Loss of Inspiration

NOTE: THIS DOES NOT PRETAIN TO MY FEELINGS RIGHT NOW, AND IS NOT A HINT THAT I'VE LOST MY INTEREST IN MY STORY!

So we all know the whole situation, and how it usually plays out, whether it happens to you or someone else. You have a story that is going damn well, the plotline is intense, the chapters keep getting better and better, the characters are perfectly filled out, you have cried, laughed, yelled, and had your heart warm at the character's actions and situations. The story is at 80k words, and the climax of the story is getting closer and closer, and you are so far past the edge of your seat, you are forced to stand to make sure you don't fall out of your chair. The latest chapter has a merged Celestia and Luna named Celena or Lunesta teaming up with the final form of the Elements of Harmony (which consists of them coming together in a Voltron style way) and a mutated Spike that has a second head like an Etin, all to fight the God of Destruction and Death that has fallen from the heavens to reap the world, and the last line consists of "With a brutal yell, the heroes charged at the evil before them, the fate of the world resting on their shoulders alone". You are excited like no woman has ever made you (that's the cleanest way to say it), and you can't wait for the climax...

... which never comes.

The story that usually updates every week or so has gone for five weeks without a single update. At first, the author made comments and/or blog posts about how he/she is "working on the story" or something like that, so you stuck by it, diligantly waiting for it to update. Now however, its been three weeks since the author has made any sort communication about the story, hasn't commented on his own story at all, and his blog posts either have nothing to do with the story, or have dried up completely. You start to weep as you start to realize that this story may never finish, and any hope of seeing an eight way romance between all the good guys (Don't even try to come up with a name for that) have dried up completely.

This happens all the time for me, and I'm sure this happens to you guys as well. It doesn't matter if it is a featured story or not, the story is amazing or not, or even if the story has been running forever, it seems to happen all the time. I can list off about a dozen stories I am tracking right now that are in that situation, and while I hope that they will eventually be updated, I have lost hope for most of them. Why do I keep them on my track list I'll never know, but its possibly because while I know they won't be updated, I am still holding out some shred of hope that they will.

My question I pose to you all, is...

1) How long does it take to make a "dead fic" dead? I know that it depends on the story (a story updating daily will have a different timeframe than one updating once every other week), so give me a ballpark estimate.

2) How long does an author saying how he is going to "update it soon" extend this by? Is it by a lot? A little? Indefinitely?

3) Once you believe a fiction is dead, do you stop tracking it, or do you keep it under tracking under the hope that it will be picked up one day in the future?

Now, lets assume you are the author...

1) What could you do to make sure people are still interested? Sure you can comment on comments, and give people timelines, but is there something more? Like teasers or maybe a really short chapter?

2) Other than something crazy like "my computer was stolen", what kind of situations do you think are reasonable to end a story prematurely? (this question is also for readers as well)

3) Lets assume you are killing a story. How do you minimize the outlash that you might get? Should you just explain that you are no longer interested? Should you post what notes you have on the story just to let people see it, or not, and maybe pick it up in the future?

And finally...

4) Is there ever a point where the author should just stick with it, even if he/she is disinterested? If so, where is that point in the story?

Comments

[Stofen]

1) How long does it take to make a "dead fic" dead? I know that it depends on the story (a story updating daily will have a different timeframe than one updating once every other week), so give me a ballpark estimate.

Never. A fic is never truly dead unless the author explicitly says so. One such case was one of the first pony fics I started reading Out of the Blue way back before FIMFiction was around. It's not dead but the updates are sporadic at best.

2) How long does an author saying how he is going to "update it soon" extend this by? Is it by a lot? A little? Indefinitely?
Usually delays are a week long in my experience.

3) Once you believe a fiction is dead, do you stop tracking it, or do you keep it under tracking under the hope that it will be picked up one day in the future?
If the author says it's dead then it's probably a good idea to stop tracking it.

[AssortedCreme]

I kind of want to write the story you described at the top there. It seems too awesome to not exist.
Now my answers to your questions:
Readers -
1) Basically, when a fic starts taking four times as long to update without any noticable increase in quality or length, I start to worry.
2) When an author says "soon" I ignore it. I listen to the little yellow star at the top.
3) I only untrack stories if the quality drops or it goes in a direction I don't like. I never untrack because of update frequency, because I never know for sure. In the past I've seen stories get picked up again after two to three year hiatuses.
Author -
1) I would do my best to be active in the comments, answering questions to the extent I felt comfortable and generally interacting with the readers. As a reader, teasers and really short chapters annoy me.
2) Any reason the author gives is a valid one. Nobody has any right to expect anything from an author, unless the author is recieving something for doing it.
3) If I kill a story, I'd post everything I had worked on where people could see it and follow up by inviting people to make use of my ideas, unless I planned to pick it up again in the future. In that case I'd post an apology.
4) If you have loyal readers who want to see how a story ends, you should probably put in the effort, even if the heart isn't there. I don't really care much about the next HiE that comes through, but I'd be sad to see a story like World of Chaos or Anthropology up and die at this point.