Making My Case · 8:18pm Apr 4th, 2023
Hey everyone! I want to say this blog has an exciting announcement in it, but I haven't decided anything so that's not exactly correct.
I'm still on my little post-act-one-wrapping-up break, but I'm thinking a lot about what comes next. Most of this blog post will be musing about something I may do when CA has finally finished—something I haven't totally settled on, but something I have a lean toward. You may consider this blog my attempt to make a case for it and not much beyond that until I say for sure. You'll probably figure out what I'm getting at pretty quick, but indulge me and my infinite well of word vomit for a time.
Do you remember Can You See What I See?—I would hope so. It makes up 33.3% of my total catalog, and I only talk about it every other blog entry, so if you've been following me for a while, you're reading this and don't remember, I advise you get your head checked for a concussion.
Like the self-obsessed type of cat I am, I've been thinking a lot about this story lately. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but it's something of a comfort story for me. That's evident by the fact that I've read it almost a dozen times on my own time. It's been a month or so since I read over it last now, but I'm probably going to do it again real soon, especially if what I'm spitballing about here is anything to go by.
It's no secret: I have some (though not many) regrets about some aspects of that story. The most common criticism I've heard is the whole 'abuse' angle I kind of shoehorned in, and I've agreed pretty much every time I've heard that. I needed something to push some things forward, and that was the first thing that came to mind, but it wasn't the right call. I could have made it work, but I don't think it was executed as well as it could have been. That's not the only issue I have with the story, but it does sit high above any of my other regrets.
Most of the regrets I have with the story stem from one thing: the haste in which it was written. In the post-mortem I wrote about CYSWIS, I mentioned that I had a habit of rushing myself to complete something because completion itself was always such a difficult thing to achieve for me. That's why I wrote and published the whole thing in a little under two weeks.
I was afraid that, at some point, my brain would pull the rug from underneath me and suddenly all my motivation to complete this story would be gone, and I'd leave a half-finished story up for someone to read through, get walled by, and never truly know closure for. As many times as that's happened to me, I never want to inflict that upon another. So I did what I thought I had to do: make compromises so I could finish it faster. Turns out, that was something I didn't actually need to do.
Something that writing CA has taught me so far is that I can make myself stick to long-form projects. I don't have to rush to push something out the door before my inspiration evaporates. I've been chugging through CA since October—six whole months—and while the momentum has shifted a few times, it has never come close to dying down. This has given me a lot of confidence, not just in the idea that I will finish it, but that I can do a lot of things I didn't think I could before. It's helped me realize I want to do a lot with this gay little series I've been working on since September.
Chromatic Aberration has been a bit of an ambitious project for me—one whose ambition from its inception eclipsed the story that comes after it chronologically. This is going to create a weird gap between it and CYSWIS when CA is wrapped up. At my current estimation, I imagine CA is going to be more than double its word count by the time I'm done with it. This will leave its sequel story feeling much more lightweight by comparison.
Don't think I'm worried about word count—length isn't so much my concern so much as it is density. In the word count it took CYSWIS to completely wrap up, CA is only just finishing its first act. That's not inherently a bad thing, mind you. That just means CYS says what it needs to say, focuses on what it needs to, and that's the end of it. The issue is that that's not what I want for that story. That story is one of the most heartfelt things I've ever done, but its current state doesn't reflect that in the way I want it to.
To illustrate what I mean: CA features all of the girls so far, while CYSWIS is almost entirely focused on Sunset, Rarity, and Twilight. Outside of the finale chapter, the other girls—who are all their best friends—are never seen all in one place, nor do they have much at all to do with the story. Granted, they aren't really necessary to the main plot, but it feels like such a waste having all these other characters I can explore interesting dynamics with only for them to show up one time.
That, and CYSWIS has a lot of time passing between chapters, but seldom explores anything that happens in the massive gaps of time. I feel like there's so much untapped potential that I never got into because of how quickly I tried to get it out there. It feels like a framework, a foundation prime for something to be built on. On top of that, CYSWIS was written initially as a one-off which evolved into a whole story into a whole story, but at no point during the writing process did I ever think there would be a sequel or a prequel, and the writing in it I feel kind of reflects that.
So, finally, I get to the crux of this whole blog post.
For the past couple of months, I have been heavily considering doing a complete rewrite of CYSWIS from scratch. I don't mean a chapter-for-chapter rewrite, either; I mean redoing the entire story from the ground up. This time with an outline, more planning, more chapters, etc. The general flow of the story and the events that make it up will still be there, but there will be a few tweaks and divergences here and there. It will add a lot more density and context. I have a lot of ideas in mind for this, and as such, it will probably exceed the length of CA.
