First!

Hello reader, how's your day going? I had a few minutes to sit quietly by myself and thought I'd just bang out this update for anyone who cares to follow along. First off, I'd like to announce that my story is not dead. On the contrary, I have been actively writing for these past several months, and have now accumulated a "scraped text" pile that's twice the size of my story. I am now on my fifth rewrite of chapter 3, and am contemplating a 6th.

It's been an extremely frustrating experience to write tens of thousands of words and not have something that I can put together into a story that I am happy with. The only plus side of this whole endeavor has been that I have solidified some of the backstory and behind-the-scenes lore that going on around the main character. (Which in part one of this series is Shining Armor.) Other then that, I feel the quality of my writing has improved somewhat, though I am uncertain about this, but whatever, at the end of the day this is for me more then anybody else. (though I really want others to see the story I've had bouncing around in my head for a while now.)

Something I've been doing when i want to write, but don't have the energy or can't get around writers block is going and checking out other well written stories on this website. Most of them are related to Shining Armor somehow, and several times now I've come across an idea or a story plot that's very close to what I have written in my story outline. It's inspired some mixed feelings in me, because on the one hand, something I have come up with is very close to what some of my favorite stories have incorporated into themselves, and done so in an entertaining and emotionally investing way. On the other hand, this creates a standard and something of an obligation to write my story in a different way, and this is difficult enough for me. On yet another hand, I don't want someone who has read this story first to read MY story and think that I stole a plot-line or theme from another author.

I want to establish now, before anything else is written and posted, the overall arcing story has already been established long before i really got into reading Fanfiction on this website. when I started writing, the only major pieces of fiction i had consumed was Fallout: Equestira and My Little Dashie. Everything else came after I wrote the outline for my series. Anything that looks similar is probably a coincidence, great minds and all that.

Anyways, I'm running low on time, and I really don't have much more to say, I just wanted to have living proof that this author isn't dead. I hope you all have a good day.