Hey, Corona-chan, how would you like it to mess up an author's writing schedule? or Fluttercheer has returned with another excuse for not updating his fics for months.

A lot of things have happened in the last few months. "Letters to Cozy Glow" (which finally has a new chapter being worked on now) hasn't updated for almost five months. "Dreamwalker Dash" (which is not yet being worked on again, but will be soon, further information will follow) hasn't updated for exactly five months. And I haven't written and released anything for more than two months now.
I can't believe it's been that long and I can't believe that I could get sidetracked from writing like that again for such a lengthy period of time after my mental health returned back to normal last year, but here I am. That happened.
I am back now and will pick up the pen again and I'll start by explaining what exactly caused me to be inactive for that long. I will try to keep this as short as possible, because I want to make new writing plans and write more AFAP, but you deserve to know what has caused me not to update for so long.

It already began in early March after I had just released Chapter 8 of "Dreamwalker Dash". It was writing away at Chapter 9, but suddenly got hit with inexplicable writer's block, that I still can't explain, and that made me feel the writing of the chapter sucks. Which it did, as I realized later, and I began to rewriting it from the ground up, but the writer's block returned.

When it really began to descend, though, was in the middle of March when the corona virus pandemic started to pick up and gather speed. I was interested in the situation and also thought it's necessary to stay informed, so I kept myself up-to-date with corona virus news as much as possible. And there were a lot of news and, as I realized in hindsight, I was much too dedicated to them all. Part of me enjoyed the slight post-apocalyptic potential of the virus, as a fan of post-apocalyptic scenarios, the other part of me was taking the situation serious and wanted to be as well-informed about the virus as I could, to be prepared for a possible worst case scenario. At some point I must have become obsessed and too infatuated, as I remember that keeping up with the flood of news every day, on top of my writing deadlines, began to stress me out. The focus on corona virus news distracted me too much and I paid more attention to them all than I should have.

As further consequence from this, I became nervous about meeting my deadline for the release of "My Little Pony: Guardians of Crystal Growth". As a result, I began to dedicate much more time to it and to sideline my other projects. I stopped to write new chapters of "Letters to Cozy Glow" and I ceased working on Chapter 9 of "Dreamwalker Dash". I only focused on "My Little Pony: Guardians of Crystal Growth" from that point onwards and until April 18th, its planned release date. And when that release date came and the first two episodes were out and it had turned out that my exaggerated focus on the corona virus caused trouble for doing the final touches on the episodes of Season 1, I still only focused on "My Little Pony: Guardians of Crystal Growth" even beyond that release date.

Focusing on it so much and ensuring that a new episode is ready for its release day was more stressful than any writing I ever did before and I eventually had to take a break after releasing Episode 6 on May 16th. It was in the two weeks that followed that I realized that I am not nearly as well prepared for stemming "My Little Pony: Guardians of Crystal Growth" as I was convinced I am and that I have no choice but to cancel the release I started in order to work more on it. And this show is very important to me, so having had to admit that I am not ready and that I have to cancel the first release of it, something I said I would never do with a fic I released, was crushing. The stress each week and this defeat have sapped me of energy and hurt the belief in my writing enough that I just didn't have energy to write for two whole months.

Lastly, a certain fandom drama involving Derpibooru (which I won't go into here) when I just wanted to go back to writing has delayed my return further. Two weeks ago, the worry about losing Derpibooru has made it too difficult to write once more. And last week, when I tried another attempt to start writing again, the leak of the Derpibooru staff chat logs and The Smiling Pony's (Teaspoon's) "Iron Fist" announcement and how he said that he would rather shut Derpibooru down than allowing nazi content on it, have forced me to archive my entire Derpibooru account, in case he goes through with this threat, which took until yesterday to do and left no time for any writing. I managed, however, to read all of "Letters to Cozy Glow" again to prepare myself for writing a new chapter.

And that's how it all happened. Now I am back to writing, but that I didn't write anything for so long and that I left "Letters to Cozy Glow" and "Dreamwalker Dash" without updates for such a long time still leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I made some great strides with writing again in the first few months of this year, but not letting drama or personal defeats affect me and distract me from writing is something I still gotta learn.
And after these months, I also find myself scared that most will not care about "Letters to Cozy Glow" and "Dreamwalker Dash" anymore because I was neglecting the fics long enough that most readers have probably moved on from them. But it is how it is and I gotta continue with writing anyway. And I still hope that you will pick up these stories again once they return, regardless.
It is not too late to meet my goals for this year and I will work even harder to still reach them now. More infos about future updates of "Letters to Cozy Glow" will come tomorrow!

Stay easy as a filly!

~ Fluttercheer

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[Bronycommander]

Better late than never, I can wait