Spoilt For Choice · 2:44pm Aug 7th, 2017
Seven.
I have seven stories vying for my attention right now, begging to be written. Five are already in progress, and the the other two have been planned for a long time but have yet to be started.
This adorable image was brought to my attention in the author's notes of Worst Patient Ever, and was drawn by yurinokesin. I have no plans to write anything with Nurse Redheart, and so figured I wouldn't have any other context in which to post it. I guess it kind of fits here as an explanation of why things are stuck on the ground for now instead of flying around being awesome?
That real-life megaproject I mentioned a few months ago has pretty much wrapped up now, and work is nice and quiet at the moment, so I suddenly find myself with all this time to write. Which means that all the projects that were previously postponed are back on the table again, hence the five chapters of five stories partly-done. The weird thing is, though, I think I'm getting less done overall than I would be if I were just focusing on one project. RDIAMF and Chrylestia were both things that I sat writing all day, every day, from start to finish until they were done, and each one took a couple of weeks. In theory, having multiple irons in the fire means you can switch your attention from one to another depending on what you feel like working on that day, but I'm finding that it's hard to focus on any one thing for long enough to get much done.
Eyeballs happened pretty spontaneously, and because it was a collab it was easy to keep focus, since it was continually under discussion. And also I really enjoyed writing it, perhaps more than anything else I've done, because there were so few technical hurdles to overcome, and hardly any other restrictions on what would or wouldn't be allowed in the story since it didn't need to maintain an ongoing status quo or exist for any reason other than the joy of existing. So when I suggested that there might be a spell to turn a unicorn's horn into a type of plant, and Naiad said that nothing like that had been seen but that Starlight Glimmer's power levels were previously unheard of, so all bets were off, then it was easy, harmless and interesting to say that if Starlight changed the rules, maybe she was the answer. And suddenly the lead character was shipped with Starlight, and the story gained a new dimension of surprising sweetness amongst its debauchery and comedic sociopathy. And while there are one or two stories out there about how Aria and Starlight look very similar, I think we inadvertently created the first one shipping them. So keeping going with writing that story was easy, with the big scenes written in one night each, and the whole story taking 17 days from conception to publication.
And then Best Pegasus was the obvious one for me to do next, and I'd started a month or so before with the first 400 or so words. Once I had a solid dialogue plan, I was mostly able to focus on that one and get it done. I know which two would be best to do next, and I'm working on them both concurrently. But the first is rather nebulous at the moment and proving tricky to pin down, and I'm wondering if the 500 words I have so far would be best abandoned and the story started again from a different point. I know where I want it to end, and I know the rough outline of the journey, but in choosing where to begin perhaps I initially miscalculated. The second of those two stories is more complex to begin with, and after 1,500 words I've properly hit the interrogation scene, and I need to work out exactly who's going to say what before I can go much further, which is going to need to be carefully pitched and ordered. Last night I planned out the beginning of the second chapter instead, and will try to come back to the dialogue planning later today, though I hardly know where to start.
That's the problem in a nutshell, really: not knowing where to start. I know that in terms of publication it would be best to mix up the genres, rather than dumping several comedies at once or several slice of life stories, tragedies, romances etc, and I know that any which risk being invalidated by future canon (like if the Dazzlings were to return in one of the EG summertime shorts, for example, then lots of things I had planned would be wiped out) should be prioritised to get them out and read before that can happen (I could slap an AU tag on it, I know, but I'd prefer not to). And I'd also like to publish stories in the order they're written, where possible, so that my first attempts at writing certain characters are seen as such, establishing my 'default view' of them before publicly experimenting with different directions. Unfortunately I have already failed that for one or two characters, and in one case I didn't even think about that until after it was published. It's great to have a Sonata-POV chapter of TSTMYLI published (which is written as how I see her canonically), so that she's now available for that kind of treatment if I wanted to try stories making her even more daft or nicer on the inside.
The Song That Makes You Lose It is one of those five in progress, of course, but I haven't written a word yet for chapter 3ii. Much of the chapter is planned out in good detail, and I'm particularly excited about one of Aria's ideas in it, but for so long the last chapter felt like a weight hanging over me, the story having gone so long without an update, that for now I'm just enjoying the feeling of not having that constant pressure, and thought it would be a good time to get all these distracting one-shot ideas out of the way. I will start working on the next bit soon, though.
So here I sit: five stories underway, two more itching to be started, and I'm writing a blog post instead. Such is a reasonable demonstration, I think, of how strangely hard I'm finding it to focus on any of them that thoroughly at the moment. I think it'll be ok, and I'll be able to put the unstarted ones off for even longer, and get the two most urgent ones done next, possibly with a detour to write little bits of a third. We'll see how it turns out 
I'm ready for more stories!
4626650 Thanks!
Me too, it's just the getting there that's a bit more problematic
4626653
I completely understand, as I am a fanfic writer as well.
Which, reflecting upon it, might be my favorite element of the story
Discounting the whole premise being fabulous because of the “inspiring someone else to write” thing, anyway 
And having too many ideas to write is perhaps better than no ideas, right?
I totally agree with you that discussing Eyeballs made it much more expedient to write and easier to focus on, so if you’d like to talk about any of the others at any point, don’t hesitate 
4626853
It is rather lovely, isn't it? I really liked how you wrote Starlight as being the same lighthearted, unconcerned pony that she is when she's happy in the show, it made her a delightful contrast in scenes to Aria and Applejack who were both kind of grumpy or annoyed.
For me it's a toss up between that and the things Aria says in the third chapter about their first customer, who (if the latest story didn't make it obvious) I think is wonderful. Having Aria think sarcastic things about her was difficult
Hardly the first time your writing has done that!
I'd guess so, but in terms of being on this site, I honestly couldn't say. I joined because I had one idea for a story, and it's still hardly told. I have solid plans for the next five chapters, so perhaps after that I'll start missing the creative deluge?
I'm afraid I may have to take you up on that for 1-3 of them