...43 weeks ago. That's at least how long I started this. Wow.
First off, I apologize for the lengthy delay. Blame one of the commenters for suggesting a "photo finish". I liked the idea so much, I wanted to finish the fic with art. So I contacted one artist, who accepted, but before he could start work on the pic, his RL work got very, very busy. I waited a month before we both decided that it would be best to look elsewhere (he hasn't done any art in months now :( )
I then found my current artist, who as you can see did a magnificent piece for a photo finish, indeed.
Anyway.
What a journey this has been. My inspiration for this was seeing numerous... NUMEROUS "Dash loses wings" fics at the time, and then seeing several body swap fics. I basically thought... well, what about meeting them mid-way? I haven't seen that before.
Little did I know that the "twilight messes up a spell" and "dash loses wings" things was fairly frowned upon by prereaders and so on. Still, my first chapter got through on EQD.
None of these chapters, up until chapter 6 or so, were planned. I just wrote down what came to mind, and what me and my numerous prereaders brainstormed. Then one of my prereaders spent so much time and effort into looking at stuff, and we spent so much time brainstorming that he practically turned into a co-author. So since then, chapters 7 and onwards began to turn into something I feel was of higher quality, but still mostly me writing it on the fly.
Chapter 8 and onwards were outlined, planned and hashed out in advance, THEN written. Though many changes happened and revisions were done before the chapters were published.
For example, chapters 11 through 13 used to be one single 12.6k word chapter. The outline had 16 bullet points, with sub-points for each.
...by the time I hit the third bullet point, the chapter was already at 5-6k words. It kinda got out of hand XD
And you know what the scariest part of all this? My "plan" initially stopped at chapter 7. Rainbow and AJ would fight, Dash would run away. AJ would go chasing her and they'd make up in the same chapter.
I am so glad my prereader/coauthor talked me out of that.
However, this does leave one issue.
Chapters 7 onwards are, in my eye, of rather high quality. Especially 11 onwards. However, in comparison... chapters 1 through 6 are not. After submitting Mood Wings to EQD, I realise that those early chapters would not pass the muster of current pre-readers.
So I'm gonna revise them. Not a complete re-write, but more an expansion, an addition of content to early chapters to make the overall story better. I want to bring the quality of those chapters up to par with the later ones. I'll likely add another author's note later to update you all when those edits are done, as I'll be tackling it one chapter at a time :)
Thank you all for reading, and I must thank numerous people for prereading.
Obscurica, for prereading/brainstorming since early chapters. Synfony and Moltare likewise.
Whiteout, likewise an early prereader and brainstormer. And great help with AJ's southern expressions :P Go comment on both of their pages, they need to get writing! :D
Kits, for prereading/commenting on some of the later chapters. Was a great help, even if he likes the heathen Pinkiedash ship. Hmph!
And finally, Macdjord for being a prereader extraordinaire and at this point, practically a co-author. I write the fic, but we both have the ideas, and he does the edits. Considering these later chapters, and Mood Wings... I say we make a good team, no?
Thanks to all the artists I commissioned to make the art for the various chapters, or those who let me use existing ones. I feel it injected a bit more life into the chapters :)
Please, if you have any questions, ask them in the comments. I'll respond to what I can :)