Fight to the Finish · 5:39pm Sep 14th, 2020
...to finish this. And everything, really. For the next few weeks/months, I'll be devoting my time explicitly to finishing Super. I want it done, I'm tired of thinking about it, and I am ready to move on. But not just from Super, from pony fanfic in general. Aside from Super itself, there are three fics I want to complete before I go, but I realized I made a mistake after trying to come back to Super from finishing Star Overhead. I don't multitask well. I get so many ideas that I don't have time to think about them all or compose a story for them, I need to find one, sink my teeth into it, and never let go. Because if I do let go, it sits, and gets moldy, and starts to rot in the corner while I find squirrels and bunnies and red herrings to follow in the mean time.
From June 28th 2019 to September 1st 2020, I wrote 112.1K words worth of other stories that I published here, not including any outlines or other projects I started/dropped. In this time, I think my writing has reached a higher level than it ever has. In part thanks to the speed writing server, which has has to be filled with some of the most openly racist, insane people I've ever talked to with a few decent ones here and there. I met some people there, I met some people elsewhere, and I think I'm finally at the point where I've got all those dirty little secrets the English language keeps from the general populace.
So, timeline: what are we looking at?
Super: My goal is to work on it until it's complete. With no other distractions and a solid work schedule, I'm thinking there's maybe 40-60k words of that left. I'll send what I usually do to my editor as I have since chapter 53, but I want the draft of that complete by the end of October.
Grounded Sequel: The outline for this story and part of it has been drafted already. It's getting sidelined until Super is done, but shouldn't take me more than a week to finish the first draft.
A Growing Shadow Sequel: The idea is there, but very little has been put onto paper, so to speak. If you've read it all, A growing shadow leads into the Sunset/Celestia stories (Candy Apples, It's Always such a Pleasure) which then lead into my bright future stories (chronological: Grounded, So too, shall this pass, Far from the Tree, Like Mother, Like Daughter) This is the story that tells you what happened to make Discord, Celestia, and Luna what they are. This one may end up a big story, or a small one, and I'm not sure which way it will go. It's either going to cover 40 years of history, or closer to 2K. Time wise, there are three major events I want to get to. Whether or not I get to them depends on if I can do it all in the month of November.
Family Pictures: The end to the Bright Future stories, featuring Twilight. This one is the most iffy of the three because there are a few things I want to put into it. Twilight has been watching all her friends' families grow over the years, and she's been involved in several key points of their lives. Problem is, two of those stories are as of yet unwritten, not including the ones above. One is just compartmentalized in little pieces, the other is a whole idea that will end up in the 20-30K range. I'm not sure I want to devote the time to it. One way or another, this gets done by the time December ends.
By 2021, I want to be done with pony fics entirely. Naturally, my original idea doesn't leave these characters behind at all, they'll just have new names and different histories so it's not like I'm throwing away all my experience here. If I can get it all finished (we've heard that before, right?) on time, or even early, then I'll allow an extra story or two to go by for my last two couples. If not, they'll get worked into Family Pictures and the timeline for that one will be extended to include the events that Pinkie and Shy are supposed to go through.
Why leave? This is my last string to any pony community. They've all either torn themselves apart, fallen away, or moved to a place that I don't want to be. I don't see a future for this place, and my future I think will take me half way around the world. As much as I love to write, I have a language I need to learn, and I have a real goal in life now instead of aimlessly writing stories to pass the time. It's well past time to move on. But I won't go with a whisper, and I will live up to my creed.
No story unfinished. No tale left untold.
Everything in my library will be complete.
Until Next Time~
—KCZ
Alas, I wanted this to be me. But I've come to realize that to do so, I would have to eat up a lot of precious time that could be used on the place I should be at, which is original fiction, so I broke that promise to myself. I regret, but not enough to change my mind on the matter.
Still, always nice to leave the fandom on a good note. So many people fail to do that, or so it seems.
5355267
That was my rule upon entering, actually. I read several things, and there are a few in my library that I hoped would complete that never did, and I swore I wouldn't end up like that. Even a story that's on this site that I've since taken down because it was an abysmal failure that I did write an ending to. It was a, 'the heroes lost and now we have to start over' ending, but an ending none the less. Technically, if I finish Super, I can go. Buuuuut, it would feel wrong to have said, 'there will be a sequel to this' and not actually follow up on it when almost all the background work is done on a couple of those stories.
It also hurts to look at a lot of my old work now because I've been through so many shifts in my writing in the last year. Either way, I'm just glad I didn't start on my original series just yet. I've done so much of the ground work in developing the world that I've actually changed how I want to start it and how I want my characters to come together.
It's a little weird to think I'm leaving this place I've been for the better part of 7 years, but I suppose that's what's happening, isn't it?
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I'm not sure that I'll ever really 'leave'. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. I do know the amount of stories I'll be producing here is going to drop dramatically as I make the shift to original fiction, but MLP still inspires me fairly often, so I can see me releasing a short story every now and then even when I'm not perpetually on the site anymore.
Heck, I don't even know when that will happen. But like you, I've long been aware that the time for moving on from writing horsewords is past. I'll certainly still finish BPH and throw in a few other things, but in terms of long stories I'm probably done producing anything new.
5355297
Yeah, three after Super is definitely the minimum, not a cap. I won't take this account down or anything and I'm sure I'll check on the site every now and again, if my habitual daily use of this place ever goes away, but I still love these characters. I've thought of two or three more stories in the last week alone. I just think it's time to start denying the impulse to write them.
That said, Far from the Tree was a three day ordeal, so who knows how much I'll write before the year ends? The biggest deal for me is what happens with this job I'm trying to get. Depending on how that goes, I'll need to buckle down on my studies in lieu of writing which could seriously cut down on it. Like much of 2020, it's still up in the air and I'm waiting for gravity to bring it back down.
So "The Grounded" won't have a sequel? Well, anyway I respect your decision bro, and that you grow more in the future, success
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No, no, Grounded's sequel is lined up next. I still have a few more chapters of Super to draft, but that should be done well before the year ends, much less October/November.