New One-Shot Imminent (And Other Horse Word Things) · 6:26pm Sep 22nd, 2019
For those of you who have been living under a rock don't know, there is a speedfic group (linking to the group page on fimfic, though pretty much all of its activity is through their Discord) that started recently. They hold around 2 contests per week, and over the past few weeks much of my horse writing has been in those contests. Since I'm still getting used to the class workload for college, these one hour contests are a good way to keep the writing muscles loose. So far, I've only participated in three contests and... haven't done well. One of these early ones you might see in heavily expanded form in the future, but this past Thursday was the first time I wrote a story that I was satisfied with.
I was unsure if I should post this for a few days. Partially, this is due to it not placing exceptionally well in the contest (while writing contests are more about practice/fun than placement, it's tricky to tell yourself a story is worth posting when it cannot win a single round in a tournament). The other reason for the hesitance is that is far different from my usual fare--I attempted to write comedy for some ungodly reason, and the overall quality might be far below my usual work. However, I am also happy with this story because... well, let's address the elephant in the room, my stories tend to be a bit on the unhappy and angsty side. This story is the first time I've felt that I wrote something similar to the show (even The Mill had moments that were way too angsty. Love that story, but I made some bad decisions there). Because of this, more than anything, I'm posting this new one-shot as a way of showing that I can write something that is not over-the-top angsty.
Outside of this incoming one-shot, I'm still working on other things. At the moment, the priority will be NAWWAL and/or lengthier one-shots. I have many one shot ideas. Bedrock has a few chapters already typed; however, I'm waiting until I have the entire second act drafted and edited before I start posting those. Reconstruction Site remains comatose for the time being.
Anyway, I figured I owed you all a word of warning before some very bad one-shot pops up in your notifications. While it's not the best story in existence, I am proud of it in that I finally managed to write something that's show-like.
Definitely don’t put too much stock in the speedwrite contest results, man. It’s a pretty chaotic writing challenge to begin with, and unseeded bracket-style voting means the results can sometimes be very unpredictable—for my example, I got bounced in the first round in the first two contests I entered and then won the third. What’s important, IMO, is getting the practice in and grinding out small ideas so they don’t take up brain space out of sheer volume.
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Yeah, I hope I'm getting better at not putting stock in the results. Just my first rodeo with contests so that's a part of the learning process, I suppose. I'm enjoying getting practice out with them, and as you said that is what's most important.