Adventures in Writing, Editing, Yelling at the Sky, and learning about yourself in the process: 2017 in Review · 10:49am Jan 1st, 2018
"December 24th, 1989, 9PM, Eastern Standard Time. From here on in, I shoot without a script. See if anything comes of it, instead of my old shit" - Mark Cohen from Rent
I have to admit that the idea of a year in review seems... kind of silly for someone who hasn't published a myriad of stories like my friend Novel Idea, from whom I'm drawing a lot of inspiration for this. He wrote up a massive set of blog posts (honestly, he said he learned that blogs have a 100k character limit because of this) about his experiences in writing - and some in life - over the past year. While I doubt I'm going to use those character limits at all, and I won't have nearly as much to be as wonderfully oratorical about as he did, I realised that this might be a good thing for me. Might help clear my head, and finally get me to finish up 14, get 2018 started off with another bang as far as writing goes, and, if anything, do something that I routinely assign to my clients as homework to help them clear their heads of stuff that's weighing them down. So, here goes, and maybe I can give folks a few things to think about as well as he did. Or half as well. I'll settle for that.
January and February - Speak
On January 11th, I finally got the hell over myself and posted chapter 1 of a story that was literally 2 years in the making. According to my notes on GoogleDocs, the last edit we made to Project Horizon's epilogue was on December 2nd, 2015. I'm fairly certain we published fairly shortly after that. That marked a time of great dissatisfaction for me, to be completely honest. I'd grown to love the cast and crew of PH, and losing nearly all of them to the end (much in the manner of several popular anime's I'd watched), it was... frustrating. It left me feeling like there was a void there that hadn't been filled, and, to be honest, I couldn't help but empathize with Blackjack's plight. It got me thinking about what would happen when she woke up those few years later. How the hell would she handle it?
Well, fortunately or unfortunately, 2015 was a mess for me, and 2016 was chaotic as all get-out. It wasn't horrible, but it definitely left me little time to do any serious writing. Which was why it wasn't until I was settled into my home out on the Oregon Coast that I finally worked up the courage to send Somber my draft for a story idea: sending Blackjack to therapy. I had to laugh at his first response, which was "You got stuck right before your new kid meets her, didn't you?" A few hours later, and we'd written the scene that's more or less become the cover image for Speak: Threnody confronting Blackjack on the porch of Star House. A bit of editing later (which still needs to be completed, honestly), and I had it posted. I waited, realised that it wasn't getting much attention, and went on to writing the second chapter.
Early in the morning on the 28th, I posted chapter 2 after pestering Bronode into helping me edit it, and went to bed. I awoke the next morning to nearly 100 new views, and that the month was ending with nearly 48 upvotes. I got confused, then tossed myself into work for the day. Then I proceeded to give Bronode and Somber a heart attack by writing a third chapter which was released on February 4th. This started a trend where Bronode started teasing me about sending him chapters prior to their completion, as they had this "Frustrating habit of starting off with 200 words, and then having nearly 10,000 by the time I woke up the next morning." Which, I'll admit, I did to him again around February 20th. To say that he was rather cross with me would be a bit of an understatement.
Honestly, the first two months of the year were what taught me quite a few lessons about patience. In any given situation, I'm more than willing to wait out someone for a response - be it them expressing their feelings, bolstering themselves to talk about something hard about their past, or admitting to continued substance use. Works wonders in session with my clients. Out of session, however... I have this rather horrendous tendency to feel that microwave dinners take too long. The first two months of Speak were an amazing object lesson in patience. Writing stories doesn't mean that you'll have a lot of readers overnight. In fact, it was almost disheartening to see 17 downvotes in the first few days of posting Speak. But... with patience, and the support of friends reminding me that Fallout Equestria stories will sometimes get downvoted by default, I kept writing. I was getting comments, and learning what readers liked, what they were confused about, what errors Bro and I missed really helped offset the impatience I had to, well, have hope that someone would read my story and actually enjoy it. Which apparently a few of you have. Maybe?
