So far, so good · 9:00pm Sep 7th, 2014
Now that I'm finished writing for a while, I finally have enough time to write another blog entry.
I'd like to start by explaining how I write my stories. As you may have noticed, I like to take my time with writing, and never rush through any part of it at all. By the time I start the actual writing, I've already been thinking over my ideas for as long as a few months, at least. However, there might be some details that I had yet to figure out, and I end up having to fill in those blank spots as I write. For the actual writing, I typically spend about an hour to fill up just one page on a Word Document, which is often around 500 words, so that means it usually takes many hours (almost never all in the same day) to finish a chapter. Once I'm done writing, I always read through each chapter twice to correct any errors and make improvements in places that I think could be better. For the editing, I typically spend about ten minutes per page, so some of the longer chapters can take me over two hours to go through just one round of editing. Then, as I prepare to publish the chapter online, I read through it all one more time for any final corrections and improvements before I finally hit that publish button. The most important part of all in this process is to never do more than one stage in a single day. In other words, as soon as I finish writing, I always do the first round of editing no earlier than the next day. The second round of editing is also done no earlier than the day after the first editing, and the final edits and publishing is done no earlier than the day after the second editing. Many times, I finish writing early enough that I can space this all out over a longer period of time, which can help a lot. By taking these small but frequent breaks, I allow myself to kind of be refreshed before every round of editing, which makes it easier for me to spot things I might have missed before, and doing this three times ensures that my work is at the highest quality I can possibly manage. Sure, it may take a long time to go through all of this, but I'd prefer to not do any more editing once it's online for all to see, so I've got to do it all before I publish it. For those of you who don't have an editor to help you, this is the method I would recommend.
Looking back over the past year, I'd say that my first story here on this site has been a modest success. It was not the very first fanfiction I ever wrote, but the help I had received from an editor on those earlier stories made me feel confident enough that I could handle this one on my own, and it seems like I did pretty good. LEGO Equestria Girls may not have been popular enough to have been featured (at least, for more than a few hours at certain times), but as far as Lego crossovers go, it is definitely up there among the best. Admittedly, that little bonus story I recently finished, Derpy's Day, hasn't been nearly as popular, though I suppose that's to be expected from a short side story.
At this time, I still plan on not starting any writing on the sequel until after New Year's Day, which is about four months from now. I could certainly use this break to catch up on some reading here, as the number of stories on my Read Later list recently reached over 1000! However, I have very recently started getting some ideas for possibly a few short stories that would take place between the first story and the upcoming sequel (kind of like those Rainbow Rocks shorts you might have seen on YouTube a few months ago). If I do decide to write them, expect to see them sometime in December, three months from now.
That's just about everything I can think of for now. I hope everyone enjoyed everything I've written so far, and I hope you're just as optimistic as I am for what I've got coming up soon.
You have a very admirable writing style. Of course, I may be biased - my own is very similar, although I have not yet reached a stage where anything I have written feels publishable. It probably doesn't help that I like to finish the whole story before I being publishing.
Anyway, I have greatly enjoyed your writing so far, and I look forward to whatever you put out next.