S P R I N G · 12:36am Mar 21st, 2017
I'm alive!
As of today, I am feeling very ready to start writing more stories for here on Fimfic, and I mean it this time, and here's why:
Yesterday was the first official day in over a year I have gone a full 24 hours without writing greentext. I had started either St. Patrick's Day last year or the day after (the 18th, which is when I first started posting under one specific tripcode that apparently prompted me to keep at it somehow).
The thing about writing greentext is... I have wanted to stop ever since late May of last year. But I couldn't, and I'm not sure how to explain what the reasons are, because it's mostly a mystery to me how it all started up as well. I did try to write prose stories here for a little bit, but my focus seemed to just disperse after a few days, and my mind reverted back to what was the only thing I was used to; greentext. It's not that I've been completely inactive in terms of writing things, it's just that I couldn't stop writing in a format that doesn't fit in with here.
It's really, really hard to describe how hooked I was on writing greentext. I can honestly say that it consumed pretty much my entire train of thought 90% of the time every single day for an entire year
. And I was soooooo mad because I could almost never get myself to do anything else.
The only real way I can convey how badly I had it is through what my (obsession?) resulted in. Luckily, I had documented every week of this in my pastebin ahead of time all throughout this past year because of reasons
. (It gets sloppy in the end, but everything I managed to find from the /mlp/ archives is there)
After doing the math and estimating what the final value would be, the total amount of KB (kilobytes) of text would most certainly be somewhere between 1,600KB and 1,620KB. Or in more understandable terms (that I also did the math for), somewhere between 280,000 and 290,000 words for the one year, and just under that one tripcode. (The raw numbers were around 1,660KB and 300,000 words before I trimmed off the extra text that wasn't part of the stories http://i.imgur.com/hkihnTS.png). I was so... overly-connected to this that I simply could not stop despite actively trying to do just that.
I really don't know what to say. I haven't spent a day this uneventful (in a good way) in a while. But I've dropped that tripcode for good now as a ceremonial-type thing. So I'm done spending a ridiculous amount of time and ideas on writing greentext that I don't even enjoy most of the time.
All I know is that this has opened up a creative vacuum that I just can't help but feel an urge to fill with some other hobby. Not only that, but I have a greater capacity for how frequently I am able to write. There are soooooooo many ideas that I've wanted to write for here, and I wasn't about to let them fall into the seemingly never-ending black hole that was my strange obsession with writing greentext, I really hope I broke the habit this time. So maybe you'll see some new stories on this page pop up soon!
I might type the prose up really quickly as long as I'm in the zone. Hopefully I won't get too in the zone like I did with greentext. I just really really don't want to only be able to focus on one thing. It limits my potenti- But that's over now!
Play time is over, fun time has begun.
With all of that said, expect to finally hear more from me probably within the next week or so.
-Alexander
That's fantastic. So happy to hear this.
Don't look at it as "throwing away greentext" either--like I've said before, that stuff gives you skills, especially since you've been doing it every day (jfc just put me to shame why don't you I can't remember the last time I wrote every day). You can outline like a boss, have a good sense of progression, excellent characterization and have good dialogue in there. You've had all the ingredients for a while now--now it's just time to add grammar and bake them cakes.
Either way, I look forward to seeing you around here more often.
(PS You legit wrote the only good Valentine's fic this year)
4466615 Thanks! Always great to hear from you.I'm really glad I have started to take breaks and gather my thoughts more often. Which helps since I'm looking to aim more towards quality with my work instead of writing hit-and-miss stuff.
I'm definitely looking forward to being around here more often.
(Oh wow, really? I was actually thinking about converting it to prose and posting it here.)