The Fame and Life of Caughlin Mare · 5:30pm Mar 7th, 2014
Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Slog, or Writing for Oneself.
I mentioned before that after publishing the final chapter that closes Arc 1, I'd write up a thing detailing my relationship with this story. Due warning: I tend to ramble, and this may not be as interesting as it is to me. At worst, it's a public reflection of bared thought, which is as lewd as it sounds; at best, it could put a fresh spin on that strange long Derpy fic you guys have been tracking for about five months.
Let's start off with some stats: it's listed as having 290 views on Fimfiction (Chapter 1), with the last chapter having 72 views. It sits at a like-dislike ratio of 39:2, has 38 favorites - follows, basically. This being the stats when I published it on September 2013, with its EqD link still headed for FF.net.
When I had first wrote and published it, it was 10/8/2011. This is its stats after - golly, it's been 3 years, now:
This was back then, when EqD drew massive crowds of avid readers, and the fandom was fresh on a backlash against Cupcakes. There were no intelligent Derpy stories, and 99% of them had her written either autistic or just plain stupid. She was still a topic, still unexplored, nothing more than a butt of primal nature to look down and sneer to empower self-worth.
I wanted to do something different, so I set out to write - and I remember this clear as crystal - the best Derpy origins story ever. And the only way to do that, as I saw, was to have her origins go on par with the most powerful of them all - the alicorns. And while I was at it, why not some actually seriously menacing Discord? It puzzled me how nobody else saw that Discord was ridiculously OP and wasn't writing him being a really dark villain. The ideas rushed together. I wrote like a madman for the first few months - 2k a day was the average, with a record whopping 6k at a point. The underground chapters came incredibly easily, and I channeled it with a fervor that I was soon about to lose.
Around then I had submitted it to EqD, unedited save for a self-pass, and it went up without objection. On its feature it garned a spike of 1k views, which put me into a euphoria. It was after a handful of readers made notes about how "a few feet underground" was kinda a glaring plothole that I looked for and found Ponychan - Grif was my first reviewer, who gave me a solid canning of my various derps and ends and flimsy descriptions. It was a "not great but not bad" review; immune to the sting from the buzz, I made the fixes and continued to send my new chapters to /fic/ for help. Along the way came LunarShadow, who was Jmozziel back then - he became my go-to guy, and cleaned a lot of work for me, pointing out inconsistencies and weak spots. I used to load everything into a GDoc, chapter by chapter, for him to leave comments on. Then it would be edit, copy+paste return, fix again because FF.net's formatting was wonky as...
As a result, turnover became slow. Chapters started taking a while to write, and editing was put off longer and longer. RL happened, and I was soon on an unannounced hiatus. FF.net won't tell me my time gaps between uploads, but I think it got quite bad at around Chapter 9: The Stalemate. Which is an oddly apt title, isn't it?
It started taking a month to have chapters ready for EqD bumping; I didn't want to bump EqD without having more than one chapter, for some reason I'm not quite sure. I think I wanted to provide quality bumps because I knew they would be inconsistent - making the bunches larger would be more satisfying kinda thing - but whichever the case, the view spikes died, I didn't push the momentum, and work came to a halt just before the big battle.
The last 2 chapters - the 8k ones - are different in construction from all the rest. They were written sluggishly, a mud castle made from drops and splashes slapped on occasionally. NIGHTMARE MOON had been a pain to complete, but New Era - actually closing the arc...
Before I had realized, I was there, finishing an arc I was sure nobody was looking at any more. I had no idea what to do with it. At the time, original work was my thing; following writer's block, I grapsed for something to kick me back into the system. So I brought Pipsqueak to Fimfic, following its win in the /fic/ Write-off; I had published it on GDocs on EqD previously. The initial view count is something I will never know, because of that stubborn insistence I had back then against moving to Fimfic. Fimfic was new back then - dayum.
I was happy with how CM had turned out, except for the whole incomplete business. I had had people tell me it was the best thing they'd ever read. I had people tell me they were genuinely feeling for my characters.
It was both exciting and terrible, because I knew that I wouldn't come close to finishing it - I was a scumbag.
That, combined with the new year, spurred me to finish New Era. Even though the end was far, far from here, I could at least resolve the arc. And the setting was for a few years into the story's future, so the massive delay in the update actually worked in favour for mood, right? So I told myself as I uploaded it.
And let it sit.
And now we're here.
It's been a strange 3 years. I have loved this story, but do not any longer. I have never hated it, but simply not loving it is enough for it to die, and what remained was a ghost: a "YOU SHOULD FINISH THIS" that lingered on the backburner, a greasy stain that my mind had deliberately rubbed in to the point of never removing because it was a source of disappointment to my readers. It became responsibility. And there was now an expectation for me to make it good - it led to a distinct dry feeling whenever I sat down to add to it, because it didn't inspire me. To be fair, I had planned out everything, so the ideas had become very familiar to me - but they had no spark, and I, in my lack of discipline, could not force myself to sit down and write unless the mood took me.
