Realizing the story is now one year old: Looking Back on the last few years. · 4:48am Oct 14th, 2018
Well not exactly since it's not October 14 where I am, but it's pretty close.
So yeah I actually never expected to get anywhere with this story since I had pretty much wiped the entire slate clean for stories (technically now untrue due to semi recently writing another chapter for my superhero story, but for all intents and purposes, for right now anything else is on necromatic hiatus. Dead until I decide to finish one story- cause I can juggle two if I release one very infrequently but I noticed that writing more than that for me caused me to get into a major depression due to me wanting to write what's in my brain as close to perfect as I can get it at that moment and for about three years I either had school or multiple projects clouding my mind.)
And I definitely didn't expect to write this story at all since I was of two minds for a while- right around the time I released "Have You Ever Seen The Rain?", my previous story, I had graduated college, got out of a rather toxic relationship- almost definitely more on me than them but yeah they weren't in college and I was and I couldn't be with them every second of the day so it crumbled slowly and horribly. So that happened. Then I had about five months of just dealing with that and losing a person I had told just about everything to since the breakup was so bad they have never talked to me again and have blocked me on pretty much everything. That still kind of stings but it's been about a year and some change so I've grown to live with myself. And around last September, I had a really bad month due to the feelings flaring up again.
Let's just say that "Rain?" cause I'm not writing that entire title again, was written at my lowest and writing a suicidal character was cathartic cause let's say that I wasn't planning chapter two to that story and I had some really bad and pointless reasons. And I woke up after that experience- thankfully didn't have to go to the hospital and all that jazz- but yeah. Long, sort of painful story short, don't do things that could kill you while you are on a semi manic depressive episode.
So that's why I decided to start fresh. Figuratively killing most of my old stories or realizing a lot of the ones I liked now needed enough rewriting to fix the glaring issues I had with them and almost doing some really dumb life choices for attention, I realized that I needed a fresh start and I thought of the dumbest idea ever. Break my rule that I had technically never written down and go fully into a story, no holds barred.
You know, pretty much the main rule I've had for most of my time here.
Don't write the smut. Pretty much I have seen my writing in terms of hurdles.
First, write plots. That was the first year or two where I was just writing anything that came to mind.
Second, add random comedy- never had touched the random section so I did that.
Third, dive into writing weird crossovers- and abandon them when you overloaded them or realized that certain mediums take far more explaining to do because you are crossing over visual mediums. That put me off for a while.
Fourth, Write a mature story to see if you are good at it and test out longform storytelling- I was fine if edgy.
Fifth, Scrap really bad ideas or save the smut ideas. Don't use them until you are confident. Note: This is where I stopped due to a relationship falling apart. For a while, they were both my first reader of a story, a person to bounce ideas off of, and sort of idea editor. I did the same but do to college, I grew jaded of their work cause they often deleted stuff or cancelled it the moment I tried to say I would love it. Maybe I was too strong on my enjoyment of their works, or maybe the critical reception of their stuff was lukewarm or something. I don't know. But I really did love their stuff. But yeah, this is where I stopped for years, barely releasing stuff- not being completely happy due to only being able to write once a month or once a week at most, which made writing difficult and made writing for fun more a chore since I had to write almost every chapter for years in almost one sitting. Which when I was doing the editing and moral support for my relationship meant I wasn't writing at all. Which honestly made me jealous. Yeah I do get jealous and seeing a person write stuff you loved, say that they were terrible and delete probably days or months of work because of that made me so angry. I'm only human.
But finally after that whole implosion of my life (cause actually the relationship died the week I graduated from college so that was a pile of messes on top of one another) and eventual rebirth and focus- I came on my sixth idea.
Write whatever you want. As many words as you want. When you want- though a general schedule is best, I usually can't be like "Every Wednesday or the first of the month, a consistent schedule is definitely something I still struggle with. So that's why I tend to write chapters for each month. And no I'm not those crazy smart authors- or literary powerhouses- that can release a fanfic on a schedule due to it being done or being multiple chapters ahead. Believe me, I'd say that would have made me far less stressed out during the writing process cause while I still want to "write pretty much whatever comes to me", I still have multiple anxiety attack moments where I think I'm taking stuff too far or I should have added X,Y, or Z tags to make the story make sense, or I'm focusing on a character too much, I don't see the fully end of the story besides certain plot points, etc.
All that runs in my head every time I write. So would it be easier if I had written months of story in advance? Yes.
But also no. Cause I run off a lot of factors. These update blogs are for my followers- and thanks still don't know how I've gotten nearly a hundred of you guys following something of mine- but primarily for me. They are stream of consciousness things that tell you what I've done just so I don't ghost you and never release a chapter again cause unless I keel over dead which everyone can do- I'd feel bad every day, a nagging thing saying get back to your story- you ended on a cliffhanger. And that messes me up a lot.
So let's get to the main point here, you know besides the self congratulations and follower thanks, why did I choose a plot like this and how the heck did it turn into what it is now?
