Icky-Sicky Pinkie Pie · 6:15am Mar 18th, 2015
Okay, I didn't know if I wanted to make a blog about this. "Woooooow I got featured guise!" stuff is already all over this site. But I had already planned on making a thank-you blog anyway.
Well. I can honestly say that I did not expect this one to blow up. What started as an experiment in writing Pinkie Pie turned into an actual story, and then I kind of sat on it while it rusted in editing hell. Then I finally got tired of that, did a quick self-check, and got it ready for posting. After a few incidents where the timing didn't line up with my plans, it finally got approved, and I watched it put up an average performance. The length kept it afloat, but it did nothing spectacular, and when I went to bed at 3am, it had hovered at 16th hottest non-mature for over an hour.
But then when I woke up...
Boom. Explosion. An hour after I logged off, my story hit the feature box. I finally ended my drought (excluding collabs, since Fluttershy Discovers She's a Lesbian already made it). I didn't care a lot about the feature box itself, but my goodness, guys. It feels so good to end that drought! Turns out I'm not cursed, as was proven less than two hours after I officially wrote this one off. I feel kind of silly for my fake theatrics about never being featured. It was a joke that felt less and less funny every time I told it. I write what I want, but I was worried that I legitimately might never hit the box.
That's all over now. So what now?
Well, first off, I'd like to thank all of you for reading, commenting, liking, faving, and whatever else you did with it. (Even if you added it to badfic shelves). A thousand people is a lot, and to accumulate that many readers (almost!) in about 30 hours is kind of a big deal. Not many people can boast that for a fic that's almost 8k words at publish. Usually, you might see that for stories half that size. Heck, I don't think I've ever had that kind of traffic on any of my other stories. So thank you all! I'd thank you individually, but this is more efficient and doesn't cause as much of a strain on the server. (I've heard that a few authors have been suggested to try this approach instead, so it's less of a drag on the server.)
Second, I owe a few blogs. Writer Report (my monthly progress update) for February still needs to be done, and I had at least one writing advice blog thought up. Or, well, less advice and more my thoughts on writing advice. You'll see when I post it.
Third, writing continues tomorrow. I've been slacking, first for good reasons (attempted publishing on Monday before work, work itself, leaving town for my birthday...), but then just out of laziness. So I will be back at it tomorrow. I've got another Comedy/Romance in the works, except this one's cut into much shorter chapters of 2k each. I'm not quite comfortable yet announcing anything beyond that (except whatever I've already announced), but it's over halfway done. At the rate I was going before my hiatus, it'll probably be ready around mid-to-late April, though I'll try to churn out words at faster than a 1.5k/week pace. I've been going much slower than planned.
After that? Well, who knows? I sure don't. I've got a ton of ideas lined up, but I'm really bad about planning them out. We'll see what catches my eye. It's probably going to be sad, though. I've been aching to get back to sad for a while now. Comedy is nice, but I like to balance things out. And I sure do have a stockpile of sad ideas. I think eight of the top ten ideas right now are sad. But we'll see. A lot of factors go into that, most of which I can't predict.
Anyway, it's past 2am. Just thought I'd touch base, remind you all that I think it's awesome that you read my scrawlings, and sort of orient my new followers to the general flow of things.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna crash for 7-10 hours.
Woo drought breaking!
resources1.news.com.au/images/2014/02/17/1226829/135081-4c6e4112-975c-11e3-9a97-2ed07c1403ff.jpg
Seriously, what the hell is the point of those, besides being a huge jerk?
2887979
Well, some people like reading badfics. I don't, but some people just get a kick out of laughing at how inferior others are, I guess.
If my story was added to any badfic shelves, they were made private. I didn't see any, at least. But if it was, hey, that just helped give it some extra heat.
to be honest, I would be surprised if it wasn't featured
good on ya
2890808
I didn't really expect this to do well, especially with everything that went wrong post-writing. But now that I've been featured, I can say that it's kind of like when I hit the drinking age (a little over a week ago, actually). It doesn't really change much, and I'm not really as excited about it as most people (still excited, though!), but I'm glad just to have hit the milestone.
Not hitting the feature box after so many tries was starting to feel like when a professional athletes fails to win a championship for the first decade of his career. People start to wonder if he ever will, and it becomes kind of like an epitaph--"It's so-and-so, the guy who accomplished all these things, but still hasn't won a championship". Maybe it's silly, but I felt the same way about the box.
But now that's behind me, and I can go back to focusing on my writing. I can certainly change my marketing strategy now, from all-out assault to get my story in front of as many people as possible as quickly as possible, back to a slow, drawn-out thing to increase views over time. I might still swing for the feature box with my comedies or whatever, and I'll still advertise wherever I can, but I don't think I'll be as aggressive about it anymore. I just wanted to know I could actually do it, especially after just missing it with Flares of Light. (I was 8th hottest non-mature! I got leapfrogged right before I could make the non-mature box.)
2891034
just remember what sensei regidar tried to teach us all a year or 2 ago:
"If all else fails, write shameless clop and get into the feature box within the hour"
words to live by