One Year of Pony Fiction · 3:09pm Feb 14th, 2012
Exactly one year ago at the moment I am composing this, I was in the middle of writing my first fanfiction.
Huge wall of text reflecting on the past year follows, so you should probably just skip out on this now while you're not bored yet.
I had just discovered Equestria Daily, after a month of my only access to the fandom being /b/. I saw that they were running a Valentines Day event asking for submission of shipfics. Being an addict of TVtropes at the time, I was quite familiar with the term, but had never before been tempted to actually write a fanfiction. I was bored, and had always wanted to get into writing in earnest, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I wrote and self-edited Creatures of the Night in about four hours. It was something like 1700 words, and was the ultimate February fic, February fic being a derogatory term for a shipfic with no real conflict or purpose. Bland and uninspired. CotN also happened to be relatively poorly written from a technical standpoint.
Needless to say, the reception was more or less neutral, after for adjusting for this fandom's tendency toward being overnice.
That irked me. I like being good at the things I do; I have a streak that runs somewhere between competitive and perfectionist. I figured that the best thing to do was to practice.
So I wrote more. I was a big fan of belligerent sexual tension, so the Rarity/Applejack ship appealed to me. I decided to write a longer fic that would actually have a bit of a plot to it. I planned some things for What Rarity Needs, but a lot of it just happened on the spot. The Big Mac/Twilight ship didn't happen until after I wrote the second chapter and realized that he was a good match for her, given the way I'd written him. A lot of my drive in that fic was creating expectations and then defying them. There were also my first attempts at subtlety, with the double meaning of the vision (Which was based off of a salvia trip. Write what you know, right?), the implication of Applejack crying into her dough, and the indefinite nature of the ending. It ended up being just over 9000 words, which seemed like a great deal to me at the time. I had an implicit assumption that the time that longer meant better, generally.
It wasn't that great, with a bit of OOCness among other issues, but a lot of people seemed to be entertained. I was encouraged by the progress.
A few days after the completion of WRN, the World of Warcraft servers went down for maintenance. At the time, I was in a hardcore raid guild, moving up quickly in my server's rankings. It's funny, I don't remember the name of the server or even my guild, but I spent so much of my time on it back then. In any case, not being able to log in left me with a few hours to spare, so I went on TVtropes and looked at the shipping tropes. The page for Ships That Pass in the Night led me to look up the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow quote and that quote inspired me to write a fic about two ponies that loved each other, but never seized the opportunity to get together. I wrote it quickly, and it was short and messy and not very well-executed, but it taught me that fics don't need to be long to have an emotional impact, and I've taken that lesson quite strongly to heart.
It was originally going to be a one-shot, but someone's comment gave me an idea on how to continue it. I decided on three one-shots, each one about a different pony finding one of Twilight's notes. They were all short, and I didn't really want to submit them to EqD as one shots, so I figured I'd do a compilation when I was done. I didn't get too many comments on them when I originally posted each individually, because most of my traffic came from EqD. Still, the comments I got encouraged me, and I moved the three individual chapters to scraps and submitted a compilation titled The Three Notes, which I submitted to Equestria Daily. It didn't get a flood of comments or anything; I think it was overshadowed by Out In The Cold, which was posted a half-hour after The Three Notes was, but the level of praise and the depth of the emotions that people expressed showed me that I had touched people with my writing, and that's one of the best feelings I've ever felt. One of my favorite writers in the fandom left comments praising my writing, which was amazing. Phoe's comment in particular stood out to me as higher praise than I deserved (not that I had any objection to receiving it).
It's not perfect by any means, but The Three Notes holds up rather well, even today. It's still my most favorited deviation, just shy of 100 favs on DA at the time of this writing. If the commenters are not lying to me, it has caused many tears to be shed. I set out to inspire emotion with an impact, and I achieved that.
After the emotionally draining experience that was The Three Notes, I wanted to write some comedy. The episode "Dog and Pony Show" inspired a short piece meant to be little more than a vehicle for a punchline, and it would never be allowed on EqD if submitted today, but I found it amusing and so did many others. For the friend-off that month, I was inspired to write a comedic tale by a pic that was MayorXTwilight shipping. Mayor on Mare was my submission, and it amused many people. I'm still quite proud of the title. Around that time, my job switched my shift from Thursday through Saturday nights (and every other Wednsday) to Sunday through Tuesday nights (ditto). This meant that instead of being able to make 7 out of every 8 raids with my guild, I would only be able to make 1 out of every 8. I opted instead to quit the game, and started visiting my parents and old friends in my hometown on the weekend instead of raiding. My best friend got me into a D&D group, and there he introduced me to one of his coworkers. She and I hit it off rather well, and she seemed especially pleased when she found out that it was me who wrote Mayor on Mare; my friend had showed it to her, and she found it to be funny (if OOC). We bonded over a mutual fondness for ponies and rum; it wasn't long before we were dating. It may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I'll say it anyway: the My Little Pony fanfiction I wrote got me laid.
I worked on In The Rain and The Door around that time, both giving me some solid practice, but they're not truly memorable pieces, to me at least. I was pleased to see In The Rain end up on the fanfic recs page on TVtropes, since I am addicted to that site.
Somewhere in among those four, I wrote a character study of an interpretation of Celestia that served as the original base for Merely a Mare. It's since been retconned away, and was a terrible way to start a fic in any case, but it planted the seed.
