The New Year's Update

I was going to post this on the 13th. Then I was going to post it on the 26th. Then on New Year's Eve. Well, here we are.

I first began posting my story, Nuclear Winter, on this site about two and a half years ago, but it had been swirling around in my head for much longer than that. Although the initial inspiration probably came to me in late November, I consider the official birthday of the fic to be on December 13th, 2013. Two and a half weeks ago was its fifth birthday. Lately, both the story and its author have been undergoing their own existential crises amidst great uncertainty for the future.

As I see it, there is a certain window of time-- or rather two overlapping windows-- that I have to write this. The first being the existence of the Brony fandom and FimFiction in particular. Although we don't have any confirmed dates yet, everyone believes that the show will air its final season this year. When the ride finally ends, we will see a mass exodus. Not right away, but over the months and years following the show's end. Whether or not the fandom survives depends on how many people stay here. The rate of new content creation will likely diminish without new episodes to provide inspiration, and people will start moving on with their lives or gravitate towards 'the next big thing,' as many did following the fandom's heyday. My fear is that as content creators leave, there will be a domino effect as people's favorite artists close up shop and depart, leaving them with nothing in particular to tie them to the fandom (this is what happened to my brother a while back). And if enough content creators and viewers leave, websites may no longer have enough traffic to sustain themselves and shut down, causing even more people to leave and making it harder for remaining bronies (and potential recruits!) to find content that keeps them engaged. The one silver lining I would have in this situation is that as the famous artists and writers depart, I could get more recognition. However, even if I could catapult myself to relative fame, I would probably be plagued with a nagging feeling that my success was not legitimate, but merely obtained by being a popularity vulture feeding off the carcasses of more famous authors.

The second window, somewhat related to the first, is whether I can still find the time to participate. Even with as little as I post, I am still able to find plenty of time in my schedule for the Brony fandom. However, I anticipate some very big changes in my life if or when I graduate from school in June. What then? More school? Getting a 'real' job? I don't know if I'll be able to find more time for this fandom or this story, especially if I find myself becoming very busy. Even if I still do have the time, I've long worried that one day I might just 'grow up' and move on to other things. This fandom has been such a big part of my life that I don't know what I'll do without it. But it's always possible that I might lose interest in this-- it will likely be a gradual process, but eventually I might wean my self off from the fandom entirely.

Knowing that neither the fandom's lifespan nor my own attention are infinite, the future of my story is uncertain. Especially with my glacial pace of writing, then assuming that nothing changes it might take years to finish. I doubt I could continue to find the same kind of inspiration I have for it now in the far future. I feel strongly that right now, I have a limited span of time to finish until I lose either the inspiration, the audience, or the platform I need to write it. The platform in particular is very important, since FimFiction seems like the only site I could really post this on. I've considered Fanfiction.net and Deviantart as backups, but it just wouldn't be the same. On Deviantart, this story would die in obscurity, and on Fanfiction.net, any artistic potential this story has would suffocate under piles of trash. Fanfiction.net in particular would feel like a serious step down from Fimfiction, which is a far better website by virtually every measure. And posting really long fanfics on an art site would just feel awkward.

Perhaps most importantly, I've been thinking hard about what I've written so far and what I have planned. I've been reading other fics and looking up writing advice, and I can't help but feel like I've messed up somehow. Like this story either needs a complete overhaul to make it good, or it never had potential to begin with and doesn't deserve to be told. The main thing that's been keeping me from abandoning it is the significant amount of emotional investment I've put into it and the blind faith that yes, this story does deserve to be told. At times in the past I've considered putting 'my child' up for adoption, simply giving a volunteer my ideas and having it ghostwritten, but I've refrained from that because I would essentially be relying on strangers to do create it when the only sure way to make it happen is to do it myself. There is no guarantee that anyone would adopt this story, and even though the quality of the writing would probably improve if it was written by someone else, but it probably wouldn't feel the same. The only chance that this story will ever be told the way I want to tell it is to write it myself. However, I don't have much faith in my own writing anymore.

Although I have long considered going back and rewriting sections of it, I have recently considered simply scrapping the entire thing and rewriting it from scratch in a much more condensed format. This format would allow me to publish chapters much quicker and force me to remove much of the filler that would otherwise weigh it down, but I fear that this new format would not allow me to expand upon my ideas as much as I want to. I could also do a hybrid of this where I start with the simple condensed format as a framework for the story, then add details later on as needed. However, that would produce a very inconsistent feel for the story and probably confuse a lot of readers. It would also spoil the plot, and leave many people with no reason to read through the chapters after I have already filled them in.

A second consideration that I've had for quite a long time is to get an editor. Lately I've also been thinking about simply outlining the idea in a forum post and getting a critique on that so I can plan ahead and fix problems with the plot itself before writing those chapters.

What should I do? Any advice at all would certainly be appreciated, especially since nobody ever reads these blog posts to begin with.

I plan to upload chapters 18 and 19 later this week. If I decide not to abandon this story, I'll try to get to 22 or 23 by the 15th at the earliest, or at the latest by end of this month.