noise."Everfree Northwest/Iron Author · 2:59pm May 27th, 2019
So since over the last week, everybody’s done their obligatory Everfree Northwest blog, I figured it was about time I got around to it, too.
I can open with the usual I had fun adventures on the way to and from the con. The parking deck I normally use at the airport was full so I had to park at a different one and take a bus to the terminal; however, I got there in plenty of time, so that wasn’t an issue. In fact, some of y’all might have noticed that I replied to a big chunk of comments on The Haunting from the airport. Well, okay, you probably had no idea where I was when I replied to them, but I was at the airport.
I also got my own personal pat-down from a TSAgent (yay!) and one of my bags got searched both coming and going.
On the way back to Michigan, my flight from SeaTac to Minneapolis was delayed, so I had to rush to get to my connecting flight but I made it. Then the usual routine of finding the baggage claim, finding my stuff, and finding the airport shuttlebus to get back to the parking garage where I’d left my van.
As for the con itself? I met a lot of people, and I’d be doing y’all a disservice listing them all, ‘cause I’m bad with names and putting faces to avatars on FimFic. If y’all looked like your avatars it would be easy, but thus far all of you I’ve met aren’t actually ponies. It’s disappointing to say the least. I can say that the one person I was looking for who I never found was Carabas, who’s apparently mastered the art of being invisible when I look in his direction.
I also decided that next year I’m going to make it my mission to get TD to collab on a crackfic or trollfic with me, just for the lulz. That’d be hilarious.
What I really want to talk about is Iron Author. Yes, again.
Sooner or later I’m gonna be uploading my fic, which let’s be honest isn’t all that hot. It also wasn’t submitted, ‘cause I volunteered to help judge.
We had 36 actual submissions this year, and there were more people who at the very least sat through the process. For those of you who don’t know how it works, at the beginning of it, Xepher gives a prompt, and everybody’s got to write a story that fits into that category.
People of all skill levels compete in the thing, and I can say that every year, somebody’s placed who I have never even heard of. This year, for those of you who are interested, there was a tie for second between Aquaman and Georg, while the winner was pjabrony with Rusty Scissors (who was my ‘never-heard-of’ for this year). You can read them all here, if you’re interested--I know a couple of people asked last year or the year before, and I didn’t know if there was a link to all of them.
There are two things to take away from the contest, I think. The first comes from me as an author: you’d be surprised what you can write in a couple of hours. I know I was surprised at the first Iron Author I did, where I got second place with Trade Negotiations. I didn’t do as well last year, ‘cause I screwed up the POV and didn’t realize until it was too late to change it, and this year’s prompt was a bit out of my wheelhouse (and I couldn’t submit anyway).
Point is, this is a challenge. This is one of those things where you’re grabbing at every one of your skills to come up with a story that suits the prompt and you’ve got so very little time to do it. You gotta make decisions quick, and if you’re someone who favors meticulous planning, you’ve got a big handicap going in. Not that it makes it any less worth doing. While there are some people who don’t take it all that seriously, most people do. As a writer, it’s amazing how much you can get done in a couple of hours when you’re under the gun, so to speak. I’m willing to bet that everybody who took it seriously did better than they thought they’d do and wrote more than they thought they’d write in the limited amount of time they had to work.
Which leads me into my second point as a judge.
Since I’m a total luddite when it comes to tech, I didn’t get a chance to read all that many Iron Author stories in ‘17 or ‘18. Just the ones that were posted on the site by people I followed, actually.
As a judge this year, I did get to read a few of them. Ten, I think, maybe one or two more. [Of those, the one I considered the best was Cabaras’ Fractal, and I still think it should have been in the top three.]
The most impressive thing about it was how good most of them were. I’ll be honest with you, I was expecting that the vast majority of them would be pretty awful, and they generally weren’t. In fact, I’ve read actual published stories on the site, some of them which allegedly had pre-readers, that weren’t as good as the majority of the stories I read.
Furthermore, virtually all of the ten stories I read needed at worst a hard editing pass to shine them up, and that’s pretty darn good for such a short writing period.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that we’ve got some pretty amazing writing talent here in our little part of the fandom. I don’t know if it’s ever been done, but I have to imagine that if you put a bunch of professional, published fiction authors in the same situation--two hours to write a story based on a prompt--they wouldn’t do as well as we did.
