I'm slowly getting back into writing Hotel Paradise. If this writer's block had never hit last year, the story would be wrapping up right around now, and that knowledge hurts. So I wanted to go into a bit of detail into what's taking me so long to write, and there are a couple of reasons.

As I mentioned in a journal last year, in October I got shot at, and nearly killed. This shook me pretty deeply. The most immediately noticeable effect was that I no longer felt safe on my porch, which was where I did all of my writing because of how quiet and distraction-free it is. Or was, anyway. I've "fixed" this problem by installing (badly) a patio in my backyard, where it's still quiet and also a lot more private, so I don't feel like I could be on the receiving end of a bullet out here.

But I think it actually got me deeper than I thought, because that was really the point where I stopped writing altogether. There's something in my head now stopping me from getting over that, and it's taken a toll on my productivity.

The second major factor comes down to animism. I'm personally a bit of a believer in it, and feel empathy towards all kinds of things that others don't -- including fictional characters. For those unaware, a quick and easy summary of animism is that it's the belief that things other than humans have souls, typically extended towards plants and inanimate objects. In my case, it's always been applied towards fictional characters, especially those of my own creation.

And with the type of content Hotel Paradise involves, it's no surprise that this could cause me some hesitation. It hits especially badly after writing a murder or an execution, when one of the characters in the story is killed. Knowing what I've already written, and what's to come, really puts a bit of an emotional toll on me as the writer of the story.

I do have a little trick for this; I imagine that the characters are actors in a film or a play. So while in the canon of Hotel Paradise they're dying, the actual "truth" of the matter is that they're just putting on a show. (Of course, this isn't actually the case in Hotel Paradise's storyline!)

The final major factor is my own self-confidence. For as long as I've been active in the fandom, I've never really attracted more than a small handful of friends, despite pouring my heart and soul into every story I write on this account or others I've had in the past. There's always the feeling in the back of my head that nobody cares, and that I could disappear altogether tomorrow and nobody would notice. After more than ten years, I'm an unknown nobody, and it doesn't seem like anything I produce can change that.

I don't want this last point to be misinterpreted -- I do genuinely love and appreciate the friends I've made over the years, and also the readers I've had in the past or have presently. Every favorite, watch, or comment I receive about how much somebody enjoys something gives me a tiny spark of hope that it actually is worth my time to keep going, keep writing, keep trying.

But sometimes when my depression flares up, those tiny sparks don't feel like enough, and that's when I really struggle.

For now I'm going to keep trying. I want to at the very least finish this story -- the characters deserve it, and you readers deserve it. Even if it takes me a few more years to muster up the second half of this story, it will be completed. You'll get an ending.

I promise.