Oniisanbomber's Blog

Starting "I Met You After the End of the World Volume 5"
and Lessons from My Professor at the University of Warwick

8th of September, 2025

September 8, 2025, marks the day when I started writing Volume 5 of "I Met You After the End of the World".

Back in 2021, I never anticipated that I Met You After the End of the World would become my most popular series. It was a simple story about the end of the world and two people from two completely different parts of society meeting after the world had ended—two people who would’ve never met had the world not ended.

It has been over four years, almost five years, since then. My dear reader, you have accompanied Daisuke and Sayaka on this journey ever since, so I thought it would be only right to take you on the journey of the process of writing Volume 5, the final volume.

As of writing this blog post, I have just written the first 1000 words for Volume 5. Every writer has their own creative process. Some people can write 4000 words a day. Others write just 1000 words or fewer. For me, the first 1000 words are the most important. They are the start of the story, the first words the reader will read. These first 1000 words are essentially like a movie trailer for the rest of the book. They set the stage. These first 1000 words don’t need to summarize the whole story per se, but rather, they need to contain the tone that will carry through the story.

And out of the first 1000 words, the first paragraph is the most important. And there, the first sentence is the most important.

I still remember back in 2021, I was hiking in the hills when the words “What is the best thing about the end of the world?” suddenly came to me out of nowhere while I was resting. And from that one single sentence, the entire story unfolded.

The creative process for writing a book comes in two parts for me.

The first sentence (or the first couple of lines) needs to come to me in a moment of pure inspiration. I need to be walking around, taking a shower or sitting around, doing nothing and then these first precious words will come to mind. If those words don’t come to mind, then I can’t start writing the book.

But after those first couple of words have come to mind, it is time to sit down and just grind on with the rest of the book until it is done.

If I relied on pure inspiration for all 65,000 words, then the book would never get done.

But it is important that the foundation of the book comes from a seed of pure inspiration. That is what makes the story feel “real” in my mind.

In the case of Volume 5, I had an outline for the entire story for about half a year, but those precious opening words refused to come to mind. Without that seed of inspiration to start off the story, I couldn’t start writing anything.

And then on the morning of September 8, 2025, it suddenly came to mind.

Those opening lines are still quite unpolished, but please take a look.

Nee nee~

You there. Come over here.

Take this broom and help me sweep the leaves.

Why should you help me?

Because there is nothing else to do.

Right, there you have it! The first preview of Volume 5!

For long-time readers, you can probably guess the context for this opening scene.

While doing my Master's in Writing at the University of Warwick, one of my professors said, “It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just needs to be done.”

She writes incredibly quickly. She doesn’t sit on an idea for long. She develops the idea while writing. She doesn’t like the “gardening approach” where the writer won’t write until the idea is perfect in their head and then spends months, if not years, fixing the draft. Her discipline comes in the form of “just get it done.”

It took me more than a year to fully understand what she meant by that.

The best book is a book that is done.

During my master's program, I learned that there are far too many writers with far too many manuscripts that are halfway finished and languishing on their Google Drive.

Usually they start writing with a burst of inspiration and passion that fades quickly and then they stop writing the book at around 20,000 words.

I remember reading in a book that Lee Child said that the first 1000 words are easy and the rest of the book is a grind to the finish line.

That is why I value the advice of “just getting it done” by my professor so much.

If you never get the book done, then no one can ever read it. If you never get it done, then you can’t ever improve as a writer. Even if the first draft is terrible, you can learn a lot from it, as opposed to a half-finished draft with no conclusion.

This is the first blog post in a series of blog posts I want to write on the creative process of writing the final volume of “I Met You After the End of the World” and the lessons I learned from the various masters I studied under during my student years.

I’m also planning on offering my editing services and consultations! Check out my "Services" page for more details! I hope we can work together! :)

—Oniisanbomber