Love Burned, She Rose Unscathed
Chapter 136

big! I think we both need to calm down. Fine, I have to go."

"Why on earth would you say my work is garbage? Do you have any idea how insulting that is to a writer? Yeah, you're the editor, and I should trust your pro opinions and market know-how, but that style just ain't my strong suit. Even if I had to change, this jump is just too Madge hung up, meeting Roseanne's puzzled gaze with a forced smile. "It's nothing, just the publishing house editor."

"Are you okay?"

"Yep," Madge chuckled, wrapping her arm around Roseanne. "The traditional publishing sector has been in a slump these past few years. Many best-selling authors have shifted to writing web novels, making a killing. Of course, some couldn't adapt and got washed out. The editor hopes I can switch to web novels, too, but I'm still on the fence about it."

"Web novels?" Roseanne sounded surprised. "What genre?"

Madge's smile wavered slightly. "Romantic urban fiction." Roseanne was at a loss for words.

Madge was renowned for her mystery novels. When the mystery genre was booming, she burst onto the scene with her book The Weapon, selling half a million copies in a year. Then she followed it up with the thriller Abandoned Village School, setting new sales records. That year was dubbed The Year of Madge, with her two books, across five volumes, dominating the annual sales charts.

And it was this very editor who had approached her back then. After a while, Madge found the editor to be insightful and visionary. Moved by the editor's persistent effort, she signed a ten-year contract in one go. That editor had edited, published, and sold all Madge's works since then.

But the bigger success Madge was hoping for didn't happen. Instead, she seemed to have hit a creative wall. Her ideas were rejected instantly for not fitting the market or lacking appeal. Finally, when she came up with an acceptable concept and was eager to start writing, the editor called to say her outline wouldn't work and needed changes.

After revising her outline according to the editor's suggestions, Madge lost the urge to write.

She was troubled by that. Was it a case of writer's block?

She had plenty of stories, ideas, and thoughts in her mind. Was it a matter of having the spirit but not the strength, replaceing it hard to translate thought into text?

Yet, she maintained her writing habit each day. Over ten years, she accumulated nearly a million words, but these were all concepts rejected by the editor, written off as practice.

They were never published. Aside from Norris, she hadn't shown them to anyone else. It wasn't as if these ten years were entirely unproductive.

Following the editor's suggestion, she wrote a coming-of-age novel, as the publishing company wanted to capitalize on the boom in TV adaptations of such stories. At that time, coming-of-age dramas were all the rage.

But that wasn't Madge's thing, so the writing process was super tough and took forever. It took her two years to finish. By the time it was officially published, another year had passed, and the trend in television had already shifted. Coming-of-age stories had become clichéd "navel-gazing literature." Madge was heavily criticized for it.

Long-time readers accused her of "pandering to the market, reaping what she sowed," while critics slammed her for "promoting underage romance, problematic values."

Netizens were merciless, saying she had run out of ideas and was obsessed with love stories, abandoning her roots in mystery and thriller writing to churn out coming-of-age novels.

Some even concocted conspiracy theories, claiming she had sold her pen name and the person writing under it had long since changed.