I'm Re-Writing "Samhainophobia"

How's everyone doing? If any of you have read one of my most recent blogs, you will know that I'm currently on a somewhat writing hiatus. Just as an update, I have been feeling a little bit better. I'm still focusing on trying to get my school projects out of the way and recovering from my recent episode, so I can regain my drive to write again. The drive is slowly returning, and I have been thinking of ways I can regrind my gears once I do return. In the process, I have been getting a lot of inspirations for many projects I want to do. This is one of them. An idea that I've had in the corners of my mind for a very long time, but I'm finally deciding to act on it.

For those of you who may not be familiar, Samhainophobia was the very first story I've ever written. It's a slice of life one-shot about Fluttershy fighting her fear of Nightmare Night with the guidance of her friends. I wrote it as a follow-up story to "Luna Eclipsed" after wondering what Nightmare Night was like for Fluttershy every year.

Anyway, for a while the story did okay but received very little ratings and comments; by August of 2013, it had a rating of only 13 up-votes and 3 down-votes. Then something incredible happened. In lieu of the Halloween season in September, Elric of Melnipony came across the story and left a very supportive comment. He then went as far as to include it in one of his blog posts to promote under-appreciated stories, groups and users. This positive reinforcement has helped me re-establish my confidence as a writer. Then after some more group adding between then and now, the positive ratings for Samhainophobia have almost tripled, leading to even more supportive comments and a long overdue review!

My story has been praised for many things: My characterization of Fluttershy; the fun story line and premise; how I portrayed Princess Luna after the events of "Luna Eclipsed"; and how the story itself felt like an episode. Then I'm just sitting at my desk thinking, "A story with this much praise deserves much better quality."

Since I wrote this before understanding a majority of the rules of writing, it is filled with several mistakes in grammar, spelling, sentence structure and Show Vs. Tell. I also find it very odd to read now, considering where the show is in current cannon; a year has passed in Equestria, so it wouldn't make sense to have two Nightmare Nights with Twilight as a unicorn. To make a very long story short, I've decided to re-write the story.

My main goals include re-working with the story line, working with my dialogue so the characters actually sound like themselves and actually trying my best to write it in the style of the show. However, I will still keep the original publishing up for all to see, as I like to think of it as a reminder of how far I've come. Instead, I will add the re-write as somewhat of a bonus chapter to compare and contrast... in script format! That being said, I'm planning on providing public access to the re-write via link to gdocs, in understanding with the site rules about story formatting. Once all that is done, I'll just kick back, relax and wait for Hasbro to send me my C&D.

I hope to work on it alongside "When Kindness Met Hatred" when my Summer starts in two weeks. Hope you all will enjoy it!

-Dramacolt.