Salutations, Tasties.

I have received a number of messages over the last ten forevers asking me when the next chapter of this series or that series will come out, usually I Love You Twice, Eric & Milo, or A Blue's Tale. Also gotten a few messages or comments from people assuming that these stories are over because they haven't been updated in a long time. So I thought it was probably a good idea for me to finally address this openly.

First off, no, this is not me announcing that I've given up on those series and we're never going to see a continuation. Just so's we're clear.

The truth is, I would love to be pumping out chapters for my stories left and right, I love all those series and enjoy moving the story forward. In particular, I'd really like to take a look at Curse of the Shieldfall, which has been begging for an epic conclusion for years now, and it's practically criminal the way I've allowed The Shape of Things to languish on the backburner.

But somehow, over the last few years, I've gotten myself into a really bad headspace for writing. I guess when writing started to become difficult, I convinced myself that I was improving, that higher-level writing is supposed to be difficult, that I'm supposed to feel stressed when I write, that it isn't supposed to be fun or easy. But lately it feels all but impossible.

I'm overwhelmed with doubt. Every time I make a decision in a story, sometimes as small as which word to use in a given sentence, I find myself second-guessing it to infinity and back. My confidence is so shot that I find it difficult to plan out the beats of a story in case I get it "wrong" and don't realize it until much later, when lots of stuff would need to be changed to fix it. But at the same time, and for the same reason, improvisation is terrifying, I'm afraid to write almost anything without already having a plan in place, which makes the previous point all the more troublesome. Because of these, I tend to get so fixated on small details that I don't see fairly obvious ways to fix the problems, failing to see the forest for the trees, as a friend puts it.

I've got my head so twisted up with the stress that I'm afraid to even take on simple premises, much less attempt to work on the series that are so important to me. And that's not even touching on the weird issue where I seem to be incapable of writing light-hearted silliness anymore, that every story needs to be believable and realistic, even though we're talking about anthropomorphic animals who are (usually) attracted to their family members. :P

So, in the face of all that, I'm working on smoothing out all the twists I've created, on bringing myself back to where I once was, or at least to a place where I can write an entire story without feeling like I'm killing myself. I'm working on getting back to a place where I can enjoy writing again, because I'm damned good at it, and it's important to me!

Since my brain didn't come with a user manual, I'm going to be taking it slow, writing stories that I feel like I can manage, and consciously trying to counter the issues I've been running into. I don't know if that's going to work, but hey, if I carefully step over every rock in the path, I should be able to cross the mountain. Here's hoping that I'll be able to confidently return to some of these series before too long. (Knock on wood.)

-JOURNAL OVER