Writer's Block · 6:49pm Mar 27th, 2013
Alright, so this most recent chapter of Coming Back has been kicking my ass. I know where it needs to go, I know what needs to happen to get there, I even know how I want it to sound, but every time I sit down to write some of it, I get less than 500 words out before I feel like hurling my laptop across the room.
I feel bad needing to delay again. I kept up a regular update schedule on it for quite a while and there's still so much of the story to go. And it's still exciting for me. I've got Coming Back planned rigorously, I know the steps, and I want to write it. I just can't at the moment for some reason. Ugh. I'm gonna put it down for a little while, work on some other stuff, and remove the 'deadline' requirement from my thought process on writing it. From my perspective, this shouldn't be a long-lived set-aside; I'm just at a rough patch and trying to force my way through it is making me sour. If I let it come with less pressure, it should untangle and I'll be back in business soon.
Some of this is me holding myself to a standard that's unnecessary. Plenty of other writers put out stories like this one at a much, much slower rate. Heck, some of the ones I track have taken six month breaks, and I don't see that happening at all. The absolute slowest I can see is one chapter a month, which is hardly slow at all.
I'm just distracted. Horribly, horribly distracted. Coming Back is such a slow-burn story, filled with lots of action and romance, but slow and contemplative nonetheless. And as much as I'd like to focus on it exclusively, I'm filled with so many other ideas. I've got dozens of shorts clamoring for me to write them, another semi-long one partially written demanding that I finish it, and to top it all off I had a collaboration opportunity presented that I couldn't pass up. I was talking to Peroth, the writer of Growing Pains which I've begun editing for, about another short novel-length I've been kicking around and she wanted to collab on it. I can't say no. I can't. And twice this last week I had shorts pop into my head that demanded immediate writing.
It's so frustrating to have all this stuff going on and then sit down wanting to write my baby and having it stare balefully back and mock me. I find myself wishing to have infinite time, so I can write four or five pages a day of everything I want to write. Then maybe I could get some of this literary detritus out of my head.
So...I'm taking a vacation. A writing vacation. I'm just going to write what I want to write at a given moment. I want to write Coming Back, but it's not being cooperative, so I'll focus on other stuff, let it stew, and return to it once it's decided to stop being such a prick. I'll continue to post stuff in my Sunday production blogs about Coming Back, which is a pittance further along than it was in the last blog, and hopefully taking the deadline out of the equation will be all my brain needs to sit down and kick the shit out of this chapter. Maybe not. Maybe it'll take me a while to work through it. I dunno.
Mean time, I'm gonna work on some other stuff. Stuff that doesn't fight back when I sit down to write it. For a vacation, this won't be a quiet one. It's just my baby that's gonna suffer. Ah well.
Hope y'all understand.
Completely understandable. Take the time you need to keep it at the standard you set in earlier chapters (maybe even exceed them
). After all, its not just us (the readers) who deserve to be happy with it; you need to be happy with it too 
I think i speak for all of your readers when i say we don't care when it comes out as long as you still plan on writing it and its not disappointing basically what you're saying is that coming back is going to be delayed a little but have all of these other amazing stories. Right now i'm more excited to see what else you can write then to see you finish coming back take as much time as you need to write
Eyep, it's not like you're a syndicated comic strip writer who absolutely has to churn out things on a deadline (and we've all seen how that turns out, since it's hard to get a laugh at all out of the comics page.)
Gotta be true to yourself, so it's totally understandable. I bet Coming Back will be awesome when it finally cooperates with ya.
Just wanted to toss out an idea, that may be compatible with your writing vacation:
I don't know how you write, but you might want to try skipping ahead on your story and writing a piece that you're really excited to get to. Sometimes doing that will get you back into the mood to write the stuff that comes before, and if it does work by the time you get there at least it got you writing again. (The chapter of Foal's Luck I'm working on now was written before the first one, and has since been rewritten four different ways. Pretty much every time I sit down to work on this story, I rewrite this dumb chapter. I don't know what I'll do when I publish it.
)
951665
Whenever I do that, I regret it afterwards. I use the fun stuff as a reward for slogging through the less fun stuff. I've skipped ahead within a chapter to write an exciting scene, then spent hours grumbling about the less exciting mood-scene that needs to go in between the already written stuff.
I think this block'll go quickly, because the last scene of the chapter is one I'm excited as hell to write. If I can just get there, I'll be able to write it. (You hear that brain?! Just get the other scenes written first, dammit!)
You should be happy with my block, though. One of the things I'm gonna work on in the mean-time is an Appledash.
...and the collaborative piece with Peroth is a long-form Appledashlight.
