Well I got a couple things I need to say, but first let me say that I was not expecting the response this got. 96 followers, 59 favorites and roughly 5,800 views as of writing this. I am eternally grateful for those who gave it a shot.
This whole thing got started because I was bored in lockdown and one day I decided to pass my time by writing a story for a cool devil fruit I had come up with. The fact that I even got this far is amazing in and off itself, its surprisingly hard to write a story, especially for an audience who is waiting on you. However looking back I need to pause, reflect and improve.
Many of the chapters I have published were written over the cause of two days, usually Wednesday and Thursday every other week. This means I have the rest of the time to myself but It creates an issue, mainly a lack of polish. Considering the time crunch I created, with a set deadline this lead to me only looking over the chapter once or twice (or sometimes not at all) to find any mistakes. It also created another significant problem that is the many in-universe inconsistencies. Lucy would flip flop between being more assertive, to more withdrawn at the drop of a hat, usually changing character within two chapters which lead me to follow paths I didn't want to go, especially when I wrote dialog that prevented what I wanted to write being expressed. Another issue that had been brought to my attention by the reviews that I have to agree with is the fact that Lucy is just too much. That is to say, as a character she is a pretty extreme person, too 'autistic' and too 'depressed' with those being basically her entire character summed up. It makes her seem two dimensional, and any attempt to branch out just becomes a facet of those two things. I have created a caricature of myself but with everything that would make me a person is stripped away and replaced with depression. Looking back this just makes for a dull main character.
I could go on and on, ripping my story to shreds with its many other floors but I want to do something productive. As such I am calling a pause to the story. That is to say I am not going to be releasing anymore chapters for the next couple months while I turn my attention to the last fifteen chapters. I intended to polish all of them, most likely re-write large parts of each chapter, add new bits to the story and remove all aspects, probably merge some together. I will sort out Lucy's characterization (by actually studying depression) and sort out all the other characters who seem out of character. The hope is by the end of it I will have a smaller chapter wise story, that actually lives up to what I imagined it would be.
I don't want to be a writer who once writing something doesn't look back and just keeps piling on the chapters when the previous ones are not good, hoping that if I just keep writing then everything will magically all work out. I want a story I can look at and say ''bloody hell, I wrote this?'' and to get there I need to go back over the older chapters and work on them some more.
Another announcement! (because everyone likes buy one get one free) Most likely afterword's I will go to a chapter every three weeks or a month. I got into university and now I can't just laze around, so everything's going to get slower, which is good in a sense.
Well till next time