Holiday Hiatus & An Explanation For The Missed Update · 10:55pm Jul 22nd, 2016
As I think I mentioned before, I will be on holiday from tomorrow until next Saturday, and will most likely not be back to work until at least that Sunday. As things are, I think I can manage an update for the Thursday of the week following that Sunday, but until then there will be a gap in updates. This, I realise, is not what I had told you would happen - in fact, it is almost the opposite of what I'd said.
The plan had been that, following last week's double update, I'd try and write as much as possible this week so that I'd have not only an update for Thursday, but also a chapter buffer so that I could take a holiday without disrupting the story's updates. This, obviously, hasn't happened: not only do I not have an update for this week, I don't have any buffer chapters either, hence the big gap.
Well, to be completely truthful with you, I do have about three and a half chapters written, but they have proven to be useful only as a forewarning to prevent me writing myself into a corner. I got quite far with what I had planned, along a route I would've followed even had I not decided to write a bunch of chapters in one go, but ran into issues partway through what would have been the fourth chapter.
These issues can be fixed, and quite easily, but only because I haven't posted any of those chapters. If I had, I'd have had to do serious retcons and rewrites on about three chapters (which all of you would have seen and read), when I finally reached the fourth one and found what I did earlier this week. This revelation being that the thing I'd planned to be a big event to ramp things up before the climax of the arc (and built up to quite heavily in the thankfully unposted chapters before it) just didn't work the way I'd hoped it would.
It fell flat, and nothing I did to fix it quite worked, so I've decided to take another look at what the story's been leading up to so far, and come up with a different event to fill that role, based on what I've foreshadowed so far. That obviously means what I have written, proud of it as I am, will require serious editing and outright rewriting to make it lead up to something other than what they do currently, which will take time and a fair bit of replanning.
Luckily, I now have a week where I can take a step back and reconsider things, so when I'm back from holiday I'll be ready and set to move forward with the story. I'm going to try and salvage as much as I can from what I have written, and if possible update faster than normal so that I can make up for two weeks without updates.
This shouldn't be more than a temporary bump in the road, and I am so very glad I caught the issue when I did, because it could have been very messy if I'd gone ahead with the story only to realise the plot point I'd built up to didn't work, and that the past three chapters had to change as a result. I'll keep you up to date as things go, and we should soon be back on track after this brief hiatus.
As always, any comments are welcome and I'll endeavour to respond ASAP. Thank you all for sticking with the story, and I look forward to bringing you an impactful end to this arc a few chapters down the line. The end of the story is nearing sight, now, though it's still some way away, and I want to make everything leading up to it the best that I can. This story, and you loyal readers, deserve nothing less than that.
