State of the Author · 1:20pm Jun 5th, 2019
I should do one of these.
This is your reminder that The Education of Clover the Clever exists in book form! :D Once that became true my mother immediately bought a half dozen copies of it in a fit of maternal pride, and has now sent them out to various relatives who will no doubt be utterly baffled by them.
As mentioned previously, I'm writing The Seven Trials of Clover the Clever! But this time around I'm apparently aiming to write the whole story before publishing, rather than writing and releasing one chapter at a time. So far I've written the first four chapters of the story in various states of completion, covering the first two trials, and they add up to around 26k words. They are hilarious and infuriating and confounding and all the things that made The Education great, and this is still just the beginning.
There are various reasons why I'm trying to do it differently this time. One is just to see if it's more efficient this way. Another is that this story is a lot more focused on a central storyline than The Education or Crown of Night were, and I hesitate to release any part of it until the whole plan comes into full focus.
Speaking of The Crown of Night... It's been almost four years since I updated that story. And in all that time I've been saying to anyone who asks that no, the story isn't cancelled, though I can understand your skepticism. The fact is that this whole time the next chapter has been lying partly-written on my computer. I know what happens in it: it's a slice of life chapter about young Star Swirl getting familiar with his new environment at Everhold Castle, meeting interesting ponies and having interesting conversations. Individually all these ideas sound great. But... for some reason they just never learned to play well together. So I put it aside, I worked on something else. And every once in a while I'll look at it again and wonder what on earth I'm going to do with it, and leave it again. It's been standing in my way for four years, longer than any other chapter I've ever written.
It's the perfectionist's curse, I suppose. Every once in a while I think that I should just plow through it, accept that it won't be the greatest chapter but that any chapter that is written is better than any chapter that isn't, get it out of the way and move on to the next. Still, it has so much potential, always close enough that I don't want to give up on it but always just out of reach. So it's been lying there. Until now.
After I finished the Seven Trials-draft I was working on, I needed a break and I went back to this again, and this time... maybe something's changed. This time I'm seeing possibilities and getting ideas for improvements that I never saw before. I've done some work on it, and it is better now than it was, better than it had gotten in those four years, and I still have ideas to work with. It's still difficult to put the ideas into practice, but they are there, and that more than I've been able to say before. So maybe. Here's hoping.
There are all sorts of interesting conundrums that pop up, as I try to move forward with a story that's been untouched all this time.
Here's a confession: I think one of my weaknesses as an author is that I don't trust my readers enough. I worry that they forget the important things, and need to be reminded. This is something that struck me especially when I was preparing The Education for print: the text is padded out with reminders, because these chapters were written and read years apart. It makes the text longer, and the longer text needs more support, which makes it longer still, which means there is more risk of details getting lost and forgotten, and it goes round and round like that. So when the whole text was bound together in a printed volume, to be read as a single whole, it felt completely different.
Now consider how that feels with The Crown of Night, where I'm dropping in original characters that were introduced at least four years ago
Congrats on the physical publication! Here's looking forward to everything you have in the hopper.
Six hundred fifty pages. Oomph! That's a hefty tome.
What a sweet and supportive mom. My mom hasn’t disowned me or anything (for being a Brony at least; politics is another issue entirely.), but she also keeps wondering when her son is going to move on from this stupid pony thing that is taking up his life.
If i had the money i would so buy one of those books.
Also i knlw how you feel, i had a fic sitting unupdatednfor ocer a year, i knew what needed to happen, what i wanted to happen and what would happen. Knew what came after the last chapter
And id sit downnto write it and half an hour later the page was blank still. I jusr couldnt get the words downx couldnt organize then to get what the chapter needed tonhappen to happen.
It caused everyrhing to grind to a halt becuase o write for both my and my readers enjoyment, i cant force out work as that turns something i love into a chore and makes it not enjoyable which means my work suffers and drop bellow standard to thebpoint its not accaptable.
Ive published chapters that werent as good as others but they were still okay chapters. But i really couldnt publish something that was just...forced out and i didnt like.
I was honestly growing tk hate the fic and i really didnt want to hate my work.
Talked tl a friend and he suggested i skip it and go tonthe next book as i had been writong thet a bit over the year and his reasoning wss i could alwaus come back to it when ready and...well thats what i did.
Im finally back doing something i love.
Was a bit longer then i planed but figired context wpuld be good.
TLDR: I know exactly how it feels not being able to write a chapter for s fic.
5069690
Thanks. And plenty of time until Bronycon. I'm just hoping I get some guidelines on how many copies is appropriate
5069697
Yup. I didn't make any major edits to the text for printing, opting to leave it as it was published. But I feel like I could have trimmed it down sharply for the new format without hurting the story. Something to bear in mind for the eternal "What if I rewrote this as an original novel?" conundrum.
5069698
Yup, my mom is a dear. I actually showed her some episodes of the show to give her the background for my stories, and she got hooked and has been watching it ever since.