Finally, with apologies · 4:29am Dec 24th, 2013
The last chapters of Perfect For Me are up. I told you I'd finish it. Worth waiting a year for? I wouldn't go that far. But at least worth reading.
To everyone who actually waited the nearly two years it took to get from start to finish, sorry it took so long. To everyone whose editing projects I neglected and eventually let drop entirely off my radar, I'm even more sorry. To the people whose PMs I've ignored, potential friends I could have made if I'd just responded and started up a conversation, well, yeah. Sorry.
I can't adequately explain why it's been so hard for me to log into FIMFiction, or why I've neglected so many things over the last year or more. I could go on about things in my life that have taken a lot of my time, or issues I've had, but that would just be making excuses. If you've been there, and you know what I mean when I say "trapped inside my own head," then that sums it up. If not, I don't have the right words to explain it, not without making it sound stupid, lame, and not at all the debilitating problem it became. (And believe me, I've tried.)
But eventually, I fought my way back. While I was on vacation in September, I took a new approach. Just write something, anything, not for an audience, just for fun to see where it goes. And, something completely alien to me, make it a first draft; no going back a million times to rewrite until it's fit to publish the moment I type the last words, just leave the mistakes or the slightly-awkward wording and move on. I took an old short scene I'd been inspired to write by a particularly interesting picture, and extended it from there. And extended it. And extended it. Two months later, it was a fairly respectable first draft of a novel-length pony fic, and I was keeping to a new commitment: write a bit of something every day, at least an hour if I can. This is day #75 since I started counting, and the chain remains unbroken.
Once I got to the end of that story, I was able to use that momentum to finally finish those last two chapters. While it's tempting to look back and talk about what I think I did right and wrong, I probably won't do any kind of author's notes. The whole process was spread out over so much time that I'm not even the same person I was when I started it. So that's the end of Perfect For Me.
Until the sequel. Yes, I'm still thinking about that. I learned my lesson, though: I can't handle commitment! Releasing a story as I go is right out. So if I do write Perfect For Me Too, it'll have been written in rough copy all the way to the end long before the first chapter hits FIMFiction. There are advantages to that, like being able to go back and polish up continuity issues before they become retcons. And knowing if I'll be able to finish the story at all. It takes a lot longer for the first chapter to come out, but keeping a regular schedule is much easier when all I'm doing is finalizing the chapters, not inventing the story as I go along.
As for that novel-length fic I mentioned, well, I'm looking into making that a story here too. I wrote it for myself, but that doesn't mean there won't be other people who like it, and hey, the hard part's already done! Even if I published it untouched in its current form, it wouldn't be the worst thing that's ever graced FIMFiction.
Hey man, no worries. I myself am returning from doing pretty much the same thing, so it's not like you're the only one who's ever been through something like this. And people here? Probably some of the most forgiving people I've ever met. I wouldn't worry too much about it.
I need to do what you did. I plan to. Just haven't yet. Winter Break is, after all, the perfect time to write.
So awesome to see the author of The LUNA Project alive once again! I forgot how much I loved that story, along with Perfect for Me.
Gonna go reread it now. Looking forward to that novel or sequel you're talking about.
I know what you mean with the "trapped inside my own head" thing, or at least my own version of it. I've had a big pile of things I've been meaning to do for so long, some of them well over two years old, but I just can't seem to ever start anything. Half-finished pictures, a few attempts to finally write something instead of only ever reading fics, and even my tracking list here is backed up ridiculously. And every day just kinda slips by leaving me to wonder where the time went.
And of course half the things I wanted to make are largely obsolete now, like the story I wanted to do of Rainbow exploring the ancient castle ruins to try to have one of Daring Do's adventures. Every time something happens in the show that renders one of my ideas redundant or whatever, I always wonder why I never did anything with it. One of these days, like I always say...
So yeah, congrats for actually breaking out of that sort of "stuck" mindset. Even though I've never actually followed you (which I really should have, since I always end up reading your stories), you're one of those authors I check on occasionally to see if there's any news. In any case, taking a long time to finish writing a fic is infinitely preferable to never finishing it at all, so
Don't worry about it. I have been waiting for probably near the beginning, but I do not begrudge you at all. An author never has an obligation to finish. There are many great stories out there that were never finished and that is OK. I have enjoyed what was there and don't complain about what is left. I am excited to read these last two chapters once I get the time (holiday travels).
HOLY SHIT! this got updated, wow. haha, only a year. thats great response time to some of the fics im waiting on, with no anticipation of course, and wow! so im gonna read these and feel awesome. probably going to re-read as its been a year, but this is amazing bro! thought i would never read it, made my night!
Welcome back.
A sequel to Perfect for Me? Perfect idea, methinks.
Odd that this blog showed up before the new chapter notification. But new chapters, I can't complain.
It's good to see it finished, and I feel the ending did the story justice. If there will be a sequel at some point I will happily read it.
It's good to have you back! Don't worry about the delay, all of us have time when it's hard to make yourself doing anything productive.
There are readers here who are glad that you have completed Perfect for Me, no matter how long it may have been since the last update. And the sequel definitely sounds like a great idea!
By the way, I remember reading an M rated side-story to Perfect for Me, but I cannot find it on your stories page. Have you deleted it or is this a Fimfiction bug? I'd like to reread it before starting the new story chapters. You know, for science!
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I checked your user page to follow up on your comment here, and from your blog, it looks like you're exactly where I was. I wanted to tell you about some of the things that helped me along, but it got way too long to reasonably stuff into a comment. So I'm going to write a quick blog post about it instead, in the hope that some of them might work for you or other folks too. Because nobody deserves to be stuck like that.
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I'm with you on things going obsolete before I can finish them. Did you know that Twilight is actually an alicorn now? So much for that idea! And then there was that episode about Pinkie cloning herself. I did get a few things thrown to me though, like the changeling scare; that was a useful element that hadn't been there when I started. Not all bad, I guess.
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Not deleted, just never actually published. I found that if I marked individual chapters to publish but never hit the button on the story itself, it made for a great way to store "extra" chapters. Here's the link, and if you need to find it again, there's also a link to it at the end of the chapter where it fits into the main story.
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Thank you.
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Thanks. It's been driving me nigh-on insane for over a year, but I get the feeling its ending now. At least I finally posted a blog and got back into the thick of things.
Thank you for finishing it. I'm glad you were able to do that.
Welcome back!