Just a guy writing horsewords · 6:05am Oct 31st, 2017
Can I be self-indulgent for a minute?
Uh, guys? I think he means "more than usual..."
I've been coming back up out of the long darkness of the last... most of 2017, and I'm finally able to get good sleep again now that my sleep apnea is under control. But as I've been getting my brain firing on at least 2 out of 3 cylinders again... I've started realizing how truly not-great I am as an author. And I don't mean that in the drama-llama sense of fishing for whatever. No, it's just like... I'm a guy with a job and a family who writes horsewords in his spare time. Sometimes they're better horsewords than at other times. Every once in a while people like them and they get in a horseword box, or there was one time when some horseword competition people gave me a silver medal for horsewording second best.
That last one was cool and I liked it probably more than I should've.
But at the end of the day (or at the start of another day), I'm just a guy writing about horses every once in a while. And I'm okay with that. Part of the long darkness was having layers of my being compacted down and whittled away to almost-nothingness because my brain was struggling to function on diminished oxygen. And when I feel backed into a corner, I fight. Not always an intelligent plan, but it's pretty deep in my fibers, it turns out. But of course, civil society and the rest of me being what they are, I don't go punch things; I turn to the competitive things in my life and I try to do them harder, better, faster, stronger, as the Daft Punk would say. And because I'm a parent with small kids and no life, the main thing I could find to put in that position was horsewords. Basically I was trying to do the Writeoff competitions in some kind of weirdly ineffective hardcore mode that didn't really make room for sleep on Writeoff weekends, and... yeah.
It feels pretty stupid now. Certainly it wasn't super-effective at achieving any specific goal other than frustrating readers, editors, and myself. The original goal of seeking feedback to improve my writing got left in the dust at some point, replaced by some kind of weird need to keep going for the sake of keeping going. I mean, sure, I was trying to improve; oh how I was trying. I just was working harder than I should've on the wrong thing. Like if I couldn't pull the time together on a weekend to do the Writeoff, I'd just do an all-nighter on Sunday to get a story done, because who cares--on some level I knew I had a problem with sleep, and I knew it wasn't helping me, but I didn't have an effective way of dealing with that. And the deeper the problem got, the less able I was to pull the ripcord and get some kind of help.
Anyway. Glad that's mostly dealt with now.
But hey, November's just about here, and in our house that means NaNoWriMo. Time to go on the record and state that I'm going to (insert unpleasant act here) if I don't use NaNoWriMo to bang out a terrible draft of the rest of To Serve In Hell this month. Spoiler alert: it's going to be terrible at first. Editing it will be the titular Hell. But it will get into an editing pipeline sooner rather than later, and the story will get done. Because I'm finally at a point where I'm not trying to be best horsewordsman among a bunch of horsewordsmen who eat fools like me for breakfast. I'mma go be me with my big dumb story that I never should've written this way. But I'mma get it done. Then I'mma go write some more Limestone. Cuz over the last year or so one positive thing is that I've finally found the sort of thing I just want to sit and write all day long, and it's Limestone, baby; Frickin' Tsundere horse. You know it, I know it. I could write her for ages.
N...not that I want more stories of me... b-baka...
First, though, I need to go finish my story where I do terrible things to poor Rarity. I almost feel a bit bad; her next every chapters aren't going to be all sunshine and rainbows. 
Dude, I'm glad you're doing better.
You don't need to write for competitions, you aren't doing this professionally and while I think you could with practice and pushing yourself, you aren't shooting for that, so just write for enjoyment.
I like the Serve in Hell story, though I haven't finished it the tab has been open on my phone for weeks because I keep thinking "No, got shit to do, short story for now." And then I spend more time reading short stories than I would have spent on yours because of my garbage impulse control. Back on topic though, just cause you started doesn't mean you have to finish, I'd rather a good author (that's you) bail on a story he isn't happy with than burn out on it.
Granted often an artist (you again, even if its "just" horse words) is never happy with their stuff even when the audience/ readers/ etc. just love it, which is why I'm always impressed with the guts you guys have to put stuff out while I have a bunch of stories (not fanfic stuff) that I just let rot on the vine.
You rock for even trying and complete or cancel tag on Serve in Hell I look forward to your next piece.
Edit: I just checked and I followed you because you wrote Heavy Rock, which was great, found To Serve in Hell after that.
Glad you’re doing better.
Great to hear you are doing better, that's pretty good news.
I'm also glad you found some clarity about how to approach horsewords. It sounds like it had become somewhat frustrating, which is something that never should happen (because PONIES) but happens nonetheless.
NaNoWriMo sounds like a challenge I should take too, just to have a horrible first draft, but which strangely worries me and which I'm certain I won't be able to complete before even starting.
Kudos to you for doing it.
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Man, you're awesome. Heavy Rock is exactly the sort of thing I want to do more of. But I also still am totally in love with all of the ideas and story stuff for Hell. Looking back, I'd never try to tackle a big story the way I've been doing this one again. But I needed to learn that, I guess. Now I just need to knock it out and move on. Quitting isn't an option for me; the site is littered with too many corpses of abandoned stories as it is, and I still like where it's going besides. But yeah... competition is fun and the Writeoff community is fantastic but it's past time for me to relax a little.
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Our NaNoWriMo group is very vocal about embracing crappy first drafts. It's difficult to not edit in-place while drafting; it feels weird and it accumulates editing debt. But writing that way is also just a tool for the toolbox, and useful for getting un-stuck when your fears about quality hold you back. I'd say it's worth trying sometime, and the cost of failure is pretty low.
Although one thing I still had to figure out when I discovered FimFic was how to coax a terrible first draft into a nice-looking story, so it's not the only piece of the puzzle.
Heh
I am pretty sure that is a tautology!
Certainly glad to hear you are doing better! I hope the remainder of the year is more restful and peaceful.
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And yes, I suppose it's tautological... 
Thanks!