This is part of the reason why I don't believe I can ever write for only myself. Writing has become many things; it is, short, complicated. Brambles grown from the counter-movement against the rock stars of the fanfic world riding it hard, that accused and judged and sought to keep the noblest, purest ideals in motivation behind writing - that "don't write for fame, write to become good" that I found to be incomplete. Not erroneous, but incomplete. I have tried to practice it; the closest I got was "writing for fun" with a Skyrim journal project (which, coincidentally, has also done amazingly well with 22k views). But my original work was written with the same target demographic as Twilight and Harry Potter; it was, as I was called out so rightly a long time ago, a self-insert, though not for me but a fairly generic form of teenage girl. It seems that, for now, I am doomed with desire for grandiose and vaguely-defined success.
But the thing is... I do have that success. I am a well-viewed author, even if the stats aren't blown across my front page for all to see. Heck, there's even an audio reading done of CM, though I stumbled on it by accident (okay, fine, I Googled CM and was surprised that a youtube link popped up).
I just didn't realize this until I logged in to my account and saw that the counter was suddenly massive - the jump (crawl, actually) from 10k to 20k for CM, I think, went by completely unnoticed.
Being in this unique position has taught me a couple of things.
1) FF.net is an interesting gamble. For a little bit of work to duplicate the words, you potentially net yourself a ton more views. True, there's something... cold about that place, compared to Fimfiction, but if you're willing to brave the sanitized browse page, once you garner a handful of positive reviews - those are the only metric of enjoyment available for viewing in FF.net - your fic will snowball.
2) Fame wears out, the shine dies. Crazy thought, innit?
2b) Additionally, it does nothing unless you want it to. The numbers are there. How you interpret them, like the suboptimal results of samples for a lab experiment, is a game of tongues with yourself.
3) Relying on others for motivation will leave you void of it fairly soon. If one has discipline, one can muster the strength to do the right thing and finish the story; if one doesn't, it might be best to complete the work before uploading it in bits. That much being said, doing that requires a fair amount of discipline too...
4) Some people will still remember your work, even if you update it after literally a year. They will exclaim joy and surprise, and the remorse you will feel for leaving them hanging will be comparable.
CM is many things. It's been my gateway to /fic/, which is - oh, fine, I admit it - a pivotal moment in my life, as someone who's looking for what makes me me. It's been my first taste of fame, my largest non-serious regret, my tool, my slave, my prison, my frustration. It's certainly not perfect, and the opening hook could use some work, as a person from Authors Helping Authors has kindly pointed out. It could very well be my magnum opus if I don't finish the final installment of Pipsqueak that lifts it to epic levels (hopefully). Thinking on it evokes, but it evokes all the wrong things: guilt, the past, a vague "um", following by rapid handwaving.
I have to say that when I started out the task of scrubbing it anew, I was really pleased with Chapters 1 - 10. The plotting had something appreciable in it, to me at least, that I wish I had kept when I moved to other work. It was during Caughlin's restoration and emotional slump that I, too, got into one - that it was mechanical, there because that was how things were. The story progression was logical. And while New Era was disjointed and perhaps a little rushed, it was over - and that frees me, flings me into the unwritten future. Blank space waiting to be filled.
I haven't written new stuff for CM in ages. Gosh, and it certainly is time to start.
I have asked myself this many times, a couple of times already while writing up this blog: do I love this story?
I certainly appreciate it. I have sentiment for it. I do care, though it feels born of a single parent: obligation, about completing it. I know that things would be drastically different without it... I look upon it almost as an old friend.
It's an important question because that, I think, is what'll determine if I ever do indeed finish it.
But you know what they say: love is a choice.
Ah! I DIDN'T REALIZE THIS WAS ON FIMFICTION
So wait, are you giving up on Caughlin? O.o What's going on?
1904533
That's how I felt when I realized it. :D
1905583
No - I actually have a little bit of the next chapter started! This is a new start, a chance to put all of the age behind, and I'll be experimenting with different writing pacing, too, to see what works the best in getting words out.
I used to want fame, and not getting it was one of the factors I had stopped before. But now that I've technically already got it, and wisened up quite a bit with time, the one thing left for me is to keep writing.
1905743
haha my mind is slowly turning to mush I can't words no more .-.
I've been rereading the entire thing with my screenreader and it always irks me that Furhich is pronounced flawlessly but Whooves comes out as 'wooves'...
Heh. I've been in just about the same place as you for the last year: The fandom turned me on to an artful and beautiful hobby and I met awesome people through it, then it lost its spark and whenever it comes back to mind the rapid handwaving comes on strong as I feel terrible and crummy about the old friends I used to craft the coolest stories with and I feel obligated, that's exactly the word for it, to do that insanely cool stuff again with them/for them but what's supposed to inspire me, y'know?
I started publishing my pony stories on FF.net, then in parallel with here... then I just kind of stopped posting them over there. Of course, most of my stories are crossovers and thus lodged in a limited niche over there, but still. Maybe I should remedy this...
(Also, I'd like to note that I wrote one of the 1% of Derpy stories that treats her with respect, even back in the bygone days of 2011. Respect for best pony.)
In any case, thank you for staying committed to this fantastic origin story for... well, everything.