Practice is Good · 8:07am Feb 13th, 2016
Some of you who follow me may know that I am a published author, though no where near as successful as I want to be. Yes, I have a day job.
In a conversation that started from a discussion of my latest story, More Than Winning a Race, where we were arguing about the merits of a Flutterdash pairing I worked not to imply and whether I might be convinced into writing a Dash romance(*), I was forced to remember one of my unpublished stories. (Not MLP.) I offered to loan a copy. Being the conscious writer that I am, and despite thinking this novella was one of my better works, I decided to re-read it.
Excuse me while I digress. Why am I writing fan-fiction, you might ask. Well, I love the characters and the world. And writing in another universe is like writing a sequel. Sequels are always easier because all the world building, relationships, and characters are done, Less work. No blank first page to start with, etc. But, for me, mostly before I put pen to paper (or really, fingers to keyboard), I needed an excuse to put the time into something that would never pay me a dime.
That excuse is practice.
When I decided to write my first fimfiction story in May of 2015, Lesson Learned, I convinced myself it would be good practice, an excuse to write without the burden of ever thinking I might get paid for it. Sure, I get comments. People give me up votes. I've become friends with a few of you. It has been worth it.
And I can testify, the practice has been worth it. I write both science fiction and epic fantasy. I've always written for publication in the third person; it's considered more salable than first person. Here, I write in first person, because, why not? I always wanted to try, so I did. After over 100,000 words and 20 published titles, I think I've gotten the knack. (Patience, my fans, there is a Glimmer of hope that an Element of Charisma story might show up in a few weeks.)
Which brings us back to to beginning. I wrote Through Blood and Tears in 1998 during a Clarion workshop. 12,000 words in 15 hours straight, the origin story of a pair of unusual characters in the third book of a fantasy trilogy, knowing who they were but not how they became that way. And I wrote it in third person.
Practice is a funny thing. Here I've been writing in first person, for nine months now. I looked at this earlier story and realized that—and apropos for this website—there are horses for courses. With a new context from my experience practicing first person narrative, it became immediately obvious that one of the biggest flaws in my old story was that it ought to have been written in first person. The third person narrative voice really gets in the way of the personal journey of a single protagonist. It can be done, of course, and some authors like C. J. Cherryh excel at it. It's important that the narration be invisible, otherwise you end up with two characters not one.
No, I did not rewrite the story. I fixed where the narrator intruded into the story, various typos, and some wonky sentence structure I had missed. (Really, the advice of placing a broken story into a drawer for a year is indeed sage advice--you have to forget the story to really read it fresh.) I have yet to look back at the trilogy, which I already knew needed rewriting, but, you know, thanks to practice, and to readers who sometimes have the delightful temerity to hold me to a higher standard, I think maybe one day soon I will begin those rewrites.
Thank you. Thank you everypony.
(*) Possibly. But I have to find a guy at least as awesome as Rainbow Dash to challenge her, to fill in her deficits while she fills in his. Sorry, but Soarin doesn't make the grade.
