New Decade, New Plan · 3:35pm Feb 24th, 2020
Blog Number 68: Ten Years of Upgrades Edition
It's a fair way into 2020, so probably about time I looked back and said something to sum up 2019, right?
That's easy. What I say is, "Good God, I hope 2020 is a lot better than that."
And with a bunch of new, explicit goals, I intend it to be.
So far, at least, 2020 is proving to be something of an improvement, but frankly I'm using a much better standard to compare, because "being better than 2019" is like saying "must not feel as bad as a rotting toothache".
EDIT: Looking back, this is a bit big for one blog post, so I've added this contents page to make it a little bit clearer where I'm going with this. Major sections detailed below:
2010s: Decade Off To A Bad Start
2010s: Gradual Recovery
2010s: Where I Am Now
The Last Problem To Solve
A Role Model in 2017
And Goals For The 2020s
2010s: Decade Off To A Bad Start
Looking back at the 2010s overall?
Mostly good, especially in the second half. At least, if we consider anything other than writing. The first half, not so much:
When the show first aired (2010), I was still in university, studying English Language, Literature, and Linguistics. In hindsight, that wasn't a smart move. Not that I was bad at the subject, by any means - it had consistently been one of my best, on par with Mathematics and (to a lesser extent) Science - but it's obvious I took it chiefly because I thought it would help give me a firm foundation for a future writing career. As the course progressed, I ended up dropping out partway through my second year.
To this day, I still don't understand why I just crashed. Honestly, I've always been good at English. But then I went from handing in homework regular as clockwork to just doing nothing, and feeling oddly rebellious about doing so. I tried a couple of times to get back in, but the motivation wasn't there to back up the attempts. In the end, I spent two years looking for a job, and being miserable, confused, sullen, and angry with myself from start to finish.
I just flat-out didn't understand why my hitherto-spotless academic life had suddenly taken a U-turn. I was happy enough with the course, I was doing reasonably well on it, there wasn't even a family tragedy or some other obvious external factor that coincided with it. It was literally like a switch flipped in my head for no reason, halfway towards getting my degree. To this day, I've resisted going back into adult education or anything else for fear of it happening again without warning.
2010s: Gradual Recovery
By the time I encountered the show in November 2011 (I'm not going to repeat myself here - that's all been detailed in a previous blog post), I was three months into my first attempt at getting back into university. Although I experienced a burst of writing activity when I was inspired by the show early on, mostly what happened was that my pre-existing novel-writing ambitions transferred to the MLP fanfiction scene. Business otherwise continued as usual.
I finally got a job in 2013, coinciding roughly with a drop in interest for the show (this was after the third season), and by then my fandom interest had boiled down to "occasionally writes for the World-Building Alliance group contests". Unfortunately, all those projects petered out, and 2014 - despite my being won over by the fourth season of the show - so far remains my worst month for fic productivity.
I then went on to a more lucrative and rewarding job in 2015, which I've happily held down to this day. Fic-wise, I was still locked in the same mentality as the previous year, and since those contests had dried up, so did my interest in writing. I only produced two fics that year. Quite amusing, considering the fourth and fifth seasons of the show were among my favourites, so it's not like I was short of inspiration or anything.
It wasn't until late 2016 when my "writing fever" suddenly gathered momentum, laying the groundwork for the 2017 explosion. And while that's died down since (I'll explain more below), the situation since 2016 has largely been the same: some fic output, job satisfaction elsewhere.
2010s: Where I Am Now
Goodness, how times change.
Right now, at the start of a new decade, I'm employed in a job I honestly like more than my leisure hours sometimes. It's a fairly modest job and not really one I thought I'd have when I started 2010, but all things considered it's slotted incredibly well into my life and even become a better alternative to my original hopes, with a lot of flexibility and a proper sense of purpose and motivation to improve my game (a happy fact that's not to be sneezed at, I understand, when it comes to jobs).
Its only downside is that it doesn't earn a ton of money, but that's where this other interest of mine comes in: the writing.
Writing-wise, the idea when I started the previous decade was that I'd get a novel-writing career off the ground, preferably with a regular output, and then use that to supplement my income. Since all else is stable and even enjoyable with my life, once that arrangement was secured, BAM! I then get a comfortable existence that's also financially good (if not an exciting one; I'm honestly happier with a quiet life).
Right now, the novel-writing career is the only piece missing, and unfortunately it's a big piece.
The Last Problem To Solve
Unfortunate, because the previous decade, I could at least hold out hope that the novel-writing bug would kick in if I pushed hard enough. There was certainly plenty of time to hone my craft and not worry too much about the future.
Now it's getting desperate. If this novel-writing thing doesn't take off, sooner or later I'm going to have to make major compromises, and the most galling part is that if I could just get over this one hurdle, I shouldn't have to. I don't even need to be a big hit in the literary world or on any bestsellers lists. The way I designed the current system, even the usual modest income from writing (that most professional writers can expect) would be secure enough to work.
So that's my goal for the 2020s: to finally eliminate this obstacle and get the last piece in place. To that end, I'm going to use the previous decade as a reference for future productivity. Because it's about time I started meeting a professional standard.
A Role Model in 2017
Looking back at 2020, the best year so far has been 2017, and it's better still if I'm allowed to snag the first four months of 2018:
- It upped the ante of 2016 with more and better works released, including my first run of writing success (February 2017, with no less than six completed works totalling 50k between them) and what led to my debut novel (Lure of the Flower)!
- It contained my longest streak of writing productivity. From November 2017 to March 2018, I successfully met a 60k-word-target and even nearly reached 100k once, falling just shy by 5k. So close!
