Newsies #34: 28 Weeks Later

It has been quite a while since I made one of these, and some of you might have been wondering if I'd buggered off into the wild blue yonder, never to return. No, no, I've been here all along, you see! However . . . I've been struggling with a lot of stuff, I mean . . . This year has been pretty freakin' whacked, all things considered, as is, what with riots, and plague and now the potentiality of a certain orange ahole getting back into the White House . . . . It's been pretty depressing, is the point.

Add onto that my mom recently finding out she had a fractured pelvis she'd been working on for nearly two months, possibly due to osteoporosis, and me having to take out of work to help her around the house while it healed. On top of ALL OF THAT, I also particularly hate where I'm working right now, the management team sucks, the other workers only care about themselves, and they expect us to get WAY more done than we can, with the number of people we have . . . I feel guilty for not having written more, but, as said above, it's been depressing, and also very stressful.

As such, I've barely written anything since a certain clopfic, Dirty Little Apples, last March, and nothing of any real significance since The Author a bloody year ago! It's been so long since I wrote on here, I'm not even all that comfy with the site controls anymore! I used to be so good with them!

HOWEVER, all of my self-pity aside, I am starting to brighten up a bit, although I do occasionally still have down periods, and am trying to write again. I've got a story I started working on a couple of days ago, hoping to have it done by Halloween, but I'm not sure I will at this point. I'll keep working on it, though, and it might get released a bit late.

I've also started plonking on an idea I had that is somewhat related to my old story Cold Trail, only instead of being inspired by the Old West, it's inspired by playing Ghost of Tsushima and my own interest in Medieval European martial arts. So, maybe look forward to that!

I . . . Will also say, that I've been going through some writer's block for a couple of years now, and I think I know why. It's related to a certain story I wrote, quite some time ago, my first attempt at grimdark, Carnivore. I spent the better part of three weeks working my ass off on that story, writing and re-writing and literally exhausting myself on it . . . only for it to receive very negative reviews. Once I stepped back, stopped looking at it from the vantage of the person who had spent all that time on it, and started looking at it from the perspective of a reader, I realized that this was justified; it was a piece of crap. Poorly written, poorly paced and just all around a bad story. And, part of that was because, I didn't really enjoy writing it, things that are that kind of dark and morbid . . . I can write them, but not about the Mane Six, it just makes me feel all . . . . squidgy. I hated that story while I was working on it, and that led to me constantly changing it in my head, and I would change the direction the story was going in, without altering anything I'd already written. By the time I was done with it, I just wanted it to be over.

Anyway, at the time, I told myself it was a learning moment, and to not let it get to me, but . . . I think it did, more than I wanted to admit at the time. It bothered me, that I had worked so hard, all for nothing, and it damaged my confidence in myself and my abilities as a writer. Before that, I would not have called myself the best writer on this site, but I still acknowledged that I was better than a lot, that I was a *good* writer. After that, I've often been self-degrading, and self-critical, calling myself a bad writer, and that I had no skill. I lost the balance between knowing I wasn't the best, and knowing I was still good at what I did.

Anyway . . . After coming to that realization here a few months ago, I've been trying to work on it, but it has come at a rough time, for reasons stated above. Still, I'm working on it, and I'm trying to get back to where I was. Just know that, while I may not be as active as I once was, and I may not be that active again for some time, I'm not gone. I'll always be here.

I think I'll tag Carnivore to this Blog post, so that y'all can see what I mean. "Enjoy".

Until next time, Harmonia Invictus, Ponies! Ave!