I have to say, I'm rather surprised some people actually liked Cyan and Lumina's story. · 9:52pm Oct 12th, 2014
I know when I first published it to the site during my first few weeks of writing, I didn't start it off as well as I had hoped, and the story was getting more dislikes than likes for a while. After some major changes to the flow of my story, I slowly got better, especially with DK's help in proofreading it. At one point though, I realized the way I had the story going wouldn't make sense for character development when he pointed it out to me. So I had to backtrack a couple of chapters and rewrote it to make it seem more believable development-wise. But then I was at a standstill when I realized how long the story was already taking, and its timeline has only gone through one week up to the most recent chapter published.
I had first thought of writing and publishing "The Model's Secretary" as a bit of a side project for me to do while I don't put too much focus on my first story, and I didn't think that story would get that much publicity so quickly. Heck, I still can't believe how far TMS has come. Even when I'm putting more focus on making frequent updates with it while CaL's on hiatus, a few people every now and then actually took a look at my first piece of work, and liked and faved it. Right now, CaL has passed the boundary as it's finally starting to get more likes than dislikes. It's a wonder how some people took the time to read my crappier piece of work (at least in the publicity's perspective), and actually liked it.
For those who haven't read into a previous blog post, I'm actually planning to do a complete rewrite of the story, starting from scratch. I won't get into it right now though, or soon, but I know I want to get back into the story whose characters helped me got into the fandom when I first started out. They may be completely different compared to what I had originally thought of them, but I'm okay with that, even grateful for it. I'm glad I decided to take a break from that story so I could rethink how I want it to progress pacing-wise so I wouldn't end up making 100K+ words to come up with the first week in the story-line. Some elements may stay the same, others may be left out because going into every detail would be tedious, but it will be worth it to get the story going faster. If you still want to give CaL a shot, be my guest. The revamped story will be different in some ways than before, but I'm still wanting it to end the same way as I had originally planned. Maybe I'll make it into like a multi-volume kind of thing, I don't know, it may be a good way to organize the story into arcs. All I do know is I probably wouldn't be where I am in the fandom today if it weren't for my very first two pony OC's, Cyan Shadow (who I later changed to Cyan Dusknight), and Luminescence (Lumina) Lustre. I may have them go through shit when I start the rewritten story, but if I were to meet them in person today, I'd thank them for putting up with my crap and helping me getting to where I am today. I don't know what I'd do if I never imagined these characters, but I know that no matter how long it will be once the show finally comes to an end, and the fandom may slowly die itself out, I will never forget these two OC's, that much is for certain. I'll get Chapter 24 for TMS posted sometime this week, but until then,
This is Dudeler, signing off.
Wait, which story is getting the re-write?
2528458 Cyan and Lumina's story
2528465
Aaah, gotcha.
I can commiserate. After not writing any story since middle school, I finally took the dive and started a story here on this site. It was going to be amazing, everyone was gonna love it, and I would be showered with praises and offered publishing contracts and everything.
The first day after I submitted, it got zero likes and 8 dislikes.
I almost stopped writing it then and there, but I knew I had a good story on my hands with interesting characters and a deep lore, so I grudgingly kept on. Now that it's sitting at 177 likes to 18 dislikes, I'm pretty glad I did. Hell, it'd probably have even more likes if my updates weren't so abysmally far apart.
The earlier chapters still make me cringe, though...
Keep up the good work, man. I can't wait for the next chapter of The Model's Secretary.