Change For You: Author's Notes · 12:36am Jan 24th, 2014
Hey, everyone! Change For You has been out for a few weeks now, and I'd like to thank everyone who read, voted, favorited, and/or commented on it. I really appreciate all the compliments and criticism, and I'm so glad that so many of you enjoyed reading it. And it even popped up in the feature box and the popular stories box a couple times! (If briefly. Am I the only one here who doesn't have the slightest comprehension of how those things work?)
The judges aren't finished picking the winners yet, and there's some very stiff competition. I'm not sure if I'll place, but I don't mind either way--I'm pretty happy with the story, and it's an honor to have it stand in such good company. I actually learned a bit about myself in writing it, so while the judges work their judging magic, I thought I might lay out some thoughts about this story and its writing process.
[SPOILERS for Change For You below this line]
Now, there's no shortage of stories and art featuring pony-Spike, and dragon-Rarity, while rarer, is not unheard of either. Change For You was my entry into both categories at once. I had the idea some time around August, if the Scrivener timestamp is accurate. I had in mind a sort of Gift of the Magi-esque storyline (or as fferror cleverly put it, "Gift of the Transformagi") in which Rarity and Spike both transformed themselves to fit what they thought the other wanted, only to find the other loved them best just the way they are. The idea that love and friendship transcend outer differences like race and (in fantasy, at least) species, and the idea that you shouldn't have to change who and what you are for true love, are both morals that I believe in wholeheartedly. (And they definitely pop up in my other works as well, both past and future.)
Once I had the idea, I did what I usually do with new story ideas: I let it bounce around in my head for a while before doing anything concrete with it. Often it can be months or longer before I start putting words down. The time spent percolating tends to help me get a solid idea of where I want to go; good ideas stick around and bad ideas fall by the wayside. Time passed, and I thought about the story occasionally, but I didn't really consider digging it out to start writing... until the Sparity contest caught my eye.
I didn't hear about the contest until it had already been going for a while, and initially I didn't think I'd have the time to enter. But then I thought I might enter a fanfic I'd just started (tentatively entitled "Carry You Home"). Problem with that was, about 1,600 words into it, I suddenly found myself struggling with where to go next. And then I suddenly remembered Change For You (which I hadn't titled yet), and suddenly wanted to finally get it written out. So I got started on it, with a week to go until the deadline for the contest.
Here we come to the big lesson I learned about myself from writing this: Deadlines, for me, are both a blessing and a curse. This is something I already sort of knew from doing Thirty Minute Ponies prompts, but the Change For You process made me really realize it. The week's deadline definitely motivated me to write, even on days when I didn't feel especially inspired. I've never written 5,000 words of anything that fast, much less pulled it together into a complete work. But in the end, a lot of readers thought the final story felt rushed, which I totally agree with. There were bits of conversation between Spike and Rarity that ended up on the cutting block because I didn't have time to work them in, and that wasn't all that got left out. It's a good story, and I'm pleased with it, but I don't think it's my best work.
So maybe what I need is a compromise, between the set deadline that lights a fire under me and the freeform writing that gives me all the time I need to revise. How I'm going to do that... is... a very good question. And one that I'm sure I'll answer... eventually.
Perhaps a deadline to have the outline completed, and then time afterwards to go back and fix things that you aren't happy with?
Anything that gets you to release more of Greenfire...