Eight Years of Abandoned Drafts
I have been writing webnovels, on and off, since 2018. I have never finished one. This is what I learned from not finishing.
There is a pattern I have noticed in my writing, and I do not like what it says about me.
I start a story. I get excited. The early chapters feel alive — I am discovering the characters alongside the reader, the world has texture, the prose sounds like me. And then, somewhere between “this is going well” and “I need to figure out what happens next,” I stop.
Not because I ran out of ideas. Not because life got busy, though life is always busy. I stop because the future of the story becomes uncertain, and uncertainty feels like failure before it has happened.
I have been doing this since 2018.
My first story was an isekai with an overpowered main character, posted on Royal Road back when the platform was smaller and readers had fewer choices. Inspired by early Japanese webnovels — Arifureta being the biggest influence. It was not a masterpiece, but it was entirely handcrafted, before AI existed to bounce ideas off, and it did reasonably well.
I finished arc 1. Sixty-one thousand words.
Then I stopped. I do not remember exactly why. I think I lost confidence in the story before the readers did.
Fast forward to 2021. I had a job now. I was reading more webnovels than ever. I started thinking about writing again, but nothing I came up with excited me. Then I stumbled across Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator — a tool that procedurally generates detailed, realistic-looking fantasy maps. I spent hours with it. Something about those maps made the world feel real before I had written a single word. A world felt real if it had geography. Geography created constraints. Constraints created story.
I finally had an idea I was genuinely excited about. An isekai again, but different — an adult MC, a profession-based story. An Apothecary. I wrote about six long chapters. They read like traditional novels, not like someone racing through a plot outline. I was proud of this one in a way I had not been before.
Then I stopped again.
After that came attempts I am slightly embarrassed about in hindsight. A xianxia novel — until I realized I did not understand Chinese culture deeply enough to write it authentically. Then, a magus novel with no planning, written on pure enthusiasm and nothing else.
What I could not see at the time was that I was not just running out of steam. I was failing to understand why I was stopping. Each abandoned draft was data I was not reading.
The xianxia quit itself for obvious reasons. The magus novel had no plan and therefore no future. But the stories I returned to repeatedly — the ones I rewrote two, three, four times — those were harder to diagnose.
Then AI arrived. This changed things, but not in the way people assume. I did not use it to write my stories. I used it to think. Over the years I had accumulated dozens of novel ideas — most now lost somewhere in ChatGPT conversation history. AI gave me a sounding board. I could stress-test a plot, ask “does this make sense,” explore consequences I had not considered.
A few ideas kept coming back no matter what. I always wanted to write a story about an overpowered magic academy professor — not about the students, but about his life. What is it like to be the most powerful person in the room when no one knows it? I wrote numerous versions of this premise. None made it past chapter ten.
It took me a long time to understand why. The professor was reactive — responding to crises, mentoring, solving problems the students brought to him. That is not a story. That is a job description. The story was always supposed to be about him — his relationships, his history, his reasons for being there. I was centering it on the wrong character.
Another recurring idea: a magical inn owner. Or a magical restaurant owner. Something cozy and contained, built around hospitality and craft. Same problem in a different shape. I kept trying to make the customers interesting. But the customers are props. The MC has to be interesting. The inn is just the setting.
I only figured this out after abandoning both premises multiple times each.
At some point I distilled what I actually wanted to write. An adult, overpowered MC who moves through a fantasy world like a tourist — curious, powerful, not driven by revenge or destiny. Someone who chooses to be there. A kind of fantasy slice-of-life with deep world-building underneath.
I finally found a premise that fit: a young adult coming-of-age isekai progression fantasy. Not quite the “tourist” story in its purest form, but the closest I have gotten.
I have written thirty-five chapters. Eighty-eight thousand words. Arc 1 is done.
And now I have not written a word in over a month.
I have been thinking about why. Part of it is that arc 2 requires more planning than arc 1 did. Arc 1 had momentum — I knew the beats, the characters were fresh, the world was exciting to describe. Arc 2 has to earn its existence. The plot has to go somewhere. That is harder.
But if I am honest, the deeper issue is conviction. I do not fully believe, every day, that this story is worth finishing. Some days I read back what I have written and think it is genuinely good. Other days I wonder if I am just repeating familiar patterns — isekai, OP MC, progression — without adding something that justifies the reader’s time.
That doubt is not useful. It does not make the writing better. It just makes it easier to not write at all.
I do not know if I will finish this one either. But I know it is the best thing I have written. The gap between my first attempt and this one is not just time — it is thousands of hours of reading, dozens of abandoned drafts, and an embarrassing amount of failed research. Every stopped story was tuition.
The fantasy map is still open in another tab. The characters are still there. The world did not go anywhere.
The story is The Extra of the Convergent Realms on Royal Road. Thirty-five chapters are already up.
I want to publish at least one chapter a week. I have the plot. I have the world. I just need to sit down.
So. Here is me, writing that down publicly, because maybe that helps.