28 Fics in 28 Days February Self-Challenge, first Week (and change) in review · 6:58am Feb 10th, 2017
Keep in mind that I'm a little bit drunk as I write this, having tried to achieve and maintain the Balmer Peak for writing horsewords. So when I say I'm a little drunk I mean I'm pretty drunk. I don't drink to the point of passing out, however. I merely drink enough so that I might have trouble walking. I'm sort of anal about spelling on my words too, but a lot of other things will be bound to make you go 'wtf' when you read it.
So, I'd like to do a sort of week-in-review of the first week (and change) of my '28 fics in 28 days' self-imposed challenge (keep in mind I nearly wrote 28 days in 28 fics to see how bad I am right now when writing this).
Anyways, I made this challenge up for myself to force myself to write and push out a fiction a day. Obviously, at that stage, quality of my fanfiction isn't as optimised as it would be if I wrote something steadily, when I was in the spirit to write, understand the context of character actions in changing things around from canon for the fic, and then sat on the story and edited it before publishing it. What it has more been is me writing a fic, editing it same-day, and then writing it. Though I didn't make it explicit in my initial blogpost, I don't write every fic all in one day. Rather, I allow myself to get bits and pieces done ahead of time on a fic when I am done the current fanfiction for the day. The biggest case for this is Glimmer in the Snow, where I had 3,000 words banked from the previous day and wrote 7,000 words that day.
So far, the challenge has been pretty good for me, as it has forced me to actually write and publish a fic-a-day. This is essential. I might not be getting the absolute best quality out of doing a fic-a-day, but it's still decent quality, and I'm forcing myself to actually meet that pace. The lone exception to this is The Fall of Twilight Sparkle, which not only burned through my 12-hour slacktime I gave myself at the start of the month, but also left me feeling close to burn-out. It's something I am definitely keen to look at plotting out again and trying to figure a better sequence of events with. In that event, I had the idea of the ending first and tried to work up to the ending, but left the characters too underdeveloped and the ending felt too blatant, heavy-handed and coming out of nowhere to make it work. It's something I would much like to rewrite at a more casual, relaxed pace, with feedback from other as to how to more naturally lead into the scene (and not leave Celestia looking incompetent and/or like a jerk)
Other than that, I have been pretty happy with the overall quality of what I have gotten out. Running through the numbers, I have done about 4700 words a day, but that eclipses 5000 easily when I include all the words I have banked towards fics I haven't published yet or towards my next Phantasmare arc. Of the nine FIMfics I have published this month so far, five of them have been published, though two of them only briefly (and Trix Over the Sunset has only just gotten onto the non-Mature list as I write this). Really, that's an amazing number, so thanks to all of you who read and upvoted! Home and Hearth has been my biggest success, though I'm happiest with Closing Remarks for the idea which sparked the fic.
I hope some of those of you who are reading this at least take it as inspiration that if you just write, it is possible to push out fics or chapter updates. I know I am in the FIMFiction Discord a lot, but I still do work about 25 hours a week, so writing is still in my free time.
So far, with 9 days in a row, I've managed to thoroughly do better than my August challenge, where I did 5 fics in 5 days and then stopped completely for the rest of the month (and none of the first four fics beat 3,000 words then). However, saying that, I fully expect to miss a fic in one of the next couple of days. I did say that it was incredibly unlikely for me to get a fic in all 28 days of February, and that still holds true. The big thing is that the fic ideas I'm working on are ones that I want to take a little more time on and come up with ideas for scenes, proofread, edit, and toss out bits and redo them if need be, though they have some words banked towards them. The other thing is to attempt to break out of the rut that I have with writing almost only Slice-of-Life and Comedy, with Fall of Twilight Sparkle being the only thing that deviates from that norm. Doing a fic a day already is breaking out of a rut, but I don't want to fall into another rut in the process.
However, there is one problem. I didn't put it in the initial blogpost, but at the start of the month, I had 48 ideas on my idea list (excluding the clop ideas list). Today, there are still 48 ideas. Most of that is spending too much time in the FIMfiction Discord and having too many ideas sparked by what other users say in there. That's a lot of ideas, and at some point I have to accept I can't write them all even if I try merging some of them together, either meaning I can try putting some out for an aspiring author to take a look at (but these are unlikely to get picked up), or simply never write some of them. Maybe if we saved SS&E's brain, but not otherwise.
The other issue with that ideas list is I'm beginning to realise the staggering amount of them that involve Twilight Sparkle. I like Twilight. But I don't rank her in my top 4 ponies list (Rarity, Scootaloo, Sunset Shimmer and Trixie), and I like writing about side-characters. I enjoy how much this fandom is willing to dedicate time and effort to letting side-characters shine through in fanworks. That means Maud Pie, or Gabby, or more Double Diamond, or Sunburst, or Lily Longsocks, or the Canterlot Five for me. We don't need that much more Twilight Sparkle.
I don't think I will do a week-in-review for the rest of the month, but I intend to do a post-mortem at the end of the month for the challenge. If anyone has a forum they'd like me to (repost) it on, I can do that as well. Again, obviously I don't expect anybody to do anything like this, given that I seem to be a font of ideas that can hold up one-shots. Still, hopefully I can give a decent enough perspective of my experience and inspire some of you to work towards your own projects.
Regards,
~Emperor
I'm actually looking forward to you finishing Phantasmare.
So that I can finally start reading it (I have this thing about reading unfinished works: I can't do it). And download it into my fimfiction archive (I have weird hobbies...)
4416415 Call it the lump-of-horsewords fallacy.
I've written over 50,000 horsewords this month. If I had been writing towards just Phantasmare, I wouldn't have necessarily gotten those 50,000 horsewords written (though I have at least gotten a few thousand done).
4416779
Well, do try an finish it before I die.