Setting Deadlines · 2:40am Sep 7th, 2013
I’ve come to the realization that if I don’t have a public deadline, I can probably keep dawdling at this forever. Social pressure can be a great motivator, and even if nobody reads this I’ll know it’s out there, declaring my intentions to the world. So alright – yes, introductory blog post, hi, been lurking here a while, love the site, will be more active in the coming months, yadda yadda – and I’m working on a story.
I have to say I hate that phrase – ‘working on a story’. It conjures up the scene of a writer – or ‘so-called’ writer – adding a couple words a day, tweaking at it, never really with the intention of finishing it. After all, if the story was completed, they’d no longer be ‘working’ on a story, they’d have ‘finished’ a story: The very phrase implies continuation.
That said, like it or not, it’s certainly accurate in my case. I’ve been writing and tweaking at this fanfic for close to a year now in my spare time, and while I’m still in love with the story and the characters and the setting it’s all starting to get a bit stale. It’s time to change that.
Between Pony Writing Month right now, actual NaNoWriMo in November, and a month in-between to keep up momentum, I could be writing 150,000 words on this – more than half my estimated length of this story, and I’ve already got one-third completed. So I’m setting the final deadline for completing the first draft at November 23rd. I seem to recall something important happens on that date, so it seems a little symbolic. I can take some time then to revise it, and still be able to start publishing long before the end of season four.
By now you might be curious what this fic is about (or maybe you’re reading this post months from now after it’s already out, in which case, hi! Thanks for reading my story, and feel free to message/comment me with your thoughts on it). My go-to response on this has always been to cite an anecdote from one of my How To books, about how central to writing is a desire to tell a story, and that your motivation doesn’t care what form it’s told in, so if you tell the story before writing it you lose the drive to write it. But that’s a cop-out. I’ve got enough of this story written to give a description of it – heck, I can write and have written a half-dozen summaries from memory. So screw keeping this under wraps. Here’s my best foot forward:
One thousand years ago, the Ponyville Greats walked the earth – they who defeated Nightmare Moon, redeemed Discord, and all the rest. Their adventures became legend, and their victories ensured harmony for all the world.
The unicorn pony Hope has always known of her heritage, and has memorized every filly tale recounting the classic legends of her ancestors. However, raised on such stories she has never known who the Six really were, what they were really like. When a tired old magepony arrives in town looking for her, she learns that uncovering the truth behind the myths is no idle curiosity: It could be the key to saving the world. A hidden adversary approaches, foretold by prophecy – a prophecy about a mare who will be known as the Child of Harmony and the Chosen of Destiny, and about the choices she must make in the darkness ahead.
The cherished Age of Harmony and its millennium of peace are coming to an end.
