Introduction to Publishing on FIM fiction

So about a year and a half ago, I was commuting to university. I would have to get up at 5:30am and drive up there at 6am. This would get me there for 7am. However my lectures didn't start until 10am. The only problem was, the amount of traffic. If I left even half an hour later, I would risk being late, and a lot of work was group work. So I ended up with a lot of time on my hands in the mornings.

Subsequently I had a lot of time on my hands, and somehow, after season eight had ended earlier that year, I ended up writing down some ideas for stories, and eventually, just to entertain my own mind, I started writing thousands of words into Auroras and Souls. It just took off for me. Eventually term ended and I had nothing to do with the story and no spare time to really focus on it.

So that was that. When I got into my last year I had enough work that I was preoccupied in the mornings, so I didn't need to write again.

And then I learnt that this would be the last season back in January. Which for a lot of people was upsetting. But just before then, I learnt about FIMfiction. I started by reading I Don't Need Magic. https://www.fimfiction.net/story/353580/i-dont-need-magic by Undome Tinwe.

This lead me to reading a fair few FIMfics in my spare time over the coming months. I always found chapters between 1500 and 2500 words the best size to read in one sitting as I didn't have much time on my hands. While I was waiting for Season 9 to be released on TinyPop UK, I decided that if that really was the end, I was going to treat it to the build up it deserved.

I had seasons 1-3 on DVD already, so I started there and then bought season 4-6 as well the Equestria Girls movies. Season 7 was on Amazon, and Season 8 just happened to be on Tiny Pop. And of course, all the specials on Youtube. It was one hell of a marathon that took me multiple months to complete.

But going back to season 3. Back then we never knew, Sombra was going to make a return (<- Season 9 Spoiler). Unlike a lot of the community (Going by EQD polls, so who knows how accurate they are) this is my favourite season, but of course rewatching the opening episodes reminded me of the fiction I had been writing the previous year. I didn't really remember it by this point, just the basic story outline.

Upon revisiting the 30,000 word document, I realised that, despite the meany many errors and continuity problems in the story, that I had read through the whole thing and been entertained to an extent. Although I did a little bit of correcting to it at the time, I didn't really get a chance to finish it off until I finished uni.

After a couple of months, I managed to get myself into a place where I have the free time to go back and do all the revisions the story might need. If FIMfiction never existed I don't think I would have gone back to writing. I have no reason at the moment to go back and rewrite it again just for my own entertainment. But I had written so much, I felt like it would be a shame if I couldn't entertain a couple of other people with my story as well.

After about a week of re-editing the opening chapters, which were by far the hardest to get right given the complexity of the situation, I felt like I was happy. Happy with the grammar, spelling, punctuation, readability; I felt it could translate to a reader who wasn't me. I know it only has a couple of views, and that I'm not too concerned about. Auroras & Souls is half written already, and so the opening half just needs edits. If on;y a few people are entertained by it, I don't mind, as long as they are entertained. Then I'll finish the second half from my story plan.

But this has been a fascinating journey for me that I certainly didn't expect.