Volume 1 Afterword

 Hii! I’ve been silent for a little while without notice. Sorry about that, but I’m back!

I’m ending the story off here as volume 1 and with a second one in planning, I’ll get into that in a bit but first I wanna give my thanks to everyone who read, liked and commented on this story, I’m grateful to you all! I read all your stories, and those who I haven’t had time for yet, I’ll be doing that after I finish writing this! And if you skipped straight to reading this, still thanks lol. Special thanks to Minatika for supporting me all the way from when chapter 3 first posted and for her amazing fan art, I can never thank you enough.

Now onto why I disappeared and came back to end the story… This will also act as a little reflection for myself so please bare with me. I didn’t intend for the story to end like this, I still wanted to write 6 or 7 more chapters before ending the first volume but a few different reasons piled up leaving me with little choice. The first issue is that this whole journey had been plagued with really terrible planning all the way from the start, I found out about the contest about a week and a half after it started and I will be moving to literally the other side of the planet by the end of August, so I had rushed the planning for the structure of the story, just giving the 2 main characters a small character profile and a start and end with a little plot points in between.

I had already noticed that when writing the first chapter, everything felt clunky and I pulled random crap together to get a thousand words. Caramel was originally never planned and put it when I ran out of ideas just 300 words into writing, but I’m glad people liked that sassy horse.

Some good did happen due to this though. The dream aspect was never planned and I had wanted to keep the isekai elements to as little as possible, but it gave a lot of intrigue into the main character’s backstory. The entire Citra Arc was also never planned. Before reaching Citra, I had planned for the rest of the story be set in the forest, but I can’t think of a way for romance to develop with those two along, so the beginning was a little messy when I was figuring things out and trying to put in for dialogue but after I had gotten used to that, and actually planned out the festival, I think it had built our hero and the merling girl’s relationship very nicely.

The second problem is that I had no idea how to character interactions which is essential for a romance story. I have learned a lot since I started but I still get stuck a lot. Dialogues and describing body languages is very hard for me, I very rarely talk to people and when I’m reading or watching movies or animes, I get drawn to the world behind the characters and background informations, so I had to use the little experience I have when writing.

It gets really frustrating every time I run out of inspiration, getting stuck for hours or days on end unable to write anything because I don’t know how to start a conversation or how a person should act and react to something. And it gets even more frustrating when the deadline I had set for myself gets near, and I just have to sit there and can’t do anything about it. Along with obsessing over checking every email notification, seeing if it’s a new comment(this is completely my fault, I can blame no one for this) is really taxing on my mind.

I also don’t write fast, I wake up and write for 5-6 hours everyday trying to get a chapter out on time, so it turned a hobby into something more like a full time job, even when most of the time is being spent just sitting down typing in a few words before deleting them.

Last and biggest reason why I had to end this earlier than I wanted is because as I said earlier, I’m moving to the other side of the world, all the way to Canada in just 3 weeks. I had to start packing my things, buy what I missed or need and have some health check ups. I can’t say I enjoy living where I live right now, so I can never forgive myself if I miss this chance, I hope you understand.

Onto a more positive side, I’m still really proud of what I’ve written and glad I did it. I learned a lot in this month and a half, definitely more than I could have if I did it without posting and sharing it. Learning and getting more comfortable with dialogues is one of the most important lessons I learned, followed by having a solid idea and planning.

I don’t know if many people noticed, but to me, I feel like I shoved in a lot of mostly irrelevant info and worldbuilding into my writing just to show it off whenever I don’t know what to write. Like the beginning of chapter 6(part 2 of the fight scene) and almost the entire 11th chapter(art gallery chapter) but I still think the description of the divines are pretty cool lol.

Something I do regret is that there wasn’t enough simple and subtle worldbuilding, like a few fantastical creatures hopping and flying around or unique architecture. I had focused a little too much on the magic system.

future plans for this and other stories

For now, I’ll be going back to earlier chapters, revising them and adding more dialogues in them. I might also write a few chapters in between and post them in my own time without a schedule. I will make an announcement chapter after I finish editing the story to notify anyone wanting to reread this.

I still very much wanna give this story the proper ending it deserves, along with their adventure inside the forest itself, but it won’t be out for a while. I’ll take my time to carefully plan out the rest of the story development this time before I start with the writing. I’ll also have to get use to my new environment after moving so I don’t have a time for when this story will continue yet. But if I have to guess, it would probably be late December or early next year, sorry for the wait!

But this won’t be an empty 4 month gap. After I finish with revising the story, I will be working on a shorter story. It will be more world heavy, something I’m a little more passionate in, and the title to that story had already been teased in one of the chapters, for a little hint, it’s in the second arc ;) I also wanna write a bestiary for my world and maybe even a magic manual.

extra notes

Now that the rambling is over, I wanna ask you what kept you following this story, and what you expect from it in the future? If you have any criticism, please leave them in the comments, I would like to learn from it and better myself as a writer. And as a bonus for ending abruptly, feel free to ask me one thing you would want to know about the story, it can be lore or story related, as long as it’s not an immediate spoiler, I’ll do my best to answer it.

Again, thanks to everyone who read my story and followed throughout this journey!

EDIT
Revision finished :D