Chapter Delay Announcement (Patreon)

So, I've had a busy ass couple of weeks at work and barely any free time to write. I was up until midnight last night working on this next chapter, and I just didn't have time to finish it, let alone do any editing and cleanup. Overall, I'm just not happy with what I currently have down, and will take a few more days finishing and polishing it up. To be fair to you guys, I'm postponing the public chapter's release until I have this all sorted out. I'll likely have the chapters out by Friday, or failing that, use the weekend to it's fullest to make sure I'm happy with what I have and post sometime mid-Sunday.

On a related note, a huge portion of my troubles with this arc and pacing overall can be directly or indirectly blamed on my complete lack of preparation. I have no outline for the overall story, no outline for individual chapters, just a mental list of things I plan on putting in and vague ideas on how to introduce them and to tie into the story. The actual word/scene economy per idea per chapter? Done completely on the fly, which has led to issues. For example, the chapter I'm currently working on, I'm going to have to skip over the majority of the two battles the main cast isn't a part of, and address them through short callback/flashback scenes, probably when everyone regroups at the end of the arc. I just don't have the mental capacity to get this wrapped up in a reasonable timeframe while giving enough attention to the choreography of fights that, quite frankly, only exist for worldbuilding and meta-reasons.

All that being said, after this arc is over, I'll be taking a relatively short hiatus to ACTUALLY plan things out and write up an outline or seven, so I don't get caught up in the weeds again.