Originally posted to the writer's group, but threads don't hang around for long there (and if I put it here, at least I'll be able to find it).

I do all my writing offline, so when update time comes around I used to spend an evening tracking down and inserting all the BB code tags for all the italics I use (never tried the importation thing; if I did I just know I'd have to check every tag anyway). Not anymore!

Tested in Word 2003 and 2007; it does a formatting search, placing the correct tags at the front and back of the italics section, one section per activation of the macro. Very closely spaced bits of italics (and multiple italicized paragraphs) might cause it problems. Your mileage may vary, don't blame me if ANYTHING goes wrong. I'm a scientist, not a programmer.

Seriously, if this manages to wipe the last 10K of your pride and joy, you should have backed it up.

Oh, and you'll need to change the tag text from (i) and (/i) to the proper square brackets, because I couldn't figure out how to put them in without them being 'active'.

==== START CODE SECTION ===

Sub Italics07()

'

' Italics07 Macro

'

'

    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

    Selection.Find.Font.Italic = True

    With Selection.Find

        .Text = ""

        .Replacement.Text = ""

        .Forward = True

        .Wrap = wdFindContinue

        .Format = True

        .MatchCase = False

        .MatchWholeWord = False

        .MatchWildcards = False

        .MatchSoundsLike = False

        .MatchAllWordForms = False

    End With

    Selection.Find.Execute

    Selection.Copy

    Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1

    Selection.TypeText Text:="(i)"

    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting

    Selection.Find.Font.Italic = True

    With Selection.Find

        .Text = ""

        .Replacement.Text = ""

        .Forward = True

        .Wrap = wdFindContinue

        .Format = True

        .MatchCase = False

        .MatchWholeWord = False

        .MatchWildcards = False

        .MatchSoundsLike = False

        .MatchAllWordForms = False

    End With

    Selection.Find.Execute

    Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1

    Selection.TypeText Text:="(/i)"

    Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1

End Sub

==== END CODE SECTION ===

...now I know what it takes to get folks commenting. So many new names!

### SPOILERS! ###

Have you read chapter 19 of ‘Wasp’ yet? No? Then come back when you have!

### SPOILERS! ###

Discord made me do it.

This all started in response to a comment (no names, you can probably work out who you are!) made after I posted chapter four; something to the effect of 'well it was obvious that Fusion would survive', after I left it at a cliff-hanger ending.

Challenge accepted.

I've been planning this for the best part of a year -- it's the main reason you are all getting these big chapters, so I could post this bit on the right date. It was meant to be a quick throw-a-way, but as I wrote it, I discovered that it actually would make a very 'real' ending to this story. It took on a life of its own, expanding to full chapter length.

It was also became much more 'serious' and difficult to write, so much so that I had real trouble with the final scene before the epilogue (let's just say that it's hard to type when you can't see the screen through the tears). I hadn't quite realised how much I had invested in the characters.

First draft was finished around December/January time and was sent off for prereading. By that point I’d read and reread it a number of times and I was starting to have an idea that just wouldn’t leave me alone. I’d written the chapter as a true alternate ending, and I was very pleased with it, but...

What if I just left it there?

What if I actually finished it and walked away? The idea was horribly persistent and attractive -- I really thought the ending worked, and the normal self-doubt that probably inflicts many people was rearing its ugly head: What if I can’t make a ‘real’ ending that worked as well? What if I lost interest and/or ran out of ideas? I’d been writing this thing for over eighteen months and this would set me free.

This turned into the short ‘By Way of an Apology’ as an explanation of what I was feeling at the time. Writing it was easy and let me get away from Wasp for a while, time enough to clear my head. Not putting a proper finish to Wasp would be a kind of betrayal, both of the characters and everyone who’s come along for the ride over the last year. Worse, it was lazy -- and I’ve always been disappointed when what should have been an epic scene in a movie turns into a flashback or a cheap montage set to music.

