Real Life Stuff and Writing Style

Hey!
So, right now, Chapter 4 is going through the editing phase. I'm still on target for January 20, but I’ve decided that every other week I would try to make a relevant blog post of some kind. This week, I decided to discuss my style of writing. Part of this is to explain to people who are curious what they might expect from Boundary Point. In addition, I want to also keep people who happen to be interested in my story appraised of my current status so that sudden hiatuses don't catch them off guard. The last few years have been hard for everyone and so I think that keeping any interested audience in the know might be appreciated.

Silly Stuff

If you're more interested in snapshots of the moment I live in, on my profile page here I have a whiteboard where I write tiny snippets of stuff that I feel is worthy of sharing, for example the current whiteboard has songs I've been listening too frequently as of late and the current self-imposed deadline for chapter 4. If you're more interested in my dumb thoughts in the moment, I have a twitter that I have linked on my main profile page. That is where I send all my garbage thoughts to accrue as that's pretty much what twitter is for.

Real Life

Recently, my immediate boss has quit their job. This means at the place I work, there is a potential shakeup happening. The place I work isn't retail, but I’ve seen it before while I worked in that industry, where they bring in a new boss and the new boss's job isn't so much to keep the place running with the status quo the employees know, but to "clean house". Due to this, I spent an hour every day the last week applying out to new positions.

I'm lucky that I'm in a position where they can't fire me immediately, not without at least training a replacement of some sort. So that gives me some time to save up and prepare for a big move. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to move up north where autumn is a real thing and I don't live in a perpetual sauna. That said, I fully expect any job interviews I might get to simply pass on me by the second or third interview. Part of this is the place I live in has a very low cost of living. However, the places I'm looking at moving to each have a high cost of living and potentially long commutes. My "profession" doesn't require me to be in the office, so I might be able to negotiate such positions into a work from home gig. Regardless of how the job search goes, my goal is to still pump out chapters to my story, as I've grown attached to it. But if they accelerate things and let me go much sooner then I expected, I just wanted to keep those who want to know in the loop.

Writing Technique and Style (or at least as far as I can tell)

With respect to my writing style, first I should outright state that I'm a novice at writing. While this is definitely no big surprise to anyone, I find myself desperately reading guides in order to enhance my ability to creatively write. One of the things I've noticed is that I might have an overreliance on body language in my current chapters in order to try to prevent the telling portion of "show don't tell". In addition, I feel as though I’m not writing pony body language as well as I could, with a possible over emphasis on ears and under emphasis on tails and poses. This might become an issue as I continue on, so I’ll be keeping an eye on that.

Another issue I seem to have is pacing. This puts me in an interesting spot as given the nature of writing on here, I can't flap about or go too deep in to purple prose in order to paint a picture as I risk losing the reader's attention. However there are scenes that I wish to slow the reader down so they can try and really take in the moment I'm trying to convey. Hopefully I'll be able to do better as I continue forward. If anyone wants to shoot creative criticism, feel free as I'll take what I can get.

I am mostly a discovery writer, with hints of plotting. I remember going through phases in my life where I would come back and attempt to try and write non-professionally, and always trying to plot my way through before I got stuck in a planning phase that never ends. Ironically, "Context" was what revealed how I should write, which is via the discovery method coupled with a deadline and goals the characters should aim to reach, and I ignored that for the better part of the last decade. This is partially due to spending the last two decades or so on the internet and my habits with respect to writing form posts and comments.

Thus for "Boundary Point", I'm using mostly discovery writing with loose end points for the story to go. A good example would've been how the second chapter ends with Twilight Sparkle fleeing. I knew that's what I wanted to have happen, but about three fourths of the interview throughout the chapter was initially constructed by discovery writing. The chapter still went through as deep of an edit phase as I could give it with my self imposed deadline, but my weakest skill so far has been in editing and drafting chapters after I get the first draft out. So far, I've used many more tools that I now have access to then I did when I wrote context, which once I have refined, I’ll probably give it its own blog post later. While I definitely do envy the plotters, it just seems to not be for me unfortunately.

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Edit 1/9/2021: Had a massive brain fart and forgot that pantsing IS discovery writing. went back and changed every pants term with plotting or its equivalent.