Write-a-versary! · 1:24pm May 9th, 2013
Today is my write-a-versary! Though that isn't even a word.
What it means is that today, Thrown Abroad is one year old, meaning I've been writing for one year now! And boy, did a lot of stuff happen in that one year. Both Thrown Abroad and My Little Changeling are incredibly popular and highly rated, which is... weird.
Don't get me wrong, it's really awesome! But considering how and why I started writing Thrown Abroad, it's hard to imagine. It started out with me thinking, "Hey, I'd like to try to write some fanfiction. I might just try out this whole changeling business, but most people have them as either mindless, evil creatures, or misunderstood good guys. Hmmm..." And that's how it started: I wrote changelings not as good or bad guys, but just... different. Although I wasn't concerned with that when I started, as I just wanted to write something with coherent sentences and a little bit of a natural flow to it.
As you might know, that went... sort of okay! By now, I'm pretty sure that Thrown Abroad is an enjoyable story to many people, but I'm not so sure on if it's actually a good story or not. Then again, it wasn't meant to be good: I just started on it as practice, and maybe as something for people to enjoy as well. Which went a lot better than expected. Thrown Abroad still has a bunch of faults, though, but I don't think I want to go back and edit it, as this is the story that so many people have enjoyed, and I don't want to tamper with that.
But hey, you write, you learn, you continue, you improve. Which I'm pretty sure I've done, especially with My Little Changeling. I think it took until the second half of that for me to consider my writing style to be not-horrendous. Then again, there's always room to improve, especially in your first year of writing.
Of course, I can't forget to mention the most important thing of them all. You guys. There's over a thousand of you now, all people who read my first two stories, and are patiently waiting for the sequel. I don't know how many writers managed to get an audience of that size with their first and second stories ever, but I think there aren't many! All of your support and kind words have really brightened up my life. It's kind of hard to explain, because the reason for why this is so important to me is a... not entirely positive story, so I'll keep it short.
A few years ago, I didn't do much more in life than go to school and play video games. I had a nice group of friends, and while our interests varied, we all had a lot of fun together. Over the years, everyone kind of found their thing to do, like sports, music, or girlfriends. Everyone except me, because I was still sitting there, playing games. Since my older brother had a lot more difficulty with school than me, my parents gave him more attention. Over time, that made me feel neglected, inferior, and ultimately, depressed. Depressed to the point of randomly crying, outbursts of anger, and even thoughts about killing myself. As for that last one, every time that popped into my head, I told myself I wouldn't do it, because it'd make a lot of people sad. And I didn't want to be some asshole who made people sad because of some triviality (I actually thought of depression as something relatively trivial at that point).
Eventually, after that one time I accidentally infiltrated the Vatican, that depression was just gone. I don't know why, I don't know how, it was just gone. I learned that I shouldn't keep important things to myself, and that the one thing I enjoy most in life is making other people happy. I can't say it was worth it, because being depressed is fucking horrendous. Afterwards, it literally felt like a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders.
I can't put into words how happy I am that you people are all here. Whether you read my blog posts or not, you must have clicked that 'Follow' button for a reason. That reason is most likely that you enjoyed reading whatever I wrote, which means I pretty much succeeded at my life goal: entertain people, make them happy. It means the world to me.
I've always greatly enjoyed reading, watching, playing, whatever-ing various stories. Stories about daily life, stories about heroes and villains... Stories that most certainly would never occur in real life. Things that I would never witness myself, only in these stories, or in my imagination. But I think I've got a knack for this writing thing. So while experiencing those stories will never happen, I can write them myself. I can make something that thousands of people can enjoy! Hell, I already have. And I'm not stopping anytime soon, either.
Even after a full year, it still feels kind of weird. I just imagine these stories, write them, occasionally dump an improvised joke in between, and lots of people enjoy that. And that's earned me all of these nice comments, readings, fanart, even interviews! That last one is saying something, because the time difference sure doesn't help. The only thing people haven't made for me is a TvTropes page... oh, and there's music and whatever, but seriously, how awesome would it be if Thrown Abroad had a TvTropes page? That place is where I pretty much started learning about writing.
