Reaching for the Stars, or Astronomer Twinkleshine's Debut · 11:15am Mar 19th, 2018
Blog Number 37: Polaris Edition
Good grief, I was not expecting that. 
More below the break, but the sentence you just read constitutes the gist of it. Pretty much.
What an overreaching metaphor that is, to "reach for the stars". Obviously, it's impossible at present to literally reach for the stars, and part of me hopes it stays that way. One of the attractions of the night sky is just how pristine it is, and something tells me we'd only mess that up as soon as we managed the proverbial feat. Heck, a few centuries back we used to wonder about faraway lands across the ocean, and now they're just another holiday destination.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do for something is just appreciate it. No meddling. No trying to improve it. No stamping your - ugh - "personality" onto it. Just letting it be, in its own marvellous silence.
Anyway, why stars? Well, they have been on my mind a lot lately.
After my last blog post, I was working on the prologue to yet another doomed longfic. The prologue ended up requiring slightly more detail than I'd realized, though, so I redirected its focus to turn it into a standalone project, hoping I could get back to the longfic project at a later date. Say, the next decade.
Expecting nothing more remarkable than my usual reception, I sent the fic on its way and bid it farewell.
Over the next day or so, I repeatedly came back and noticed it rising to the Featured Box. Ah well, that has happened on occasion, though never for particularly long. I decided to check in later and see whether or not it came down again.
I checked in later. The fic's still there.
Odd.
I checked in later again. Still there.
Very odd.
I checked and checked and checked, and the darn thing, despite my more pessimistic predictions, was still there.
Absolutely odd.
This is not something I've had any experience of. Look at the fics that have made it: Petalback and Dame Trixie and the Countess of Wyrd got in and out so fast I didn't even know until long after the fact, whereas Beautiful Lives had all of a day to enjoy a short stint. Even Lapidify: To See And Die never made it, and that received a bucketload of attention early 2017. By this point I figured the only way to get something in the Featured Box would be to turn cynical and write something "mature" (gag), and since I am resolved not to do that, by this point I figured there was no way to get something in there.
Except all of a sudden, it was there. Not even some magnum opus I'd been hoping to get off the ground. Just another in a long line of fics, this time with a heavy dose of astronomy.
Intrigued, I checked its progress daily. It actually held the top spot for a while, even against all three ratings (Everyone, Teenage, Mature). Obviously, it wasn't going to stay at the top for long, but it was five days before it left the Featured Box at all. Five days.
Five. Days.
Five.
Days.
This is kind of a big deal for me, because that just does not happen. As far as view counts go, I've surpassed 1,000 views exactly twice in the last five years, and in the entire six-and-a-quarter years I've spent on this site in total, it's only happened ten times, for fics I'd rather see lower down the appreciation ladder and which in any case achieved this much due to mere longevity. Only two of those surpassed 2,000 views, and only one of those scraped 3,000 views, and even then only within the last couple of days. Anything higher is frankly a pipe dream by this point, unless I'm willing to wait a few years for it to occur by sheer chance.
And yet this fic is on course to do it within a matter of months.
I'm metaphorically speechless. How on earth does this happen?
Better still is its impact on the personal rankings list.
My highest rated fic, ever since its feature on Seattle Angels, was Griffon a Load of Bull, and frankly its continued placement as my apparent number one fic almost made me weep. It just didn't belong in the top spot. That was not me at my best; that was me doing a fun little exercise before getting to the good stuff. That was me starting out. I hated seeing it up there, especially post-2014 when I got into writing again and produced what I felt strongly was higher quality material. I still hate the fact that it trounces even stuff I've submitted to Equestria Daily.
Well, not anymore! Admittedly, it's been replaced by another fun little exercise, but this is a "fun little exercise" that was:
- A demonstration for a character concept I've been dying to get out there for years.
- Heavily astronomy-inspired, and that is a field I absolutely want to write for in some form.
- Considerably more friendship-oriented, with just the right amount of complication to make the scenario at least complex by implication (or so I like to imagine).
- A debut for two characters I've had clear ideas for since as far back as 2013. Twinkleshine in particular was a character long overdue for some kind of fanon treatment that wasn't "one of three bridesmaids" or "one of Twilight's former school pals". But seriously, Twinkleshine-Minuette has been around for a long time without much in the way of development, an oversight I intend to rectify.
- A more recent example of my prose style, which I hope has improved considerably over the years.
Frankly, having When Space Met Time as the most appreciated fic in my collection is a hundred, thousand, million, billion times more dignified. And to my astonishment, it's still garnering views and likes, even one month later. Usually, both peter out by this point.
Even more frankly, none of this on its own proves a lot. View counts, rankings: are these marks of quality? I think not. Marks of popularity, maybe, but as I've said elsewhere, I don't consider popularity much more than a multiplication effect. It's just as capable of multiplying negatives and nothing as it is of multiplying positives. Strictly speaking, multiplication is neutral on whether or not something's worth multiplying in the first place.
Which is why, by contrast, I set great store on constructive feedback. Unlike a fave and a view, it isn't uninformative or open to interpretation (much). It's a direct, point-by-point detailing on what works and what doesn't. "On what works" is crucial here; it's all very well receiving pointers for how to improve, but you know you're in a good place when you get specific praise for aspects. Unlike its more critical cousin, it doesn't make you start to question yourself if you receive too much of it (well, unless it's very vague feedback, then you start to wonder).
When Space Met Time had plenty of this, which alone is enough to make it feel like a genuine bit of goodness. Quite a few singled out the astronomy theme, the novel character interpretation, the dialogue-free style of prose, and the overall sweetness as particularly worthy of note. One or two even discussed the cosmology of Equestria and interpretations thereof, and it's a good sign of what kind of fic you're providing when the ideas are under discussion while at the same time the fic itself brightens up a few days.
