Finished

I just finished posting my second longest story today.
Coming in at just a little over 25k words.
It's been a project I've been working on since like...maybe September or so last year?

And it's been crazy.
The difference between posting this particular fic as compared to my first long fic.

As my first long fic was over 30k words and had to be posted all within one day because I was doing it for a Big Bang event. 
And the rules for that big bang were the entire story needed to be posted on the same day.
Which was fine.
and I was rather proud of the fact that I managed to finish and post the story on my posting date last year.

But the major thing that I missed from posting it all in one go.
Was the build up.
The anticipation.
An entire story in one day means that the reader doesn't have to wait for updates.
But it also limits the amount of people who can see the story you posted unless you like reblog it like crazy afterwards. 

And without the anticipation of 'when is the next chapter coming'
It also means that I don't get to add people to taglists. I don't have people wanting to know when the next chapter comes out. I don't get people following me and talking with me and sending me asks about the chapters.

And I missed that.

I thrive off of feedback from my readers and posting the story all in one shot limited my ability to adjust the chapter if it needed adjusting.

As that's one thing that I've found while posting multichaptered stories is that it gives me time to see what the readers are anticipating, to notice details I had glossed over and to see which parts of the story would need improvement.

Posting it all at once?
Yah you just gotta rely on yourself and hope you made good judgement calls on everything that happened.

And having only had the Big Bang Fic as my longest fic before this point....

I honestly wasn't expecting a huge reaction when I posted the first of eleven chapters. 
As I've posted first chapters of multi-chaptered stories. But those stories are short usually under 5 chapters long.

This one was 11 chapters.
25k words. 

And posting a chapter twice a week...that's still like 5 weeks of posting. Over a month. So there's a lot of time to build up anticipation in readers.

I just didn't expect such a huge response. 
From the very first chapter....people were hooked. Wanting more. Excited for updates.
My taglist got super long.
Like over a page of names long. 
It was crazy.

With this ONE story I had around 400 people follow me. 
O.o 
And that's crazy.
So crazy because previous stories usually get me like 5-20 people following me.
So to have 400 people. 

It's huge.
I've never expected such a response.

But I'm grateful for the experience. 
To see people's anticipation and their reactions to each chapter. XD lol.

And it was also great to help me make the story better. 
As it helped me see things that were missing in later chapters.
And it gave me time to adjust them.
To make the story better.

Like I'm pretty sure I added about 6k words after I began posting the story.
As with each huge response I got.
Came the pressure of wanting to be better. To please the audience. To make sure I didn't disappoint them.

So like chapters 5 and on ended up going through major rewrites to ensure that the chapter was in it's best condition before I posted it. ^^;; 

And it was so worth it.

It makes me a little sad that my Big Bang Fic couldn't have the opportunity to get a similar response because it was all posted in one day last year.

But writing is always about learning.
And I loved the learning experience of both.
And how I've grown from writing both long fics.

I can't wait for the next story.

^^;;
Hopefully the response is just as positive for the next fic as it was for this one. ^^;; 

Until you next read these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi