What We All Feared Would Happen:Announcement
Hello, everyone. Here we are, seven months of absence without so much a note on the nightstand, and now I show up. The answer to my absence has a few main reasons with their own smaller reasons, so I'll explain those first before getting to the heart of this author's note. I never understood why people did these in their stories and I never thought I'd do one myself. Sure, at the beginning or end of the chapter was fine, but the whole chapter? I don't agree with it. There's plenty of other ways to let people know about your story or whatever without using a whole chapter for an author's note. Especially when they were never removed afterwards. If you're going to let people know your story is going to be delayed, fine, but at least replace the A/N with the next chapter when you do update. Otherwise it breaks the flow of the story. "This is a really great story, next chapter! Oh, an author's note? Darn, well I guess- Wait another chapter? Sweet! What was the last chapter about?" Plus, if you've moved past your "hiatus" or whatever you want to call it, the A/N is no longer necessary. I think it'd be better if the A/N was a note on your profile or something similar. But seeing my own attempt at that... I understand why people put the bait next to the trap. Forgive the metaphor, I don't mean to insinuate I'm doing anything similar. But I understand why people put A/N in for a whole chapter when there's no other way for people to notice. Perhaps I have no room to talk, but I'm getting off topic.
Moving on, my first reason for this long absence was essentially I was very busy with my life. Graduation, employment, as well as internal family struggles. I couldn't find time or make time to sit down and write without some other interruption. After graduation it was immediately, "Well, schooling is done, better go and find something to do with your life or you'll be poor and homeless and a waste of space and resources." At that time, I was still writing, but it grew harder as every time I turned around my family was harping at me to get a job. Once I got one, it was difficult to adjust to a schedule that allowed me time to myself, especially since I didn't even have regular hours. Working different shifts different days was really straining and I lost a lot of motivation. Every day I had to work it seemed like that was all I could do that day. It was wake up, have a few hours to myself, go to work, prepare for tomorrow and sleep so I can wake up for work tomorrow. I felt terrible each day, it seemed all I did was work, eat, and sleep. And people do this as a living? Why? What was the point of working for a living if you stopped living? You didn't do anything other than work. The days I had off felt god-sent, it was the only time I could do anything. This was all just adjusting to the job, I know. But even then, with my limited free time, why spend such a luxury on a story I had lost motivation to write?
Secondly, I felt really unhappy with the story. Reading it myself, chapter for chapter, the same you all do, I found it almost painful. The flow was broken when gaps of several weeks were between chapters and it showed. I felt every one of my own near month long gaps between writing, the urge to go back and rewrite was uncontrollable. It grew after each chapter, which led to editing over and over and over with each time leaving me as unsatisfied as the first. I look at it now though, and it feels mostly like the story spiraled out of my grasp. I lost control of the direction of the story as it jumped from plot point to plot point resulting in shallow characters developing in ways I hadn't intended as a result of my inexperience and impatience as well as a practically inhumane David when there was little to no actual character development other than "this happened, he's like this now." Add in way too heavy angst and haphazard back story throw-ins and the result is what we have now: a story rushing from point to point like a man gasping for air. Coupled with the felt need to update in a timely manner, I wound up still being unsatisfied when I "finished' a chapter. Taking more time to write led to other problems piling up and soon a week went by with zero progress. I felt rushed and under a lot of stress that was only put on me by myself. I almost felt like giving up; why was I doing this anymore? Because I needed to finish the story? Needed to write the next chapter and upload it? I thought I was supposed enjoy this, write because I wanted to and liked doing it. Yet suddenly, it felt like a second job, writing because I had to not because I wanted to. And it was no one's fault but my own, all of these things building pressure on my shoulders that I kept placing on myself with the rest of my life.
I still want to finish this story. Almost three years have gone into it and I want it to mean something. There are so many things I thought up for this story. Back before I started this story, I remember reading another story on here when I began juggling the idea of becoming a writer myself. Starting out didn't seem hard, all you needed was a word program, basic reading comprehension, an Internet connection, and some imagination and you could be an author like anyone else on this site. I remember laying in bed one night thinking if I was going to be an author on this site I needed a good idea. This is fanfiction: stories written by fans taking place in the setting of some game, or movie, or book, or show, or whatever using pre-existing characters to entertain, fill in all the little what-ifs, or write something no one even considered could happen to their favorite Game/Movie/Book/TV Show/Whatever. There was plenty of potential, I just needed an idea. Then it hit me, what if someone discovered a way to go from real life into their favorite G/M/B/TV/W? What would that person do? What could happen? From there it was personal preference and the ideas multiplied. I've thought up many ideas for this story that haven't even been glimpsed at, some haven't appeared yet and some I simply shot down because they wouldn't work with the story as it is now or were too outrageous. But the point is this: I wanted this story finished, I wanted it to be good, and I wanted people to like it. From what I've seen and been told this is still an original idea that I have coined. I just needed to finish executing it. Which leads me to the big announcement of this A/N. The whole reason we're all here.
Yes, I'm quitting the story.
No, I'm not quitting the idea.
Before anyone explodes into a horrible mess, I'll elaborate. I'm done with this instance of the story, it's progressed so far that simply editing the whole thing would be pointless and unsuccessful. So it's being trashed, instead, I'm rewriting the whole thing from beginning to end. Prologue to epilogue.
It will be different. It will be better. It will be something I'm happy with.
I'm going to look into all of the problems this version had and I'm going to fix them. The most obvious two being rushed story and broken flow. To fix those, the new version of the story isn't going to appear until the whole story is finished. Not just a few chapters, but the whole story from start to finish. I tried to do a few chapters ahead and we all know how that turned out. It will replace this one once it's finished but I'm not sure at the moment if the name will be the same. It'll be called something similar to A Visitor From Another Land but it might change, if anyone wants to suggest something, go ahead, I'll make sure to look at it.
I plan on solidifying David's personality and backstory more as well as toning down the angst a bit, but I'll say right now his childhood won't be sweet and fluffy, it's too much of a core part of him. Call me evil if you want for doing something like that to my creation but I've seen worse.
I'll post a teaser to the new version at some point. Probably a few months from now though. Not sure what it'll contain but I'll work on it.
The last thing I wanted to mention, although previous experience has me hesitant to do so, if anyone of you has a suggestion for the new version of the story let me know. I'll look at each one with equal consideration. Whether it be an OC, a story event, or something else, I'll consider it. Though do keep in mind I reserve the right to reject the idea. I'll be accepting ideas from now up until the first chapter of the new version is posted, so take your time. At that point, though, the story is done and I will not be making changes. I plan on doing something along the lines of posting a chapter a week once it's finished, but I may change my mind.
I hope no one is too upset by this, and I apologize for the silence. I noticed a large number of followers and favorites in the past few weeks and to those people, I sincerely apologize for having this dropped on you.
With that, I believe I've covered everything. If someone has a question, I'll try to answer the best I can. Just don't leave it as a review, I can't reply to that. I'm perfectly fine with PMs though.
But for now, this is Ghost signing off.
I hope to see you all at the new story.
-TGwR