State of the Writer: November 2012 · 11:34am Nov 1st, 2012
A day late! I haven't been managing my time very well lately. D: I blame it on Halloween.
Man, October went by fast. I've accomplished a lot, too! Things Rainbow Dash Doesn't Like written (in about two days, no less), posted and up on the blog in the span of maybe two weeks, and just a few days shy of one month since ACT OF WILL, too. It's like the good old days. D: Add to that two writeoffs (though I didn't get my entry in in time for the second minific contest. You can read it here if you're so inclined), a drabble and probably something else, and I have been busy busy busy.
No wonder I'm not writing at the moment.
Yes, to be perfectly honest, without deadlines and after a pretty hard week of work and GODDAMN RAIN, I'm just sort of sitting around and wondering what I should do next.
Of course, I know what I should do next. There's a charity fanfic competition going on, and I will be darned if I miss it. See, I've recently come to realization, and I don't know if I've shared this with you all, that fanfic is really second-class art in this fandom. Not because people don't appreciate good writing, or because it takes far longer to read story than to listen to a song or look at a picture, but because none of us will ever be able to show our work to anyone who works on the show. Daniel Ingram lauds high-quality fan music. Sibsy and others pal around with fandom artists. Fanfic? Nothing. They are not legally allowed to read our works, even though if someone from the show happened upon, say, a comic, or listened to the lyrics of a song hard enough, they could glean ideas from that as well. So we have to carry on and pretend like fanfic doesn't exist.
In light of that, this contest is so phenomenally important. Even though it doesn't involve anyone from the show, this is our chance to show that fanfic is important and can make a difference. I want nothing more than to be able to write a story that will help this little girl. I don't even give a damn about the contest itself. I just want to reach out through my words and help someone.
And that's why I'm blocking so hard on my entry. D: I'm afraid it's not going to be uplifting enough. I'm afraid it's not going to be age appropriate (and I mean reading level there). I know nothing about seven year old girls. I'm going to have to wing it and hope I do something right.
So with that said, I've got no progress to report. Oh, except that Cloptober was an absolute bust. I wrote one day's worth of words, and that was last week. It was enough to finish an entire story, at least. Which some of you still need to give me feedback on, hint hint.
I've been doing some thinking on Faithful and Strong and Epic Unicorn History. I reeeeaaaally want to write Epic Unicorn History. I think fear is holding me back. Fear and unsureness about where to begin. I'll get over it.
So you should all subscribe to that "here" linked story above, because you never know what I'll put in there next. I have plans to kill some of my ideas list by just flinging them out randomly, because they're not the sorts of things that require an entire story to accomplish. If I had anything to say here, I've forgotten what it was.
It is a little sad that they can't, for legal reasons, read our stuff. I 100% understand why-- and to be honest, I don't think they'd like most of our writings! But you kind of wish they could be watching from somewhere and one might say "Oh, that's not so bad!" but eh.
466979
EXACTLY
And I've heard that some folks do actually read fanfic on the sly, but that's honestly meaningless to me. It may as well just be a rumor.
It's pretty much one of the things I think about Far Too Often(tm): It's a subtle effect of this "rule", even if it's probably never really enforced, that writing feels like a second class expression compared to music and art. Of course, part of this is because reading a story will always take more effort than listening to an album or staring at an artpiece, but it's sad nevertheless, and I hope this whole event changes that, if only just a little.