To ride the storm... · 9:33pm January 14th
Ah, airships, majestic means of transportation with an undeniably fantasy vibe to them, perhaps for the very reason they're so outdated and frivolous. Also a great source of arguments on a certain website.
I've long had an itch to write a story featuring one, but it was one of those ideas where you have inklings of what you'd like to write, but no concrete storyline. I've figured I'd like Luna to be the narrator of the story, who upon her return gets an airship named after her and instead of being happy about it would have been upset. Twilight (being pretty much the only pony beyond Cellie to confide in her) would ask why and she'd explain that she was part of an airship crash where she couldn't save her ponies. For what its worth, it was a decent idea, but I never quite felt it concrete enough to start writing.
Cue a year or two later and, out of good or bad luck, relatives are visiting for two weeks, along with their many small children. I don't really deal well with noise, not that i ever got vocal about it, but it certainly put me in a very sour mood. Coincidentally, I was also listening to a bunch of metal music, including Iron Maiden to drown out the endless chittering of the kids and upon my fourth or so re-listen of Empire of the Clouds, I had a revelation.
Around 80% of this story was my easiest time writing yet. I've had up to three thousand words / day at times which, considering that unlike Witless this story was pretty much entirely original beyond its theme, is my fastest speed yet. Obviously speed doesn't equate quality, but it does show that writing this story was a very therapeutic experience after all this stress. And indeed, the stress really showed itself during writing. If you think the story's current ending is dark, well, it used to be even darker. Steady? She jumped after the captain in a moment of confusion. Wrench? She burned to her death. I'm already somewhat known in the few circles I frequent as someone who writes mostly darker fics, but this was something else.
Thankfully, my two editors, Jinxed and Equimorto reined me in a little. The story underwent some serious changes during its editing and not just the aforementioned two changes of fate. Most of these didn't really change the fic substantially, only made its prose a lot more pleasant... and correct. Perhaps it was due to my mental state, perhaps exhaustion, or perhaps I'm just rusty, but this ought to be my highest fixed error count so far. Not exactly a proud achievement to have, but alas, what can you do?
Still, to end on a more positive note, 'Maiden Voyage' was a story I simply enjoyed writing. It might not be my most poignant work or most popular, but it was a story that I didn't really struggle with, beyond the good kind that results in a better story by the end. I hope you had as good a time with it as I've had with writing it, and thank you for reading it, and of course thank you for reading this blog post.
Somehow I didn't expect for whole accident to be so deadly, even though it was stated at the beginning. Glad that Wrench survived, part about her focusing on safer design is great way to deal with such trauma and prevent future losses. Found it odd how "weak" Celestia seemed, considering Steady was able to beat her with a bar, but then again being in a storm of Windigos might have had a thing with that. Glad it didn't went any darker then needed, most of crew dying is horrible enough as is.