Post-Challenge Thoughts · 2:38am May 10th, 2020
Hey, y'all!
This was a big accomplishment for me! I'm proud to have done it 
The following will contain some VERY minor spoilers for Hearts Beat. If you haven't finished reading it, you can still feel welcome to read this blog! It won't "ruin" the fic by any means.
For those of you who are unaware, I wrote Hearts Beat as a challenge to myself to stay productive and creative during quarantine. The original challenge was to follow a set of prompts I found online, writing one 2k-word chapter a day about this little rarepair of mine.
Over time, the challenge definitely evolved! Where I had initially intended on following these prompts exactly, I deviated and started thinking of my own (though all alphabetical, of course). I also thought I'd be approaching this from a "loosely-connected one-shots" angle, and it clearly became something else entirely! The genre meandered with my mood over the past few weeks, I ended up with some chapters more than three times my target length, and I even somehow started shipping Appledash in the middle. Whoops!
Overall, am I happy with the quality of the work?
Well... kinda. I'm happy with it for the conditions I was working under, but the story could have used a lot more time in development on my end (like, say, some basic proofreading hahaha), and a LOT more filler to show how Twilight and Vinyl's relationship grew and evolved. So, no-- I don't think of this fic as being some great work of literature, or even the best thing I've written personally.
"But Mushroom," I hear you say, "If you're unhappy with the product, why did you create it? Why did you publish it? Will you ever return to it and improve upon it?"
Those are some great questions!
Honestly, gang, this was just fun for me. I had fun making it, and most of you had fun reading it, it seems. Plus, I learned a lot about when the best time to publish on fimfic is in order to get the coveted feature box slot, which was pretty cool. I'm glad I shared it with you because I learned a lot about what suffers when you rush, and what thrives when you push. I wouldn't have learned without your feedback, so it was all worth it!
As far as returning to this fic, I hopefully will! Somewhere down the line. Right now, I'm happy to call it complete and just close that chapter of my writing career. Perhaps, one day, I'll add some extra chapters with fluffy filler and relationship development, and even just crank up the quality on some of the later chapters where I really hit a crunch. But that day is not today!
Anyway, I just wanted to share some of my thoughts regarding what I learned over this process, and how I think it will impact my writing in the future. Y'know, Twilight style.
- I always thought of myself as a horror/drama author, but it turns out people really like it when I write romance. Not sure if that's me or people, but it's very interesting!
- When you get stuck, you really do have to just keep writing. There were a lot of portions of this fic that I really struggled with, but writing terribly cheesy dialogue and little else is what allowed me to break through my block! I'm not sure if that translates to any good advice for anyone, but yeah. Sometimes you just have to go fast, I guess.
- I am REALLY looking forward to writing at a normal pace hahaha. I definitely burnt out towards the end, and I'll probably revisit this at a future date to tweak it. A far, far future date.... Although, this experience may have me writing faster than I was before, anyway. So, we'll see!
- This quickly became the longest piece of continual fanfic I have ever written... my previous was 60k, and it took me a year to write. That's insane.
- This is also the longest Twinyl fic on the site... yay?
- Outlines HAVE to change. they just have to. I had outlined this the day before I posted the first chapter, and lemme tell you... a lot changed. Don't get attached to your outlines, and definitely don't overplan, cause your plans will get destroyed in no time.
- I composed orginal music for this? Still can't believe that happened
If you guys have any questions for me about the challenge, don't hesitate to ask! I'll go back to quietly writing On the Horizon for now. Thanks for going on this weird journey with me!
Meanwhile I can barely pull myself away from various distractions long enough to write a 3K one shot, let alone finish my novel. I should really get back on that. Perhaps I'll challenge myself, too.