And to those of you who haven’t tried it . . . well, I’m not going to say that you ought to go to Everfree Northwest and enter the Iron Writer contest (I mean, it’d be cool if y’all did, but not everybody can afford to). But maybe if you’re feeling a bit down, or need a burst of inspiration, maybe search around for one of those plot generator things or even better just pick a couple of characters at random and write a story about one or two of them. When we wrote the Shouldn’t Write Shipfics collabs, we just drew cards out of TSSSF.
Oh, I also got a floppy beanbag Lyra at the con.
Also a Steampunk Applejack plush, but I don’t have a picture of her.
I skipped Iron Author, as I'm fairly terrible at that sort of writing (I'm far too slow and meticulous).
The breadth and depth of creativity in this fandom is something that never ceases to amaze me. Fimfiction is full of authors who are as good as or better than a lot of commercially-published authors. I've not been involved in any other fandom where so many people put the sheer amount of effort into their work as Bronies do. How many other fandoms out there have people acting as dedicated editors and reviewers, just for fun? I mean, seriously, most Fimfiction writers have an almost professional level of attention to the craft; and people here certainly encourage that level of dedication. It's crazy.
I can confirm that the two of you were in close proximity several times, including when people were arriving on Thursday. He must have been wearing a stealth kilt.
In any case, good to see you again! Looking forward to seeing your IA entry.
Was definitely in proximity to yourself a few times. Next time, I promise to be more obtrusive.
Really flattered you think so! Iron Author was a heck of an experience, which did leave my brain feeling like exhausted pulp for most of the day afterwards, but definitely worth repeating. The other stories I've read to have come out of it have been uniformly ace.
5065372
Must you reveal all my secrets.
I started reading fanfics back in the 70s with Star Trek stuff.
One difference is that writers today feel a LOT freer to curse
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/277772/fucking-sleepless-in-fucking-ponyville
Also, more porn. Or at least more openly distributed porn
But, the bottom of the barrel hasn't changed much in 40+ years.
IMO, the big difference is that the bottom is maybe 10% today & it used to be around half.
Some of the writers on this site today are as good as some of the pros back then
This year's Iron Author was pretty great, and the top slots were very close contests. The only reason Fractal didn't place (which I agree it definitely merited) was that the other top stories were just all great.
For what it's worth, IMO any of the top five could have all ended up placing (and probably any of them could have even won, they were that close and all that good).
Hmmmmmmmmm WHO could that be referring to?
(I later got a stern talking to by Xepher.)
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Can confirm. Fractal was my honorable mention, and if I'd been the only judge, it would've made the top. But Sweetie Belle is my favorite, so it's probably a good thing overall that my bias is balanced out by the other judges. :-)
EDIT: To be clear, Flurry Heart in "Fractal" this ended up being almost exactly what my headcanon Sweetie Belle was in my own fics from years ago. The "struggling magic user who has to learn an entirely new way of doing things."
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I get that those entries were all in good fun, but... could similar things please not be repeated next year? I don't want to be mean, but Iron Author takes a lot of work to judge, and when stuff like that comes up, dealing with it just uses up that much more of the limited resources of time and focus available to us while we're trying to give every entry a fair shake in a single night.
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I promised Xepher I wouldn't do it again. Also believe it or not, one year he was so desperate he recruited me to be an Iron Author judge!
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I still think it’s a useful exercise; however, I’m speaking from the perspective as a discovery writer, so for me it’s usually little to no planning before I dive in.
Oh yeah, totally. A while back on Discord, a couple of people were talking about that--can’t remember who specifically--and mentioned that the editors on Fimfiction often provide better feedback than actual professional paid editors.
And reader engagement--the level of discussion in the comments is another thing that amazes me. That’s honestly one of the things that drew me to the site in the first place, reading Just Passing Through and coming across a discussion of the energy of liquid rainbow in the comments.
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That’s got to be it.
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Maybe a big hat, that might do the trick.
The contest does do that to a person, but man is it ever worth it.
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I mean, it is the internet, and you know what they say about the internet.
Some of the writers on this site today are as good as the pros right now. Full stop.
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Oh yeah, no question there. The three winners were also top tier.
Which makes one realize just how much talent there was in that room.
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Oh, I have no idea.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2012/7/28/59494.gif
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Check your PMs, nerd.
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That’s the advantage of multiple judges, gives everyone a chance to hash things out.
I think I did a bit of that in a fic once, as well, just as an in-passing thing. Not entirely sure, though; I’d have to go back and re-read.
What really impressed me was how in character
Baby Princess DestructorFlurry Heart was, despite having barely any characterization in the show.5066620
I did, I just haven’t had a chance to respond to any of them yet.