Hey everyone! Sorry for the sudden hiatus. I haven’t been posting for a few reasons.

For one, I was busy with finals and had to move to a new dorm right after. Then I traveled back to my home in Texas.

But I’ve also been putting off writing new chapters for this novel mainly because I’m worried that I’m making a bunch of mistakes. First, there was the hard-to-read first chapter where I decided to give up readability for, well, let’s just call it creative storytelling. Then, many of the story’s background details have undergone many changes since the first chapter. I’m worried that it is just going to end up being terrible. I don’t have much experience writing novels, and this one is complex, especially since a considerable part of the novel is about mental health, which I’m no professional, and I struggle with it a lot, especially with my ADHD.

And finally, I’ve been stuck on where I want to take Nike’s character. I hadn’t intended this when first writing the chapters, but Nike exhibits symptoms of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID, also known as multiple personality disorder), and since discovering this, I’ve wanted to write Nike with DID. I just think it really fits into the story well and allows me to skip fight scenes (fun fact, I don’t like fight scenes in novels and hate to write them). But the major issue I’m struggling with is whether or not it is okay to write a character with DID. Many people in the DID community have expressed displeasure with the media spreading misinformation about the disorder. So unsure of the ethics of writing about DID with little knowledge of the condition, I wrote to someone with DID. They told me I should spend a year researching it before writing about it. As fun as it is to learn about DID, I just don’t have the time to spend an entire year researching it for a novel, so now I’m at a crossroads. Once realizing that Nike has the symptoms of DID, a lot of the story just snapped into place around the disorder; now, I’m struggling to let go of the idea of giving Nike DID.

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So that’s where I’m at right now. For now, I’m still going to try to write chapters for the story, but I think it will just be sporadic and slow. I’m also thinking of putting this story on the back burner and starting a new novel that is far simpler and easier to write. I really need some advice on this story, so please give me your thoughts.

By the way, I already have most of the next chapter written; I just need to write the fight scene. I could also use some advice on what methods yall use to write fight scenes. For me, I’ve been sketching them out in a sort of play-by-play format, super inefficient, I know.