Template:KV To Do List/8

'''Currently, I have 11 incomplete stories. 3 are active stories; 2 are on reserve, set to be started soon; 6 are on hiatus and are not going to be bumped up to the "On Reserve" or "Active" categories until more stories have been completed.'''

There are 6 Dragon Ball Universe stories; there is 1 Halo Universe story; there is 1 Death Note Universe story; there is 1 Lord of the Rings Universe story; there is 1 A Song of Ice and Fire Universe story; there is 1 Pokemon story.

'''In progress stories: 7; not-yet-started stories: 4. Underlined stories have not been started at all - they have no prose written for them whatsoever. Priority is given to completing stories that have at least something written for them already, prose-wise.'''

Active Stories (3)

 * The History of the Decline and Fall of the Planet Trade Organization - 65/95 chapters completed.
 * The History of the Decline and Fall of the Planet Trade Organization/Volume I - 20/20 chapters completed.
 * The History of the Decline and Fall of the Planet Trade Organization/Volume II - 20/20 chapters completed.
 * The History of the Decline and Fall of the Planet Trade Organization/Volume III - 25/25 chapters completed.
 * The History of the Decline and Fall of the Planet Trade Organization/Volume IV - 0/30 chapters completed.


 * Unnamed Soba story - 1/5 chapters completed.


 * Ikigai - 2/6 stories completed.

On Reserve (2)

 * Death Note: Our Truths - 8/67 chapters completed.


 * His Majesty's Pet - 1/??? chapters completed.

Hiatus/Storage (6)

 * The Last Saiyan - 14/52 chapters completed.


 * The Shadow of Valyria - 0/?? chapters completed.


 * Dragon Ball: Heart of the Dragon - 0/??? chapters completed.


 * Unnamed Halo series - 0/?? chapters completed.


 * A Just Edge - 42/??? chapters completed.


 * Unnamed Lord of the Rings story - 0/?? chapters completed.

Oldest stories
''This section lists active stories by start date. Underlined stories have yet to be begun.''
 * 1)  Unnamed Halo series  - Sometime in early 2004
 * 2) Death Note: Our Truths - 01:31, December 2, 2010‎
 * 3) A Just Edge - 18:04, December 16, 2011‎
 * 4) The Last Saiyan - 21:09, April 6, 2012
 * 5) His Majesty's Pet - 21:54, April 6, 2012
 * 6) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Planet Trade Organization - 15:31, August 14, 2013
 * 7)  The Shadow of Valyria  - 14:15, September 23, 2015
 * 8) Ikigai - 9:03, December 22, 2016
 * 9) Unnamed Soba Story - 6:11, February 7, 2017
 * 10)  Unnamed Lord of the Rings story  - not started yet
 * 11)  Dragon Ball: Heart of the Dragon  - not started yet

 Some thoughts on this section:  I will break this section into two parts: the first part being the first six, up to the PTO story; the second part being the last five, from TSOV to HOTD.

The first section lists six stories that are, in many ways, remnants of earlier times. Certainly my Halo story, The Last Saiyan, His Majesty's Pet can be put in that category. These are ideas that are too expansive to be deleted. I usually do not delete stories that I have written anything for. I don't delete stories that I've written words for. It's so rare that it's barely worth mentioning. Ten out of the eleven stories in my deleted pages anthology have either been re-written (Breaking of Silence is His Majesty's Pet, for example), or re-imagined in their world (which was the case for To Kill an Empire). So in general, I do not give up on stories. I may re-work them. I may change significant details about what I want to do with them. That is the case with all six of these old stories. All of them, as I imagine them now, are significantly different plotwise from when I first created them. That's just how it is, though.

The Halo story, for example, has existed since 2004 in my mind, to some capacity. It has changed and evolved quite a bit in the twelve (almost thirteen) years since then. And yet, in all that time, I haven't written a word of the story. It's just how it is. That's such a long story that I won't be getting to it soon. Still, it is by far my oldest fan fiction. I expect to start it in two or three years, hopefully. If I haven't started writing it by then, there's a good chance I may not write any of it at all.

Our Truths is a Death Note story that I have struggled with since about 2011. I haven't written a word of it since January 2011. In the month or so of time I spent writing it, I wrote an entire saga, which is pretty cool. I'm looking to return to this story in February 2017 or so to quickly finish it. It will be much shorter now and significant details of the plot have been changed from the original vision. This is a story I can see myself completing in 2017, which would be a great relief, as this story has been in danger of never been completed for almost 6 years. I haven't read this story in 6 years, and I remember very little of its plot. I will re-watch the entire Death Note anime before/during my re-writing of this story.

