October 2021 Update · 7:03pm Sep 29th, 2021
Yes, it's September 29th, I'm aware. But I didn't do an entry for September, and I have time right now, so you're getting it a bit early.
As always, I'll start with the recap.
From Whence Power Flows: This actually wasn't conceived as a "What Led To The World of Gen 5" story, though it somewhat morphed into that as it progressed. The primary goal was to blend some Tolkienian themes in a story about a world losing its sense of wonder. Not the first time I've used the former (while it's clunky, my earliest story Mirrors of Darkness was an attempt at that), and likely not the last either, I'm fairly pleased with how this one turned out.
One improvement I likely would make if given the chance are slight adjustments to Twilight's narration - they could stand to be blended a bit better.
Getting Out by Going Through: There's a lot I could say about this story. I think I'll settle for saying that sometimes, a story just doesn't resonate widely, and that's okay. I wouldn't call this my best work, but it did give me ideas for future work that I plan to explore sometime.
This will sound cynical (and it probably is), but once this released and fizzled, I joked with a friend that at least Core of an Apple was no longer my lowest ranked when sorted by votes (since then CoaA has jumped to third lowest, so the joke's lost a little steam).
I might submit this one to a reviewer group or two, just to see what more critical eyes think of it (I already have my own ideas of the problems).
Either way, now I can say I did Iron Author for one year. I don't expect to repeat it next year - there were other panels I missed to participate, and I think, given the class of reviewers involved in the contest, the Cartoon Court would have been a more valuable use of my time.
Alcohol Addled Alicorns: I've been a member of Bean's Writing Group for several months now, but I've yet to publish any of those prompts. Sometimes, that's because they're ridiculous (like the re-work of a scene from True Lies using Bon Bon (as Sweetie Drops) and Lyra in the Arnie/JLC roles, and Chrysalis/Changelings in the role of the terrorists). Othertimes, I use them to test out an idea that just isn't working right.
But there were a few that I really should have cleaned up and published, and this was one of them. In contrast to most of my comedic stories, where I go back and add more humor, for this one I kept needing to tone it down, because it was getting far too zany as I wrote it. I'm glad people enjoyed it, and I think I struck the right balance of ridiculousness.
I do plan to follow this up with at least one sequel...sometime.
Reading Is Hard To Do: Another BWG piece from a few months ago, I actually read most of the prompt version of this in a workshop at EFNW, though they didn't find out who caused the damage due to lack of time. For this one, I did make the recommended change they suggested - significantly tightening up the opening - and added a few hundred words on top of that.
Is it a bit of a crackfic? Sure, but it made some people chuckle, and I'm good with that.
For upcoming work, I'm continuing to work on the two longer projects I previewed recently, while also working on a Luna/Celestia piece. On top of that, there's one more BWG prompt I'm going to polish up a little and publish, as I went back to it and decided it was both better than I remembered, and something I wanted to share.
That's all for this month. Thanks for reading!
-GMS
