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Greetings readers~
. . . Been a while, hasn't it? (At least, for this story specifically). Let's just jump right into it: This story, my very first fanfiction, is discontinued because I've been wanting to do a rewrite for quite some time now. My most "recent" chapter of To Be Willing was published sometime in 2015. From the last one or two months of 2015, the entirety of 2016 and the first couple of months of 2017, I had been off of this fanfiction site. Around March or April of 2017, I came back with an Author's Note (now deleted) explaining the reasoning for my hiatus and that I plan to edit this story before continuing on with the updates; and later on during the summer of that year, I did go through all of the chapters to edit them.
Only, one problem began form – the more I edited and perused through my original story, the more that I realized that I wanted to change the whole thing, for the most part. I wanted to undergo an innumerable amount of edits, just sooooooooo many that I may as well as rewrite the whole damn thing. It wasn't until the beginning of the 2018 year that I officially decided to do as such and, since then, I've been planning and jotting down a bunch of things for the rewrite.
The following listed are the major reasons for my deciding on said rewrite:
1) Writer growth. This was published in February 2014. It is now October 2018, nearly five years later and, although I still need to grow more as a writer, it cannot be denied that I have improved over these past few years. I've gotten better at refinement, detailing, the handling of characters (both OCs and the canon folk), character developments, dialogue, and a couple of other aspects; and I can only hope that I continue to improve over time through my constant practicing. My writing from five-ish/four years ago does not completely reflect my writing now (my Shingeki no Kyojin story, Magi story, and the latest three chapters of my other Tolkien story showcase this).
2) Character developments and backstories. This story begins in Third Age 20 and I originally had a prequel posted (now deleted) that would have covered all of the Thranduil/Oropher-focused events beforehand. The new remastered version will start off in the First Age, right at Thranduil's birth. This is so I can basically just incorporate everyone and their backstories in merely one single story, and I wish to expand on so many things such as the entirety of Thranduil's life; the OropherXThranduil's mother OC romance; the GlorfindelXThranduil's sister OC romance that I had somewhat covered in here yet didn't go into depth with; how Greenwood became Greenwood; Oropher's journey, as well as thoroughly fleshing out more of the canon characters and OCs and lots of other stuff. Withal, expect many of the characters to be very different in the rewrite in comparison to this original.
3) A little change to the world-hopping element. This story is a person-ends-up-in-a-fictional-world fanfiction. The new version will not be; Lyrial's going to be the youngest child of a successful elven baker family from Doriath. Please don't misunderstand – the person/people (not just OCs, but canon people as well)-ends-up-in-a-different-world element is one such thing that I am utterly in love with to the universe and beyond. These types of stories are so insanely fascinating, adventurous, exciting, fun, intense and emotional, and they tend to be some of the best fanfics that I've ever read, especially when handled well and with some sort of plan (my opinion, of course). I love the fish-out-of-water idea; I adore explorations into travelling through different worlds/realities/dimensions, as well as time-travel; I absolutely love explorations into the reincarnation element . . . \(*0*)/ HOWEVER, I also love and fully appreciate variety; and because I have another Tolkien story with the world-hopping element in it, I've decided to not make it so for this tale's rewrite.
I apologize profusely for the people who have actually liked and enjoyed this story; in all honesty, I didn't expect for it to go down this way . . . Then again, I probably should have considering that this was my first fanfiction, LOL. Yet, I'd rather write a story that I can get behind with and be much more satisfied with (a little hard to do because of my perfectionist issues, but oh, well, such is life and I merely have to plow on through, hehe). Thank you so very much for your support in the past when I was still updating this story; I truly appreciate it all from the followers, favourites, reviewers and the silent readers.
I plan to publish the first chapter of the remastered version either this week or next week. If you are still interested, I thank you, and I guess I'll see you on over there. If you've lost interest, I honestly don't blame you and I can completely understand why – thank you anyways for your past support on this story, though. :D
With heartfelt regards, I bid you all a goodbye for To Be Willing – The Discontinued Trial-Run Version.
Thank you very much once again,
~ DeLacus ~
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