Hey all.
So, I just came off (another) half-year long "hiatus" with Seventh Soul, and I figured anyone who's kept with it this long deserves some sort of semi-formal explanation for my terrible, terrible work ethic. Let me begin by saying that what appears to be huge time gaps between chapters legitimately do not feel that way on my end, largely because I'm in the habit of chipping away at parts of individual chapters at a snails pace. There are very few times where I've thought about dropping the story or spent an extended period of time away from it; mostly I just find myself writing in very small chunks, then making a sprint for the end once I finally get frustrated enough with myself and happen to find the time to do so. I wrote the last 1500 or so words on the most recent update in the span of 2 days, the rest I've been prodding at since my previous addition in September of last year. I tend to fall into that rut where I'll sit down to work on the story, then end up mulling over the same sentence for 20 or so minutes before finding other things to distract myself with.
Not particularly productive, to say the least.
There are a few contributing factors to this, the most obvious of which is lack of time/motivation. I started this story as a freshman in high school who had just finished playing Undertale for the first time and, like many others, was super passionate about the game. Now I'm a freshman in college who's developed as a writer (or at least, I'd like to think so) and has other potential projects I'd rather be working on. That being said, after a good deal of consideration I realized I had no desire to drop Seventh Soul. It is by far the longest piece of fiction I've ever worked on, and I want to see it through to the end before I fully commit to anything else. I still enjoy writing from the perspective of the main protagonist (who, thankfully, evolved in my eyes to be more than just an edgy self-insert) as well as several of Undertale's original characters, and I do have a certain direction I want the story to go in that I hope will catch some readers by surprise. Spoilers, if everything should go to plan, the last few chapters will not amount to "human does pacifist route things and everyone gets out of the Underground all hunky-dory."
Alright, I think that's just about everything I wanted to go over. Sorry if anyone confuses the notification this gives off for chapter 30 so immediately after the last, but I felt the desire to give people an idea of what's been going on. Though I began and continue to write this story mostly for myself, I am super appreciative of the feedback I've received and the enthusiasm that comes whenever I get around to posting a new chapter. I won't bother giving an arbitrary time frame for the next update, but I can promise it will come sooner now that I've decided to see this through to the end.
-J.W.F.