I’d finish it, and to cement the deal I wrote the true epilogue.

Time was marching on and April 1st was getting close; I had far too much material to keep to my normal posting schedule. Chapters got merged and double posted, all to make sure I could hit that deadline. Everything was ready.

...but I was getting nervous.

I’m not a big fan of practical jokes, as most seem to rely on someone being laughed at, and I’ve too much empathy to be comfortable with that. The chapter as written wasn’t really joke material; it was dark and, all modesty aside, I though I’d done a good enough job that many would take it as real (which was the whole idea!). I nearly didn’t post it, but fortunately one of my prereaders (and good friend), IcehawkPrime, recognised the signs and talked me down.

The plan was to have Apology as a follow-up chapter, but I didn’t want to annoy anyone with a ‘human’ story thrown into the larger Wasp, so it got posted as a separate short, with a link in the author’s notes. I’d have liked it to go live at the same time as CH19, but the system won’t left you send anything off for moderation without it being ‘published’, so that went up first.

Fallout

Mostly good, I think. A few were not amused, but I hope this won’t impair their future enjoyment of the story. I don’t like the idea of stressing people out, so I’m sorry for any angst I caused. Won’t happen again (at least, not with this fic).

So where next?

The chapter will stay up until the next chapter is posted, then I’ll edit the title to show it for what it is, and add in a link to allow through-readers to bypass the extras if they don’t like the idea. Apology will go in as chapter 20, with chapter 21 posted at the same time. IcehawkPrime had an excellent idea on how to integrate the whole thing; hopefully you’ll agree (and if not, I’ll be telling you exactly where to start reading again).

And finally...

If this had gone up on any other day, what would you have thought? It’s not a nice ending, but would it have worked for you? From what I’ve read from the comments, quite a few of you would have gone with it.

Anyway, I've got that out of my system now, so I shall return you to the much delayed revolution!

TL;DR: April Fools!

No streamers of balloons to mark the occasion, so how about a self-indulgent blog post?

A little bit of background

I’ve been writing, off and on, for longer than many of you have been alive, but only in the last eighteen months has it become a real hobby. I spend more time doing this than anything else other than work or sleep. 100K isn’t much compared to some, but it’s the most I’ve written in such a short a time. For reference: my first story was 4K words and took a year, so I’m about twenty times faster now (on average; my writing target is five hundred words a day, so it’s closer to a factor of fifty).

So what changed?

Ponies, obviously. Not the show; for the first six months I didn’t care for it, just watched it because I needed to understand the references in Fallout: Equestria. It was the vast collection of fan generated fiction that turned me, first from EqD, then from FiMFic. I haven’t read a ‘real’ book in a year (I used to read several a week).

Anyway, back to the story

DOWAS started in NaPoWriMo 2011, a 16K draft that had Fusion’s story up to her second accelerator run. Over the next few months I expanded it, then finally posted to FiMfic in Jan/Feb 2012. Signal to noise being what it was, I think only a score of people read it (not surprising, the first few chapters are quite a long way from FiM, with none of the ‘crowd pleaser’ characters). It was only after I worked up the courage to submit to EqD that things changed.

I still remember getting that email in April 2012. Up until that point, only friends and family had told me what they thought of the story. They liked it, but cynic that I am, I couldn’t escape the little voice that said ‘yes, but they aren’t exactly unbiased, are they?’ To get a favourable response from a reader whose job it was to be critical... let’s just say I spent the next half an hour walking around the house in a daze.

It’s at that point the fear hit--people were going to actually look at my stuff and judge it--and it returns every time I get close to hitting that ‘publish’ button (probably a good thing, it keeps me honest). Eleven chapters later and I’m starting to get used to it--I think I’m getting addicted to the curious mix of terror and joy that comes when I check FiMfic the morning after posting.

Writing process

This works for me, your millage may vary, no refunds.