March - Shame, Guilt, and Ways of Overcommitting yourself
March saw me getting chapter 5 out. Honestly, this chapter was... hard. It was definitely one of those moments where I toed that line that Novel Idea references in his year in review about putting too much of yourself into a piece. I knew that the content was going to be a massive tonal shift for Speak, but it would also be a critical point where Threnody and Blackjack were going to at least get kind of on the same page. That said, when writing about trauma, I realised I had to accept a certain margin of possibility that what I was writing would be upsetting.
Which gets to a rather marked character flaw that I still struggle with: I have this almost pathological desire to make sure other people are not suffering. Might me where Threnody gets it, I don't know. As such, it meant that the content of chapter 5 really, really agonized me to write - and due in no small part to the fact that many of the things talked about were from my own experiences and/or vicarious trauma that I'd experienced from listening to the worst days of people's lives. The feedback I got on it was... well, positive, but that didn't stop me from having (and, I'll be honest, I continue to have even writing about it) a visceral response of pain and anxiety in my gut. This fucking hurt to hear and to talk about, and it worried me all the more that I'd really upset folks. Luckily, that... didn't happen. No one tried to find my house and come with torches and pitchforks. If anything, I got compliments on how I managed to write something emotionally impactful without breaking it down into a hollow, cheapened literary tool. Maybe it's because Threnody's shit rubbed me raw, I don't know, but it gave me practice in handling emotionally difficult scenes, and it gave me the confidence to realise I could handle them without coming across as flippant or (insert your own negative statement here).
March also saw me doing my damnedest to over commit myself to Tartarus and back. I was in the middle of trying to get the Scribblefest edited for Everfree NW, had recently accepted a position on the Post Apoc Emporium Discord server as a moderator, and, as if that wasn't enough, started picking up new responsibilities at work that had me working longer hours, doing more paperwork, and seeing more clients. In retrospect, dropping the moderator position would have been probably a solid plan, but because I tend to over commit myself anyways because I think I can handle it.
April, May, and June - Adventures in Depression
I don't know how I got chapter 6 out. Much of the end of March and early April is this hellish blur that I can't really remember very well. I remember pulling 42-45 hour weeks (which may not seem bad for folks who work longer hours, but when you're a mental health therapist, that's... a terrible plan and a good way to develop horrible habits for self care), and more or less generally feeling my mental health tank.
I've mentioned in previous blogs that I struggle with mental health issues. To borrow from Allie Brosh of "Hyperbole and a Half" fame, I was beginning to restart the oh so fun game of "Adventures in Depression" 0/10 do not recommend. AI is awful, storyline sucks, UI unoptomised. Initially I thought I had a handle on it, but the truth is... I didn't. After missing a week of work because I couldn't get out of bed, used my normal coping skill of 'throw myself into anything else', and managed to make it through May.
Honestly? Writing helped. When insomnia reared its head as it is often wont to do during episodes for me, it let me write. That's how April and May saw 4 chapters a piece of Speak. I wish I could say that seeing the multitude of comments and reviews and upvotes was helpful, but to be frank, I couldn't find time to look at it. Between work and prepping for Everfree NW, I basically worked, got home, worked on volunteer things, maybe remembered to feed myself, and went to bed. It's probably why I was sick throughout most of EFNW itself. My body was screaming at me to slow down, but... I wasn't.
That said, Everfree was amazing. Parts of it are a fuzzy fog induced by my accidental overdosing myself on cold medicine (because I am very, very bad at remembering how long 4 hours is), but it was a labour of love that was well worth it in the end. I got to see Somber, Piquo Pie, Xepher, Grand Moff Pony, Silver Flare, and Titanium Dragon again, met Novel Idea, David Silver of Ponyfinder Fame, and Ebon Quill. We had a great time talking about writing, going out for impromptu lunch or dinner, and stayed up way too late given that I was actively fighting off a serious upper respiratory infection. I ended up nearly spending the night in Xepher's room post con just talking about writing. It was awesome. It was stressful. It was something I'd looked forward to for months.
