TLDR: This story is not dropped and I don't plan on doing so. But I will place it on 'hiatus' until I have finished this chapter and maybe one more, just to have something to show for. More info on my struggle and health stuff on the discord, as it would be "too much info" for this place.
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Hey there!
As those of you who are on the discord are aware, I ran into some issues a while back. Not only did I have a nasty health scare which I am still trying to get to the root causes of, I also quite literally burned out on writing - the same way I have burned out on every single other hobby I ever had.
I enjoy writing this story. I want to see it finished. I love 'exploring' this (slightly flawed) world I have created and everything fox should be appreciated. There is a wiki now, many documents featuring stuff for me to base the story and future chapters on, calculators for fox tail weight and volume and a full pantheon with bunch of fantasy races for these gods and goddesses to gouvern. The discord is awesome and I have lots of fun with it. Everything is perfect and should be going well, yet it doesn't.
This story has thousands of readers on two websites. It has dozens of people on a discord crafted around it. There are many, many hours spent into writing it, hundreds of hours spent in perfecting the lore using the help of a few dedicated readers I would now consider my friends. For all intents and purposes, this should be enough. My body is functioning, my brain knows what to do, and I want to make you happy just as much as I want to make my cats happy whenever they walk up to me. You are part of something I love and cherish. And yet... whenever I open that document that is about 40 pages long by now and still has at least a dozen pages missing, I just feel... wrong, empty, exhausted? I stare at that file for hours each week, without writing a single word.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I know how that chapter should end. I in fact now how many chapters in the future will play out. I have all the ideas and those I lacked you all provided without asking anything in return. So... I just need to write it down. And I can't. And I don't know what to do about that.
I have talked to my social worker/helper/whatever you call it in english, as, despite my depression making a reappearance and despite the health scare that has yet no identifyable cause, despite so many things being off in my life what feels most wrong is easily this one thing: I cannot do what I love. And I am deeply, deeply disturbed and sad about this fact. So I want to get professional help, and learn if there is anything I can do to fix my 'condition'. I feel cursed. I don't even dare to open discord or this website, as there will be new notifications, new sources of seemingly endless guilt.
I have been talking a lot to Dec and Piisfun during these.. months of struggle. They tried to push me into writing, had me promise them, threatened me even with things I would be uncomfortable with, anything they could think of to get me to at least do something. Yet... despite promises, progress is very slow. And during the last two weeks, there was no progress at all. Every single day, without a fail, I think "in the evening when I have done my stuff, I will continue to write." And yet I don't.
Well.. this is the current standing. The chapter is 3/4th done. I know how it will end and nothing in me wants to drop this story. So I will continue struggling until I get it back or at least manage to get back in working condition, so I can do some writing every day, even if not six hours of it.
I am sorry to let you down like this. I never wanted it.
-Iris