Good question. I can easily, though weirdly, answer that first question.
Why did I choose this story's plot? Honestly, I wanted to come up with an idea that I've seen around and liked in shows and fanfics and all that that still wasn't super common. And I've always liked weird ideas- part of me wanted to make writing said smut so easy even my rather brute force method of smut could make sense. Another really nostalgic part of me wanted to not rewrite my first two stories on the site, but reuse characters and ideas I had in there as a really basic template to do something entirely different with. If I want to boil that down to it's major component- I wanted to just have a way that the OCs I made six years ago could technically exist and be so far better written. Cause I still love my first two stories due to how outright gung ho I was about writing. I wanted to kind of get that feeling back that I had only briefly felt in years. So literally I fell asleep one day in October last year and woke up after having this weird dream where I saw Twilight swap Fluttershy's and Dash's bodies and literally I had a big writing episode the moment I woke up and finished the chapter in one day. The whole Fluttershy writes Fifty Shades of Hay was originally from a story idea or a story I wrote I really can't remember which- it was years ago and before the A.K. Yearling thing, that Fluttershy was writing Daring Do. And well, I haven't bloody touched on that in months but I haven't forgot. I wrote down the names of the Fifty Shades characters and know the general location of where they get mentioned cause I have a Fluttershy idea there. But yeah Starlight put everything on hold. Ironically, probably close to how fighting a bad guy would ruin your week.
And the Mane 6 fight a lot of those.
I then submitted my rather stupid concept, and people liked it, so I then wrote the entirety of chapter two in two days. Pretty much running on pure adrenaline, I wrote nearly 12000 words between those two and that was without sleep.
I didn't know where I was going. with the story. I knew the pairings and general character traits. I kind of wanted the story to be the best I could. I set a goal of writing 1000 words a day in order to keep up with demand or at least give people something to look forward too every few weeks. Then a month once the story got built up. Not because I had not enough time in the beginning- far from it I was running on people's comments and likes, but the chapters got far longer than I had ever expected and they stayed at a consistent level that I couldn't write in two weeks comfortably or with thought.at
Then Starlight entered with far more panache than I expected. And after ten chapters and (if I'm guessing correctly) about a week of in story time passes and now we're done with Starlight.
Every month, I write a chapter. Or two due to some months getting two chapters. Every month, I end it with a cliffhanger. And then I come back refreshed and ready to continue.
And I wouldn't have gotten this far without some people seeing some silly dumb story where Twilight both bodyswapped two of her friends and created a gender swap spell primarily just because she could and now seems to have two mares vying for her attention- and with how her story is seemingly ending up in my head- three different mares want her. That's a bit of a yikes on my part, but I realized it when I was writing all of the Ironhoof chapters recently. Twilight's a big, dumb nerd and seems to be attracting more big, dumb, or goofy nerds. And part of that is how I'm interpreting canon and also just realizing how I write Twilight. She's a really fun one. And where Pinkie is pretty much genderfluid. And where Fluttershy became adopted by Rarity's family. And where Applejack is well Applejack, haven't done too much with her yet. Though with how the plot is going in my mind, there will be a lengthy Rarity and Applejack focused section in the coming chapters. (I do love writing her since all her mannerisms and everything is so very relatable) And where Rarity is bisexual and now bases her romantic life on romance novels and Fifty Shades of Hay in particular. And Rainbow Dash knows Ponyacci and joined the circus- heck yeah I didn't forget all this stuff.
But I haven't forgotten most of that stuff cause of one thing. I'm not fully happy myself, but writing this does make me feel better. And I haven't felt this in tune with a story since my first two, six and a half years ago. And I love it.
I remember your first two rather fondly. Back when I was writing Crashing Angels and cute fillies and saw your crazy, fun stuff that shared the same cool ships that I liked too. Twilight Sparkle; Appleloosan Sheriff had some cool stuff, but I felt like you kinda fizzled out (and hence the story kinda got left).
Those classics along with our talks way back then sold me on your works. and Ive been glad each time I see something posted from you, even though my career has crazy hours and so sometimes I don't have the time to leave a comment (it's amazing how many blogs you've done). I can certainly tell from this story that you have something back that I really enjoyed from your old stuff and I think its great.
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I actually kind of rewrite that Twilight Sparkle Appaloosan Sheriff at some point. I literally fizzled out on my stories around that time because college became too difficult to spend any amount of time writing something. I had a ton of ideas where I had a sequel in mind but until I rewrite it, that's not going to happen, if at all due to how old it is now.
College was a great experience and useful to my resume and all that- but it made me focus entirely on that, so any writing during that time of 2013-2017 (besides my first two stories due to me writing that when I was completely free from freshman classes) is missing some spark that I wanted so I have a lot of stories I want to come back to and redo not because the ideas were bad- but because I didn't have the skill necessary at times to plot out huge stories like this.