A Little Something About Failure · 6:48pm May 28th, 2015
For the past three or four weeks I have been struggling to muster some enthusiasm on my part for the upcoming story Becoming Them, which is due to release this Saturday. Alas, in this I have failed. Although I have managed to finish the story, I look upon it and know that it isn't anything like what it could be. In fact, I would go so far as to say it may well be the low point of Them-verse in terms of my writing of it. A lot of authors I know would throw it all in the trash and start over.
I am not "a lot of authors." Becoming Them will appear on Saturday, and though it is not my best it is still mine. I'm not going to hide my story on GDocs and pretend it never happened. I know there are some people who regret not being able to see certain stories by their favorite authors, stories that never see daylight because the author as ashamed of them. I am not ashamed of Becoming Them. If anything, I want to show it as a lesson that everyone has their bad times and we should not fear failure.
Could I improve upon the story? Absolutely. Yet I've seen far too many authors lately who agonize over their work and devote hours upon hours trying to make everything right, and I am not going to do that. I have too many stories waiting to be written. For me, the drive towards quality is not about going back and rewriting the same scenes a dozen times; it's about knowing what you did wrong before and trying to get it right next time.
Which leads me to a certain understanding of where we're at with the Them-verse. RainbowBob has all but abandoned the subject; when I asked him if he wanted to give Becoming Them a look, he chose not to bother. With the originator of the universe disinterested and myself growing tired of it, I wonder if there's any need to continue. I'm not even bothering to give Becoming Them a pre-reader or editor because I don't want to make people suffer through something I don't intend to fix. As such, I'm considering cancelling End of Them and Origin of Them, although I have every intention of writing Worship Them at the moment.
Yet I do not consider this a truly bad thing. There comes a time when one realizes that the ship has sailed, and I think this one is far beyond the horizon. In the meantime, I can devote my attention where it belongs: Order of Shadows, of which I have finally started writing on, and Shadow Pony, the release date of which is still enigmatic at best. I'm not going to linger on what Becoming Them should have been.
I have brighter things in my future.
Becoming Them: Saturday, May 30
Order of Shadows Book I – Chapter 1: Saturday, June 6
Shadow Pony: TBA
Stats
Total Word Count: 1,246,000 over 26 stories
Average Words Written Per Week: 9,200
Follower Rank: 346th (-3)
Overall Ratings Average: 95.28% (+0.06%)
Highest-Rated Story (Not Counting Stories at 100%): The Gentle Nights @ 98.46% (6 Weeks, +.01%)
Story with the Most Votes: Tyrant @ 1966/53 (25 Weeks)
Story with the Fewest Votes: Paul's Persistently Protacted Practice Pieces (21/0, 3 weeks)
Longest Story: Trixie vs. Equestria @ 144,000
Yep.
Damn shame. I like the Them stories.
Man, that's pretty big of you. I wouldn't be able to do the same for my own works. I always end up deleting or otherwise disregarding those I'd consider my failures.
Still, I hope you can find more success in writing your other fics.
Good luck! Who knows? Perhaps struggling with this one will lead you to finding renewed inspiration later down the road. Or maybe your failure will inspire those who are still unsure of themselves to pick up the writing stick again, and finish their own stories, or maybe even inspire a new generation of Them-Verse authors to write their own stories within the universe.
Better to bow out at a graceful point than run yourself (or the stories) into the ground trying too long. Do hope you'll at least give us a peek at what the missing stories would have had. Perhaps a blogpost on where the Them stories were headed or what you had wanted to do with them?
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Because I can.
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Hmm, I might do that. We shall see. If I do, it'll be after I write Worship Them.
I'm kind of late to the party on the "Them" stories, but one of the things I've enjoyed is that after OctaScratch, you kind of went with a Random Romance styled thing there with Scootaloo/Iron Will and Coco Pommel/Babs Seed. Not that there was any romance happening, but the pairings were unusual and born out of coincidence and convenience.