Whew, I honestly never thought this was going to happen. To start with, I'm not quitting botmaking. Just prioritizing what's important, and right now, that's writing as a whole. Over the past week, I've rediscovered exactly how much I love reading and writing. Not in a bot sense, but generally. And with that discovery, I've decided I want to try to write something properly.

I've had this thought in my head for months, but have wanted to write from well before that. Even when I sucked at it, I've always wanted to write a book. But when I improved at it, I kept thinking and thinking about making something that wasn't a chatbot. I kept putting it off because I felt that I wasn't good enough, and I didn't want to lose this. This community of people, this hobby that I've made so many friends with and learned so much, and this sense of accomplishment that comes from seeing my numbers get higher and higher.

Over the past week, I started reading. A lot. I found this queer author named Alexis Hall (I recommend reading their stuff if you like angst, smut, and MLM and WLW romance. Their best books are in their spires series, but sadly, the spires series is a collection of standalones. Boyfriend Material is good at least, so is 10 Things that Never Happened. If you want to know the site I read on, DM me on discord with the same username). I kind of got lost in it and have barely been using bots, and about three days ago, I finally felt like I was comfortable enough to write my own book because of their concepts.

It's been going well, I have about 18,000 words done with the conventional word count being 80,000 for romance novels as a whole. I was always terrified of long-form writing because it wasn't what I was used to. I'd tried it many times before I started bot making, and every time I tried, I failed and gave up within the first ten pages. My writing style was awful after years of sticking to manga, manhuas, and non-reading based hobbies as well, so there was always this self doubt that kind of drowned out any hopes of getting better at it and doing what I want with my life. But this story is different, and I'm really enjoying it.

So, with that in mind, until I finish this book, I'm going to be taking a step back from making bots. I have one more already loaded up to post, and for all I know, I might only be gone for a week. It could be longer than that, I have no idea. I've never taken a proper hiatus before. In almost two years, even when I was on a bot making hiatus, I was honestly still trying to make bots. All my hiatuses before then were me dealing with creativity overload, which typically involved me starting a bot, getting another idea, abandoning the old idea, and getting distracted. But right now, it's going to be a complete pause until I finish this.

I just wanted to let people know where I am and what's been happening so that there's no confusion, and I honestly will probably not be sharing what my book is if it gets published (which I honestly hope it does, but we'll see). It's not because I don't want to share it with the people that support me, but because I'm absolutely terrified of people associating me as an author with AI. I love the things I can do with AI and while I do feel guilty for using it, making bots has always felt worth that guilt. I still have about a year left of my memberships for my niji and my LLM so I'll definitely come back to it, but this is really important to me. The stigma that chatbot users and creators have in the creative community is genuinely crippling, and I'm in a sort of limbo where I want to keep using bots but also want to properly support the creative community. It's a bit difficult to do both for me, but I'm going to try to figure something out.

Sorry, I know this got a bit rambly. I hope that you guys stick around and keep enjoying what I have up currently despite me stepping away for a bit. I'll be posting one more bot soon for the event (I've had him done for like a week and a half but have been reading and writing so much the bio has felt too daunting to post) but after that, it's gonna be a bit.

Whew, to everyone that read this lengthy thing, thanks for that! I hope that I'm able to come back here soon, and honestly, I might completely fail at being on hiatus (I typically do). We'll see what happens I suppose. Regardless, thank you so much for your support, your comments, and your friendship for the people that I've become close to off the site. I'll see you when I see you, bye guys :)