I suddenly went on hiatus for like 20 days last time and this time it's been 5 days without an update so I thought I'd give a heads up. Right now, I'm going through the early sections of the story and editing them. I'm a little reluctant to write new content until I get back to those points in the story with my editing. Focusing on two things at the same time is my weak point. I'll try to finish the next chapter up tomorrow but after that who knows when the next update will be. Even me saying I'll finish the next chapter tomorrow can't be taken at face value.

Now onto a better topic, the nature of the edits.

First off, tenses. My tenses are all over the place. It's supposed to be a past tense story but I've let way too many present tense verbs slip by. Even a few future tense verbs can be found within the philosophical BS.

Second, filler words. I've been inflating sentences with redundancies and extra content that can easily be cut to fill the wordcount. Cheating on my own goal to hit around 1000 words per chapter.

Third, research and accuracy. I've been sorta writing whatever with minimal research. I've sorta only been researching to find cool stuff to write about and never went in depth, leading to some embarrassing writing. For example, I assumed baby tortoises were about the size of my hand because of some movie I watched with turtles heading to the sea after hatching. Turns out that baby tortoises are like half the size of my palm, so I need to rewrite a few parts of chapter one.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Fourth, formatting and font. Formatting is straightforward and easy. Put into a program with formatting tools like Word and adjust a few options like margins, indents, page numbers, and chapter markers so I'm saving it for last. Fonts are simply a matter of trying things out and preference. So far, I'm liking the looks of Times New Roman, Caslon, and Janson. Meanwhile, I find Garamond to be terrible in an online format while Palatino and Minion have letter designs that irk me. Let me know a few fonts you like so I can try them out, preferably serif fonts.

Fifth, story direction. The main reason I'm finding it hard to write the next chapter because I'm considering changing the story's general plot, essentially making some of the chapters I've written non-canon. It's gotten to the point where I've considered cutting out the demon element of the story. It was only forced in to keep the story from going stale from repetitiveness and because of the story's title. If I do end up drastically changing the story direction, I'd probably keep writing this as somewhat of a draft since it sorta is a draft anyway. Or by making them two completely different stories and using this one as a place to test out new ideas.

TL;DR I'm confused and need some time to think while editing the early chapters.