Brief update on chapter releases, and future plans · 4:46pm Aug 20th, 2016
So for anyone following Twilight Sparkle, Bringer of Chaos (I still hate that title...), it's gonna be a while longer for any new content to come out.
No, the story is not going on hiatus, I'm still working on it. I just realized that releasing each chapter as I finished it is probably a mistake, because it lets me ride the emotional wave of "yay, people like my story!" for several weeks instead of actually writing new material. This is partially why I've only been releasing a chapter every three months or so. It also leads me to bounce around, lose tone, forget important previous plot points, and let the story event be more driven by reader feedback than it probably needs at this juncture. Not that I dislike all the feedback; in fact quite the opposite! It's just that everyone has such fun speculation and good ideas that I end up working in a lot of them instead of just letting the story happen.
My new plan is to finish fleshing out the remainder of the story, and then do a rapid release schedule sometime near the end of the year (maybe 1 chapter ever couple weeks, depending). This is significant for me for two reasons:
1. I made a New Year's Resolution to finish this story before 2016 is out.
2. About ten years ago I wrote down a list of goals and aspirations, one of which was to write a novel before I turn 30. That's coming up in February of 2017, and I'm so close I can taste it. This story is already novel-length (50,000 words), and I feel like it will wrap up fairly soon, about 65,000 to 75,000 words.
So, If I can complete this before December 31, 2016, I will have fulfilled both my New Year's Resolution and my life-long goal of being a real writer with a novel under my belt.
Longer term, I have two projects in the pipeline:
1. Once "Bringer of Chaos" is done, I'm going to clean up, re-write, and fix all the myriad problems with it. I'm also going to integrate the prequel as an introduction or prologue, and publish it as a printable PDF with all the trimmings of a "real" book. I'll also probably use an on-demand printer to make a hardcopy for myself (possibly anyone else who wants one and is willing to help cover the printing/shipping fee). I plan on making this happen sometime halfway through 2017.
2. I'm laying the foundations for my next story, which will be an epic MLP sci-fi drama spanning thousands of years of Equestrian history. I've got a ton of small story "hooks" written down that I want to explore, and I realized just a few weeks ago that most of them share common themes and ideas which could easily be worked into one overreaching plot while still staying true to what I want to say. This might be a long or short project, but I'll keep everyone updated.
By the way, I want to thank all of you so much for sticking around and being patient with my amateur storytelling attempts. This has been one of my dreams for most of my life, and the encouragement I've gotten from everyone here has been so helpful in showing me I actually do have some creative talent to offer the world.