A Just Edge may be my third oldest story, but it's also one of my most optimistic stories. I love Pokemon, so that makes writing this story a lot of fun. Also, the fact that I use so much comedy in it makes it quite fun to write. I wrote 28 chapters of it in 2016. Yeah, really. I love this story. It may be my favorite fan fiction overall, even outclassing TF (I know that sounds crazy). It's also, currently, my longest fan fiction ever. AJE is not like my other stories in that I have no plans to end it, at least in the foreseeable future. I'm writing it in arcs. I finished the Kanto arc in 2016. I'm going to write the Sevii Islands arc next. Dunno what's going to be the third arc yet, but there will be a third arc, and likely additional arcs after that. This story has been on hiatus since I finished the Kanto arc in August 2016. It will likely remain on hiatus until June or July 2017; by that point, the Pokemon Gen VII metagame should be pretty much set. Then I will continue writing away at this story. This story is certainly the most successful and least concerning story (for me to complete) on this list.

The Last Saiyan and His Majesty's Pet were created on the same day. Perhaps that was my greatest day of futility on this wiki ever. Sometimes I regret creating those two stories, particularly The Last Saiyan. But I have recently decided to change aspects of His Majesty's Pet. It will no longer cover all of Vegeta's life under Frieza, but rather a few specific plotlines while he's a child. It'll still probably be about 20 chapters, or so, and it will be a priority for me to complete this year. I would love to finish 2017 with HMP done. The Last Saiyan is a much more complicated beast, and all I can say at this point is that I do not expect to return to it until I have finished Heart of the Dragon... which itself cannot be started until my PTO story is done. So TLS is a long ways off. It is likely to be my last major fan fiction on this site, not gonna lie. Three to four years from now, I expect to start work on it again. I will have to basically re-write the extant fourteen chapters (including the prologue) and then go from there. That is not to say that I've hit a roadblock or anything. I have ideas for the story. It's mainly an issue of style and timeline that made me stop writing it. I think I should get everything up to that point in the timeline written out before I continue with TLS. Just doesn't seem right to write about Ledas' son when we don't even know what happens to Ledas yet.

My PTO story was started in 2013, but I didn't really get serious about it until 2014. I finished the first book in August 2015, and finished the second book (while taking a large bit out of the third book too) in 2016. I'm roughly halfway done with this story, as of writing this. Basically, it's a huge story. It's gotten way bigger than I imagined, and even with its grand scale, it's still not that big. HOTD will be much larger in scope, for example. I want to start writing HOTD, so my PTO story is my #1 priority. I have 46 chapters left to write, give or take. That's doable in one year. I think 2017 will result in the third book getting completed at a minimum. The fourth book is 30 chapters, and I haven't plotted out those chapters yet, so that number could change. That said, I think it's likely that I am able to write 35-40 chapters this year and then finish the story overall by June 2018. This is my #1 priority, once Chasing Oblivion and A Short-Lived Dream are completed. I will try to finish this more than any other story in 2017, I think.

So the first six stories were all created by 2013. Each of them is at least 3 and a half years old. These are quite old stories. Take for instance that what I consider to be my magnum opus took me roughly 4 years total to complete, and that was with probably a year and a half or so of no activity on the story at all. Why these remaining stories are taking me so long to complete is a complicated question, and the answer is different for each story. For these six stories, the main thing that binds them together is length. They are all incredibly long and will require a lot of work to complete. I don't want to just jump into a new long story before completing shorter ones if possible. That is how we got here. It's why I stopped working on TLS, why I've done not much work on HMP. But other stories on this list are getting worked on. AJE and PTO are both significantly written (AJE has 42 chapters done; PTO has 49; these numbers are unmatched by any story of mine, save for TF). These are certainly my main priorities. But with how I've structured some things, I've already decided that some of these stories will not be worked on again for a very long time. I would like to finish PTO and Our Truths in 2017 at the very least. HMP would be a bonus.

Now we get to the most recent stories. All of them have been around only since June 2015 or later.