- It lacked the persistent and more unpleasantly sharp emotional lows of mid and late 2018 (though August 2017 remains my worst month so far due to a personal matter). This is significant because that year technically had more productivity, with 29 fics released compared with 26. I could do without the drama and misery that went along with it, though, and my writing still hasn't recovered since then, suggesting it's not a year to emulate.
- Lastly, 2017 still represents my best considered output as a writer, with 12 of the fics successfully qualifying for Equestria Daily (to put this in perspective, as of today I have 36 fics total on that site).
The implication couldn't be simpler: this section of time should be my gold standard for comparing future productivity levels. It represents the ideal situation thus far, complete with actual novel production. If I can recreate this sixteen-month period and maintain its standard consistently, I should be productive enough to get my novel-writing ambitions off the ground and finally have the current situation under control.
And Goals For The 2020s
So, concrete goals intended to ensure this outcome will be:
- Minimum of 26 fics per year, excluding anthologies and other borderline cases to be identified as and when they become apparent.
- Minimum of 365k words per year, or 1k a day average, or roughly 30k per month average. To keep this from being too draconian, the count will include unpublished material. Published material should make up the majority, however.
- Minimum of 1 novel per year.
- Incomplete fics will no longer be posted without a completed story behind them. Trying to write and publish it as I go along has never succeeded.
- At least 6 fics onto Equestria Daily per year (allows for a 50% failure rate, assuming each submission takes one month to process; no point being overambitious in a situation where I have limited control).
- Any fic rejected by Equestria Daily does not get a second chance.
- All fics should be upvote-dominant within a week of publication. Any fic with a downvote percentage greater than 50% will be removed.
Well, I think that should be enough going forward. Any amendments can be made as and when they become pertinent. Hopefully, future updates will be much more substantial once I up my game!
That's all for now. Impossible Numbers, out.
Those contests were dope, man.
Yes, big fan!
Weird. Why not make reasonable adjustments and try again? This feels like a great setup to hit November with only 2 EqD fics for the year and burn out again
I'm not sure what this accomplishes?
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Oh, the contests were good, no question. I meant that I got too dependent on them, so that when they stopped, so did I.
I should clarify: I'll give the fic another go if the problems seem relatively minor and easily fixed (spelling errors, odd usage, unintentional repetitiveness, and so on), but the bigger and more foundational the problems, the less I want to address them. It's just dispiriting and tedious to make major overhauls. Easier to give a fic up as a bad job and try another one instead. (It's not like I have a shortage of candidates, anyway.
)
So far, I've succeeded with 3 in 2016, 5 in 2017, 13 in 2018, and 10 in 2019, with 2 in 2020 already. I'm feeling reasonably confident I could manage 4 more for this year.
Two things: quality control and morale.
Quality control, because any fic that gets a ratio that high is making some monumentally miserable mistake and shouldn't by rights exist. We don't need more bad fics in the world, and I don't intend to add to their number.
Morale, because I also don't want to see that kind of backlash in my lineup. It's way too depressing.
I was directed to this blog entry by my friend and now I finally have time to answer, after my own writing kept me busy for so long. Although, I have to make it a little short since I have a long feed to go through now. I hope what I want to say comes across.
This is a very good plan and I'm glad you have figured something out. I would only recommend an adjustment to this part of the plan:
What I am wondering here is how you define "upvote dominant". There are cases when a story does have more downvotes than upvotes at first, but it's only a first reaction and later the upvotes increase when more (and other) people get to the story. Or (and that's the worst case and not very likely) the story has more upvotes first but delves into red later, when, like aforementioned, other people find it.
In both cases, the fic should stay regardless of percentage and ratio.
In the first case, you should give it a proper amount of time before you do something drastic, to see how the votes develop. The mood of readers can greatly change, especially if you're writing a multi-chapter story. Every new chapter published attracts a few new readers who can potentially upvote the story. And sometimes readers wait with turning their downvote into an upvote until a few chapters are released, if they still give the story a chance and see where it goes. Or they don't vote at all until that point, but will give an upvote later.
The rating of multi-chapter fics is always in the flow. But even single-chapter fics can create a surprise and improve their rating after some time. So this should be considered and a little patience should be applied to the deletion rule, to watch the development of the rating.
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Hallo, again! Nice to see you're still around, fluttercheer.
Then it seems the most important point is what to deem a "proper amount of time". In my general experience, fics usually gain most of their votes either A) within the first few days of publication, and rarely longer than a week after, and B) if they appear on Equestria Daily, which until recent months was almost like publishing it again, so again the votes usually spike before a week is up. The Equestria Daily publication, if it happens, has never reversed the ratio of upvotes to downvotes in my experience, so I'll discard that second part and just focus on the first.
That said, turnarounds do occur, yes. Myself, I've only seen it happen a couple of times, and always within that "few days" timeframe. For instance, Insecta Non Grata got heavily downvoted the first day or so, but then became upvote-dominant after that and has stayed that way. I've never experienced it beyond a week...
In that case, given that turnarounds do occur, I think I will modify that particular condition to:
"All fics should be upvote-dominant within a week of publication."
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That is what I meant. I was worrying you could go and delete a story right after the first 24 hours if it is downvote-dominant after that timeframe. A week sounds good, though. I haven't closely monitored my own fics enough to figure out such a timeframe, but seeing how you're active as a pony author longer than I am, your bigger experience is validating that decision and adjustment of the rule.
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Yes, I haven't been going anywhere. I'm just sitting in the dark background where people can't see me, writing about background ponies.
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The background can be a comfy place, I find. It's good to get some quietude. Myself, I've been taking some time off the site, reconnecting with other things I let fall by the wayside. Good to visit occasionally, though.