Random Ramblings CCVI · 12:30pm Nov 14th, 2017
IN WHICH I MAKE SOME HEADWAY
Yesterday was my ex's birthday. As she has broken off all contact with me for no reason I can surmise, I celebrated by buying a box of doughnuts. Blueberry cake doughnuts are my crack. That said, it's currently raining outside. It's supposed to for the next two days, and my steep driveway is full of leaves. In other words, I ain't leaving. So, read on.
November is National Novel Writing Month. I never take part in it for one big reason: I'm too damn slow. Seriously. I've been posting fiction for you on this site for nearly three years (with significant gaps) and my total output is still less than 100,000 words. That is going to change very soon, however. Writing that Halloween story -- even though I failed in my quest to finish the non-pony version by yesterday -- sort of put the wind back in my sails.
After finishing the preliminary draft of a capital offense and getting other upcoming stories put on the Cloud to send to sympathetic friends, I decided I needed to work on my Albatross -- the historical AU adventure fic that I've had in the works for nearly two years but only recently got the guts to write beyond its first chapter. It's taken me most of 2017, but I'm very close to finishing it. Finally got over the hump of creating more lore and characters I didn't want to but had to. I just barfed out another 2000 words, taking the story over 23k. I'm not sure what the final word count will be. I doubt it'll hit the 25k mark, but anything could happen. After all, this story was meant to be a simple one told in only three chapters, but once I actually started working on it in earnest it evolved into seven chapters plus prologue and epilogue (neither of which are written yet). Regardless of what the final word count is, it will be over twice as long as my current longest published fic, which is my first: Ponyville Holds An Election.*
*Yes, Reconciliations IS technically longer, but that's only if you include its alternate Pinkamena chapter, which is almost 3000 words by itself. I don't, so "Election" still wins.
Just like CoffeeMinion did with his wonderful Limestone×Flash story I helped edit, I have no intention of sharing any of this story until I've finished it (that includes rewriting the first chapter from two years ago). Given its length, I won't dump it all at once -- I think it was a mistake when I did that with "Election"; not sure how I'll handle the last two Recovery Arc stories, which are both multi-chapter but nowhere as long -- with this, I might do one chapter a week, or two a week, I dunno.
No, I haven't made any headway on my newest Sunset story I teased in my last blogpost aside from writing down a quick & dirty outline. But that's fine. I work at my own pace, and my loyal readers (poor souls) have become used to my erratic schedule, seeming to believe that it's a signal of quality over quantity. That assumes my work has any quality at all. I try for quality, of course, because I usually care; whether I succeed is anybody's guess. I can say my Sunset Shimmer stories get more views and upvotes than anything else I do, which disappoints me a little bit because I love doing experimental fics like Comma Comma or When There's Smoke.
This AU fic I'm writing is completely different from all of that. It's a simple Adventure story. But, as I've said before, it should fill in a LOT of gaps about my version of Ponyville that stretch all the way back to "Election" nearly 3 years ago. Just like how my Anon-A-Miss fic, if I can publish it, will simultaneously raise and answer questions.
I probably could have finished the story by now instead of ranting in this blogpost, but writing these posts takes a lot less thinking. Yeah, that quality thing again. In blogposts, I can go off on tangents as much as I want. There is no pacing, and sometimes I make typos. I write these pretty much how I talk. That's true for my actual stories to a lesser extent because I'm so anal-retentive about flow and cadence. But readers have told me they like how I pace my stories, so... yay for me I guess.
As always, no timeframe on when anything will be finished. Stories happen when they happen. Nevertheless, I'll keep you updated, and I hope not to let you down.
Peace out!