But it also came at a cost. I felt awful for the first few weeks afterwords, went on antidepressants that honestly killed my desire to write, and that's why no one heard from me until August. I basically tossed myself into work, trying hard to repair a few connections that were a bit frayed after a management change that had happened a year prior to my hire at the company I work for with community partners. And I did good at it. Which also happened to be part of the problem... There's a reason why Sandalwood and Slate keep telling Threnody she needs to take care of herself. It gets bad if you don't.
September Blue, Thy Sorrows be Forgotten
September sucked. Like, there's no way getting around it. I was so excited to get Deep Breath out, but... I wasn't happy with the circumstances that led to it being published. As I will always tell anyone, there are healthy ways of coping with things - exercise, journaling, etc- and unhealthy ways of coping with things - alcohol, drugs, workaholicism.... I opted for the 3rd of the unhealthy ones. Which, unsurprisingly, didn't actually really help with the stuff that was going on at all. If anything, it made it worse. So... I ended up getting Deep Breath published, and immediately went on a 2.5 week leave from work.
I have this overriding personality flaw that I've inflicted poor Threnody with in Speak, and that is of ignoring myself because I feel like I need to fix everyone else first. We had started a vent room on the Discord I moderated, and I found myself using my insomnia to basically work 24/7. So when I took the leave, and the first thing that my doctor told me upon signing off on the papers for FMLA was that I'd gained a very concerning amount of weight over the past 12 months, it was a wakeup call for me. That, coupled with several serious conversations with my friends - Novel, Shimmercoat, Somber, and nearly all the mods of the discord - that basically constituted them telling me that I worried them by about how much time I spent trying to fix everyone else to the exclusion of myself told me I needed to make a change.
Which really sucks to hear. It's one of those things that, as a writer, I hate to hear from an editor. If anything, the need to make painful changes was what made editing Casualties so loud. I had Casualties finished on November 1st. It took Bro and I 2 weeks to edit it, and I spent a lot of those two weeks just... angry. Angry that I'd fucked the first half of the chapter so much that he and I needed to almost go paragraph by paragraph and adjust it. Angry that I had let myself get into a habit of being stupid. Angry that I would make changes, Bro would make comments, and I'd end up internally screaming at myself 'I thought you just finished unfucking this!' Shimmercoat said he could tell I was editing, because I was making angry, exasperated noises from across the living room. It hurt like hell to see this thing that I was labouring over just... not work out.
But that's the thing about editing - you can either take it personally, or you can take the sting that comes from being told that what you wrote doesn't work and needs work and move forward. I'd had it fairly easy, as many of the edits in prior chapters had been things I agreed with whole heartedly. It was probably a challenging time for not only me, but Bronode, as I was trying very hard to not make him feel like I was upset with him. He and I have been friends for years, but I'll be honest, I don't think I talked to him for a good three weeks after publishing Casualties. But... looking back on it, his patience with me, my anger, and my frustration with needing to keep going over things was one of the things that makes him extremely valuable as a friend.
I think... in review, as silly as it sounds, 2017 showed me just how much I needed my friends. I've tried to not put my crap on other people, as I spend most of my life weighed down by the hurts and burdens of others. But as Shimmercoat, Novel Idea, Radiohooves, and Bronode told me (sometimes on multiple occasions), they can help shoulder it a minute or two. I'm so glad that Shimmer and Radio haven't gotten tired of my 2am tirades about how unfair the world was to someone or another. Or how frustrating it was to keep being asked more and more and more from my job. Because sometimes... sometimes we can't be our own heartmender.
