I’ve been traveling this week and it has impacted my ability to write the chapter for this week, so instead of a chapter I’ll be doing an update on the project. Sorry about that, so if you’re not interested in this, business will resume as usual next week.

So, first off, yes, I’m writing these the week they go out— the same day actually (and I happen to have gotten 4 hours of sleep yesterday so don’t feel a chapter would be up to par today!). My goal with this project isn’t to write some perfect story, I’m very much aware of the limitations of my work to this point. I’m not dissuaded by it though. If anything, I’ve seen my writing improve pretty significantly and it helps my motivation greatly.

This isn’t my first writing project, I’ve been doing music reviews since 2019 (link in profile if interested), but that project eventually hit a stylistic dead-end. I kept having these moments where I tried to craft something out of a 1k word block of text tied primarily by theme to the work under review, and I feel many of them turned out well, but they were restricted by the medium to both be at least mostly relevant to the work under discussion (which I of course wasn’t always completely successful at), and to being shortish one-shots.

So, with my style more or less refined I made an attempt to do something longer which would solve these problems, but 44.5k words in I realized it was complete garbage and trashed it. That was Jan/Feb 2022, but I kept facing the same problem. I wanted to write something more substantial rather than just iterating on style, so I came back to rewrite the project as The Hand of God Would Smother All (original title “That Time I Accidentally Became the Demon Lord”). It’s no longer even close to the same project, and only very shallow resemblances remain, but strictly speaking this is an extension of that project, though I have no intent to publish the original.

My point in saying all this is that I like writing, though I would guess that’s not a shock. Sometimes it can be concerning from a reader’s point of view that the author might abandon their work at some point, and given my current slow publishing rate I can see how this might be a concern here as well, but I have no intent to abandon the project. The point of this for me isn’t to write some grand narrative. I don’t want to make this a career. If it becomes monetizable in the (likely distant) future, so be it, but the point of this is because I enjoy both the process of writing and the development of the many skills involved in creating a work such as this.

So, this project isn’t going anywhere. As for why it’s slow, that’s because I gained a lot of perspective in bum-rushing 44.5k words in like 3 weeks. The whole thing is the same, and there isn’t much authorial development through its course. I don’t want that. The point of this isn’t to produce a work at the end (though I will be doing that as you need to finish things to see the full perspective of their course); the primary reason I’m writing this is to develop my long-form writing skill.

Stolen novel; please report.

I’m sure you can see it, I certainly can. Arc 1 is, despite the things I did well, not the best at character work. It’s a tonal scattershot. It’s missing direction. I could have skipped almost all of it and started at act 2 (or done something else to establish Henry’s initial character) and we’d be at the same place now. But doing that would be missing the development I’ve taken on since then. I’m aware act 2 has shortcomings, but my impression is my handling of the various story beats I’ve taken on has been much more clean and developed than before. And though the story moving forward will require a stylistic shift to account for what’s happening in the story at large, I do expect to continue my development throughout this process.

I can’t say whether it will be good. I’m going to make mistakes. There are going to be bad moments, but I’m ok with whatever impressions are made. However this goes, I like people seeing my work— it helps keep me motivated to continue making it— and however it’s received I only really care about interest. Is it interesting enough to come back? I don’t care if it’s bad, I just want it to be interesting and for my process of making it to improve as I see it.

Anyway, I generally don’t like writing about myself and likely won’t do this frequently or perhaps ever again, but hopefully it’s at least somewhat insightful as to where I’m coming from and where this is headed.

Also, I think this should have been obvious given what I’ve said, but this is not going to be one of those perpetual works that just keeps going… and going… and going… for years. We will be wrapping this up, and I’ll be moving on into another story. I may take a break (likely a smallish one) once we finish, but I do and have always had a message and central theme here, and we’ve just about hit its conclusion. When we finish I will simply continue publishing chapters under another title. There may also be other forms of writing (as I’m trying to figure out how to bucket my thoughts; putting them all in one place makes the tone jarring), but this one will continue as is for perhaps a long time to come. I have no intent to stop writing under this name at this time, at a minimum.

This is also why I publish weekly, because I have a job and other projects to handle. I am dedicating time to this project, but it’s both time-consuming (if enjoyable), and absolutely requires time to reflect between chapters. Without space to breathe it’s impossible to develop, and that’s what I want most. That is what I learned from the last draft, after all.

If you’re curious about the next work, I’ve been toying around with a Bloodborne / Steins Gate / Re;Zero thing with some hard magic system inspired by the Bash programming language. I don’t know how this would work narratively and it may or may not be a good idea (given that’s a hard thing to write and I’m… maybe not prepared for it lol), but we’ll see.

If I do miss chapters in the future it will be for the same reason, not because I’m losing interest or motivation, but because I have something else unexpectedly going on. I will make an attempt to prevent this wherever possible, of course.

In any case, I appreciate your following the work to this point, and hope to see you next week!