Update on Things (as of 6/2018) · 2:11am Jun 2nd, 2018
So..."Grief is the Price We Pay"...
...at the time of posting this, it stands at...
...98 chapters...
...609,417 words...
...802 upvotes...
...63 downvotes...
...4,572 comments...
...took a year and a half to write...
...and now it is finally finished.
So I've been getting inquiries as to what's next for me. Well, I'm happy to report that, though we're still working out the final details of all just what it'll be, I am working on a commission fic (of sorts) for another user on the site, so while I can't really say too much about it just yet, there's that to look forward to.
But after that?...That's still a bit up the air.
There's a few reasons for this. More immediate is the fact that this summer season is looking like it's going to be super busy for the job I'm currently working, which is all fine and good, except we're actually a bit short-staffed at the moment, so I've had to work extra hours to fill in the gaps. While this isn't so bad on the "getting-funds-to-live-off-of" side of things, it is kinda bad on the "free-time-to-write" side of things.
To be sure, I still have time to write, and still have been writing...just not as much to a day as I'd often like. And that lack of time to write has honestly been something of an ongoing problem for some years now, and one that hasn't been getting any better. Something I became increasingly conscious of while writing "Grief" and how I only ever had time to work on it and little else of other projects. This left me debating how I really want to proceed after I finished writing it, because while writing fan fiction is great fun and not something I really want to set aside in all honesty...the fact of the matter is that I just don't have the time to justify to it as I once did, and I don't intend to write only fanfics forever--I do have hopes to one day to write and legitimately publish an original work of my own someday. Plus, there are other non-writing projects I'd like to work on to, some of them being art-related, which I do dabble in.
Problem is, to do that, I need to time to work on such projects.
And fan fiction is...kinda getting in the way.
But I've tried giving it up before in the past, back in April of 2014...and obviously I wasn't able to keep away in the end, cuz...well, I'm still here, aren't I? 
So I'm thinking I won't fight that clear urge to write the odd fanfic for now, but this will mean some ground rules have to be laid down for myself for the foreseeable future.
Basically this means no long-form multi-chapter fics for the foreseeable future, and most of what I write will likely be sporadic, spur-of-the-moment, one-shots. I also cannot say how often they might come up--might be weeks, might be months, might be more...or it might be less than all of that.
Beyond that, I don't really have a game plan other than to go with the flow and see what happens...but here are a few things I would like to get done at some point:
-Sometime soon I hope to put together a blog post that will interpret and "reveal" some of the hidden "secrets" that were hidden throughout the tale "Grief" tells, mostly pertaining to certain dream sequences...but not always exclusively. 
-Many readers of "Grief" already know that I have plans to go back and give the whole story another editing run-through, and this is still planned, but probably not to be done right away given present time schedules. When I do, most of what I will be doing is correcting minor typos and other small errors and making little refinements where I see fit. The biggest change is I intend to combine some of the smaller chapters into bigger and fewer chapters. For example, I expect the first three or so chapters of the story will get merged into one once I do this. However, there were will be some more major changes in select spots of the story, such as chapters "At the Wrong Time" thru "The Possibilities," and roughly "Stratagem" thru "Terrified"...for reasons I will elaborate further at that time. This will NOT change the core plot of the story though.
-Once that final edit-through is done though, I want to do another blog post discussing what things I had, at one point, planned to do in "Grief," but ultimately cut from the story and never posted...of which there's actually a fair bit to talk about, both big and small.
-After that is just a bunch of little ideas I'd like to do. For example, I adore season eight's Young Six (or Student Six if you prefer, but the former seems to be the officially settled upon name) so I'm exploring ideas to put them in some of story and which I seem to have no shortage of ideas for. I'd also like to do something to revisit Pink Cloud and Sprinkle Medley from "There's A Story Behind This" in other, interrelating, one-shots.
-While I'm dreaming, I'd also like to finish that rewrite of "Doctor Whooves: Shadow Of A Ghost" and write a long overdue follow-up to "Heritage"...
-Those who have read my blogs as far back as 2015-2016 may recall me mentioning work on a fanfic I've only ever referred to as the "swansong fic"...so FYI, work on that still continues, just very slowly and very in the background. The reason I have referred to as a "swansong" fic--the assumption it would likely be among my last--has also not changed.
But that's where things stand for now. As usual, I will say more if and when it becomes necessary. 
That is considerably more words than I'm betting you thought it would be.
Since "Grief" Started before the season 6 finale, I'm a bid curious. What was the original plan for the climax? How much had to be replanned?
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Well, actually, I started posting "Grief" a couple weeks after said finale had officially aired...and it had been leaked about a week in advance, too (I don't recall if I watched it early or not, though...might've, considering it was going to be last new episode for some months so I might not have seen a need to delay, but I honestly can't recall now). So when I started posting "Grief," it was done with that finale already being taken into account and plans adjusted accordingly. So yes, I already knew pretty much exactly how the story was going to end already by that time, save small details here and there.
It is true that I had already been writing "Grief" well in advance to that point, obviously, but when I started writing, I already strongly suspected that the show planned a major event for the changelings by that season's finale, so I was deliberately keeping my plans for the ending thin and basic in preparation for changes I was certain would be coming. Amusingly...the ending didn't change after that point as much as you'd think, though--the direction I wanted to take the story was already remarkably similar to the final and already heading in that same route. There was even a changeling invasion of Equestria planned already, so when the show did the same, I simply adopted it's version into the story.
As I said in the blog post, I intend to delve into all of this and more in more detail in a future blog post.