In fact, why don't I just share with all of you what I've learned this past year?
1. Ratings mean a lot less than I initially thought. Sure, every thumbs up means someone enjoyed the story, which is good! It doesn't tell you much more than that, though. On the other hand, a thumbs down means someone dislikes it... but why? Unless they say so in the comments, it's completely useless. It could be that they thought it was not enjoyable or badly written. Or they didn't like the pairing or the premise. Basically, these votes are useful only for people looking for a new story. What you really want is feedback in the form of a comment.
2. I'm my own worst enemy. The most grief I've had during writing was all because of me; nobody put pressure on me to write faster, nor did anyone antagonize me for any reason. Any slip-ups and such were my own fault, and I'm constantly getting in my own way. Sure, not all of that was exactly in my own hands, but a lot of it was. I'm a bit prone to random bouts of frustration and jealousy, even though that's completely ungrounded, but there was never anyone to blame but me.
3. People will be patient. This one might sound obvious, but I didn't know about it for a while. It's better to write something good and put it out slowly, instead of writing something shitty very fast. Since people want good stuff, they'll have to be patient. Most people realize this, so they will.
4. Get an editor. Okay, I didn't follow this one myself, but I can certainly recommend this to everyone else. A good editor will pick out your spelling and grammar errors, help you fix them, and maybe even help you improve your story. I always did everything solo, because I hate bothering people with my inane junk, but it's definitely worth having someone else look at your fic before you upload it; an outsider's perspective gives a whole bunch of new information. I can't edit for other people worth a damn. I can write, but I sure as hell couldn't explain how to write. There are plenty of other people on this site who would like to help you. Just take a look in one of the many groups!
5. Learn your tools and learn them well. By tools, I don't mean stuff like a word processor, or a dictionary, or a thesaurus: I mean tropes. The building blocks of stories. Obviously, the best place to learn about these is TvTropes. Search for your favourite stories, and check out the tropes and how they were used. It gives a whole lot of insight into how stories are built, and you can use that knowledge to build your own story. There's also the Bad Writing Index, which showcases a bunch of stuff that you shouldn't do when writing a story. For people who aren't that good at English yet, there's The Big List of Booboos and Blunders, which is a gigantic list of words that are quite easy to confuse. TvTropes has a lot more information pages in the form of their 'So You Want To...' section, which are also very helpful.
In a nutshell: TvTropes is one of the handiest sites ever. Though it could also completely destroy your life, because you can get stuck there for hours on end. It's been an amazing boon to me, because I love analyzing stuff and learning about them in the process. Additionally, TvTropes is very funny and easy to understand.
That's... pretty much everything. Two stories, 32k views, nearly 1,1k watchers... And that's just my first year! I couldn't have gotten this far without all of you, and I'm certainly planning on continuing! First, I'll continue and finish Louder Than Words, and then, I'll write the third part of Suncloak's story: Traveler's Exile.
I see where you're coming from with the Changelings. I had them as choosing to be like that, with some already actively living among ponies without disguises. Hell, I even had one married to a pegasus!!
Even worse when they didn't read the fic in the first place! It happened with mine, as soon as it was posted, I had three dislikes...and no views. Thanks for giving me a chance!!
Meh, mini-rant over. Feeling a little down cos I just failed my fitness test for the third time in a week... Thank Celestia for ponies!
Can't wait to see part three!
You do realize that you linked to tvtropes without the obligatory "here be dragons, black holes and timesinks." disclaimer? That's really, really risky. Someone might return and those guys are never nice. Also the whole "Brains, brains" thing gets annoying really fast.
You're cool. Just FYI. Good advice.
Lol
I HAVE TO BE PATIENT ??? ... ok fiiiine