feel free to completely skip this i'm just not doing great and decided to complain. because that's just what i do, apparently.

I know it's been more than a year now,, but i feel really guilty for abandoning the Author Trilogy. like, really really guilty.

it's a weird kind of guilt, though, because i'm not exactly sorry that i stopped writing. it's more like i just,, i don't know.

in some ways, i think dropping the project was something i needed to do. it was giving me a lot of trouble, in a lot of ways.

I kept being faced with bad decisions I'd made early on in planning. I was spending too much time on it and ignoring some of my other projects and passions. My self-esteem was going way down because I was rushing every chapter and I wasn't improving in my writing as much as I could've been.
And then Aiden's death threw up a giant block in front of the whole project, and I needed to start fresh with a new idea and a new project, which became Parallels.

But...

There were so many people who were so excited about Forgotten Demons. So many of my friends had characters in it, and I let them down.

I let myself down. I let the story down.

I had so many good ideas. I managed to explore a few of them, but more have just been abandoned, left to collect dust in my 'plans' document.

I was going to do so much more with the characters. There were several people that were going to get full awesome arcs, and I feel so bad for abandoning them.

I really loved my ideas for the Author Trilogy, especially the ones that were going to come up in War of Wither's End. There was a lot of epic shit that was going to happen, and I'm honestly really sad that I didn't get to tell it.

In the later bits of what I actually managed to write of Forgotten Demons, the writing wasn't even that bad. I did improve through that book, just...not as much as I did through Parallels.

I'm just wondering where I'd be now if I hadn't given up.

Would I still be struggling and hating myself, and letting the story down a different way?
Would I have worked through the issues and been able to actually tell the story I wanted to? Would I have completed it? Would I have been happy?
Would the whole project have burned me out even more, so much that I ended up giving up on MCSM? Or even writing?
Would I be as down and lonely as I am now, since I'd probably still have the same amount, if not more attention on that story?

How would things have been different?

I hate that I'm still thinking about this. I don't like wondering about my mistakes, and whether or not this was one.

I am glad I started fresh with Parallels. I am so, so much happier with that story. Not just because the writing is better, but because it made me feel so much better. There was no pressure or outside obligation, and I was able to finish my biggest project yet without being scared that I was failing.

I don't think I can go back to the Author Trilogy. I just don't see it happening. I still love my ideas, but I think the whole project has just gotten too stale now.

Plus...I don't think anyone cares anymore. The MCSM fandom is dwindling to nothing, and I'm fairly certain that most of my original readers have completely moved on.

I want to reuse some of my ideas, though. Like I said, I really liked some of the ideas I came up with, especially the lore that I didn't get to share because it came later on. I just...I don't think I can bring myself to continue the actual story. I've mentioned this a couple times here and there, but I didn't really have the...strength, I guess?? to really accept it.

At some point I was considering rewriting A World Unwound, or turning War of Wither's End into its own story separate from the original idea, but I just can't. I have too much of a mental block around the whole thing. It's really really hard to explain. I just can't fully turn back to this project.

I feel really bad about this. Like, really really bad. Guilty and sad and like I'm making a mistake and just...all sorts of negative crap.

so, yeah. To sum all that up, I'm never coming back to the Author Trilogy. It hurts to let it go, but at the same time, it hurt too much to work on it.

I'm kind of considering posting my unused plans? I had a full chapter-by-chapter plan for Forgotten Demons, and a whooooole bunch of scattered nonsense for War of Wither's End.

So I may end up putting those either here or in Forgotten Demons. I don't know though,,, would you guys be interested if I did that??

But yeah. That's what was on my mind last night. I don't think I did a very good job of explaining how hard it was on me to admit that the series is dead, but it needed to be done.

I'm not coming back to it. I can't, and I don't think I should.

Thanks for reading, if you did. t's alright if you didn't, cause it's just a lot of melancholy venting anyways.

hopefully I'll have something more interesting and less depressing to post soon.

-your favorite lunatic 📝