Hi, Specter here.
First off, thank you for reading and supporting my story up till this point. It's been a short ride but a ride nonetheless.
A special thanks to Lorddarkrai and more than 400 readers who enjoy the story and read every new chapter.
I'll yap for a short bit, like 8 minutes read, but here is the TLDR: Toby's story will stop here as I find myself not enjoying what I'm writing anymore. As the reason, it's below.
Yap start here:
This is my 1st attempt at trying to make a career out of writing and make something kind of on market but fail spectacularly :D
I got a few Patreons so there might still be a chance to make this story better after some editing. But that wasn't where the real problem lies.
I tried to find a balance between writing a story that I might want to tell and what readers like you might enjoy enough to support my ideas. But alas, the story started to become something that I don't even recognize anymore while trying to turn it into something profitable.
After working on the story every day for 71 days (including drafting, plotting, and planning before and after posting on RR), I just don't recognize what I'm writing anymore. For example, Toby's entire journey looks something like this:
Arc 1: Helping Lily with her lifeforce but not completely heal (Treasure chamber 11, 12)
Arc 2 Travelling around to see the world + help Tootha -> got a base village after fighting a tyrant (Treasure chamber 10, 9)
Arc 3 Saving children forced to become artificial Heroes from the Temples -> Got hunt down -> Need to hide and run (Treasure chamber 7, 8)
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Arc 4 Magic Academy - restore Lily's family honor and show the truth but gets exposed in the process -> on the run again (Treasure chamber 6)
Arc 5 Return to glory, Lumispring Clan - Help Rina's clan -> Get the clan's support (Treasure chamber 5)
Arc 6 Kingdom build - Create a place to call home, a place to return to from the village liberated from the tyrant (Treasure chamber 4, 3, 2)
Arc 7 War - Final battle with the Temples
Got the bones planned out but the more I wrote the more this nagging feeling just hit me: What am I even writing? Is this the story I want to tell? Is this what I'm sharing with the reader? And many more of the same kind of questions.
Then it hit me when I heard a little kid's conversation with her mother in the city's public library. It was simple really. The mother asked the girl if she liked the story and the girl beamed while hugging the book, "I like it."
That was it. Three words. I like it.
Yet, it reminds me of something I forgot. The real problem. A story isn't about what the market demands. It's profitable to write on market, yes. It's a quick way to earn a living as a writer if it's done right, yes. But the most important thing is the story a writer shares with you, the reader, must be a story that both sides like. How can the reader enjoy a story if the writer doesn't even enjoy it? I don't think that is even possible.
I realized I don't enjoy writing this story. I didn't even feel anything for this story. Not when it hits the first 100 followers, not when it gets the first 10,000 views, not when it gets into rising star top 20. I felt nothing about any of it for this story. Unlike how I celebrated with a cheese and salted egg dumpling when my previous story got just 10 followers. That story was a chaotic mess and a prose monstrosity. Yet, it made me feel happy to share it.
I want to write for the rest of my life but I have to be realistic and earn enough to live off writing, or at least enough to cover some of my bills. Still have a day job so I can only focus on writing one story at a time. That's why I'm stopping Toby's story and returning to my roots: Before a story is profitable, it must be something I enjoy writing first and foremost. In turn, I can share that excitement on every page and invite you to join me.
So I made a decision. Toby's journey ends here.
I'm working on a story I'm excited to share with you and planning on launching it around mid November or early December. If you are curious, I put the blurb (not the final version) in the author's note below.
Once again, thank you for sticking with me and enjoy Toby's journey to this point.
See you later (^_^)/
Specter