This might seem like I'm jumping the gun, especially considering the story is only about six months old at this point. Not a lot of time has passed since the epilogue was posted, but I feel like I've become a lot more confident in my abilities since I started, and I feel like it's a story that deserves to be done better than how I did at first. I still love it the way it is, I love it even more after Eileen gave it a much needed facelift, but I know I can do more with it now.
Beyond my personal reasons for wanting to rebuild it, I just think it would make it connect better to CA. The two stories connect just fine, but this way I can really iron out all the inconsistencies, and make them sister stories like the way they should be.
At the end of it all, as much as I've come to love CA's concept, the ideas I have for it, and what I've done with it so far, CYSWIS is and was always meant to be the Main story. What I mean by that is a little hard to define. It's like, if someone asks me which story they read in this chronology, I would want it to be that one, even though CA will be a more dense and well put-together story overall. It's the centerpiece of this whole canon I've built. It doesn't need to be perfect, but it should have all the attention and detail I want it to.
This will also make it a lot easier to write around for future installments, too. I actually have a sequel in mind that was outlined not too long ago, but when I got done outlining that, I realized how much better it would turn out if the foundation supporting it was even stronger.
I've made a case for rewriting, but there are some points against doing this. I don't want to wear my readers out by telling the same story again. Sure, I would endeavor to make reading this a different enough experience from the previous iteration, but at its core, it would still be pretty much the same story. Admittedly, readership is rather low on my list of priorities, though. Please don't get me wrong: I love that people read my stories and enjoy them so much, but at the end of the day, I am here and writing for one reason and one reason only: for myself. My page is The Me Show Starring Me, and everything on it caters to exactly what I want and no one else. But, even still, I don't want to completely disregard my readers.
There's also the fact that this is kind of a slippery slope. If I do it, am I going to feel like rewriting my other story, too? Constantly rewriting both until they're both bloated, unrecognizable messes? Highly doubtful as the speed of which I wrote CYSWIS is my biggest point of contention, and everything else I've written since then has taken me days, sometimes weeks, to complete. This rewrite will almost definitely be a one time thing, but it's still worth considering that.
That, and while I think it has quite a few shortcomings, the original works well on its own. A newer, lengthier version could be considered largely unnecessary, weighted down with too much in-between and not enough in-the-moment. Personally, I like to think of the original version as a 'proof of concept', but there are some that may wish to look at it as the definitive version—that think it's okay as is. There are other points, but those are some of my biggest concerns.
To underline how much I've been thinking about this: I've discussed this with both of my editors on more than one occasion. The first time I brought it up was mid February. When I first thought of it, I thought it was just a passing thought, and that my heart would eventually gravitate towards something else as it tends to do. But it's April now, and I want to do it even more than I did when I first started talking about it.
Regardless, I remain undecided. Even if this idea is met with rejection, I may roll with it anyway. Or I may not confirm what my next project is until the time comes. So if you hear nothing else about this, do not assume I am or am not going to do it. As I always say, time will tell. Please let me know what you think if you read this far, though. I'd like to gauge interest. Sorry for such a lengthy blog, but I felt the need to make a solid case for something like this.
Thanks for reading 
The big time skips in CYSWIS did stick out to me quite a bit. It seems like weeks, months were passing with little of note to talk about. For teenagers, presumably high school seniors, that is a significant amount of time, and they were all seeing each other almost every day for most of that. The pacing in the final chapters also struck me as a bit too quick, and it came off with the impression that Sunset and Twilight's relationship was very volatile. An odd mix of long periods of nothing happening in the world followed by a few hours where everything happens.
I agree with your reasoning about rewriting it, and I WILL read it if you do.
Just as a side note, I would love to see something from your Rarity's perspective. I don't know when, exactly, she started to crush on Sunset, but between her theory that Rainbow has it for Sunset and later setting up Sunset with Twilight... She seems to have, at some point, convinced herself that she could never be with Sunset herself, and resigned herself to being Sunset's matchmaker. Being generous at the expense of her own happiness. It's such a fascinating situation you've put her in and I think she is my favorite character in your stories for it.
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Yeah, the beginning is a bit too jumpy, and the ending is too dense and far too explosive, with not a lot of good enough set up to warrant it either. And I definitely agree on the volatility aspect, too. There was a much better way to do what I was trying to pull off there, and it needed a lot more setup lol. I appreciate the feedback, though. Both on the post and the story.
As for your side note, I can't promise anything, but I have workshopped something from Rarity's perspective that's written around the time she realizes she has a crush on Sunset with Nudistsquid a couple of times. She's definitely the character that's been the most consistently fun to write for me, and I've had a lot of ideas about what I want to do with her in the rewrite and where I want her to end up. But only time will tell.
Thanks for your comment
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While I can admit I'm 75% sure I'd read a re-write, it's your decision at the end of the day.
I agree on Rarity though, she's the character I enjoy writing the most myself, with Applejack arguably being the least.