, but not today.Some notes on a hundred thousand words · 9:42pm Feb 16th, 2013
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.
Congratulations! I've really enjoyed the story so far, and impressed that you're able to put in such consistent dedication. I'm lucky to get a paragraph a day on my story.
I'm glad to hear you've got a plan, and that the curve balls so far have been manageable.
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Thank you -- I subscribe to the 'forward momentum' school (if I keep running fast enough, I won't fall down), mostly out of fear that if I stop I won't be able to start!
You are referring to your 'Just Passing Through'? I remember reading CH1 when it went up on EqD; for some reason I didn't track it at the time (am now!). It's a good idea and you are doing a good job in its execution. Keep going -- I want to see what happens after that cliff hanger!
"I’ve got two chapters ‘in the bag’"
That's nice to know, but having to wait that one month...
And thanks for "Writing process", it'll come in handy when I try writing something.
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Thanks, I was indeed referring to JPT. It means a lot to me when I can offer a bit of entertainment back to authors who I regard highly. Apologies for the long cliffhanger, it should be resolved soon. I just need to pick up the pace a bit (yet again impressed by the 500 word hurdle, especially as editing doesn't count towards the total - that's often the slowest part for me).
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It's essential, I'm afraid. Without it I'd have been retconning left, right and centre. I did feel a bit guilty at the start, like I was 'holding out', but in the end I have to work for a living and thus one chapter a month. You will notice that chapter lengths have doubled since I started, so I could subdivide and post more often, but I get twitchy enough at once a month and I don't think my heart could stand it.
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No problem, I can wait.
I'll admit I don't have much of a problem with editing, an evening or two per chapter. That probably comes with practice; it certainly wasn't the case when I started the fic. The same with writing speed, but it can be fun to 'stress test' your writing with something like NaPoWriMo. At 1600 words a day there really is no time to wordsmith, it's all speed. That's for a given value of 'fun', of course, it's a bit like banging your head on a wall, great when you stop...
I noticed that you favorited one of my stories, (glad to see that you're interested in reading more) decided to spare a glance at your user page, and saw this blog post.
Anyway, this blog post I found I could connect with and glean some ideas from. So far I've lacked the willpower to impose a five-hundred-word daily quota for writing on myself (because I'm just that lazy and have terrible planning and next to no creativity).
The fact that it works for you makes me think about it more. Thanks, and best of luck with your writing! (I might read your stuff, too; looks neat.)
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So I'm not the only person who does background checks on readers!
Glad you got something useful out of it--and if any of it works for you, then that's great. The '500 words' thing is a recent target; at first it was just '1 chapter a month', then 'something everyday'. If you do set yourself a target, then start easy and crank it up after you know you can do it (there's nothing more demoralizing than setting yourself up for failure).
Also I wouldn't call yourself lazy, considering your word count!
I think I caught up with ‘Eclipse’ this morning; it’s not as hard SF as I normally go for (magical ponies excepted!), but I’m a sucker for first contact stories and am enjoying it. I do have a number of questions--the sheer amount of firepower they have shipboard, for example, seems excessive for a colonisation mission--but will hold out and see what happens...
If you like SF then you might like 'Wasp'; if you do give it a go, let me know what you think.