This Is For Me – Open Letter
by MonochromaticHi everyone.
This is Mono! I need to make an announcement regarding the story, and I need it to happen within the story, and this is my website so here I am. I am sorry this isn’t an actual update, but it’s relevant to updates, so please bear with me.
To anyone still reading this, or interested, or invested, I need to be fully upfront with you about something because it is the reason I’ve not touched the story in months (beyond Grad School) and I am at a point where it feels like cancelling the story is the only option I have. Which I don’t want to do, so this is my so-called Hail Mary pass.
I wrote myself into a corner. The issue with years of posting a story as it goes and by the seat of my pants and for years just hoping for the best is that eventually that no longer works when the pressures on the story to be good feel so big and enormous that I can’t breathe. I live terrified of disappointing whoever is even still reading, and that I’ll write a bad story, and it’ll be unsatisfying and I just can’t bring myself to write it and–
I am not entirely sure this is a healthy approach, but I’m saying all this so I can free myself of my own expectations: the next few bits are going to be rough. They will be messy. I have had the ending of this series planned for a decade, but the immediate next bits have always been nebulous, and I am now having to deal with it, plus my own crushing expectations on me writing a satisfying ending, conclusion, I don’t know.
I don’t want to quit TELverse. It haunts me. It consumes me. But for years now I’ve not once written this 100% for me, except for the side stories which are incredible, like the latest one, which is incredible frankly only because I wrote it 100% for me.
I don’t know if I’ve just been warped by twitter and social media and the like, but I want to continue this, and I will, for me, and it was very important for me to say it out loud, to have the safeguard explicitly said that I think the next section is going to be rough and indulgent and not a masterclass of a story, and that’s okay.
Every other story I am currently working on, I am trying to work on professionally, but I think I need to allow myself one story that is a hobby story that is messy and imperfect and that’s fine, and I am going to make the active choice for TERa to be that, and I wanted to be upfront with this. I needed to set expectations, both mine and yours and whoever.
I miss TELverse. I don’t know who else misses it, but I miss it, and I miss when it felt like it was for me, and I have to believe people who still care cared in the first place because they liked my completely self-indulgent story, and not a story crushed under what I think everyone else wants or deserves or is entitled to or jdjkdjksadkjadkjda
Anyway yes. I’m starting summer break, so I’ll be working on horsies, and I am going to write an imperfect story and I think that sounds lovely.
Thank you all for your time!!!! ily!!!!
Mwa,
Mono
p.s. grad school is hard but i made it thru the first year!!
Just..take your time, write it as you want it; that’s what matters I’d say.
Congrats on getting through your first year of grad school! Writing this next section just for you is exactly the correct move. Who knows, maybe it’ll turn out better than you expect? Or maybe not, and that’s fine. As much as many people love this story, at the end of the day, it’s an MLP fanfic, hah. I say that because it should be fun, not stressful.
I’m very glad this story will continue, especially knowing you’re shifting your mindset to be healthier. This story shouldn’t come at your expense.
As someone who comes here to check every day to for an update, i can say that whatever you do with the history as long as you having fun will be perfect!
I absolute love this and i am verry happy to know my favorite history its still going, thank you for all the beautiful stories you white!
I can’t believe I’m so late to this!
If TELverse began as what you call an indulgent, imperfect story, then I wouldn’t want it to end any other way. I fell in love with this universe in every aspect of it — flaws and imperfections included.
Write for yourself, Mono. Take back your story and let it be messy, let it be fun, and let it be the hobby writing that you want it to be. Let it be 100% yours.
I’m happy to know the story still matters to you too, and I’ll be excited to read whatever shape it takes moving forward.
P.S.
Many congratulations for completeing that first year of grad school!
perfection is the enemy of progress!! and imo much of the best art is self-indulgent. the creative process is much more fulfilling when you’re enjoying it, and that also comes through to your readers! i adore telverse, and wherever it goes i know that won’t change. your writing is a massive comfort and i hope you continue to write for your own sake and not for mass appeal. thank you for sharing your work.
The enchanted series is best because you write them, not because everyone puts in their two cents
No kidding, I never read this for you to follow random peoples expectations, mono your story is the best because it has all that emotion you want to put in, stop caring what anyone else says, library kingdom and era are best when you write them how you want them to be
oh don’t worry 🙂 I would love for you to just write the rest of the story for yourself it would be fantastic either way
I hope you have much fun writing the rest :3 (so excited for the updates bc I love this series so much yay)
Write what you want! Cause that’s what we want to read!
No matter what, I love your writing. I hope you don’t put too much pressure on yourself. It’s okay to be imperfect; we have always been here.
I wish you all the best, some of the best fanfiction I have read has been self-indulgent, but it helps to pull you in, as the care and passion result in quality and fun!