Oh wow wow wow, it's been a long time since I logged in! I'm genuinely surprised this blog has 95 followers, thank you all for sticking around :')
I did the thing most of us do where we duck out of our project for a while because life things are happening or our mental health needs our attention. At some point, I realized I was doing exactly what I said I wouldn't do, which was overexert myself trying to make this story Absolutely Perfect and think that I wasn't a good writer if I didn't get tons of attention. It's really hard not to do those things, and I forgive myself. I had very reluctantly given up on this project in order to internalize that it's okay to know when to quit. And then I promptly forgot I ever started a massive ATLA fanfiction project at all.
I went to Comicpalooza this weekend and attended a panel (hosted by my incredibly passionate and talented best friend @chromecutie ayyy) about responsibly writing your characters' trauma. It got me thinking about Shinza again and how stuck I felt after the last chapter I wrote, because what I had planned next just didn't feel right in a way I couldn't articulate. What I picked up in that panel--that experiencing major trauma can change your character's motivation and goal entirely--was what I needed to hear to get the gears turning again.
So, I'm not going to say I'm back or not. My motivation and drive are constantly in flux, as are a lot of other writers'. But I'm thinking about where I left off--thinking about scrapping what I had planned after that last chapter, which I think was always weak from the beginning of my planning, and considering what might change about this story with this new guidance.
If I do, be warned--I'll be doing my best not to give a fuck, even if that means what I write is Deliberately Bad. Even if that means no one knows whether they can expect a chapter at the regular interval or whether I've quit altogether. Because the point of this, from the very beginning, was for this to be fun. If it's not fun, I'm not doing it, you know?















