanks his donors and supporters on Busty/Boosty, artists who sent him paintings for his “castle,” and his beta readers; they are not individually named.