First and foremost, hello!

I hope all of you are doing relatively well and are currently safe and healthy. It's been a while. I apologize for such a long absence from the AFF community and from updating all of my stories for such a long time. Today, I read a comment on one of my stories that pointed out something I've been wanting to address for a while. That something is part of the reason why I haven't been updating anything as of late. Now, this isn't something *super negative*, and I'm not bashing the commentor, and rest assured I *am* still writing and will continue to do so at my own pace.

Let's dive into what this is all about:

The comment I read described feeling a lil disconnect between the chapters of one of my fics. Now, I totally understood what they were getting at. See, my writing process back when I was updating "regularly" was that whenever I posted a new story, that meant I had what I thought was a significant part of the fic written out and completed. I'd start posting a chapter while continuing to write updates as I went along. The problem is, I wasn't mapping out the story from start to finish and I'm a pretty slow writer (unfortunately). After a while, I would run out of pre-written chapters to update my stories with, which led to me rushing updates that weren't quite fully developed yet. The idea and thought were there, but I feel now they came out half-baked.

After such a long break from writing and updating, I now feel a pretty big disconnect from my old works - completed and unfinished WIPs. Especially so with my unfinished works. When I look at them, I have no idea what to do with them next. I would get so excited to share something new with you guys that I would start off the story strong, but wouldn't quite know how to follow that through to the end. Like I said: I would churn out updates that weren't ready.

Even with my finished works, I feel a little uncomfortable thinking about how some of them turned out. I feel like I could've done much better than what I ended up writing. I feel a little disappointed in myself, honestly. In the past, I've even considered deleting some of them so as to wipe the slate clean and start over anew. I won't do this because keeping them up serves a reminder of where I've started from, but the urge is there. I know I'm probably just being super critical of myself, but I can't help feeling this way asdfghjkl. I'm so honored to have as many people supporting me and my work as I do, but I'm also aware my stories have their flaws (some more than others).

So here's the moral of this long winded ramble: I want to work on these issues for future stories. I want to become a better writer. More specifically, I want to show I've become a better writer. Currently, I've been working on taking some concepts I've worked with in the past (ex: Soulmark) am fleshing them out more. This is why while I've been writing, I haven't been posting anything about writing. From now on, I'll be completing the entire story before I post any chapters. This will ensure that I won't have anymore WIPs and it'll help lessen my urge to share a new chapter before it's ready.

Now, when I say I'm working with concepts I've written about before, I do not mean I'm going to be making carbon copies of them. While there may be a few similarities plot-wise, these are going to be brand spakning new stories. I've even got a brand new concept in the works that I'm developing. I'm really, really excited to share it with you, but I want to make sure it's quality writing. Turns out, it takes a little while to get used to story mapping instead of just winging it all the time. I'm trying to go more in-depth with character studies (we'll see how that goes) and the motivation behind character's actions. I'm trying to be more deliberate.

Anyhow, writing like this is taking a lot more time than I'm accustomed to, but I'm hoping that the wait will be worth it in the end. Cheers for anyone reading this! Once again, I hope everyone keeps safe and healthy~!