Jan
7th
2014
BEST PONY DAY EVER! · 7:14pm Jan 7th, 2014
So Cheerilee's Thousand made EQD today, and now the Royal Canterlot Library just wrote to tell me that they want to induct Diary of a Pliant Tyrant into their vault!
Now I'm doing the super-happy dance! I truly cannot believe that it really happened!
And I'm sorry if that last post came out like I think EQD is wrong or bad at their job. It's just a difference of opinion. Those pre-readers have a tough job to do, and I generally think they have good advice for stories. I just think this time we see what a story needed differently, and that's fine. While it bums me out to get a story rejected, I fully accept it. Their job is to weed stories out.
CONGRATU-PONY-LATIONS!!!
well glad you got it! be happy and well done!
Congrats!
Well congratu-pony-lations! You deserve it.
Just don't forget we little people now that you are famous.
Congratulations!
Speaking as one of the Library administrators, thank you for writing the very enjoyable Diary — it's earned its accolades.
Speaking personally, I've been getting quite a kick out of Cheerilee's Thousand too.
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Thanks so much, you guys. It really means a lot to me!
1692668 Hey. Hey! Where is my soylent update?! I gotta know how it's going!
And thanks! It's like my story is now refrigerator-magneted to the big ass steel door of The Vault.
1692710 Well, thank you! I know I'm not the greatest writer on this site, but I keep trying to improve with every story. It's nice that it seems to be paying off.
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Nothing new to report on the Soylent front, really! I'm still having it daily, usually for every meal. I've more or less made up my mind that for nutritional and laziness reasons, when it's widely available, I intend to switch to the official Soylent, but I'm definitely going to keep using it in one form or another for the foreseeable future.
I think the image of your fic magneted to a big Vault door is hilarious.
I'll actually be in the RCL soon too myself, so... see you there~!
I find oftentimes that the stories we hold closest to us are the ones that the fewest people enjoy. My favourite of my own stories, And Dream Of Sheep, is despised in comparison to my other stories and has the second smallest following.
Sad that EqD didn't take your other fic, though. If I were a prereader there they'd all have made the cut. I still think that once you've passed a certain quality threshold the system is entirely luck based.
1693750 Yeah, it bums me out, but I do understand. A person who's job it is to weed things out can't like everything. There is going to be some personal bias involved. That's why I really wish a story had to go through three people, with at least two of them approving. But that would make the process even slower than it is now, so that would be equally bad in a totally different way.
Do I think that story deserves to be on EQD? Yes. However, it not being there isn't the end of the world. It still has two more strikes if we ever decide to push the issue, but for now, I'm satisfied with that story, even if it might have a few warts.
1697760 The Twilestia group has three judges for the contests for this reason exactly, and has three admins to avoid me turning the group into my own widdle Kyubey-run dictatorship. I'd be okay with EqD being slower, since it's not credible and to me credibility trumps streamlining when it comes to tests of quality. According to Vimbert The Unimpressive it's still really slow and inefficient anyway so it's not like too much is gained.
Poor, poor And Dream Of Sheep will never even be considered for EqD, of course. I had to give up on it even though I had it all planned out start until stop. It was just too discouraging with how few people were interested.
1697818 That's how I feel about A Periodic Tale of Elements: Generosity. I've actually written 40,000 words of it, and I've released 10,000. After four updates, it's had 162 views and 19 upvotes. Pretty dismal for a guy with over 200 fans. I keep hoping that it will catch one day, but unless EQD picks it up, it probably never will. EQD has saved quite a few of my fics, since I've been in this predicament several times. Taking a Job for Granite had about 200 views and 30 upvotes before it got on there, and I think Diary of a Silent Tyrant had even less.
People often ask me why I obsess over getting my stuff published there. It's because people DO NOT READ MY STUFF unless that happens! I'd hoped that I'd turned the corner after Diary of a Pliant Tyrant but that's clearly not the case.
1697818 Oh, yeah. I just took a look at your story. That was a pretty brutal reception. I'll have to read it and see what I think.
1697845 Well, look at it this way. At least it means "fame" will never change you into the heartless monster it made me.
The Twilestia group is a free "post fic to become popular" button (adding a story to the shipping folder doubles its views pretty reliably, and sometimes multiplies them by up to five!), and I owe any success I may have to them and Wizard Of Words. I think it's just a matter of luck and persistence. I didn't catch my big break on the site until two years after I signed up and a serious change in my "public" persona. Another thing I can suggest is trying to make a change on the site that is a noticeable gap but nobody else seems to be working to fill. For me it was just trying to correct some science terminology that made me the centre of an editing network and simply complaining about the lack of organization in the Twilestia group that made me an admin.
All of which is to say that being the kind of Brony Everybrony Should Know is not all it's cracked up to be and not as hard as it seems. You have the skill and the creativity. Just wait until you get a good opportunity, and it'll happen. If you want to force it, of course, you can always sell your soul to myself or Tchernobog and write a Twilestia
(Contract? /)(o w o)(\ ) or Appledash.
I somehow doubt you'd want to, though. It wouldn't really be you if you took the boring, predictable and easy way to fame.
1697882 I don't really want or need to be famous for the famous part of things. All I really want is to have some level of assurance that when I spend three months writing what I believe to be a good story, that a sizable group of people will give it a shot. With where I'm at now, that is kinda starting to happen. A Periodic Tale of Elements: Generosity might be a flop, but Diary of a Pliant Tyrant was very popular, and Apple Ninjas and Other Vital Concerns actually did way better than it had any right to do, considering how horribly edited it was when I put it out and that the story is basically free of any level of conflict.
I want to be known as a guy who writes clever stories, but I want to have earned that through a good track record, rather than because I wrote stuff that was exactly what the majority of people wanted. The two might be one and the same from time to time, but it's the intent that I'm interested in. I want to write MY stories and have them accepted and beloved. I don't want to go "Hmmm. Twilestia seems to be pulling in the views. I'll try that and see if I can get 2,000 upvotes." I want to write what I want to write about, otherwise it's just work.
1697997 Which is precisely what I meant in the last sentence. It didn't seem like you to worry about being a household name on the site.