Second Wind · 5:22pm Feb 1st, 2014
In which I discuss:
I. The last few months and the upcoming chapter
II. My New-year’s resolution regarding Valor is Magic
III. A new round of Q and A with a format change
But let’s open with Derpy:
Because Derpy. 
I - Updates
Yeah, I’ve been gone lately. Turns out, the holiday season is rife with hurdles for writing. Who knew? Also, sick cats and rough one-year anniversaries are no fun. But none of that is important. What is important?
I’m back.
By “I’m back,” I don’t mean that I started working on my next chapter today. I mean I’ve been working on it for about a week, and it’s half done. It’s looking good, and my Beta reader likes what she’s seen so far. If things continue at current pace, it’s possible chapter 12 could get published as soon as Friday, though experience tells me that might be pushing it as I look ahead to the regular work week. That would push things back a week, to the 13th or 14th.
Which would make my beta reader, who ships, so very, very happy, for reasons she may or may not be willing to explain when the chapter is published.
Point is, my cats are no longer deathly ill, my extended family is once again extended and being ridiculous at a safe distance, and all the dark anniversaries are behind me. I’m back on the horse again for the foreseeable future. Valor is Magic was always on my mind, however, and it gave me some time to step back and consider. What did I consider?
II - New-Year’s Resolution
I have a long term goal in mind as I work through this project. I want to write fiction for a living, and I’m the type that learns best by doing. So I do, taking on a bit more each time.
ViM was started as an experiment: I had written before, on and off for about 10 years. My biggest project, though, clocked in at about 15k words. I’ve been through the process of publication for short-fiction in magazines. It’s a good time and a great way to get your feet wet, but let me tell you, I doubt anyone could make a full living writing short fiction. Not that you couldn’t write fast enough/get paid enough, but looking into the market you’ll find that there just isn’t much demand for short fiction in terms of quantity. There just aren’t that many publishers, print or online.
To make it as a freelance fiction author in the market today, you have to write novels.
The ViM experiment was twofold. It is my first novel-length project. It’s already four times larger than my next biggest work, and you haven’t even finished meeting all the relevant players yet. In an earlier blog post I use the analogy of boat vs ship: Sure, the ship is additively bigger than a boat, but the change in scale changes so much beyond numbers. I’ve learned a lot about ‘ship’ construction with this.
The second part was writing discipline. If you want to write for a living, you can’t always wait for the mood to strike. Yes, you still need to learn how to use fits of inspiration to their fullest, but to put out the scale of product to remain relevant in the market you have to write almost constantly, whether you feel like it or not. While I (and most of us) have in-real-life responsibilities that prevent me from putting that kind of time into writing right now, I’ve learned a lot about how to approach a project when you feel like crap and just want to go to bed. In this regard, though, there is more ahead of me than behind. The emotional circus of the last two months brought my process to a screeching halt. I have a lot more to learn, and those events went a long way to inform me just how much more I'll have to grow as an author to get where I want to be.
But learning is accelerated with proper goal-setting. To that end, I’ve made the following new-year’s resolution:
I will produce 100,000 words for Valor is Magic in 2014.
Whew. There, I said it. 
Yeah, it’s a reach, but I think it’s a doable and healthy one. Starting today, that works out to 9k words a month. My most productive day last year I wrote a little more than 3k. If I can do that every weekend, I’ll beat my goal and then some. But sitting down to write once I’m in gear has never been a problem for me; the difficulty has been in getting into gear. So I got to thinking about ways I could keep that place in my head where I could always come back to it, and I think I came up with something.
III - New Round of Question and Answer
Way back when, just before I sent ViM out for Equestria Daily review, I did a question and answer session as thanks to those who had taken an interest in the story already. What made it fun for me was not that the questions were to me or for me, but that they were directed at the main ‘authors’ of ViM: Luna, Kaleb and Twilight. I got a lot of really good questions, and if you haven’t seen it yet I suggest taking a peek.
There was a problem, though, at least for me. Turns out, trying to string a bunch of random questions into a cohesive interview is really freaking hard. The block format runs together, you struggle to move the question order around in a way that brings the text together. To this day, it’s the only thing I’ve written that made my eyes hurt, reading and rereading all that block format. I ended up not writing a darn thing for three weeks after posting. If anyone wants to take on a project like that, I figured out some tricks to help mitigate some of those difficulties, but I wouldn’t suggest it.
So I’m not going to do it again…exactly.
This time, I’m going to break it up. Starting the weekend after chapter 12 is published, I want to post a blog answer to one or two questions a week with the same submission guidelines. Rather than a spoken interview format, I’ll be handling the replies as if the responses are written replies. I’m also broadening the range of characters you may posit probing ponderances to all point of view ponies (and griffin.) This currently includes, in order of appearance: Twilight, Canard, Luna, Kaleb, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity (with a brand new PoV coming up next chapter!)
I’ve done a lot of reflecting over the past weeks, and I’ve realized that PoV transitions are some of my greatest difficulty with the project. Once I get a character in my head revved up and going, I start producing a thousand or two words in a sitting. The problem has been getting to that point. I started thinking about exercises that would let me practice jumping to and fro, as it were. I remembered how the Q and A blog had forced me to juggle multiple perspectives at a time, and how for all the pain it had become towards the end, it had been great practice.
But I couldn’t take that up again, I thought. I’d need more questions to even make it work.
... 
With that, I figured heck, if it’s an exercise I can do to keep myself focused on the project and would be doing in some form anyway, I might as well open up submissions and share. Sometime this week I’ll put together a blog I can link with all the guidelines and such, but if people have something they want to send right away just use the old format and PM me.
So, that’s all there is for now. The goal for chapter 12 will be Thursday or Friday, but that might be a stretch. If not, the week after is certain, barring physical harm, fire, debilitating illness, etc.
You should include a berserker in ViM.
i.imgur.com/fc37V2Y.png