A note to myself, and some news about my stories. (+ some real talk)

don't spread yourself too thin holy crap

finish a story before you start another multichapter project

anyhow, news time for fics.

Splintershard: honestly, out of all the things I've worked on recently, Splintershard is the one that ended up losing the most steam. It was meant to be a sprawling story universe that I intended to more or less define myself around back when I started it. And then it just kinda... didn't. Updates were pretty fast at first, for a while coming on a weekly cycle even. But as time passed, I really started losing steam. It happened across almost all of my fics, but at least to me, the dip in motivation hit Splintershard the hardest of all. I do hope that I can maybe regain at least some momentum now that I've finished another chapter and sent it off to my one remaining active(?) prereader, but I'll eventually need to make the decision on whether I should cut the story short with a different ending than planned, or if I should stick to what I have written, and stretch the grind for who-knows-how-long. For now, expect the upcoming story arc to possibly be the last.

Pony-Me: Similar to Splintershard, the Pony-Me rewrite also took a pretty hard hit. Its entire existence is just that--a rewrite, meant to polish up the original in a way I previously couldn't, and patch some plot holes along the way. Though its momentum is at a complete and utter crawl now, I've mentioned before that the whole ruckus about N/F/Ts and "The Metaverse" has really left a bad taste in my mouth that I'm not sure if I can ever remove. As such, Pony-Me will very likely have a completely different ending compared to the original. Across both the original fiction and fimfic versions.

Ruins: Currently my most actively updated fic purely because it's new and... well, I guess more exciting in a sense to write. It's a return to form on how I used to write. No prior plans, no stockpile of prewritten chapters, just a simple trail of breadcrumbs to tell me what's already happened and when. It's also been hit by the productivity dip (really, only What If has made a recovery from that) but for the foreseeable future it'll keep going.

Crew-T: idk it just kinda exists and I haven't been in the mood to do any heavy tie-ins anymore lately maybe I'll bring it back over the summer or something.

Really, aside from Ruins, the main thing I've been looking forward to writing is my Fractures story that I've for now shelved out of not wanting to bury myself even deeper.

I suppose, on a more egotistical note, for ages I've been trying to one-up the original Pony-Me from 2017. I'd set it as my personal benchmark, as something to try and surpass with subsequent stories.

The first time I tried to one-up Pony-Me was, funnily enough, Worlds Reset. I hadn't even let a month go by before I tried to beat what I saw as my personal best, and... well, I think it's pretty easy to say that it turned out to be a flop. I wrote myself into a corner, and to this day I have no idea how I'd want to continue it in its current form.

After that was Into Equestria... and then Into Equestria, again. It was a really-not-all-that-veiled attempt to ride on the past success of Pony-Me, and it's safe to say that that attempt also went down the drain. The original Pony-Me was written to a conclusion, with no plans on expansion, and Into Equestria was grasping at straws to create new conflict.

Splintershard came next, being one of my biggest pushes in a while with a fancy cover art and everything. As I mentioned earlier, I had big plans for it. I really wanted to prove to myself that 2017's Pony-Me wasn't my peak. I maintained the momentum for a good while, until it just started to become... well, boring to write. At its core, it was just a souped-up heist fic with increasingly more piled on top. The actual failed heist itself turned out to be the peak of the story's momentum, and it rapidly fizzled out afterwards. It was the moment I realized that it didn't have much left going for it. Almost all of the ideas I had written down were related to its magic system, and by then, it was too late. Like Worlds Reset, I wrote myself up a wall, and only realized that that was the case after the fact. As it stands, with the consequences of the failed heist being a greatly escalated level of security and Emily/Starlight now being under heavy guard, it'd take some serious power creep for Emily and Star alone to have a chance again. I will leave talk about Splintershard at that, as it honestly pains me to cut short something I poured so much time and effort into. I want to continue it, but I know that in its current state, my attempts to do so would only make things worse.

It's something that's happened time and time again. I obsess over a story I'm writing for maybe a year or so, writing with the idea that maybe I just won't ever stop. Forever stories, I used to think of them as. For a time, even 2017's Pony-Me was one such story. But in the end, they almost always fizzle out. They get drawn on for far too long, and grow increasingly convoluted until they're inevitably shelved.

Even when it isn't so, there's just something--I don't know what I'd call it. Lingering pessimism? Apathy towards my own work? I certainly know that there's some tinge of imposter syndrome that nags at me every day of my life--that periodically grinds my writing to a halt. It may take a year, it may take a couple of years--but it's touched every single story that I've written with the intention of creating multiple chapters.

I went undercover for a time, moonlighting as a new user and experimenting with writing styles. And, to my immense surprise, for the first time in ages, just a little under a year ago, I did what I thought impossible: I surpassed Pony-Me.

I am well aware that it's best not to pay close attention to likes and dislikes, or how fast a view counter shoots up. But man. When those are your only metrics of how others see your work, and your alternative is to constantly reassure yourself that you aren't just faking things (as ridiculous as that may seem considering how it's fiction I'm writing), man, does it feel good to see that green number go up. I declared the experiment complete, and winded down my presence on the account to once again refocus myself here. With sound knowledge that I can in fact surpass myself still, I returned to what had become my long-lasting duo of stories, Splintershard and Pony-Me's rewrite. Momentum on both had already long-since been crushed to a crawl, but I still wanted to give them at least a ending, rather than leaving them dead in the sun like Worlds Reset and other stories from my past.

And then The Dragon of the Ruins happened.

Hoo boy, did it happen.

I wrote the story during my lunch break, sitting under a tree at my college campus. I figured that I'd might as well hop on the G5 bandwagon while it was fresh, and write a little oneshot of some lingering thoughts I had.

I did not expect for it to blow everything I'd ever written previously out of the water in terms of ratings.

I did not expect that for months, it'd sit as the top-rated G5 fic on the site.

And when I expanded on its world with Ruins, I didn't expect to do it a second time in a row.

Holy crap, that was probably the first time since 2017's Pony-Me that I'd found myself glued to the stats page, refreshing periodically and watching the bars grow taller and taller. It just feels so good to see your efforts finally be noticed, even if you didn't expect them to be.

For now, I've been content over the past few months with where I now sit, devoting most of my long-form writing that previously would've gone to Pony-Me and Splintershard instead to Ruins.

But I know, in the back of my mind, that eventually, I will want to surpass myself again.

It's a ruthless cycle.