Friday 5 December 2014

It Doesn't Matter Now featured by Twilight's Library!

"It Doesn't Matter Now" cover picture
I'm a little disappointed no-one has picked up on the reason for the proton's colouring
I really am delighted by how well It Doesn't Matter Now has done. This was mostly written in one evening as a bit of silliness, but it really seems to have caught people's imagination. It's now become my fifth inductee into Twilight's Library, as both a Staff Pick and a Featured story, and has also gained (for the little this is worth) the most likes of any of my 15 published works. Thank you, everyone who's read it! Thank you even more, those of you who liked it! I suppose all I can do now is... write some more pony words. That's what we do around here, right enough.

It's odd how things change. In 2012, I thought that the be-all and end-all of ponyfic was to get a story featured on Equestria Daily. I'd still like to achieve that one day (though I'd have to start writing longer stories even to have a theoretical chance!) but to me, at least, Fimfiction is now where it's at for writers. I do get the feeling that EqD doesn't care all that much for fanfic and would really rather concentrate on more quickly consumed pleasures: art, music and so on. Writing, which inevitably takes longer to appreciate, doesn't fit entirely comfortably with a fast-moving news-centric website like that.

So, back to Fimfiction. The stats there show that, although numbers have fallen a little bit from the heights of a year or two ago, there are still over 400 stories being published on the site every week. That's a lot of words, especially when you consider that I usually review five in that time! All my stories have between 130 and 800 views, which I consider reasonable, though I'm sure they'd be a bit higher if I hadn't largely ignored the site (and therefore not picked up many views or followers) for most of 2013. Which leads me to set a few goals of varying importance and likelihood:

1) Actually win a writing contest of some sort
2) Get 1,000 views on a single story
3) Reach 100 followers
4) Have a story of mine be another reviewer's equivalent of a "Pick of the fics"
5) Publish a Dark-tagged story
6) Write a Watership Down crossover that actually works
7) Get Friendship is Poetry going again
8) Finish Where They Understand You 
9) Write something in second-person, just to see if I can
10) Never, ever, under any circumstances, make the feature box

2 comments:

  1. There's no doubt at all that it's something to be very proud of, and I'm really pleased the story has managed that, especially that I remember you telling me (back in Bewdley, if I remember correctly) that it was only meant as a bit of silliness originally. So it's great to see it doing quite nicely indeed. :)

    As for those 10 goals, they do seem worthwhile ones to aim for and hopefully they'll all happen. (I'm not quite sure what #10 means but I'm guessing that getting into the feature box is A Bad Thing(tm) though.)

    A Watership Down crossover would be far from easy, I'd imagine, but I can't help wondering just what Hazel and (particularly) Bigwig would make of Angel... And goodness only knows how Woundwort would react, trying to order him around!

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    Replies
    1. That's right: it was written for a UK of E fanfic contest that never was (because only GeodesicDragon and I actually entered!) and originally intended to be pure randomness. It ended up being a little more thought-provoking than that almost by accident.

      The Feature Box? Well... if you have the Mature filter on, as an experiment, turn it off and then see how many of the story summaries in Fimfiction's feature box sound like the sort of thing you'd run a mile from. I'd be surprised if it's less than half.

      I've wondered about that particular crossover for ages, but I think it would be very hard. Mind you, the size difference could be overcome (see the breezies!) so it might happen one day...

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