So what happened? To put it simply, I could not deal with the pressure. No excuses. I could not hold a job at the time and was going through a lot of stuff I had no control over my life and, ironically, I felt most in control when I was destroying something, which was self-sabotaging, I had a lot of imposter syndrome going on.
Because this was my first, and I'm not kidding first time writing I was not expecting the reaction I got. But it was my first, and I had no idea what I was doing. I took no classes on how to write and did everything by the seat of my pants, I would work 16 hours a day seven days a week writing and editing it.
And it was just me, I had no one looking it over and giving me some notes on what should be improved. It was a time-consuming process. It got draining quickly and I ended up burning out hard. That and I was never happy with the story, again first timer but, there were a lot of things in here that I look back at and cringe at.
And some of the ideas I had for the story were even worse. Lots of notes and rough drafts that just made me disgusted cause of how needlessly edgy and repugnant the story was going to get. Jesus Sheele, I am so sorry I almost put you through a fate worse than death.
The other problem was ROTH was feature creep the fan fiction, I kept adding plot points and story beats that ended up dragging the whole thing down. To put it simply it got too bloated and complicated.
But in the years since, things are better, I have a more stable personal life and, I've learned far more about writing and I've never stopped thinking about this fic, not a day goes by where I haven't. I'm not going to make any promises but this iteration of ROTH is done. However, the idea is not.
I don't know when I will post this story but I've been rereading HNK & AGK to prepare, I have a few other fics in the works as well, and I don't want to burn myself out again. I want to do this right.
I can't say much about the new ROTH since it recycles a few plot points and ideas from my first story but the idea is to get Ken to the capital faster and get the plot going and I think I found a way that's engaging and not nearly as overblown as what I did the first time around.
At the time I thought my fic was a flash in the pan no one gave a shit kinda deal, that was until I googled it and found some forum and Reddit posts talking about my dumb little fic, and I realized what a mistake I made. So this is for the fans you were small in number but you made up for it in passion. So...sorry I deleted my fic and took that away from you. I had no right to do such a thing and I ended up lashing out at a lot of people. Something I'm ashamed I did, I realized that fic regardless of how much I did not care for. It no longer mattered it wasn't mine at that point.
When you create something and share that with the world it no longer fully belongs to you, it belongs to everyone. It brought people joy, and perhaps it's arrogant of me to think but maybe it inspired other writers as well. Who knows? But hopefully, I can create more works that will bring joy to countless readers. It's something I've always wanted to do and I will continue to.