It's Not Over Yet! · 8:33pm Jun 22nd, 2020
It's funny. I no sooner posted my last blog and that night, my drive to work on pony stories started coming back. I had just finished reading a chapter of the "The Savior's Champion," a book I've been reading, and I looked up at my Sunset Shimmer plushie and thought to myself - How would I describe her mane in a much richer way as opposed to just saying it was red and yellow. And well as I pondered that, I thought back to how I still wanted to write a story about her. As you might guess this started my train of thought chugging down the tracks and slowly an idea for a new story started coming to me.
That said, I have good news and uh, other news (it's not necessarily bad news). The good news, in between working on my non-pony story, I've started work on a new pony story as of May 30th, and it's one I'm utterly ecstatic about. And some of it was inspired from the edginess (and heart) of "The Savior's Champion." It's too soon to go into details yet, but as soon as I get a solid handle on this, I'll share some more details. And as I mentioned in a previous blog, I'm going to write this story entirely before I start posting any of it.
More good news. I have a story arc outline going for this and best of all a beat sheet that has this set in a solid direction. Right now I'm estimating it will be about five parts or chapters (whichever you prefer). Currently, the first part is drafted and the second one is...mmm, I'd say about half way. Currently the story is at 7,441 words. So it should be a nice length upon completion.
I've been bouncing ideas off a buddy of mine that's been helping me continue to drive my writing skills forward. To give you some idea of how my style has changed over the past few months. I've gotten confident enough that I've sharing some of this with him and he is not a fan of MLP, but I had him hanging on my every word as I read part of it to him. One other thing I'll note. In the past, when I've read over my stories to see how they're flowing and to perform edits, often times it got boring or felt more like work. But with this new story...it's an absolute pleasure to re-read what I have and I sometimes just want to read a small portion of it and end up reading several pages before I realize I've gotten carried away. So, hopefully this will mean nothing but good things for the future.
Some big changes may be coming for my pony stories down the road, but I won't have details until this new story is closer to completion. One thing I can say, I've got a much better handle of working conflict into a story, while keeping the heart and love that all of you are used to my stories having. In case any of you are wondering how long it will be till this new project is done. Eh, ballpark, I'd say I should be done drafting it by the end of summer. I'll be able to give a better time table once I start part 4 or part 5. As it stands my current beat sheet should see me through to part 3, if not into a little of part 4. The good news is characters are already cast and set to fill their roles as is the story and the setting along with the overall arc.
Progress. In case any of you are working how my writing has been progressing over the past three months. I've started keeping better tabs on my daily goals by making an Excel spreadsheet. One part tracks my daily writing and which project I've worked on. The other tabs are for each project and track specific story data including overall story progress. My non-pony project is coming along very well. I just started chapter 11 last night. Overall the story is currently at 60,958 words and my creative momentum for it is still running strong. And I started my spreadsheet the other day but have been keeping track of my daily progress since the beginning of June. So as of today I've written 17,534 words for the month of June - 4,823 words of that belong to Sunset Shimmer's story.
So to wrap up. My days of writing pony stories are not over yet. I've got a new one in the works and I will keep you all up to date as I grow closer to completing it. I've been writing all this time and have a better way to gauge my progress.
I hope all of you are doing well and are staying safe and awesome. Take care and I'll be seeing you around!
- Jaydex
PS: I know, that was close to tl;dr wasn't it. 
Me af rn