In the middle of the year, I moved out of the 6' by 10' converted laundry room that I had been renting into an actual apartment, with my best friend as a roommate. It was interesting to be able to have furniture other than a bed and a small table to use as a desk. Around that time, Kits invited me to participate in something that was just starting up, a Writer's Training Ground to help new ponyfic authors become better at the craft. I jumped at the chance, knowing that trying to teach something to others is the best way to master it yourself. Most of my efforts at that time were dedicated to agonizing over other peoples' fics and trying to articulate ways to improve, and agonizing over Merely a Mare. A lot of time went into both of those pursuits, but I managed to put out a fic for the week 1 prompt for WTG and another for week 5, which was actually based on an idea for a story that I came up with before getting into the pony fandom, but that I never got around to writing. Those stories were Crumbling and The Cough. Crumbling was my usual sad fare, an expression of my interest in immortality tropes. The Cough was my message to the fandom about what I thought grimdark should be. Not gore for the sake of gore, but more horror. Not cheap tacticle impact, but emotional impact. I'm very satisfied by how it turned out, and it's still the fic I wrote that has the most name recognition.
The biggest brick wall I hit in writing Merely a Mare was the 2nd interlude. I didn't know how to do it correctly. I had a lot riding on it, since it needed to justify Twilight's reaction to Luna in chapter 1, to justify it completely. I skipped it, working on Chapter 3, and then delayed by writing 7000 words of U-Harmony (Which I wouldn't release until months later). It went through a complete rewrite before I reframed it into a letter, and once I had that, I still agonized over every line. I didn't know what to think of it when I sent it off to my editor, and I've changed a few lines since the original release, but looking at it now, I'm satisfied.
I wrote a bit after that, but fell off the edge of the map around the end of October. I started going back to college full time in earnest as well as studying for technical certifications and putting in more effort at my job. That paid off when I applied in December for a full time position with the company, and got the job, which came with a crapton of benefits, more pay than I know what to do with on my ramen and tenement living sensibilities, and a lot more responsibility and work. I've had less time to write, but I actually got back into writing instead of wasting all of my free time. My girlfriend and I breaking up had a bit to do with that, but not too much. I'm almost done with Merely a Mare (finally), and I like what it's become. I think when I'm finished that it will be something to be proud of. I set out to entertain, to inspire emotion, to explore very deep subjects, and to make people think. I hope to accomplish all of those goals. After that's done, I'll probably finish up U-Harmony before moving on to Forbidden Lovers, which I think has a lot of potential, even if will never be able to get posted to EqD.
My life is much better today than it was a year ago. I'm closer to my friends, I get paid more than twice as much as I did then, I'm living in a much better place, I have a top of the line new computer, and I still get laid relatively frequently, even without the benefit of a girlfriend. I owe some of that to chance, some of that to work, and yes, I owe some of that to the fanfiction I've written and the fandom I wrote it for. Here's hoping I'm able to deliver another great year of FIM fanfiction.
And to all of you, from a writer who considers shipping to be his speciality, have a happy Valentine's Day.
Ah, salvia. Write what you know, indeed.
What a coincidence, I checked your blog not 10 minutes before you posted this, and then remembered "oh yeah, no blog entries". It's a shame really that some of the most famous ponyfic writers seem to use fimfiction.net as a extra repository, the main places of attention being DA and EQD. I thought you were the same way, but now I know with this blog post (even if it was mirrored off of your DA account almost certainly), you do pay attention to us here, and we thank you for it.
I'm thrilled to have you here, you're one of my favorite authors, alongside SleeplessBrony and ShirtSkirtsandExplosions. I was starting to worry as I was reading this post that you might be drifting away from writing due to your new job and such, but as I read on and saw your plans for your stories, I was glad to see that my presumption was wrong. I would be devistated if you left the fandom. I have never laughed as hard at a ponyfic as I did for U-Harmony's mom chapter. The Three Notes comes in for a close second behind the infamous My Little Dashie for saddest fic ever. Merely A Mare's second interlude letter absolutely stuns me with it's eloquence each time I read it, and the Pinkie Pie alliteration is simply the best alliteration in the history of the written word. I've read over 300 ponyfics on this site alone, probably coming close to 3 million words, but you are still a staple of this fandom to me. A million thank you's for being the awesome dude you are.
If you ever want to talk to the most dedicated readers and writers of our site, or the administrator and moderators, come visit us at irc.irchighway.net #FiMFiction. We would love to have you!
ow yeah!
Forbidden Lovers Forbidden Lovers Forbidden Lovers
Pretend I made that a wall of text although I didn't cuz I didn't want to be rude.
It's just such a great idea, filly Celestia and Luna.
25597
They're adults, just young adults. I'm definitely going to be continuing it and I've been giving it a lot of thought, but I want to make sure that it's RIGHT before I put anything more out for it; it's a ship that needs to be handled delicately.
Also, good luck with your EqD submission. I don't think I'll be reviewing it myself, but I might pick it up if the urge for TwiLuna strikes me.
25603 Okay, though defining adult or filly in an alicorn's terms is kinda confusing for me lol. Well I trust you'll do a great job when it's ready.
Eeek, omigosh, though it probably won't get through anyway, I don't think I'm that good
Thanks for the luck 