On the 26th of December, my friend and fellow moderator, RoMS, gave me an amazing Christmas present. He dumped a multiparagraph review of Speak on me, and honestly made me re-evaluate how I was viewing both Threnody and well, my view of the world. His one thing that he was so frustrated with Threnody about was the fact that she tends to see her friends as not friends but merely objects to be repaired. While there's certainly a trauma component to that thought pattern, I very quickly realised that my own sense of hurt wasn't coming from the review, but because of how closely his complaints about her fit into what I was doing to my own friends. Art is supposed to imitate reality, but not this closely. I hadn't realised there was anything wrong with Threnody's thinking and characterization of how she treated her friends with her misconstrued views of how empathy worked because that was how I looked at the world. I haven't told him this until I wrote this, mostly because it's been kind of disturbing my own emotional calm a little bit.
...Ok, a hell of a lot.
"Her drive to help and relieve others' pain does not feel genuine, moreso like a person going beyond the call of duty to counterbalance their distorted view of themselves--a terrible one." That... hurt. And it still does because I realised it was something that was driving me to nearly kill myself with my job. And it made me realise that I've been using my own lack of self worth, self confidence, and self image to push people away. By default, I don't share my thoughts and feelings well. I used to hide it behind the lie that it was because I was a 'private person', when in reality it has more to do with my fears that no one can handle my stuff. That no one should have to handle or put up with my stuff. Which, were I to hear this about literally anyone by myself, I'd tell them that it was categorically untrue. So... in writing up this criticism of Threnody's character, RoMS more or less accidentally pointed out a very negative thought loop I'd trapped myself into.
One that I'm actively working on figuring out how to stop. So much of our lives is caused by faulty logic patterns. Our brain likes to put our thoughts and feelings in to nice, logical plinko ball lines. The problem is that sometimes the ball keeps ending up in places that it shouldn't. And that takes work to change, adjust, and ultimately accept.
So my hope for 2018 is to work on that in myself. To work to identify those broken parts of myself and find a way to stop doing the same dumb things over and over and over and ultimately hurting only myself in the process. I know it can make me a better writer. I know it can make me a better friend. And... for the first time in a while, I feel like I can say that being better at those two things without feeling an overwhelming sense of guilt, shame, and feelings that I don't deserve it.
Super Edit
Ahh, shit. Novel pointed out to me this morning that I didn't focus on accomplishments, and I really should. Apparently Speak is being translated into Russian, and I got two amazing pieces of art by people who just loved the story enough to draw my horses! And, well, if that's not something to think about, I don't know what is.
The first art I ever got was from S_Outcast, and omg it's wonderful. I made high pitched squeaky noises that freaked out my roommate (and probably the neighbourhood dogs) when it got it. I just... I was so excited that I was writing something that people felt like drawing. Plus Threnody's expression is just... always applicable. XD
The other one I got this morning. One of the translators is friends with Setharu, and while I'd seen a WIP of it, I thought the WIP was amazing. I'm still super geeked about the finished product. Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou, Setharu! 
Good luck, Heartshine! Please let me know if you think I can help somehow.
For what another external voice saying it is worth, I think that the thing you don't deserve is the overwhelming sense of guilt and shame.
I think that you can take a lesson from this year and make Threnody learn it.
And don't push yourself. If you have to take a break, do it. You seems to be a wonderfull person, don't kill it because you work too much.
( Sorry for the english, i'm French )
I'm sorry to hear that 2017 was tough on you, hopefully 2018 will be better. Interestingly I feel that this blog post added more depth and clarity to the story and character due to explaining of why their the way they are. Personally I feel that Threnody's focus on others isn't bad, but instead can be sometimes a bit excessive like Blackjack's self destructiveness and stupidity. Just don't be afraid of trying things and don't be worried about how people reading will react. Also, try not to force yourself to do anything and take a break if you have too much on your plate. I wish you luck with the future and whatever it brings.
