Reader thank you's, other general stuff, and blog ideas

Welp, decided to do my first ever blog post. I know this’ll probably only be read by the handful of people who follow my story, but hey, it gives me a chance to talk about other stuff I find interesting in life apart from my story, and who knows, maybe once I get more readers, these blog posts will help in eventually getting me some followers.

First off, a big thank you to those handful of readers who have faved my story so far: One Lucky Gamer, Ula Star, Willsons, Rathalos122, xTSGx, Dynamic Dragon, XJ411, MerlosTheMad, and omni001. Special thank you’s go to MerlosTheMad for leaving the first comment on my story and for giving some useful editing advice for a portion of my first chapter; thanks again for that, man! And the other special thanks goes to xTSGx, for providing reviews of my chapters in his (or her’s?) annual review blogs. I really appreciate the feedback, xTSGx, as well as the exposure your reviews give my story. Much, much thanks to you, good sir (or madam)!

I’m glad my story is getting a good reception so far, despite it recently getting its first downvote. To the person who gave it, if you ever read this, I’m sorry my story didn’t appeal to you. I wish you could’ve left a comment on my story so I could’ve at least known your reasons for not liking it, but I suppose your reasons are your own.

But I digress. The good reception my story is getting so far has certainly been an encouraging factor for me to continue writing Heavy Rain. I’ve had experience writing fanfiction before over on fanfiction.net, in the form of a couple Pokemon fics, both of which are dead now, I’m ashamed to admit. They were written back in the time when I thought that in order to get readers’ attentions, I had to write massive-sized chapters over 10,000 words long. Eventually, the strain of trying to maintain that quota proved too much for me, and I stopped updating those fics.

Now, however, I’ve settled upon a much less stressful writing schedule when writing Heavy Rain. I no longer try to attempt massively long chapters, instead I try to keep my chapters under 10,000 words if at all possible. This has greatly helped improve my writing and publishing pace, and when I do a writing session, I no longer feel like I need to write over 1,000 words to call it a successful writing session. I can settle for just 500 words and call it a successful night. And so far, these new standards I’ve set for myself have worked tremendously when it comes to writing. I’m no longer feeling stressed about the prospect of writing like back when I was still writing my Pokémon fics, and I’ve having fun doing it, which is the most important feeling to have when writing, I believe.

Now that winter break is coming up, I’ll have a lot of opportunity to begin work on my next chapter, and I fully intend to do so. Although, I also have to write out my outline and thesis for my CRJ Field Project research paper, so my focus will have to be equally divided between writing my story and planning out my outline and thesis over the course of this week and the next. Hopefully I’ll be able to handle the challenge, heheh.

And that’s all the news I have for this first ever blog of mine, but don’t worry, it definitely won’t be the last! I’ve got some cool ideas for future blog posts; one idea in particular is I’m planning to start doing occasional music and movie reviews and posting them here on my blog. I’m a HUGE movie and music nut, music in particular. Mostly I’m a diehard heavy metal nut, most of the CD’s I own (which has to be over 300 by now; my room is stacked with them, lol) are in the genre of heavy metal, although I do have more than a few albums in the hard rock, classic rock, and blues genres. I look forward to sharing my thoughts on the albums and movies I own with you guys, so be sure to keep a look out for when I post my first review!

In closing, a big heavy metal salute to any brony metalheads out there! \m/

-fatescanner