(I know you wouldn't wish a block on me just to ramp up the Appledash, but hey we might as well both be happy about this in some way.
)
951730
I went hunting. Desperate hunting for Appledashlight that was real Appledashlight, and not Twidash + AJ threesome, Appledash + Twilight threesome, or spur-of-the-moment orgy. I found...one fic that was readable. And it was a Sexty Minute Ponies speedclop!
This needs to change and by god Peroth and I are gonna change it!
951745 Anything you two write is pure gold so I don't doubt you'll change that in a heartbeat, and what story would you be referring to? I would like to give it a read.
951928
One of the chapters in Sexty Minute Shorts by KrazyTheFox is authentically Appledashlight. Outside of that, most of the Appledashlight, (of which there are many good examples) are actually Appledash with Twilight as a voyeur/minor participant in a threesome, such as A Lesson in Preening by Wabbajack. There are some ship + friendshipping examples, too, but those hardly seem to count in my opinion.
I found another actual Appledashlight on fanfiction.net, but my god the writing was bad. Like, painful. Like, this was the second sentence of the story: "Rainbow Dash lied on a cloud feeling the tension and backwash of a hard days work she sighed heavily."
951942 Thanks for the link
and I know what you mean, I hate when a good story idea is ruined by bad writing. There are so many stories on this site that would be so much better if they just had several little things changed or fixed.
A good polyamorous story is Taw's Trifurcate. It's a great three way story just with Pinkie instead of Applejack, and even though it's mostly clop it's still a well written romance, (as all of Taw's work is) and it doesn't feel like a normal couple with an extra pony tacked on as you mentioned the other stories felt like.
951978
I've read Trifurcate. It's one of very few actual polyamorous romance stories and in my opinion only suffers from the amount of clop to story ratio. The story feels more like a framework to hang the clop off of, rather than the clop serving to enhance the story (as opposed to Wind Beneath Her Wings, which may have had that problem at the start but quickly changed to the latter).
This Appledashlight project from Peroth and me is going to be erotica (I mentioned in the A/N of My Mare that I was practicing writing romance-infused clop; this is the project I was practicing to write), but it's approaching from the angle of how sex influences and changes emotions, so while more than a little saucy, it'll be predominantly story-driven rather than clop for clop's sake.
951990 Sounds like it will be an awesome story once it's done, I can't wait! You said it's long form, does that mean something like a 10-15K word one shot or a multichapter series?
952035
Multi-chapter. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50k words, probably.
952038
Woo! I'll be looking forward to it!
Wait, a writing vacation entails only writing what you feel like? Damn. I've been on Writer's Spring Break for at least a decade, now.
Sarcasm aside, you aren't on contract, here. The second you feel like you're compelled to create something, anything, is the instant it ceases being fun and begins to be a chore. I haven't drawn anything for years because I was, and am, too distracted by what I should be capable of even if I never quite meet that mark.
But we're seguing into existential awfulness, now. As a doctor (editor's note: I have no medical license nor have I attended medical school), I prescribe copious amounts of rum, disregarding anxieties over what your readers might think, and just plain having fun.
Mostly just the rum, though.
952078
Eugh, rum. Can't do rum, not after the 'rum incident' five or so years ago at a party house. I'll stick to beer.
952100 Beer works. I trade off between beer and rum with reckless abandon, honestly.
I just can't do vodka. Or whiskey. Or jager. My stomach has a learned aversion that far exceeds my own conscious impulse control...
Rude intrusion of alcohol aside, I really do hope you don't focus on something and instead just have a bit of fun. You've written enough to know that, even if you're having problems now, eventually what you want to write now but can't will birth itself at the most awkward moment possible. (Bonus points if it's accompanied by an angelic chorus heralding the impending Apocalypse.)
I find the program Dragon Speech helps me with writing a lot in a short amount of time. When I first looked at Coming Back I thought it might not as good as I found out it is and now I have to say that I should not judge a book by its cover.
Rainbow and Twilight happens to be one of the shippings that I like to read and this is the first one of its kind that I've read and I have to say I WANT MOAR!!!!
Pardon me 
951745I think that when you get that finished I will be able to die happy.
Appledash is a favorite shipping of mine and if you can successfully ad Twilight to that shipping...
952267
I'm gonna give it the ol' college try. Polyamorous relationships are a challenge, because you're not only arguing the validity of three different ships (Twidash, Appledash, and Twijack in this case), you're arguing the validity of the group partnership and the very idea of polyamory as a viable relationship style. To quote Peroth when discussing the logistics with a few others: "Meh. It's me and bats. We'll think of something. Or abandon it. Fuck, whichever works."