I'm not gonna lie: I loved every second of it.
Because one of the philosophies of writing (which I sometimes remember to hold) is an old and somewhat simple dictum: "to delight and to instruct".
"Delight" is obvious: you want people to come away from your work feeling better than when they started.
"Instruct" is a little trickier, but really is tightly interwoven with the previous: you want people to come away from your work thinking better too. Not necessarily to a dramatic degree, and certainly not by shoving a polemic down their throats, but to the extent that anyone willing to add a little something to their cerebral cortex will be at least somewhat rewarded. There are, after all, a lot of things in the heavens and in the earth, and that's long, long, astronomically long before we start dreaming up any philosophy.
And if I can do that by writing about a budding stargazer's tentative first steps into friendship, I think I'm in a good place.
That's all for now. Impossible Numbers, out.
Statistics
NEW: List of Reviews
The Web Untangled received the Louder Yay treatment earlier this month, which was a delightful surprise. Didn't quite do as well as I'd hoped, but still got a respectable score.
http://louderyay.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/ponyfic-roundup-194-thaw-green-world.html
Fics Accepted By Equestria Daily
Raven Night School got in. So, to my surprise, did Stinging The Trail almost immediately afterwards. See, my usual policy is to submit another fic as soon as the previous candidate gets a response. Normally, this process takes about a month, so a little over a week is unheard of.
That being the case, I'm currently trying my luck with White Lightning and the Elite Pony. It's not a fic I'd have considered Equestria Daily material, but since I somehow managed to get two fics in during the same month, I thought I'd change course and let this one try its luck.
New Stories? Five. Five. My word, it's been a while.
When Space Met Time, you already know about from my talk up top, but let me just say that I am thrilled to see this prove itself so well, and hopefully this is only the start of a much longer project.
Sell Me A Lemon has its own peculiar history, and in any case is currently incomplete. Basically, where the former story focused on Twinkleshine, this one focuses on my interpretation of Lemon Hearts, though it should be noted that said interpretation was constructed around 2013 too and so is likely to clash with a lot of other people's.
Lure of the Flower is... well, if you haven't figured it out by now, I have a keen interest in characters with little in the way of fanfic attention. Whereas Roseluck and Doc are hardly marginal characters, Daisy and Lily definitely are. Truth be told, I've been dying to grant these adorable cowards some stories that actually give them character, and even more exciting is... Aha, no, I'll tell you more next time, if all goes well.
Now The Wind Has Changed Forever was a collection of concepts I'd wanted to address for a while: Wind Rider's life post-expulsion, Spitfire's familial relations, and a compare-and-contrast between the two characters. Plus, I needed to try my hand at more depressing topics, because I'm definite I have to keep diversifying, within genres as well as among them.
Zip and Zing and Azaleas Too was basically a cute characterization piece, and a sort of side project while I fleshed out some ideas for Lure of the Flower. Like Flitter's Night and The Icing on the Hearth's Warming Cake before it, this fic is a little on the longish side for what at heart is a relatively simple meeting of characters, but it's sweeter than the previous March fic, and hopefully will prove useful for future reference should I revisit this kind of story.
New Updates: Several for Sell Me A Lemon and Lure of the Flower.
Story Count: 72.
8 in 2018.
26 in 2017.
16 in 2016.
2 in 2015.
0 in 2014.
8 in 2013.
9 in 2012.
3 in 2011.
My Total Story View Count: Rendered obsolete due to new site changes.
Age: 2,288 days, or 326 weeks and 6 days.
Working: 19 days in December 2011, 2x366 days for 2012 and 2016 leap years, 4x365 days for 2013 and 2014 and 2015 and 2017, and 77 days for 2018 so far combined.
My Follower Count: 172.
My Followed Count: 150.
It seems like the fun little exercises are often the ones with the best chance for the featured box, at least based on my experience. That's not to say more involved pieces can't make it, but I often find my expectations for a story are inversely proportional to the audience reaction.
4820194
Yes, I'm coming to that conclusion as well. I guess it's just easier to latch onto a work that can be read in a matter of minutes, and longer works have a harder time earning the commitment needed. In statistical terms, at least.
At the risk of being the fox confronted by "sour" grapes, it's not as if it's a guarantor of quality anyway, or even of positive fan reaction. Lapidify received wonderful treatment from lots of people willing to give it feedback, despite the fact that it never so much as got a look-in at the Featured Box.
I mean, I'd like to get in there again. Just for good reasons.
This is very much a cause and effect relationship.
4820522
Strategic spacing to enable multiple applicants a fair shot at getting featured?
Or am I just that notorious?*
* As in, "Oh god, IN's chucking another fic at us already. Quick: hide it and wait for the side effects to wear off."
4820530
Heh. Not the latter, because you're a reliably good writer. The former, maybe a little. We do get odd complaints at times when we have several stories by the same author in short order. We do tend to get to better authors more quickly, since they're probably going to be postable, but a few things can work against that, primarily if the story is long. But if the queue is running pretty long, and there's a story we know will be immediately replaced if we grab it, then it doesn't shorten the queue any, so it runs more first come, first served in those instances.
4820552
Aw, you're too sweet.
Makes sense: since the whole point of the pre-reader system is to act as gatekeeper, the smoother the entry, the easier it is to get in. Or something along those metaphorical lines, at least. Having quality work that doesn't take days to read is obviously going to go down well.
Mea culpa.
On my own, I figured this was how it worked by default, hence the "one submission only" guideline. I imagine its removal would lead to all sorts of trouble, especially if someone basically bombed the pre-readers with half-baked fics.
Honestly, I've gotten used to the patient arrangement, which is why the Stinging The Trail thing caught me by surprise.