• Member Since 8th Oct, 2012
  • offline last seen 27 minutes ago

bats


Writer, blogger, saucy chat mom, occasional bitch. Hablo español. She/her/ella.

More Blog Posts198

Dec
12th
2018

Returning to Active Writing, Plans and Junk · 9:09pm Dec 12th, 2018

Howdy folks!

So … been a while since I’ve been around, but I come with good news. As you may or may not have noticed, I posted a new chapter of Twilight Holmes: The Mystery of Basil Bones today, which means I’ve been writing again. The good news is, this wasn’t a one-off random thing where I decided to write a chapter of some forgotten ponyfic from three years ago, possibly with an ulterior motive behind it, and then disappear for another year. I mean, it’s not like I’d ever do that.

>.>
<.<

Anyway, it isn’t that. After a long year of not writing any fiction at all, I decided to do a mini NaNoWriMo challenge in November, because I missed writing pone words and I wanted to try and get Basil Bones all the way finished. It wasn’t a full NaNo and I didn’t get Basil Bones finished in November, but I beat my goal of 750 words a day/22.5k words for the month and got the next several chapters of the story drafted. Additionally, it did exactly what I wanted it to do and jumpstarted my ability to write at a daily pace again. I haven’t been going at the same rate as I was over November, but I’ve kept up writing since then and am still going strong. I’m in the process of finishing up the rest of the draft for Basil Bones and should be done shortly.

Which means, firstly, that Basil Bones is going on a consistent update schedule until it’s complete. I’ve got several chapters drafted in advance that are going to be in edits, and I should be finishing the last chapters shortly. It will be updating on a weekly schedule, with a new chapter posted every Wednesday until it is complete.

If you were waiting for me to finish it before you started reading because you didn’t trust my flaky ass to finish it in any timely manner (and why would you have done that?), now’s a good time to start and follow along week to week. Or you can wait until it’s all the way done in early January. Either one. Wouldn’t blame you for still not trusting me up until I switch its status over to complete.

Or, if by chance you weren’t waiting for Basil Bones at all and are more curious if I’ll ever write anything else pony-related besides that story again, the answer is yes, and soon … ish.

To expand on that, what I mean is that my daily writing thing I got going on is working for me, and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon. This is the most successful I’ve been with keeping up with writing day to day, ever, and I’m feeling good about it, especially after toning things down post-NaNo. And despite some of my misgivings with the show, I’ve mostly kept up, and I still love the characters. There are plenty of stories I’d still like to write, sequels to stuff I’ve written before, ideas for new stories I’ve had sitting in outline documents gathering dust, and so on, and I’d like to write them, so I’m going to.

The ish part, however, is I’ve got some non-pony-related stories that are also calling out to me, which have been neglected for even longer than the pony words have been, and I’m planning on working on those things, too. As such, my tentative plan is to sort of leap-frog back and forth between different projects for a while.

After I finish Basil Bones, which I wanted to just write until it was finished inside of November and it ended up spilling over into December, I’m going to work on an original novel I have sitting 2/3rds done next. My plan is not to do like I did with the pone words and hammer it out until it’s finished, but rather to work on it for a few chapters, and then jump to something else for a while, in a sort of week on/week off routine. Super attentive followers might recognize this as an attempted and failed plan I proposed a few years ago, but I have the advantage now. Y’see, that plan was made to attempt to jumpstart daily writing for me, which is something I already have going on now, no need to jumpstart anything. It’s now more just a schedule for how I’ll be spending my already-productive time. I’m feeling pretty confident that I can actually do it.

So after working a bit on that novel, I’ll be back to pony for something. What, I haven’t fully decided yet, but I’m narrowing it down to a few “I’ve been wanting to do this one for a while now” options. That could mean that it’ll end up being a little while before I post anything new here on Fimfic, but fortunately I am working with a bit of a buffer, thanks to the NaNoWriMo writing, so there’s a good chance I’ll be getting back to pony words before Basil Bones is even finished being published. I can’t make promises for when exactly a new story will be forthcoming, but with luck this profile’s gonna be a lot more active than it has been for a few years now. Thanks a ton for sticking around if you did.

Lastly, and more an aside than anything else, if by chance you were especially missing reading stuff that I’ve written, or if maybe the subject interests you, I’ve been running a blog for a while now about language learning called Fumbling Toward Fluent. I know it’s kind of a niche subject, but I’ve been teaching myself Spanish for the past year or so and decided to start documenting my progress and writing about the methods, stumbling blocks, annoyances, and insights I’ve had as time’s gone on. I doubt it’s something that’d interest most of y’all, but hey, it’s there to check out if you’d like. I’ve been enjoying running it, and I credit it and my language learning in general as being responsible for the murder of my procrastination problems. If anything I described sounds interesting, or you’d like to see some occasional hot-takes about the Spanish dub of MLP, it’s at http://fumblingtowardfluent.com and it updates on Tuesdays.

That’s all I got for now. I’ll do my best to be less of a stranger round these parts. TTFN.

Comments ( 16 )

I like this guy!!

It's coming back.

4980171
Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Looking forward to reading your works again.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

yay, the only good bats is back! :D

Congratulations on the momentum! That must be an awesome feeling. :D

4980248

Smut is one of the aforementioned “I’ve been wanting to do this one for a while now” options, so maybe sooner rather than later, I dunno.

Welcome back to pony writing! Can you send some of that mojo my way? I realize the key to actually getting more writing done (in fandom and in general) is to...you know...write. But it's damn hard, so an honest to goodness congrats to you for being so consistent and getting back in the flow.

On another note, if you ever have a sudden flash of inspiration regarding Coming Back I wouldn't be mad about it.

Anywho - congrats again!

4980907

Well you could do what I did and decide to take up another hobby that's very demanding of your time and effort like learning a second language from scratch, and do that for a year until you forget how to actually procrastinate. I'm unsure if that's feasible for most people. Though I do recommend it, because in addition to killing procrastination, you get a free new language out of the deal at the same time. :ajsmug:

And alas, I am very unsure if I will ever get back to Coming Back. It's pretty low on my mental priorities at the moment, I don't think I'd be able to get in the headspace to where I wanted to work on it right now. But maybe some day. It might be worth finishing just to kill the jokes about wanting to know when Coming Back is coming back.

4980913
Fair enough :derpytongue2: I've been meaning to get back into improving my French - maybe this is just the excuse to get started again.

Yay! Good to hear from you again!

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