So. I'll cut to the chase. I have no motivation to work on RwTS, or anything related to it. I haven't had any motivation for over a year. And, I'm starting... ...to reconsider RwTS. Originally I started RwTS because I was bored, I had nothing to do, and it was a fun little storytelling project. I enjoyed it. The drawings took me a few minutes to do. The chapters took me a couple of days. I had a constant supply of motivation. Now, it takes all of my self-control to click "See Inside" on RwTS chapters. Working on it is draining and feels like a waste of time. My art has improved so much, which is great, don't get me wrong, but it's turning me into a perfectionist. So it takes me ages just to draw one panel. And RwTS is nearly two years old. It's not just the art that's improved - so have my storytelling skills. So the plot feels boring, stale and just not fun. The characters are cliché. The villain is cliché. The plot is cliché. Let's face it; when I started out I had no idea what I was doing. And now, two years later, I'm feeling the negative effect of that. But. Usually in these kinds of projects, the artist says at the end, "I'm cancelling my comic". Boom. Done. They're putting it aside. Shoving it in the corner. Never working on it again. Bye, comic. See you never. But. I can't bring myself to do that with RwTS. Call me sentimental if you like, but the truth is, quite frankly, I love RwTS. It's nostalgic. It holds memories. It's opened me up to to the wonderful world of the art community, and I think I wouldn't be where I am on Scratch without it. Not to mention the fact that my art skills have come on in leaps and bounds because of drawing the panels over and over. I can't look at the prologue, or even (relatively) recent chapters like Ch15 without wanting to erase the image of my awful old art of the face of the planet and then curl up and hide somewhere, preferably for eternity, but the truth is that without those drawings my art would not look like it does now. I'm the first to admit that I'm far from the best artist on Scratch, but I like my art and I'm proud of it, and I can't wait to see how much more I improve. So. I can't stop RwTS. But I can't carry on with it either. It's a Catch-22 that I've been struggling with for most of 2023 so far, and most of the end of 2022. (So does that make it a Catch-23? Sorry, couldn't resist. Back to being serious.) I can't bring myself to stop. I can't bring myself to carry on. I'm in limbo. What do I do? As far as I see it, these are the things I could do: 1. Finish Ch17, the catalyst chapter, and then stop so I won't leave everyone on a cliffhanger. Only, I will be leaving everyone on a cliffhanger, because there's some backstory explanation that won't be covered in Ch17. So I'll need to keep going and going and going and... Plus, that's kind of like dumping the comic, which I can't bring myself to do, as I said. 2. Publish a synopsis of the entire comic. But that's kind of like dumping it, which I can't bring myself to do, as I said. 3. Change it to a different format that isn't drawing. But what? And that doesn't guarantee I will have any motivation. 4. Put RwTS on an indefinite hiatus. I think 4 is the least-worst option. It still means that I, and every RwTS reader, will be disappointed, but it's the best option I can see. I'll pause RwTS for an indefinite amount of time. Maybe I'll come back to it one day, maybe not. Who knows? So, yeah. I won't be working on RwTS in the foreseeable future. I think that's best for my mental health. It means I can stop thinking about it and move onto other things I DO have motivation for. In the meantime, I may end up starting another comic, but probably not for a while. I may go back to focusing on TT, but I'm not sure. In other words, everything's very up-in-the-air. But that's the way I like it. It means that, no matter what happens, I'll still be here, having fun with my feline doodles. That's what matters. *sighs* I wish I could've broken some better news, especially as RwTS's second anniversary is upcoming. This isn't what I was expecting to be saying during March. But it's best for me, I think. Also, rest assured that I will STILL be keeping all my RwTS OCs, and making projects about them. I'm too emotionally invested to let them go. Thank you for reading my long rant about RwTS, the comic that I should be letting go but just can't. I hope you understand. Thank you to all my amazing RwTS readers, too - for having faith in a cat who's trying to tell a story. Here's to a future which is a lot more uncertain, and yet brighter for it. - Stormy =^w^=
