An apology · 4:47am Nov 13th, 2014
I want to start by saying I'm sorry to anyone waiting patiently for the continuation of The Scion of Harmony. (Short answer—I'm not done there. Long answer below.)
A little over a month ago, I stopped posting new chapters to my third novel. I had two more chapters written and my plan was coming together for a hugely dramatic climax to follow. Clearly something happened, and I probably owe my readers an explanation.
Without going into too many details, it all started when I submitted the first book to the Twilight's Library group here on FimFic around two months ago. The initial response was great, but ultimately, it was rejected (a little over a month ago—note the timing). To be fair, it was my first book and wasn't all that polished. It actually went through quite a huge transformation before I even posted it here, but that clearly wasn't enough. Over the next week, I went back and completely rewrote it. Again, it was rejected. Major blow to the ego aside, I know what I need to do to fix it and the story will be much better once I tackle the list of things I want to add/change.
While that was happening, I was also going back over book two. I've learned a lot by reading, writing, and helping others on the site and I wanted to go back and see if I could improve what I had written. My second book, while not as bad as the first version of book one, had (and still has) some problems. Again, nothing I can't fix, but I don't really have a lot of time to focus on getting it done right now.
On top of that, I ventured out to read a lot more to try and get a feel for what people liked and didn't like. Honestly, I think I could rack up 1000+ followers and just as many likes/dislikes if I just sat down and wrote a bunch of one shot stories involving fetish clop where every single background/mane pony in the series gets all nasty with <insert whatever here>. I'd found the level of the room. It doesn't even have to be well written. Spelling, grammar, logical flow, PLOT—none of it matters. Either you wrote some epic piece way back in the day and have a million people groveling at your feet for another chapter, or you write pony porn. Those are the two main ways to ensure your work gets read and the followers/likes/dislike/whatever go up. I seriously thought about starting a pseudo account and filling it with the worst possible mash up of every horrible sex/drug/pony contrivance I could think of just to see how big a reaction it got.
</rant>
Instead, I stumbled upon a couple stories that looked popular and interesting but had problems with the "formatting." I basically signed myself up to be an editor for the continuing sagas of two author's stories—"Poniocracy" and "But you can't be interested in HIM!."
That, in a nutshell, is where I've been for the past month. I spent the first week dabbling with corrections to book two before plowing into a massive rewrite of book one—immediately followed by a second rejection and another list of things to fix (mostly in the second half now). The second week, I got into editing for my first side job. The third week I added another side job with my second editing stint (both of which are ongoing). And now, we come to the fun part.
I found a group through reading PP's blog where they have a writing contest every month. I discovered this too late to enter last month's prompt, but I've been eagerly awaiting the November contest. Last week, the prompt voting was held and the starting gate opened late Thursday night (I'm in MST time zone). Having waited a whole month with building anticipation of actually getting a chance to participate this time around, I lol'd when the chosen topic ended up being a troll-prompt—Title Drop. Read their forum if you want the context. Needless to say, I was less than amused.
For the past week, I've been writing a completely new story for this "contest." When the voting is over, I'll post it here regardless of the outcome. I think it's pretty amazing what I was able to put together in about 10 hours of idea/outline/writing/editing time. I finished it last night. We'll see if the group agrees.
So, here's where we stand. I need to fix book one and get it to a place where I can get the TL monkey off my back. I also need to fix book two, but that will probably have to wait for a while. I need to continue to support the author's I promised to assist since I'm a nice guy and I really want to see their stories work (it also helps me get better when I can find and help fix what other people are doing). Plus, I need to get back to wrapping up book three. I promise I'll get there. In fact, since I already have two chapters waiting for an edit/polish pass, I may get to some new content here soon.
Hopefully that explains where I've been and what I'm planning to do. Thank you again to everybody patiently waiting for something to happen with that crazy story I need to finish. I hope I don't disappoint you after waiting so long. The story is there, I just need to force myself to get it written. That's really the hardest part. Once I get something on the page, I seem to have no trouble editing it a million times.
Thanks for sticking with me, and go check out those other stories, revisit book one and two (hopefully after I get around to making a final edit pass on both), and maybe consider an entry in the November write-off. You've got until Sunday to write 2-8K words with the troll-prompt. I'll try and get back to book three as soon as I can, which won't be soon enough.
—Thornwing
p.s. I also had a birthday and bought a new car. It's been a pretty crazy month.
Happy late birthday!
Damn FIMFiction, why you no alert me to blog posts!?!
Just for the record, your reputation has just been boosted to 'EPIC' status. Seriously. And yes, clop or magnum opus is the way to get views, i'm afraid. And it is a shame that it got rejected twice...
they couldn't find a good thing if it hit them square in the face.
But no matter! Because there are still people here who love your work, and i'm sure being an editor will help get your name out there. Always a pleasure writing comments for you, because you truthfully deserve the praise. Also: Happy belated birthday! Was there cake?
2603287 I want to be clear, perhaps I wasn't in the post, that the rejection was totally warranted. I may think I've written the best thing ever, but there were legitimate concerns that were detailed by the reviewer. I agree with most of them.
I really want to go back and fix the things I've identified need fixing coming from the feedback. The prospect of actually doing that and having the time to do it right is daunting. I want to finish book three, I want to rewrite/add a good bit to book one, and I still need to look at book two again.
I've got one more story to read and score for the November write.off competition, and I also need to edit my own story so that it's ready for FIM posting once the voting closes. I think that will be next on the adgenda, followed by another chapter of book three and then maybe I'll dive into a section of book one stuff. As I said before, too much to do and so little time to do it.
Birthday was good - can't complain. I'm getting too old to complain about them. Today happens to be my daughter's birthday, so we get more cake (she wanted a "candy" themed cake - I'm too old for the load of sugar that turned out to be too.)