STATE OF THE AUTHOR: The Sequel Scrape

Lately (and by that I mean this week), I've been a little down on myself for not being able to write that much. It's not something I should feel, and the more I think about it, the more irrational it becomes. I've finished the first 100 pages of Imperfect Storm. I started a new series last Friday, and updated Paging Doctor Sparkle. On top of that, summer semester's wrapping up at my library science program, so it makes complete sense why I'm not able to write as much. Finals, group projects, all of that. And then, I realized something--it's not the fact that I'm not writing enough that's getting me down.

It's that I'm not writing enough If You Have a Little Hope.

From the get-go, I promised myself I'd write a chapter every two weeks, just like the original IYGALL. But IYHALH is a different beast entirely. For my longtime followers, it's probably no secret that I can't get into writing slice-of-life stuff as easily. It challenges me to focus on dialogue, something I've never been 100% confident about, without using plot as a crutch. I'm getting better about it--or I thought I was--before I realized that the problem was never really with IYHALH. It was about my decision to greenlight it.

Just to be clear, I don't regret my experience with it. I'm not cancelling, or coming anywhere close to it. But do you ever have that feeling where it's like, you don't regret something, but you wonder what your thought process was in making it? It's like that. I wanted it to be an experience, just as large as IYGALL, with all the characters coming back and hanging out. And who knows, maybe it'll be like that once I get out of the arc I'm writing now. But right now, it's a bunch of vignettes, which are fun to write, but not as ambitious as the old IYGALL, you know?

I'll be frank--other than this upcoming arc with Rarity, I have no clue where the story will go. My mind is going away from the "start with the end in mind" model and moving towards something different, and that honestly terrifies me. I improvise more and more in my writing--with just about everything except Glitched Stitches, even Imperfect Storm to some extent--and I don't have as complex of outlines. I know it's a way for my writing to grow in those cases, except with IYHALH.

Because I wrote it because it was expected.

It's a trend on FiMFiction to have sequels to popular stories--something I feel writers don't even think about sometimes. Even though I feel I wrapped up IYGALL really well, I still made IYHALH, because I didn't want to let these characters go and I still wanted to be "the CocoBabs writer" on the site. (Anyone who wants to challenge me on that, I'd be happy to see it. Not because I'm tired of it, but because I'm genuinely curious what someone else could do.) I had some vague idea of the touring arc planned...but nothing else. The old IYGALL ran on improvising--heck, a ton of my Mosely writing was all improv--but this was a different ball game.

And what all this means, essentially? I'm probably going to make IYHALH a full-blown anthology series within the next few parts. I honestly tried to write a plotline to go with it, but it's just not really meshing as well for me as I'd hoped. Besides, Coco and Babs deserve peaceful lives more than anything else, so a series of vignettes probably suited them best all along. I'll write it when I want, rather than sticking to an arbitrary "once every two weeks" schedule. I have a lot on my plate, so there may be weeks where I just don't update anything on FiMFic. Just...don't worry too much about that, I'll still be out there, checking the site near-obsessively.

I might not write the next IYHALH part until next week. I just don't know when it'll come out, but it will. I really want to get the next Glitched Stitches out, and finish chapter 11 of Imperfect Storm, and do everything else I need to do in the process. I wanted to get it out this week, and I didn't. That's okay, and that's something I really need to learn. It's worthless to be down on yourself just for not doing *one* thing out of ten things you had to get done this week.

A lot of times, I have ice cream after a relatively large part release, and I'd been saving some peach Halo Top for when I was supposed to release IYHALH tomorrow. It's limited edition, and I've been wanting to try it for a while. If I was in the same mindset I've been in for a while now, I wouldn't eat it, because I didn't finish the part. But even now, I'm starting to progress past that a little. Tomorrow, I'm gonna eat it because I wrote two series parts this week and made good progress on my group project.

So I'll leave you with this--don't be afraid to cut yourself some slack sometimes. I know a lot of writers on here deal with stress and imposter syndrome a lot, and I'm no different. (I really wish that last one was just something from The Incredibles. Like an evil clone or something, or maybe someone claiming to be a villain back from the dead, instead of what it really is. That'd be a killer plot, Pixar, and you know it! #pleasehireme)

Anyway, I got a little off-track there, but be sure to celebrate your accomplishments once in a while with some peach ice cream--whether literally, or just through whatever favorite food "peach ice cream" represents in your head.