"Perhaps the kindest thing I could do for the characters would be to leave their stories unfinished. Leave them with their possibilities, their potential, even if they only exist in my own mind."
— Rebecca Yarros
Over the years, I have grown so much as a writer, but even now, I find myself wrestling with the same quiet pressure I have always placed on my stories. I still catch myself chasing perfection, wanting every plot thread to tie neatly together, every moment of continuity to make sense, every character arc to arrive at a satisfying conclusion. When things fall apart, or when a story refuses to resolve, when the timeline tangles itself into knots, or when my muse suddenly vanishes as if it has taken a swan dive off a cliff, it can feel incredibly frustrating. There's a sense of unfinished business that lingers, like a door left open or a conversation cut off mid-sentence.
For a long time, I interpreted those moments as failure. I thought that if a story stalled or drifted away before reaching its ending, it meant I had somehow done something wrong as a writer. But the truth I've slowly come to understand is that creativity rarely follows such tidy rules. Not every idea grows into a full novel. Not every character walks a complete journey. Some stories simply live for a while and then fade.
In many ways, I've always thought of my roleplaying stories like comic books featuring my characters. Each storyline is an issue, an arc, or sometimes an entire run. And just like in the world of comics, not every series lasts forever. Some are cancelled before their time. Others are quietly retired. Some get rebooted years later with a different tone or perspective. And sometimes an idea that once felt like it would become an epic saga turns out instead to be a short, limited series or even a single, self-contained one-shot.
But that doesn't make those stories failures.
Comic issues that only run for a handful of installments still exist. They still entertained someone. They still introduced characters, emotions, and moments that mattered in their own way. In the same sense, the stories I began but never finished were not wasted time or abandoned dreams. They were part of the creative journey. They were experiments, sparks of inspiration, brief but meaningful adventures shared with characters who lived vividly in those moments.
Following a muse can be unpredictable. Sometimes it carries you deep into a long-running saga. Other times, it leads you somewhere new before the previous path is fully explored. Learning to accept that shift and to allow inspiration to move freely, without treating it as a betrayal of past ideas, has been one of the hardest lessons in my growth as a writer.
But it has also been one of the most freeing.
As I continue to grow and make peace with this part of the creative process, I want to take a moment to honor the characters whose stories never became the long-running series that some of my others did. They were still vibrant. They were still engaging. For a time, they lived and breathed in my imagination. They had personalities, struggles, victories, and voices that mattered.
Even if their stories paused, or ended quietly off the page, they were still part of the world I created.
And that matters.
Those characters were never failures. They were simply stories that burned bright for a moment and then gave way to the next spark of inspiration. And I'm grateful for every one of them.
