Dear Adventure Journal!, or How PtVAJ Revived

But first, a bit on how PtVAJ died.

Most of you following this would have seen it during its debut on EqD, back in 2012. The first volume, ingeniously titled "Vol. 1", was what had been submitted to the Write-Off - a simple set of journals showing Pipsqueak's life before Ponyville, and the circumstances that brought him there. There were plans for a second volume, the first part of which has been published. However, that, as with my other multi-chapter pony work, went on hiatus, because of writer's block. More specifically, I wrote myself into a block.

To get to the fun part of Vol. 2, I needed to have a major event happen, and for that major event to happen, I needed someone to convince another someone to follow a plan that would then proceed to fail, leaving many someones in a certain someplace. And that convincing part was boring. It had to be perfectly logical, but it was also boring, and there was also the fact that I couldn't find a way to make the plan plausible to myself, roleplaying as someone #1 against someone #2.

So when I returned to my Google Drive to dust off my old works, I decided to delete the offending bit and just trail off.

The next thing I knew, I wrote 800+ words on that, then another 800 words, and now I'm done with that major event and I can get to wunderbar Pipsqueak being Pipsqueak.

Whether or not it's fine depends on what I get back from my reviewer, but the point is that I managed to get progress on something that was dead a year ago, and it all started by moving backwards.

It's funny, but worth a shot, because stepping back restores to your narrative that much more potential for action. And also possibly gives you enough breathing room to see whether or not you should skip the stone instead of jumping over it.

Now, this could be dealt with by properly planning your story, but this is a nice alternative too, for when your planning isn't detailed enough to handle a certain something, or if you simply didn't plan for the past three chapters to happen, but it was so good that you decided to roll along with it anyways.

Anyhow, I'll try to work extensively on PtVAJ and TLaToCM's current arc final chapter (closing an arc after a year is the classiest way to close an arc). From then on, it'll be quiet on the pony front as I clean up edits on my original project and pour my pittance free time into that instead. Maybe the chapters will come once a week. Maybe not. Eh, well. We'll see. What I will do (and I hope I don't fail this) is finish Vol. 2 before I start uni again. Hmm. Maybe I could time the writing of Vol. 2 with the next Write-Off, just for the illusionary pressure to drive me to its completion. Who knows?