'Becoming Katelyn' is becoming my white whale

Hello, everyone. I know this is a much overdue update, but I wanted to let everyone know I was still alive! It's been a crazy few weeks. There was a surprise late-Valentine's Day getaway, followed by an extremely persistent bit of sickness and some weird schedule upheavals, and I got a bunch of bad story reviews that were pretty discouraging, but at the core of things I'm still struggling with trying to finish Becoming Katelyn. I just... do not like the way it's turning out. I keep getting to a point where I'm just blech about the story and then going back and rewriting a substantial portion of it and continuing and then doing it all over again. The idea of the story is still sexy and exciting to me, but the draft that I'm working on makes me muy unhappy. Part of the problem is that I keep trying to blend together parts of the original Halloween story with the new cosplay-convention-themed story and coming up with a mess. The main character can either be a super nerdy guy who happens to be on a sports team, or he can be his campus sports star, but I can't seem to make the two go together very convincingly. I'm also struggling with the fact that the original draft of the story was in Second Person "You did this, You saw this, You felt this" but as I started rewriting it I kept changing to First Person "I did this, I saw this, I felt this", and then back to Second Person, then back into First Person...

Unfortunately, writing doesn't always just ... flow, and sometimes you can't finish a story on schedule. That's part of why I've been quiet the past few weeks: not being able to finish a story when I thought I was going to be is really irritating, and embarrassing.

I know this is the story that everyone is most looking forward to, so I'm gonna keep working on it and trying to finish it, but instead of trying to turn this Frankenstein of a draft into a finished story, I'm gonna delete the entire thing and start fresh. Don't worry, I have a very detailed outline by this point, but as many writers have said before, sometimes the only thing you can do to finish a story is to throw the draft you're working on away and retype it all so that it's fresh, cohesive, and you don't have to keep going back and fixing things as you work on it.

I'm sorry you guys are going to have to wait a bit longer for this story, but I'm afraid them's the breaks. I'm not happy publishing stuff that I don't feel good about, and I really want this to be a good story. I know that a lot of creatives who use Patreon try to keep to weekly or monthly release schedules with their content, but I don't feel like that produces the best quality of content, and I don't think I'm ever going to be quite that regular -- If I'm not happy with something that I'm working on, I'm not gonna publish it until I am. I'm sorry it's taking so long to finish this story, but I want my 'brand' - so far as that exists - to be known for well-written, good stories that I'm proud of, not 'lots of stories very regularly regardless of quality.' For that reason, I've been thinking about closing my Patreon down and just focusing on writing, but I know some of you like having a way you can show support for me between story releases, and I appreciate that. Just please be aware that even when I think I'll be able to finish a story in 6-8 days or some such, there's always the possibility that I'll get close to the end and then look back and think 'wow, this story sucks, better rewrite this...and this...and this' and that's just the way it works sometimes. 

In an unhappily-related note, I've been receiving some demanding messages lately (not from my patrons) and I need to make it publicly known that sending me demanding messages asking where stories are, or leaving me bad reviews specifically so that I will write stories the way a particular person wants them written will not have the effect intended -- my stories will be done when they're done, and they'll be written the way I decide to write them. You don't have to read my stories, or support me on Patreon if it's not worth it to you to do so, but demanding stories - or demanding that I write them according to your tastes -  is not going to produce them any faster. It actually has the opposite effect. Messages and reviews like that make me wanna go sit in front of a video game for a day or two instead of working, and are not inducements for me to work harder, or to respond to you. None of my current patrons need to worry that this applies to them, but I have been getting messages of this sort the past few months, and I felt like I needed to make a public statement.