At least five hundred new words a day, no excuses. Editing and proofing doesn’t count, no carryovers. I decided that if I was going to be serious about it, it would have to take priority over everything else. So it’s the first thing I do when getting home from work (I don’t eat until I’ve reached quota). I’ve kept this up for four months now, long enough that it’s part of my routine and I feel distinctly twitchy if I’m going out for the evening.

I don’t try to edit until I have a good chunk written; it’s far more important to get the crude draft down. Editing can come later. It’s always easier to edit rather than perfect a story on the first pass. Don’t forget to save often and back up the file at the end of a session; it’s soul destroying to loose even a day’s work. I use two different cloud services, as well as transferring the current version to my phone.

I try to plan in detail, but it never works. I’ll always be halfway through a chapter and something unexpected will pop out of the text and the direction will shift (you should see my original plan; it’s unrecognizable). An example: Salrath was originally a throwaway character, you were never going to see her again, but she was just so useful, and so much fun to write. The text is littered with things like that.

This makes the story develop in some unexpected directions; it’s no lie to say that I’m as interested to see how it works out as the rest of you.

I do have a few prereaders, but only one out of the four is an actual pony fan. Mostly I rely on my own paranoia (you may have noticed how high the version numbers can go), and reading the final text out loud. I can recommend that to any writer; I catch so many errors that way.

The final line of defence is the buffer; I post once a month, but it takes me ~3weeks to write a chapter--at the moment I’ve got two chapters ‘in the bag’, giving me time to catch any problems future chapters cause.

Canon conflicts

Being set so far in Equestria’s past has made the background very adaptable. I started writing this at the end of S1, so no Discord and no Cadance. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it has been to keep the story current; Discord just fell out of the world mechanics--a ghost in the machine--while Cadance (or any other winged unicorn) is a natural consequence of [redacted, spoilers]. I can even account for Pinkie.

Having said all that, I bet S4 will cause me problems (and I haven’t actually seen the current episode yet...)!

The future

...or how much longer is this going to go on for?

Hard to say (see above: inability to plan ahead), but it will finish when it’s finished. Rest assured that it will end, I’ve a very definite endgame that all this is working towards. Besides, I’ve got another writing project I want to get back to.

That’s all folks, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Next post will be a little less self-indulgent, and relate to the interesting problem of building a machine using society without hands.

I can't just sit at a computer and read - I have to grab my pony fic time when I can; waiting for a bit of lab equipment to cycle, during tea breaks, while eating breakfast and so on. This means I need a good mobile solution that's easy to update and works offline (mobile bandwidth is poor where I live).

You need:

1x smart phone or tablet

1x copy of the 'Pocket' app (free) on the phone and/ or your desk computer (it's a Firefox addon)

What it does: saves a text only version of the story chapter to the 'Pocket' app for offline viewing.

The real benefit comes with the ease of updating: receive an email from FiMfic? Just follow the link and 'Save to Pocket'. Follow a link from EqD or through FiMfic itself? Open each of the story chapters in a new tab, then run along the tabs and hit each 'Save to Pocket' icon. It's quicker to do than for me to type that sentence. All the synchronisation is handled in the background; if you have a phone and a tablet, put Pocket on both and when you read a chapter on one it updates the other as well.

Anyone else do anything similar (or better!)?

This has always caused me pain, right back to the days when I used to role play and had to think up something for a character (or lots of NPCs if I was GMing). So much so that first drafts of stories tended to be littered with placeholders like {ALSATIAN1} or {DIRE WOLF4} - yes back then I was writing about talking dogs rather than talking ponies. Nothing changes much. That was until I found the wonderful world of name generators. Without these DOWAS would have been much harder.

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index-name.php is amazingly useful, as was http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/ who I plundered (pun!) as a source of old Norse names for the gryphons. I'll take full responsibility for the 'science' pony names (there are a number of 'easter eggs' in those names...). Of course it's not all been plain sailing; as well as names ponies need an interesting range of colours and cutie marks. Arrggghhh!