New Stories Galore! · 9:53pm Oct 2nd, 2014
Today, I have three new stories hitting FiMFiction. Well, three stories new to FiMFiction, anyway; if you're a participant in the Writeoffs, you'll recognize these titles.
First of all, the two minifics I did over the summer are now added to Bantam Tales, my short-short collection. Go check out my slightly modified versions of An Equestrian Gaur and The Last Line over there. The latter is cleaned up a bit, to make the distinction between an ending and a last line clearer (which, since it's the point of the story, is pretty dang important); the former has a few spelling fixes. I was going to do a more substantial rewrite of Gaur, but after a couple of stabs at it over the summer without much progress, I've decided to cut my losses and let it stand. Well, minus the spelling stuff.
Second, I've just submitted The Sweetest Water, and expect it to go live on the site before long! It's been somewhat modified from its writeoff form, both to make it flow better and fix a few stupid mistakes, and to address one of the two main criticisms leveled against it: that the moral could be read as an exhortation to stay in your place and not try to better yourself. Hopefully, the new version shows a little better what I was going for, which is more along the lines of "know thyself, and to thyself be true."
The other main criticism was that the repetition was too much. On that front, I've made a few changes that I think will help the story's flow and keep the story from feeling too long... but there's still a fair number of repeated phrases and elements. I toyed with a few ways to tone it down, but I couldn't come up with something that I didn't think compromised the fairytale aesthetic I was aiming for. Hopefully, those of you who pointed this out to me will find what I did sufficient for your enjoyment!
In any case, though, thanks to all of you who commented on The Sweetest Water, and whose suggestions helped me get it ready for general publication. And now, as your Chris Follower Bonus, have a link to the story! If you hurry, you can probably read it before it goes up sitewide! And as always, comments and criticism are appreciated.
EDIT : Woo-ee! The story's up, and I just set a new personal best for "fastest downvote on one of my fics."
> a new personal best for "fastest downvote on one of my fics"
My own Social Lubricant got a downvote literally before a single word was posted to the site — apparently based on someone clicking a teaser link to the unposted story, and votebombing it based on title/description/cover art.
Good to see the edited horsewords, though! You've been cleaning up at the writeoffs and the stories deserve better exposure.
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On the other hand, having a story with zero words written downvoted really narrows down the list of things the reader might have disliked about it!
...You gotta find your silver linings where you can.