Future Plans, 2022 edition. · 2:32am Feb 3rd, 2022
TL;DR
- Feb-roo-airy or Feb-you-airy?
- Dash of Humanity 3 - four chapters remain
- Some future Ideas/Plans
Winter is Coming has come
I keep starting and deleting blogs because I'm not too sure how to put into words my thoughts lately. To make a long story short, it gets really cold, yada yada, zero productivity. To make it longer, well, I'm not a self-motivator and the last couple months have been full of distractions, shit weather, and stuff. It's gotten better but I've always been my own biggest critic, and a day spent not being "productive" feels like a much larger failure than it should. Sometimes it's okay to do nothing, or binge Pokemon Acreus for 30 hours over a few days.
Anyway, my motivation is returning with the sun and temperatures above 40 degrees. I still can't self-motivate very well, but I can practice good self-care and make sure I'm setting myself up to succeed.
Dash of Humanity 3 over, sequel?
With only 4 chapters to go, the story has all but wrapped up. Hard to think I wrote it back in November. Releasing it over time after finishing it did alleviate some of the most stressful parts of writing on fim fiction. There wasn't a constant pressure to "be productive" and "cram" 4k words into a chapter every week. Ideas for revisions were easy to find and slot in. The over all time-per-week to edit is way less than to write, allowing me to do other things (like be hella lazy).
So I think it was a success in that regard. The trick is, I need to start writing now to have something new to release when it ends... like Dash of Humanity 4-6 (the second trilogy). I can confirm I want to do them, but to be fair, I wanted to finish Trixie Gets Slandered and I think that's been on hiatus over 8 years now. So, like they say "You can wish in one hand and crap in the other, and see which gets filled first..."
Uh, which is getting us off-track. Not to be a Debby-Downer, I have the plans in place, I want to write them. The length will be shorter (I'm thinking 20-40k word each range). Really, I have a lot of ideas for Dawn that I can do now that the story didn't dead-end in old-DoH3. It should naturally flow into some side-stories, as well as a gen 5 crossover, if I can just keep the ball rolling. The foundation has been laid.
The other 8 things I want to write
So I still haven't figured out a calendar for myself to write, and I keep finding more ideas I want to write. I don't want to go into too much detail, but I want to give people a chance to weigh in.
Anything with an asterik is 'serious' enough that I'd want to finish it before releasing it (i.e. narrative too complex to just wing it weekly). The others lend themselves more to one-shot or short format where I could just "wing it".
- Twilight's Dollhouse 2 *
- Ponified Without Consent 2 *
- Animorphs x MLP Crossover *
- Isekai Choose Your Own Adventure HiE (dark/horror/comedy)
- Dash of Humanity 4 *
- Kalvinburma (short story prompts ~1k/chapter)
- Moondancer traps Twilight in a book using Haycart's method (bondage)
- Applejack and Dash make a dumbass bet to see who can 'get swallowed by a snake faster' (vore)
- Some other ideas are still in the oven, there's at least... 4 more in serious consideration that I'm ironing out.
Obviously I can't write so many things at once, I'm not Starscribe (mad props to them). So the question is how to break these down and manage it.
For instance, if I'm currently motivated to write a CYOA, I can probably make great progress. However, TD2 is already half completed but complicated. Would it be better to finish it first? Meanwhile, I need to write DoH4 so I can eventually get to DoH6, for which I have a really really awesome idea...
It's like this internal balancing thing of how to spend my time, which leads to analysis paralysis. Since there's "no wrong choice", and there's not really a "subject matter expert" to ask for advice, I tend to drift listlessly in a circle, not unlike a ship on the ocean. I set a course for winds of fortune, but I hear the voices say....
Uh, sorry, see? I get distracted easy. It's easy to say "I like this idea, I want to write about Dawn". It's very hard to decide "I'm going to write 2k words about Dawn getting his flanks waxed before a beach trip." Ideas are easy, actually doing them is hard.
Comment if you have advice on how to choose / progress on multiple stories or to focus. Or if you just want to vote for the coolest idea.
Story references to Other Stories
Oh, and I have been dropping "Twilight Gets a Puppy" references like mad in Dash of Humanity 3. Also a few "Witch in Broad Daylight" ones. Of course, the "Hard Reset" ones are obvious (Well, some like Pinkie's Party Canon are deep cuts.) Anyway, apparently I don't feel very clever if no one gets the references, so if you do get them, please like subscribe and ring that bell comment on them.
Over-use of references is like 90% of the fun in writing. And they don't usually age well, so you gotta enjoy 'em fresh. 
I do love replying to comments. I know the past few weeks I haven't been commenting or blogging much (see the first section on how winter sucks), but I look forward to commenting more in the future. The social interaction is a large part of what keeps me "hyped". Since Gen 5 was one-and-done, I've been feeling the lack of hype very acutely lately.
Gen 5 was one-and-done
One and done so far.
I've been enjoying reading DoH3, and I'll be sad once it is done. Looking forward to what you write next though.
Feb-you-airy, for what it's worth.
5633344
That's great to hear. I keep going back and forth on various ideas when I'm working and have the time to think about them. I just need to choose and write something in the evenings based on all those ideas I keep going over.
Knowing people are interested in what comes next is good motivation.
I kinda want to read through that one just to see if I can find the reference.
5634078
Oh that'd be delightful if you did, but if you'd like a spoiler if you're busy:
Spike jokingly will neither confirm nor deny Owlilicious is Prince Blue Blood in an early chapter. In Chapter 19, Dawn doubts the rumor that witches used to be able to turn ponies into familiars, so the villain proves it by turning Dawn into an owl.
The moral of the story is: never dare a dubious unicorn to 'prove' something. Also owl familiars are cool.