It's a bit disingenuous to say that The Shadow of Valyria began in September 2015. I began working on it in mid February 2015. In the process of working on that story, I got the idea for The Lost Dragon, and began working on that instead. I have since finished TLD. I decided that I wouldn't work on this story until The Winds of Winter is released, as my story will deal with some sensitive stuff going on in the region of Dorne in TWOW's timeline. So I need the book. Basically, I'm just waiting for George RR Martin to release it. I have ideas for this story. That said, TSOV is a long story, probably 80 chapters and more than 400,000 words. I would like to reign that in, but not sure how to yet. The length is part of why I haven't at least written the first couple chapters yet. I don't want to start a new, super-long story until some of my other stories are completed first. This is one of my newer stories, so it's not a high priority right now.

Ikigai is the one-shot collection I began after A Short-Lived Dream (though one of its stories was technically written before ASLD was completed). This is meant to be a lighter one-shot collection, with a focus on humor and characterization - plots are not as important. I am in no rush to complete this collection at this time; I will write at least one more one-shot before June 2017, but I don't know if I will write a third before then. I do hope to finish this one-shot collection sometime in the latter half of 2017, but I cannot be sure at this point. It's only five more stories, and most of them are building up to Heart of the Dragon, though not all of them will. There is a slim possibility that I will choose to finish this collection before July 2017, but that would mean writing almost all of the one-shots in May and June.

I have also recently started a short story about a Yardrat named Soba with TeamUnitedNerds. We are planning on making this story three chapters, but that number isn't set. We also don't know how long the chapters are going to be. The first chapter is over 5000 words already, though it's not done yet. I expect this story will be completed in the first half of 2017 regardless.

My Lord of the Rings story is being written in collaboration with Hyper Zergling. Because he can't work on it for the foreseeable future (potentially ever), I will not write it yet. However, I have ideas for it, and I do have plotlines that are entirely unconnected to his characters. With that said, this is not a priority at this point, as I have other stories to complete first. But this is certainly a story I could start at any time. The simple fact that I have 10 other stories, many of them quite long, is why I haven't started my LOTR story yet.

Heart of the Dragon cannot be started until my PTO story is completed, at a minimum. Basically as soon as PTO is done, I will begin working on this story. I have already started on a character list. I know the name of the first saga. I have most of the villains already created. But beyond that, I don't have a tremendous amount planned. Some of what is coming is hinted at in The Great Sushi-Eating Contest, but please note that that story takes place in the gap between the first and second saga of HOTD. The timeline for that story will be tricky, another reason why I have yet to do much work on it. There will likely be one-shots in my 2017 collection(s) that will also build up to this story. So currently, this story is about a year off. It's super complicated and likely to be my biggest story ever. I have written at least a dozen stories specifically building up to this story. That's how serious I am about it. But alas, it's still a year or so away.

My priority is always first on short stories. Stories that can be completed quickly get maximum priority. Stories that have a short number of chapters, even if those chapters have long wordcounts, have second priority. Then it's basically in terms of stories that I am interested in, and then stories that I am working on in collaboration with other people (these always have the lowest priority because I cannot control when the other writer is available and vice versa). Stories that have any extant chapters or prose have priority as well. I don't like unfinished stories. Stories that are partially finished are in much more dire circumstances than those that have no prose at all yet. So that's my process for writing and that should hopefully explain why certain stories are active or on reserve, while others are on (in some cases) extended hiatuses.

I think the breaking point in 2013 with PTO is telling. After I started PTO, I tried not to make impossible stories anymore. The first six are still around because they are problems, because they cannot be easily completed. In some cases this is because of plot and timeline issues. In some cases this is because I'm not ready for the commitment. Our Truths and His Majesty's Pet are two that should be done, though. I just make a bunch of new stories every year. Most are just one-shots, but creating a one-shot collection is basically the same as creating a new multi-chapter story. So it's an issue of priorities, too. If I hadn't been writing so many stories in the past three years or so, HMP would probably be done by now. OT would likely be done too. I'm not sad I've written any story I have though. HMP and OT now become greater priorities because they are medium-length and fully able to be completed in a year. Can I complete them in 2017? Perhaps. There will be new one-shot collections, no doubt. Likely I'll write more collaborations and contest stories and whatnot - things I couldn't predict. And I'm going to be trying very hard to finish 46 PTO chapters this year. And at some point, I'm going to be writing 15 AJE chapters. So with all that in mind, and considering I am going to be going back to school soon, which has been more intensive than ever, it's foreseeable that I can do these things. It'll be tight. It likely won't get done. OT may fall. PTO may get 40 chapters completed. HMP may get a dozen done. I would be surprised if I managed more than that this year.