Weeknotes 2023-03-24

I finally got a new story out, hooray! The first draft of this was written last summer in the space of two hours as an entry for Everfree Northwest's Iron Author contest. It's hard to write a good story under severe time constraints like that, but of course you don't have to do things all in one go. The limited time is useful for breaking through writer's block and getting into the mindset of just putting something down. Ideas can be refined, worked with. The blank page is full of possibility, but too much. Anyway, about the story itself. To be honest it's not my favorite piece.It's hard to be confident sometimes. But it's been sitting in my files so long, almost but not quite finished, that I was desperate to just be done with it. And now I can repeat this whole process with the next story.

I wonder how long that next story will be? Probably not very long.
I will admit I don't quite understand how to write a long story. It always seems to me like I write and write, here's the plot, here's the conflict, here's the character arc, here's a whole story, and then checking the word count it's only a few thousand. How do people come up with so many words about things? Thankfully writing short stories is not as actively vexing as when I had to try to meet page counts for school essays.

Moving right along, I have something fun to show you. I got myself a new toy last week. My latest hobby is typewriters. I actually got my first one several months ago, promising myself that it would not be the start of a collection. I made that promise precisely because I knew I would break it, and I really don't have the space for a bunch of big heavy machines. Seriously, these things are all hunks of steel. But I broke down and added this handsome green one to my inventory. I like writing on a typewriter. There's a physicality to it that you just don't get with & computer. I'm writing this post on that typewriter. That being said, I sure am glad for computer word processors. I would hate to have to make a finished product on a typewriter. Let me edit, let me out and paste, give me spell check! But for the first draft none of that matters. Didn't I just mention the benefit of just putting something down. Damn the typos, full speed ahead!

So much for writing, now onto the reading for this week:

Dry Bones

A morbid little tale. It's quite understandable that poor Ivory would have a fascination with death, but when you are a unicorn in Equestria, that has some f different implications than it does here in our world.

Grief can lead people to bad places, but at least necromancy is not one of them. The difference in implications between our world and Equestria is what I find most interesting about this story. There is a choice between a dark path and a light path, but they do not mean the same thing they would to us.

The Runaway...Ears?...

For a bit of tonal whiplash, here's a silly story about Jazz Hooves' missing ears. Taking animation errors and running with them is so much fun. Unfortunately I did not finish this win one. I could not get along with the writing style which is all tell no show. Jazz' humiliations go on for too long as well, and verge more into the mean spirited than the comedic.

Twilight Talks To A Dead Bird

Spoiler alert: the bird isn't actually dead. At least as far as I can tell. Not a lot is clear in this story, and that's on purpose. It's a dream-scape. Scenes shift suddenly, characters morph from one thing to another. Actually where it gets undreamlike is that Twilight shares our confusion.
A dream is not only strange things and images, it is also taking those things in stride. We are unconscious of the world around us and also to the nonsense of the dream.

Stars and Scripts

First some background. Star Bright and Silver Script are a pair of background ponies who have showed up together a couple of times in the later seasons and were consequently shipped with each other à la Lyra and Bon Bon.Their late introduction does make them more obscure. This is the only story about them that I know of. I once started work on my own fic but that's been shelved. Now this story is about two stallions who are bad at communicating. Thankfully it steers clear of the cliche "It's not what it looks like" cheating accusation to drive the plot, just the plain old not speaking up that afflicts ordinary people. Now I haven't quite finished the story yet, but the characters are good and adorkable and endearing. More please!

That's what I've been reading. What about you? What stories have you enjoyed? Or non-fiction. I'd love to hear about them.
Have a great week!