Breaks and Other Future Plans

I regret to announce that I'm taking a break from writing pony. It seems odd to do so four days after joining this website, but that's not the whole story.

I started writing fan fictions - this time - back in August, approximately a week after the first time I watched an episode of the show. I wrote stories for some other things a long time ago, but they're not even worth considering at this stage. Yes, it had that big of an impact - within a week it had inspired me to start writing again. But if you'll check my FFN page, you'll see the first of these was posted on August 14th.

Since then, I've amassed about 125,000 words across three stories (the two up on FFN I won't post here, because I don't think they're good enough to warrant the effort of transferring - if you really want to read them, the link is in my profile). When you do the math, that works out to an average of 1,100 words per day for three and a half months, and for me, a chapter roughly every two days. Writing that much for that long is creatively exhausting. This really hit home on the last story I wrote (one of the FFN only ones), where I hit a wall halfway through and found it a chore to finish.

Another reason I've been able to write at such a terrific pace has been planning. I was able to plan out most of Harmony's Wrath for a little while before I first put pen to paper, and as such I've usually been able to start a chapter knowing exactly what's going to happen from start to finish. While I have a rough sketch plan for my next story (a direct sequel to Harmony's Wrath - god knows the guys at FFN are clamouring for one), I need time to let the details and patterns emerge in a meaningful way - this story is going to be easily as broad in scope as its predecessor, if not broader.

There's also the fact that writing ponies isn't the only thing on my plate right now. I have an ask tumblr that updates every 2-7 days, I have college, and I have a Pathfinder game I'm GMing. None of those were there in the summer.

Simply put, I've been firing on all cylinders for a while now, and I need to stop and let the engine cool down.