• Member Since 30th May, 2018
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Wings of Black Glass


The worst fanfic ever written is still better than the greatest story never told.

More Blog Posts30

  • 168 weeks
    Pony Wars

    So that Pony Wars project that I’m posting the character backstories for: That’s a project trying to make a new setting for people to create stuff for. While I was initially brought in to help with some of the worldbuilding, I’ve since turned into the lead author for it. (right now the *only* author for it, but that’s another issue) Dratta Arcana is the project lead, and he wants people to

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    0 comments · 221 views
  • 185 weeks
    I still exist.

    I’m still here.
    I’ve just had nothing to say.

    Read More

    0 comments · 162 views
  • 204 weeks
    Out of time

    I have something of a confession to make.

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    2 comments · 176 views
  • 212 weeks
    Mask of Despair and EQD

    A couple months ago, I submitted The Mask of Despair to EQD. Rejected, obviously. At the very least, they gave me some notes on it. More notes than all the other comments and messages combined. On that note: why did no one tell me it was such a mess? It’s got random capitalizations, missing words, and

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    2 comments · 220 views
  • 214 weeks
    My first Shipfic

    So yesterday I wrote my first Shipfic, and it’s doing alright. 60+ views, 8 upvotes, a dozen-or-so favorites. (Nothing I’ve done can come close to competing with The Alicorn Limit, though.) I had wanted to get it done for Hearts & Hooves day,

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    0 comments · 182 views
Jan
17th
2019

Milestone and the quality of my writing · 10:25pm Jan 17th, 2019

It only took seven and a half months, but The Mask of Despair finally made it to 200 views. Joy. (that’s an average of not even one view per day.) Approximately a quarter of that have read the whole thing.

Aside from that, I’ve got two things I want to talk about today. The first is why I’ve not found an editor yet. Most obviously it’s because I haven’t asked. So the better question is “why haven’t I asked?” The answer there is… more complex.

Let me tell you a (hopefully short) story. A few years ago my friends and I wanted to do some kind of project together, something we could make and sell. We decided to work on a computer game, and I started work on writing, while my other friends were going to get the art/programming/scenarios/design. I’ll spare the details about the game itself. After a month, we had no art, no programming, no scenarios aside from what I’d suggested. No one had put forth any ideas or effort. No one but me. Even when they didn’t like my ideas, they provided none of their own. It didn’t take long before I gave up trying to get them to put any kind of effort into it. I didn’t have the ability to make a game of that scale on my own and was forced to drop it. (I even wrote the story of the game as an actual narrative, although I lost that when my computer suffered an unrecoverable failure.)

Let me tell another. When I finished writing Mask of Despair I asked some people to read it and tell me what they think. Not including putting it up on Fimfiction. I mean telling them about it and asking them personally to go read it. These aren’t people who oppose MLP or fanfiction. One of them has written his own, one wants to write MLP fanfiction, one of them reads MLP fanfics!

Only one of them did.

I’ve asked them to read other things I’ve written.

Most of them didn’t.

The point? It seems to me that if I ask others to do something… it doesn’t happen. If my closest friends and family won’t help… why should I expect better from some random stranger online?

On a… less heavy subject. The other thing I wanted to talk about is the quality of my writing. In the reviews for the Nightmare Night Knightmare, they constantly pointed at the quality of the writing itself as a weak point. That it felt somehow machine or stiff. Go read one of my fics (Maybe not Elements of Tyranny part 1, I wasn’t very careful with that one) and compare that to this:

Amid the endless grey expanse, faint motion steals into her view. A tiny flicker of light and motion, almost too feeble to exist at all, descends from the indistinct heavens. The glittering star falls, seemingly forever, reflecting in her eyes a fiction of hope. At last the struggling light gives in to the inevitable. It shatters into a thousand infinitely tiny flares too small to exist on their own, and dies.

A second star falls. Weaker than the first, empty of hope or chance to survive; more quickly does it tumble to the ground and perish in a small splash of light. She holds out one hand and a third such droplet falls into her open palm, it meets its end as nothing more than a plop upon her skin. Now a fourth, then a fifth, and then countless more, within endless moments are they birthed and then perished. More and yet still more teardrops from high above descend about her and onto her upraised face.

Each insignificant on its own, together the multitude of stardrops are powerful enough to drive away the grey. The ground beneath becomes dark and wet, the sky above becomes a mass of twisting clouds. Color returns, even if it’s only black and white. The faintest gift of light becomes a curse as the rain pours down. Her hair and clothes grow heavy, wet, and cold. Each of the raindrops that fall upon her upturned face and bare shoulders chills what remains of her body and soul.

Perhaps not as clean as I am now… but more evocative?

I wrote that in early 2008. Before taking some writing classes. Frankly… I’m not sure I’m all that better than I used to be. Writing became… less fun and the writing itself less interesting.

I’m not even sure where I’m going with this. So maybe I’ll just ask again. If were to ask for encouragement… would I get it?

Comments ( 1 )

I think your story's great. If people don't like like the quality of your writing, then I'd advise going to the library, getting books about writing fiction, and practicing what they say when you write your stories until they become second nature. Don't forget grammar books. I improved my writing a lot that way.

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