While I hardly feel qualified to speak on matters of psychology to you of all people, the fact that you're more aware of yourself in your characters is a huge boon. You can transform it into something truly healthy and cathartic. It's what I've done... I transform the most painful moments of my life into stories and see what my characters do with the circumstances. Eventually, they find a way through. It's rarely an easy way, but they do it.
I'm humbled and thrilled that I helped inspire something like this from you, though, as I said in my blog Monochromatic inspired this from me. Make sure to read hers. I think everyone should read hers..
Never forget to celebrate your wins, too. I know I speak for a great many people when I say that the reason I'm making EFNW my only Pony con this year is because of the hard work you put into the Writing Track. Your hard work and dedication inspired me to join up and help others. It was my favorite con and I know a ton of that is because of you (and yes, I still have my Novel-Idea nameplate above my desk).
The war against the demons never ends. But you don't have to fight it alone.
I pray that my post did some good. It sounds like it did and honestly, if you're the only one to have gotten something worthwhile out of 13,000 words and four days of writing, then it's worth it.
And since you commented on the Babylon 5 thing...
Fuck that was...really cool to read. I know damn well I'd never have the balls to talk about my personal life like that, thanks for that.
Damn that's some good cover art!
Could you link the review please?
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I wasn't sure which review you meant, but here's Novel Idea's Year in review part 1. He was inspired by Monochromatic's year in review, and I think he linked hers in his comment on here.
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This thing, if you don't mind.
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Oh um, here it is:
"As I had promised, I have caught up on Speak and can now give some bits of opinions about it. At first I thought it would be a criticism, but it ends up being more my analysis of Threnody.
I believe Bubblegum's hasty opinion in late ch.13 is a correct analysis of Threnody. I personnaly don't like her as a character at this stage of the story. In my opinion, she displays a misconstrued conception of empathy which hurts herself and her entourage. Her drive to help and relieve others' pain does not feel genuine, moreso like a person going beyond the call of duty to counterbalance their distorted view of themselves--a terrible one. In doing so, she reifies her patients and her friends. They are not people but objects to be repaired. Nothing is worth within and beyond the patient than their pathology and the cure Threnody can provide. Once the repair is done, the patient can be discarded, having voided its utility as a redemption tool for Threnody. They are side characters worth their spot inside the Threnody's referential and redemption arch because they only further it. But instead of just being a narrative construction, I feel like it is how Threnody portrays her friends with regards to herself. They are patients, she is the doctor. They are objects and she is the repairpony. Threnody is stuck in this subject-object relationship towards others. She's been stuck so throughout her short career. That she's been having one patient, blackjack, for far longer than her previous ones is slowly forcing her out of this reification process. And this hurts because her patients, as she's finding out, cannot be trully repaired and/or are not the objects she's been portraying them to be. She's seeing the redemption quest she's set for herself crumble to dust.
To me, Threnody is one selfish pony. She hides her selfish desire for a distorted redemption behind a quest through selflessness and martyrdom. This ends up trapping other characters. She makes them objects of her own quest without their consent or real desires being taken into account. They are trapped within this drive of hers. Trying to escape this will either brand them as sicker as they would refuse treatment, or inconsiderate as they would provide Threnody the criticism I am formulating right now--even though in other formats or shapes. This may hurt the reader who would be viewing Threnody as this paragon of selflessness. The criterion of inconsideration would be the reaction of Threnody transposed to the reader.
Threnody needs, in my opinion, to escape this circle that, I think, destroys her. She wants to conform herself to her idealised vision of self-redemption and her companion to it as well. This doctor-patient relationship is what's making her a flawed pony at this stage of the story and calls for growing up and more development.
Threnody sees pony naked, mentally. And so doing, she believes she knows the good she can provide. But she forgets all the horror this can also bring. Maybe at some point she will need to encounter somepony or something that will show her she can also be the monster of the piece.
Also, I think there is too much sex talk. But that's just Tuesday for most FoE sidefics anyway."