Melancholy Days - Wrap-up · 11:23pm Jul 15th, 2014
So last night before I went to sleep I uploaded the final chapter of Melancholy Days, bringing to an end the sequel of What Separates. I started chapter 1 nearly a year ago, though the actual writing time can be considered far less. I'd like to take a moment to reflect upon a few things since the journey of this particular story is now over. I'll probably mostly focus on trying to review or summarize what I've gotten out of it rather than dissect things about the story or its writing process, since I could obviously unload pages upon pages upon pages of writing if I wanted to cover absolutely everything I thought about the story. Maybe that's for another day.
There's not much need to go over how things turned out by my primary metric of fun; I had a blast writing this. I made my choices going through it for the sake of having a good time and don't regret an ounce of that. At least trying to take a more critical eye to the story though, I think it had its successes and failures. Like I've talked about before, I only really knew the broad strokes going in and the story itself evolved chapter by chapter as it went along and I tried to tie everything together. So in some ways I've never really had predictions of what the story would be like in the end and it's interesting for me to go back and see how some things unfolded.
On the more negative side: some of the ancillary conversations in the broader dialogue didn't come out as great as they could have. Chapter 3 has James, Twilight, Applejack, and Gadget go into a dialogue on technology that was never meant to directly play into the wider view of the story (James' depression) but was just supposed to be an interesting aside (the indirect connection that encounter does have to the greater story is that it gives James a chance to witness Applejack's and Gadget's conflict; how ponies in conflict get along, which comes to relate to Drypony conflict later.) Honestly I like the thoughts that the technology discussion explored but it probably didn't come out as great as it could have. There's a side of it that is so constricted and jilted, like it really could have used a more refined focus and more room to breath, but I didn't want to give it so much space because it was only a side discussion. Something similar could be said about the conversation James, Rarity, and Fluttershy have on the exploration, evolution, and definition of self in chapters 5 and 6. It was hard to pin down a clear way to present a "defining oneself" versus "discovering oneself" battle and I think I probably could have set that stage better. What's more, that whole thing was meant to be a theme that ties back to the Drypony conflict more strongly (e.g. the Dryponies' choice to view themselves through the past versus how they want their future to evolve) but it didn't come back like it could have.
On the positive side: I am really, really happy with how all the Drypony stuff turned out. As far as a connection to the central theme of the story goes, it was always meant to be partial (but not complete) analogy to James' depression. He refuses to acknowledges truths before himself and he carries forward in his own way, selectively oblivious of the darkness he is mired in, just like they do. And just like them, his way out is not something of magic cures and guarantees but heading into something frightening and unknown on faith and trust alone. That came out better than I had personally hoped, but not only that. James incidentally but wonderfully also became comparable to Prideheart, which is something I didn't plan for or expect to happen. Prideheart is the pitiable fate that could have happened to James if he kept running and never faced the pain that was chasing him.
I think the Drypony section of the story (which is the bulk of the tale, from chapters 7 to 21,) really came out the strongest of everything. I know I've said before than with this story, just like with What Separates, I have been intentionally reaching become my grasp; writing beyond the limits of my skill to handle. The way this section turned out says to me that if I had excised the James character and removed the wider story of his depression, I could have had a really well written story about Twilight and her friends meeting an expatriated pony community. That's not any declaration on my part to cease doing stories like this, or to cease writing beyond my capacity. It's just an interesting thought for me to personally ponder, since my fun-based style makes it hard for me to directly understand and consider my abilities as a writer.
The story came out way, way longer than I thought it would. I always expected it would be another novel length work like What Separates was, but it still kind of blows my mind that it finished up at nearly twice the length of the first story. I dunno if that was just my propensity for verbosity getting worse, or if I was just indulging in it more, or if the story was simply covering more, or what. The chapters themselves do average longer than What Separates' did, besides there being 7 more chapters in total. But another interesting thing for me to consider about all that is that the story didn't take any longer to write than its predecessor. Not really, anyway. Technically What Separates was written over about 6 months while Melancholy Days was written over about a year, but it's important to understand that the first 6 months of Melancholy Days was only chapters 1 to 3, due to the very limited amount of time I spent working on it. Once December 2013 rolled around I settled into a regular writing rhythm for it and then, in the same amount of time that took What Separates to get chapters 1 to 17 done, I did Melancholy Days' chapters 4 to 24. I guess this means I gave more time to writing the story since I got nearly twice the words out in the same duration, but I honestly don't recall giving it more time, or even writing it any faster. I wonder what changed or what was done different?
In terms of response, there were a few people who gave some very interesting thoughts that I was glad to hear. There wasn't nearly as much response as What Separates got, but that really comes down to exposure. What Separates got featured on Equestria Daily when I gave it a casual submission, but doing the same for Melancholy Days has more or less completely slipped my mind. Somebody even added this story to The Shameless Self-Promotion Bureau group but I haven't done any shameless self-promoting because... that's not why I'm here! Regardless, maybe I should put in a little now that the story is complete since it may lead to more interesting discussions.
One "response" that still kind of puzzles me in a very amusing way is chapter views. The story follows what one imagines to be the standard view curve: it starts with a high number of views on chapter 1 and then diminishes chapter by chapter as readers figure out that the story isn't for them and they stop following; eventually it settles into the regular amount of readers. For Melancholy Days, at least at the time of this blog post, this starts at about 600 views in the beginning before it at last levels out at about 200 views around halfway through the story. However, there is one utterly bizarre exception: readership explodes on chapter 6 and chapter 6 alone, hitting levels nearly twice that as chapter 1. Maybe it's just coincidence, or it got linked somewhere, or something, but it's just both strange and laughably awesome. That is the chapter where the central focus is James having another encounter with Pinkie Pie and she sings him a song, so I guess the lesson to take from that is... uh... Pinkie Pie is best pony? I swear it's a real shame that in both stories Pinkie hasn't had a bigger role, but she's hard to work with sometimes, particular since I'm going for a philosophical focus. I love having her around though.
I guess this sort of leaves me at, "what now?" I could look at just doing some minor promoting of the story to see what comes of that. I could also consolidate the remaining notes from the story and see where I'm at for writing another sequel; there's lots more interesting topics to cover and the natural story that would follow from James' post-depression has a lot of potential for different things. I also feel kind of like I want to do another blog post just talking about the whole story setup and the Drypony setup in particular since there's just so much to say. And I'm not forgetting that the dang thing is riddled with grammatical errors here and this, particular missing words that my brain automatically inserts every time when I proof read. I've got a list of a few existent errors but it wouldn't hurt to go through the whole story again to find more and clean those up. Dunno if I'll be able to muster the strength for it though; that's not a very fun task. Hell, What Separates hasn't even gotten that treatment yet!
Anyway, I want to give a very special thank you to anybody who has taken the time to read or look at the story. I'm in it for myself but it's always amazing to see other people take a read and then come up with their own thoughts. Your gentle participation in my fun-time writing shenanigans is appreciated beyond any respectful words I have to address it with. If I do more, I hope you'll be around for it!
- Zurock
A sequel would be awesome.