AN: The Final Update for a While

Hi everyone,

As you've probably guessed reading this story or maybe checking out some of the reviews, writing this for me hasn't always been an easy ride. I've made mistakes, some of which I'm going to address here. First off, I let my original plan for this story get derailed by some negative feedback. People not enjoying a certain direction regarding the horcruxes and how I envisioned that whole process going. So, I changed it. I rewrote and morphed the story to suit what I thought reviewers and readers would prefer.

Doing this meant that a lot of my planning was scrapped and then any new planning I've done hasn't felt right. This led to the second mistake I made which was attempting to finish it early and wrapping up with a hasty and frankly terrible epilogue. So, I tried again, I tried to go with this new direction I'd made for myself and it still isn't working. As one of the most recent reviews has noted this story is rushed. It's sloppy. It's nowhere near where I want it to be.

The final mistake was trying to write this alongside another Daphne centric story. This has led to a lot of merging of plot beats, difficulty keeping the characters separate and just on the whole comparing the two stories. One is much more light-hearted than the other and due to some personal reasons that I won't share here, I just honestly preferred writing a more fun and upbeat story. But that meant this story, the story that has gotten the most love I've ever received on this site and a story I'd been dying to have a go at for years, has gone under-appreciated, under-resourced and, to be honest, not what I wanted it to be.

So, with that in mind, here's the plan. Instead of doing what I did before where I rushed out chapters to try and give you guys something quickly to make up for the mistakes above, I'm going to actually finish this before publishing. This is going to take a while and I'm sorry if at first it doesn't seem like anything is happening. It is, but this is likely going to end up being 100k words plus and so could take a long time. For that, I'm sorry. I hope you keep this story favourited/followed so that when it is ready, you'll be able to jump back and see what happens.

I think if I continued, actually, I know if I continued on the path I'm on this wouldn't be good. I've currently written and re-written the next two chapters so many times because I don't like them that they're now just an overly edited mess. The chapters up to the end of part 1 will likely stay the same, I've gone over them once and it may cause more harm than good doing so again. There's definitely mistakes in there, plot beats I'd tweak and adjust but it was the story I had in mind and for that reason, I intend to leave it as it is.

I'm sorry this isn't the update you were probably hoping for. I'm sorry I've not been able to deliver that first time or even the second time. But I want to get this right and that's what I'm going to try and do.

Updates for It All Starts With a Dance will continue now that the two stories are going in very different directions.

Thanks for reading this and for taking the time to support this story. It means a lot that this hobby actually matters and is enjoyed by so many people and it's knowing this that makes me want to do this properly.