Hiatus apology note and explanation - Yes, OLS is back!

Okay, guys, it's finally time for me to crack this nut. And just to make it convenient, I will split the entire thing into the short version (first) and then the longer one (second)

So, first off:

I'm extremely fucking sorry. This four-month-long break was never supposed to happen. Never in my worst nightmares of the time, I expected a week of rest to turn into this massive hiatus. Yet, what happened happened, and now I can sadly only apologize, hope you guys will forgive me and then prove with hard work that I really mean what I'm saying here. 

As for the details of what the future holds:

First: for the next few days, there will be at least a single chapter a day (still at my family place, don't really have the means to write a lot). Once I'm back home, 2 chapters per day minimum, unless I end up with a super long one (2k words or more, I don't want to split chapters just to make more of them)

Second: I won't make any priv until I complete AN ENTIRE MONTH without a single day of missing releases. And yes, being a minute late with a chapter counts as missing a day. 

And now, for the longer version. 

Back when I initially went for the week-long break, that's exactly what it was supposed to be. Just a week-long break so that I could rest, regain motivation, and will work hard. Yet, as days went by, this one week turned into two weeks. Two weeks turned into a month, then into two months. 

Then, I tried to get back to writing... Only to be faced with the three problems that made me stop.

1st - I believed (and I still do) that the part around chapter 100 is poorly written. Coupled with how it's one of the lowest points MC gets to, it effectively made me feel as if it fucked up the entire story - even if it was a vital point to what happens for the next 200 chapters. And this fuck up made it super hard for me to find the motivation to write this story.

2nd - I ran out of the outline. It happened actually quite a bit later, but this entire story came to be when I was returning from my friend's place, high af, thinking about the potential story I would want to write. And up to a certain point, OLS was all about that one line of thought that grew into this story that at least some of you came to (I hope) love. Yet, after certain events... I ran out of the initial juice. And while I had a lot of ideas about where to take this story from then on... Welp, it wasn't the same. 

3rd - I lost the connection with the flow of the story. It actually happened as I was writing the last few chapters already. It started when I sat down to write... and just didn't feel like writing. So I wrote whatever for the first time in the OLS lifespan. And then, when I tried to pick the story up the next day... Rather than the actual story, I knew I was basing what would come next on that whatever part. 

Then, came the first two months of the hiatus. The time when I attempted to pick it back up. And after just two chapters I realized that I had no idea what this story was about. I had no idea what plots I left to hang, what foreshadows I prepared, or what connections there were that were bound to bind the story together. I was out of the flow of the story. And after writing just two chapters... I realized that if I wanted to write it, I would have to reread it from scratch, just to get myself back into the story's flow. 

And that's exactly what I did... although, it took me two more months to do it. 

Those are the main, but not all, reasons why this fucking hiatus came to be. Of course, there are a lot more of them. The shame of dropping the story that did so well for apparently no reason. The worry that if I picked it up after such a long time it would be taken as a money-grab move rather than my wish to restore it. The very fact of going back to something I left aside four months ago...

The longer the hiatus turned out to be, the harder it was for me to go back. The heavier the burden of dropping it became. And this, in turn, made fixing this problem all the harder. 

But now, hopefully, this sad time came to an end. 

I don't care if some of you (maybe even all of you) will think about my attempt at reviving this novel. It's the best novel I've written on WN to date and I'm not going to let my worry about what other things dictate whether I will pick it up or not. I love Arthur x Mia's wholesome pairing too much to just let it collect rust and be a shameful point in my history. 

I'm going to revive it. No matter how hard I will have to work for the sake of achieving that. No matter if it will turn out to be futile in the end. No matter what some of you (something I'm sure about) will say about this attempt. 

I'm going to fix this greatest blemish on my honor as an author into the proof that if I set myself to do it, I can do it. It will be my own path of cultivation where, instead of circulating mana through my meridians, I will circulate ideas through my mind and words through my fingers. 

All so that one day I will be able to look at OLS not with shame and regret, but with pride and a feeling of accomplishment. 

And rather than seeing it as a dropped and failed project, I will see it as a completed novel that brought the greater story of Slothverse to the end it deserves.

I apologize for making you, guys and galls, wait so long for this "redemption arc" of mine. I hope you will forgive me for the mistakes that lead me to this long hiatus and support me on my way to giving this story justice. 

All the best,

MotivatedSloth. 

PS: I know I kinda rambled a lot here, but I really needed to get it out of my system. Maybe I wanted someone to excuse me? Maybe I wanted to show the other side of this sad story? Or maybe I just wanted to excuse myself? I don't know. Maybe, in a few years, I will mature to the point where I will look back at it and be able to laugh and say, "Why did I do this and wrote that? Hah, it's simple. It was all about..."