estee

New one-shot story: Belle Époque

Added 2020-09-27 01:17:37 +0000 UTC

This one scared me.

It's not the length. (I swear I didn't mean to hit 14k again.) It's because this is the last link in the bridge. I announced that I was thinking about this story on Twitter some time ago, I got the first 800 words done, and then -- a lot of things happened. Some of them made the blog and are legitimate reasons for not having written the rest. But the remainder came from fear.

There are chapters which have scared me. Things where I had to relate major events, explain my perspective, solve the mystery I'd presented and in all cases, they were things where I had to wait for the backlash. That's a familiar terror. This was something different.

This story is the last portion of the bridge between not-at-all-epics.

After Belle Époque ends, Glimmer has to begin.

And that scared me.

Once this story was up, I had to find the strength to start on the next journey. And you have some idea of what my life is like. I don't know if I can complete it. (I didn't know if I could finish the first time, and things were more stable then.) I have to commit and I don't know if I can. I don't want to wind up in a situation where I get partway through and my life collapses to the point where I can't continue. Where everything just... stops.

It's not fear of commitment so much as terror of being unable to fulfill it.

But now this is up.

And I have to figure out what I have left. When my life is chaos, when every day is uncertain.

I have to hope I can tell the next story.

And I'm scared.