This breakdown of the chapter's development progress was requested.

WARNING! The following contains a rundown of events during the struggle to get a single chapter of A Deer Named John written between May and October of 2020. It is only a bullet list of events but does refer to moments of severe mental health. It does NOT go into detail of these mental health events.

It is also only an explanation for the delays, not an excuse for them. It also does not give specific dates though some could be found through cross-reference with other blog entries.

It also gives a sort of break down of how I went about this chapter's development while other ideas sprang to mind. My brain went very analytical during this long period and it shows in this list. I may have also missed noting some things along the way.

• Did not realise going into this chapter that I was suffering from burnout after the previous chapter and all of its intricate little moments over such a long chapter,

• Unpacked the concept notes of the chapter planned months prior and properly start setting out the chapter while working on the previous chapter,

• Debate continued from several months prior as to Jacob’s eventual cutie mark,
  o Three options raised,
  o Third option dropped early due to being overly complex,
  o First and second options, cake vs quesadilla, continue to fight it out,

• Originally planned out as a chapter from Jacob/Shield Breaker’s perspective,

• Continue to flipflop on Yori’s species for the upcoming second major story arc,

• Asked for suggestions for chef names,
  o Ran poll on the list of suggestions,
  - Somewhat disheartened by the lack of participation yet pushed forward with the base designs of these sort of guest characters,

• Made some notes for both the chapter after this one and started looking at parts of the next major story arc,

• Challenge for this one was to write a chapter which involved food,
  o I don’t write food much as I feel I struggle to describe the look, taste and texture of foods in the way that others would view them,
  o This was to bring me out of my comfort zone,
  o Originally planned that each contestant would present three dishes,
  o Originally the Quesadillas were meant to be the failed dish by Jacob,
  o Decided what would be the dish to seal victory: crème caramel,
  o Added Bonbon to the competition as it makes sense with part of her minor story,
  o Also added Mix-up at this time as it would work well with his story thread,

• Attempted to change to Jackie’s point of view but realised after about two weeks that it would make the chapter feel too passive,
  o This also meant the chapter following would be changed to Jacob/Shield Breaker’s perspective, but has reverted to Schmidt/Comet Streak’s perspective after this chapter was reset,
  o Scrapped whole notes set and rewrote them,

• Wrote the scene of Jacob showing off his skill to Ochre,
  o Originally meant to be the opening scene but it just didn’t feel right,
  o Struggled with this for more than a month while writing snippets of other scenes to try and get things moving,

• Mental health issues cropped up all throughout this chapter which ate into my ability to make much progress,
  o This was approximately the timing of the first one and led to a month and a half of being messed around by one mental health organisation when I made it clear that I was after diagnosis, not just treatment for other aspects,
  o Two more wasted weeks trying to find and arrange a psychologist who would be able to do the diagnosis as well as treatment of all issues,
  o First thought I might also be suffering from burnout,
  o Continue to be frustrated and annoyed with myself for not being able to solve this, get the chapter written and posted,
  o These mental health issues are now being handled appropriately but took a major toll on me and my ability to get the chapter ready for production,

• Continued to struggle with Jacob as point of view for an unknown reason (this was almost constant),

• Wrote most of the scenes regarding Stormwalker/Cloudchaser as an attempt to speed up production (speed up failed),

• Test piece of Sam O’nella is so-so and needs to be more divergent from a test piece of Jacob’s,
  o Not sure which will change more at this time,

[list Test piece of Exotic Spice goes better than expected,
o Regret her not being part of the main competition but not going to add scene just to use her more,

• Continue struggling with having to come up with so many dishes,
  o Challenge seems too daunting to bother with but must keep going,

• Realisation of a major problem linking this chapter, the one following it, and the first few chapters of the second major story arc,
  o This took my focus away from trying to get this chapter working on its own as I needed to flesh out some parts of the second main story arc as well as change the intended ending of the chapter following this one,
  o On again off again debate on the handling and timing of the relationship between John and Spears,

• Altered the challenge of food for the competition to a single food per character to simplify it for myself and not bog down eventual narrative with food after food after food ad nauseum,
  o Led to the two teams, cooks/chefs vs locals,
  o Decided on the dishes/foods and the basic ideas of their presentations,
  o Changed Jacob’s failed and successful dishes to account for preparation/competition time,
  o Obtained recipes for most of the dishes (Perfect Plate’s Not Berries not included as they are based on molecular gastronomy but don’t actually exist),
  - References not actually used in the chapter, mostly just were gained to focus my mind on what they would be, not their ingredients,

• Test piece of Critical List introducing Rare Taste proves that Critical List is possibly crazy,

• More mental health issues with stress re-igniting a physical health issue I had many years ago and doctors couldn’t actually diagnose at the time,
  o Had me doing nothing, even stopped myself from looking at the chapter for almost a week, until the physical pain the extreme stress had caused went away,
  o Actually admit I have been hit hard by burnout during this rest period (I am very aware that I am stubborn),

• Expanded a major concept for something, with roots back in the start of the story, to take place during side arc two and main arc three,

• Possible scene idea for side project/request story based on dragons and Twilight Sparkle,

• Moved scenes around for current chapter and continued to worry about the possible opening being too similar to that of two chapters ago,
  o Eventually decided it didn’t matter after bringing Comet Streak into the scene to start something that will be a part of this chapter as well as the following one,

• Got the inspiration to have Jacob somewhat haunted by things of his past which have lowered his self-worth,
  o This was the breakthrough I needed and it happened while playing with the opening of the chapter one evening,
  o Looking forward to the chapter now that I understand Jacob a lot better and have a much better feel for this chapter’s flow,

• Notes/further discussion on future project to adjust the Coping of a Former Human story,
  o Still desperately need to write the Tael meeting dragon Casanova chapter, especially as it links to this chapter,

• Become mother to my stubborn father to ensure he follows rules for three days ahead of medical appointment,
  o The worry over this and a friend’s own medical check during this time drains me emotionally for several days after,

• Discovered I had neglected to give pretty well all of my characters eye colours while working on opening scene of this chapter. Had to fix. Took some time to solve,

• Very bad mental health moment. Took a few days to get past,

• Finally get to production with a number of changes to already written scenes as new ideas spawn on the fly,

• Switch to new laptop so don’t lose what already written when apps randomly close on old laptop,
  o Wanted to hold this off until after this chapter was done but app failures forced my early move. Hard deadline for this was mid-October due to Office 2016 losing support,
  o Get office on new laptop to work the way I want (still happening),

• Have the idea to make Jacob/Shield Breaker fall asleep after talking with Schmidt/Comet Streak at the start. Gives the bonus of speeding things up,
  o Resulted in very good writing session,

• After a good session of writing, spent the next day sick,
  o Work around this by trying to lock down Casanova’s colour scheme,

• Uncle passed away,

• One week later, darkest of all mental health days,

• Grief period continues and some introspection
  o Discovered why Jacob had been giving me such a hard time,

• Mind snapped back from the edge and finally stopped trying to hurt me,
  o The Jacob realisation was part of this,

• First half of original chapter completed,

• Two days later, second half of original chapter completed,
  o Original chapter split in two as it was over 12.6 k words in total.

There is a lot more to this but, as I said at the beginning, I will not be going into the details of the mental health issues, except to say this: I am still here.

Hopefully the next chapter won't take so long.

Love you all and see you then,

Tael.