Sorry For Being So Late, or National Pony Writing Month the Third · 8:33pm Nov 19th, 2016
Blog Number 22: Raising the Stakes Edition
Naturally, there have been more than three National Pony Writing Month contests on Equestrial Daily, but this is the third one I've participated in. The first one I extensively talked about back in 2012, when I was still naive enough to believe I'd finish Didgeridoo in time for the deadline, and a planned 30k+ epic adventure story ended up as a 6k prologue to nothing. The second one was last year's, when I was gloomy enough to wonder why my writing habit had vanished, and so I ended up quietly planning, quietly writing, and quietly submitting Black and White Truth, yet another 6k prologue to nothing. (Also, apologies for the total absence of fanfare on that one. Like I said, I was gloomy, so I guess I didn't want to get my hopes up.)
This year is going to be different.
That's not an idle claim. By the time you've read this, I will have published the tenth chapter of Hive Versus Hive, a fic which has now become my official longest on this site, and which is currently the only incomplete fic I am actually finishing.
I will also have met my planned target for the Equestria Daily contest, which I had conservatively placed at 25k words. Lastly, I will also have produced, as of this moment at least, the third longest story that includes Seabreeze's character tag, because the poor devil does not have nearly enough stories on this site.
Better still, I am not done yet. You're going to have to take my word for it, sadly, but I now have over 50k words written for this contest behind the scenes which are all just waiting to be submitted, and they will contribute to the target recommended by the original announcement. Basically, I could cruise through the rest of this month twiddling my thumbs, and so long as I submit on time, I will have met both my meagre target and the official and relatively more challenging one of 50k.
Why stop there, though? I have about eleven more days, and I'm looking at a break next week which will grant me a large amount of free time to focus on this thing. Maybe 50k is too modest. Maybe something a little more ambitious will keep things interesting. Maybe I should try harder and work towards something big. Something like...
...100k?
OK, OK, I'm not going to delude myself over this one. The evidence and the probabilities are against it, there's no getting around that, and unless you're someone like shortskirtsandexplosions or kudzuhaiku, it's a daunting rate of production. The psychological intimidation alone is likely to cause me to fail. It's extremely improbable given my track record.
On the other hand, perhaps the attempt will be worth it. Even if I don't hit the target, I might get the next best thing. It would, as well, provide me with plenty of experience and a chance to find out what kind of techniques will work. Perhaps I will learn to appreciate through trial and error what rate of production best suits me. At the very least, I've got those 50k words to fall back on; they are there to show me what I can do. It's a "heads-I-win, tails-I-win-even-more" scenario.
It still sounds astonishing and unrealistic to me. I feel strongly about it, but I don't know if I'm mostly excited about succeeding or mostly alarmed at the idea of failing so badly. I've never tried anything like this before.
In the end, there's only one way to find out. At the end of the month. No guessing games. The results will speak for themselves. We'll just have to wait and see what they actually are.
But darn me, I'm going to try it. 
Until then, Impossible Numbers out.
Statistics
New Stories?: Three. There's Hive Versus Hive, natch, but also Practical Nightmares Only and Splash Dash, which were definitely on the fluffy side.
Practical Nightmares Only was a bizarre case of art copying real life, as I was spending most of October going "darn it, I wanna get something out before the end of the month", and I ended up writing about Derpy/Muffins spending most of Nightmare Night going "darn it, I wanna get something out before the end of the night".
Splash Dash came from two things: the observation that there weren't many fics showing how Sweetie Belle and Rainbow Dash might interact; and a load of water-based folklore I'd been picking up here and there.
Hive Versus Hive is mainly a combination of world-building exercise for the Breezies and character development for Seabreeze, and I must say it's turning out better than I expected!
N.B. One of these days, I think I'll have to write a blog about the nine fics I mentioned in my previous post, because it feels a bit unfair to leave them as a list of titles, and I can think of at least four that are good enough to get special attention.
New Updates: The latest seven chapters of Hive Versus Hive, which have largely been released every day or two. I have a complete draft, but my current method of working is to edit each individual chapter before publishing them. Now, I intend to leave it for a while and focus on my own 100k challenge, because I do need to focus.
Story Count: 35
My Total Story View Count: 32,117
Age: 1,803 days, or 257 weeks and 4 days
My Follower Count: 82
My Followed Count: 71
