The White Mall's backstory

If you ever tried writing, say, a novel, did you notice how your motivation disappears without a trace after you've lost that first 

"That's a great idea, I should write a piece about it!"

You sit around for a couple hours, and then you write a bit more the next day, and then... some more work or studying than usual keeps you busy for a few days, and when you get back to your great stuff, the spark is gone. And it's not going back no matter what. You don't feel the same feelings when you were beginning. Then your novel is dead. R - I - P. Draw it a gravestone in Paint.

Maybe it's just me, but I used to suffer from it hard a few years ago. I suffered from wanting to write, and then suffered from having 5+ unfinished Word files.

The turning point was when I needed to contribute to a municipal writing contest. Encouraged by my school newspaper section, I pulled through and finished my first novel. In short, it was about first love, and one of the characters already has a cameo in TWM. 

The thing that led to the success was responsibility. My teachers, pals and family believed in me, and I made a firm decision to not let them down. I won the contest, and then another one I submitted the story to. However, repeating the strategy did not end up as gloriously. This is when I understood that responsibility is my mightiest motivation that had to be used very carefully. I would sacrifice a lot of time and effort to be as reliable as possible, so I avoided giving promises left and right.

Years later, I tried writing a fanfiction for my favorite MMORPG, Guild Wars 2. I just used the setting and locations, while creating every single significant character myself. This is how I discovered that keeping my interest by playing the game was also a viable strategy. 'Just' two months in, I finished it.

It wasn't that great, but it was a coherent story of 15k words, which was insanely large for me at the time!

So I published it. And was pretty much ignored. I got some useful feedback on narrative structure and characters that I was going to use on the sequel, but in the next few months everything would change.

You see, I was seeking audience. I was excited by the fact that someone would go through the effort and read my stuff. To achieve that, I had to go for broader audience. Most of the puzzle pieces were on the board, but I had no idea what was coming when I gave birth to the beast.

On March 16, 2020 Mall.docx was created. It was loosely based on one of my dreams related to my long-lasting fetish fantasies. I never dared to spill them out in a text editor before though, so I must have been feeling particularly brave that day.

Unlike with the game fanfic, I didn't need to keep up my interest in the kinky stuff. It was just there for as long as I can remember, and it showed no intension of disappearing. I read over a hundred stories on my favorite topics, such as male-to-female transformation and getting stuck in fetish clothes such as insane-heeled footwear, corsets, hobble skirts, masks, armbinders, etc. This experience was also coming in handy, supplying my unhealthy imagination. Slowly, the story progressed, and the universe around it started acquiring its rules and principles.

After assuming that the popularity and reception of The White Mall: Una were going to be optimal on GaggedUtopia, I submitted the story on September 1. Twenty days later, it got published. Unfortunately, the site viewer and the vote count was going to be broken for the next eight months, only rising back up this April. I could not see the amount of my audience... but they were there! And they left valuable, valuable feedback that was going to finalize my decision to make The White Mall a CYOA.

Soon I discovered chyoa.com and chose it as the platform for it. I took Jen from another version of the story (the original ending is written back in June and is still not in the CYOA version as I'm writing this, lol) and made her the protagonist.

Making the story savagely branched with lots of 'sad' endings was also part of my plan. Yeah, it's taking a lot of time and effort. Yeah, it's probably already bigger than all of my previous writing put together. Yeah, it'll probably take more than a year to complete this one character.

I love how it's different from everything else I've read thus far. I love to keep this tree growing. I love knowing that actual people are reading it, and at least some of them like it.

I'd like to keep it this way.