STATE OF THE AUTHOR: I Know I Said No More Surprises, But... · 4:56am Jul 19th, 2020
...I gotta say, I was really hoping to pull off one last one.
I apologize in advance for what I'm about to say, and how I always seem to deliver this sort of news with Iron Man quotes. (I blame my Iron Man fanatic BF for the latter, but have no one to blame but myself for the former.) It's a decision that I've stressed over for quite a while, and something that frankly still wracks my brain late at night. I've always told myself I'd finish everything I had on this site and everything I wanted to do before officially retiring, but I have a confession to make.
I'm not so sure I can anymore.
This isn't about anything the fandom did, or anything bad at all, really. I still love MLP and Coco and Babs and everyone, and all my ideas for my series are in my head, but...for some reason, they just can't get out. I've tried for months to get back to writing fic, but what I've produced since the pandemic couldn't even fill a short story. The only thing that has gotten me back into writing after finishing the first draft for my IRL novel (Imperfect Storm) has been a little thing called Burning Sun. And if that sounds a little too much like Imperfect Storm, well, there's a reason. Burning Sun isn't an MLP story, it's a sequel novel.
The more I think about it, the more I feel this lack of inspiration is related to the reason I became a fanfiction writer. When I started writing fic, my inspiration for real-world works was basically dead. I was in a rough spot with my writing, and MLP gave me faith. Now that I've been writing more real-world stuff than fic, I've begun to realize this is an inverse relationship. All the feelings that writing MLP used to give me are pretty much exclusive to Premiere Nebula stuff.
I've never been the kind of author to want to leave works unfinished, but every time I struggle with writing fic, this particular phrase rushes into my head:
And the thing is, when Cure Moonlight says this, I want to scream into my screen. Hail the power of being way too emotional about anime characters to the point of naming your Tumblr after them, making an itabag based off them during a worldwide pandemic, etc, etc, etc.
For this reason, I've changed the statuses for Let Somepony Love You (Before It's Too Late) and We Could Be Heroes on my profile. Since "fate unknown" is such a dismal turn of phrase and a fair amount of you share my love for amusement parks, I marked them as "placed in seasonal operation." This is a reference to how Disney parks treat rides before permanent closure--seasonal operation rides are only opened during peak periods in the park. Basically, this term is how I feel about my stories at the moment. It's a bit more than a hiatus, but less than a cancellation. If inspiration strikes me and there's significant fan response (read: two or more people because I'm terrified of disappointing others), there's a decent chance I'll come back to them. We Could Be Heroes is on its last part, part of which is complete, so that would be the most likely option. What I'd like you to know, though, is that I genuinely love these worlds and am perfectly willing to finish them up as long as my inspiration doesn't completely flatline.
For my sake, and for yours, I hope that won't be the case.
I know what it's like to lose motivation as a writer for a while, as my last nearly year-long hiatus from this site will testify. I can't say I share the same ideology where everything I write must be 'completed', in fact I would love to redo some of my earlier work to more befit the way I write now. But anyway, you only have one life to live so you do what you have to do. Your happiness and satisfaction are the most important thing, after all.
Yeah, been there done this whole dance I'm afraid. But your happiness comes first, Quill. If any of your readers complain, that's their loss really.