Take it Easy Informational Post/Apology_(1)

First of all, let me apologize. Months without any sort of update is pretty inexcusable for someone who cares about satisfying his readers like I do. Ironically, I do have an excuse, lame as it may be: school. School has dominated my life for the past few months, as it has many other college students’ (looking at you, BashfulScribe 😉 ). There is, however, a perk to being a college student. With little or no work to do over the summer, I will be free to write to my heart’s content. This freedom will be coming in around a month, so please be patient (you have of course been very patient so far, for which I am grateful) for these next few weeks.

Secondly, I would like to announce that “Take it Easy” has been cancelled (this is where I dodge the rotten fruit being thrown at me by dedicated readers). I was never happy with the story, as I felt it didn’t exemplify my best writing abilities. I believe that this is because it was a half-assed effort: I never wrote backstory for characters or planned events ahead of time, choosing instead to wing it week-by-week. This is not conducive to good writing and I hope that none of these practices return in my new series.

Thirdly, the new series will be similar in premise to “Take it Easy”: a male high school student (shh, don’t report me to XNXX’s moderators please) living his life. This is what I know best, considering it was my life not too long ago.

That brings me to my list of changes for this revitalization of my writing career.

1. Aaron Moody is a very popular character, so he will still exist in spirit, though not in name or much else. An Aaron-type character will not be the protagonist of the new story, as I want to try new things. However, since Aaron is basically me and I am too narcissistic to not write myself into my story, there will be at least one character with similar traits to him.

2. The rest of the characters will be scrapped. I like change and starting fresh, and I hope that most of you will agree with my choice. They all felt a little two-dimensional due to the lack of backstory, which shouldn’t be a problem this time around.

3. Oh boy, where do I begin on the plot? For “Take it Easy”, I had no endpoint in mind, so the story lacked direction. This time, I guarantee it will have both direction and magnitude. The story curve will be less flat, with definite sections of rising and falling action.

4. While writing “Take it Easy”, I stuck to a strict upload schedule. Although I won’t make any promises I might not be able to keep, this is one feature of my writing that should stick around. However, instead of one story every week, I am aiming for every ten days, which should ensure better quality.

5. Sex scenes. I hate them. Will I be crucified for having fewer sex scenes? There’s only so many ways that I can describe what a vagina feels like, so all sex scenes seem the same after a while. Instead of being a dominant part of the story, they will instead be a plot device that drives more important elements like character development and interrelationships. To be clear, I don’t mean that they will be few and far between, but there might not be one in every chapter.

6. I have interacted with my readers via the comment section, which works reasonably well. I would like to communicate with you via email, but the spam and useless mail wouldn’t be worth it and it would be time-inefficient. This also makes me think of something. If you generally like the story, but have a complaint or suggestion, please tell me what it is. I love hearing that people like what I write, but those comments are less useful to me than constructive criticism. Quote-unquote “hate” comments will be ignored, but not removed from the comment section, as I am a firm believer in freedom of speech. Spam, however, is useless and unnecessary and will be removed.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in a month or so,
-Ishmael

P.S. There is a hint as to the title hidden somewhere in this post. Enjoy.

P.P.S. I realized that I was about a thousand characters short of having a full story, so I guess I’ll explain the exigence for my characters in the following paragraphs:

Aaron is me. We are basically the same person, except my dad never went missing. His sense of humor has been toned down from mine a little just to make it more appealing to readers. This is exactly how I was in high school, art nerd and all.

Ashton is based on a girl I had a crush on in high school and eventually dated. She was a dancer, just like Ashton, and all the guys were smitten with her. Somehow, I came out on top. Unfortunately, the real Ashton, whose name was obviously different, turned out to be a little crazy.

Nicole is similar to a female friend that I grew up with who always gave me shit in a loving way. We both knew we could rely on each other in times of need, and I loved her like the sister I never had.

Mrs. Moody is pretty similar to my mom, personality-wise, but pretty much everything else is different.

Emily is an amalgamation of the hottest girls I’ve dated, excluding Ashton’s doppelgänger.

Alice is the milf I always wanted in my life and Damian is just a random rich British dude, very loosely based on Lew Ashby. Points to you if you know who that is.

Alright, I’ve hit 5000 characters, so I’m signing off for real.
-Ishmael