On Wander · 6:48pm Aug 7th, 2019
I could start this blog with a long, rambling monologue about what lead to the state of Not All Who Wander Are Lost. Its odd birth, its unfortunate comatose state, long detailed explanations why the fic essentially died so long ago. I'm not going to waste all of your time with that. If you have questions, I'll try to answer them in the comments, but that's not the point of this blog. Instead, I'm going to keep this brief and give the basic information. After all, for many of you who have read Wander, its been well over 5 years since you last gave it a look.
When I put the story on hiatus, I was expecting to write a complete overhaul of the original story. Rewrite the whole thing with an entirely different plot line, the only similarity being that the story is about Scootaloo going on a desperate journey to bring Rainbow Dash back from the dead. As time wore on, I realized that I simply did not have the energy or desire to do that. It's hard to put into words, but once you get 90k+ words of a story finished... the idea of scrapping that entire thing and starting over, while maybe for the betterment of the overall plot takes a toll on you.
As years have gone by, and I have come no closer to getting a rewrite even under way, I have decided to do something different, and unlike previous times, I have actually made progress. All chapters save for chapter one of NAWWAL have been unpublished. This morning, I went over Chapter One with fresh, more experienced eyes, and made a few changes--specifically from a stylistic viewpoint. I was a much younger and inexperienced writer at the time of its inception, and some of the earlier chapters definitely needed fixing. Likewise, there are certain components that have been changed because... if I can be blunt for a second: originally, the story was written with one ending and one cause of Rainbow Dash's death in mind. Due to reader feedback, I quickly changed these moments of foreshadowing (and in some cases, left them in absentmindedly) as the story went on and the admittedly-weak original outline fell apart.
Luckily, Chapter One has very little bearing on the greater plot of the story outside of providing Scootaloo with the inspiration to begin her quest (which, after much debating, I have decided not to change. Originally, I was going to scrap the Daring Do book-within-a-book thingamabob, but have decided to stick with it). I have a plan for the story, and while it will differ from the original plan (and several chapters, once republished, will look completely new), I have decided to stick it out and finish it in the vein of its inception. That is to say, the story will still play out as though the show ended after Season 2. Twilight is not a princess, the library is still a thing, the Cutie Mark Crusaders still have blank flanks, and so on. Trying to adjust to an ever changing canon during the hiatus was another factor that killed motivation. Due to the time of its publishing, I'm debating whether this should be given an alternative universe tag (I think this would be an example of a story being 'grandfathered' in due to its publishing date).
I cannot say how long the wait for the older chapters to be completely republished and the new ones to get started (my head is full of stories, many of which are shorter and easier on the soul). I can assure that I am, at long last, actually working on my epic once again. I will admit that this decision is a bit of a spur of the moment one that I've thrown myself into quite suddenly (I decided to finally work on it once again at Bronycon this year), but I also knew that if I held off on working on it, the chances of me losing that motivation once again were very, very real.
Feel free to ask questions below if you have any.
I’m not familiar with the story, but I’ve had my own experience with an eternally on-hold longfic that I struggled to put to bed.
I say, if you’ve found a way to drag the thing across the finish line, that’s hugely positive and it’s probably worth doing. I speculate that you already know about issues that have made it difficult to complete as you originally hoped, but from my experience, I wasn’t fully able to absorb the lessons about what I could’ve done differently until my project was in the rear view mirror.
Bonne chance!
Holy shit dude you were more dead than me. Wha happen
Oh man!
5101654
Bronycon infected me with spaghetti of excitement.
Also I just finally had it hammered home that if I want to do something, I should, well, just do it
I was there... I could have talked to you!
Excited for this throwback, that story feels like a dream of a dream.
has hell frozen over
no seriously i am a very happy boy congratulations!!!
5101817
Heh heh, I actually used to refer to the story as 'Narwhal' when discussing it with friends way back in the day. As you said, it sounds so similar.
5101820
A freezing'd be nice. I've had enough of this southern humidity for the year.
5101824
summer is a bitch
5101822
The secret ending is gonna be Scootaloo turning into a narwhal, I can feel it.There is nothing narwhal related in NAWWAL, any references to narwhals in anyway is certainly coincidental and has no bearing on the story whatsoever.
5102262
derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/5/21/1159382.jpg
5102297
Oh shit I'm sorry, let me fix that