• National Pony Writing Month Winners And Word Counts

    You may have noticed that September ended seven days ago.  That also was the final day for the National Pony Writing Month.  It sounds like a lot of these are still in progress, so expect to see the actual links in the near future as they are submitted / go through the pre-readers.  Everything can be found in Siraj's copy paste after the break.

    My little writers, how are you all? Siraj/Noble Cause here, one week removed from the utter insanity that NaPoWriMo became.  I want to wish you all a hearty congratulations whether you wrote nothing at all, or, like Vanner did with his 'Children of the Sun' fic and utterly obliterated the 50,000 word mark and then half again.  Vanner, I'm only singling you out because BUCK, colt, you blew my mind with your word count.
          Now that that's said, I have something of a surprise for you all.  Everypony that participated and sent in their work were placed on a list, and, using a random number generator, I have picked four random ponies to give prizes to once I have work and the funding available.  I want the following quartet to form a band and put Octavia and her group to shame e-mail eqnapowrimo@gmail.com with something you'd be interested in recieving.  Is it a Steam game? Would you perhaps like a nice leatherbound journal/diary to jot things down in? Maybe something food related? I do cook, and I take requests and have no qualms shipping.  Cost will be within reason, of course.
          The four ponies to be picked are:  Pyrobug, Taren, Bearycool and Prismatic Pretzel.  Please e-mail at earliest convience so we can correspond and figure something out... and I can look into costs.

          For reference, my final word count? 7585 words.  I stalled due to RL and never got back to it.  Stuff like that happens.  So many of you actually outclassed me.
          Without further ado, the LIST!

    •       Bob Bobstein:  Left 4 Trixie:  4,143
    •       Dragonas77:  Rewriting History:  9,731
    •       Ponydora Prancypants:  The Ties That Bind:  62,266
    •       Heitomos:  The Seamstress: Origins, Bucker: Origins and Havoc: Origins (series):  50,030
    •       Steel Richelieu:  The Goddess Who Wasn't:  39,254
    •       kal413:  A Spark Of Light:  53,900
    •       Icefox:  The Icefox Chronicles: Volume 2 Equestria:  3,106
    •       Pav Feira:  My Little Chrono Triggers Are Magic:  31,315
    •       Dsarker:  My Little Warhammer: Friendship is HERESY!:  13,203
    •       RogerDodger:  Gifted Unicorns:  8,837
    •       toanoradian:  The Scary Powers of Love:  50,000
    •       Forte Canter:  Octavia the Tenth and Po'ni (dual entries):  1,119 and 3,171
    •       Clockwork Canter:  Requiem Rivalry:  14,932
    •       joe samuel:  Foals of Colts:  16,319
    •       Luna-tic Scientist:  Days of Wasp and Spider:  16,600
    •       Bearycool:  The Gray Mares:  8,960
    •       DEFCON:FUN:  With A Little Help From My Friends:  30,909
    •       Vanner:  Children of the Sun:  76,540
    •       Destroyer9283:  The Eclipse:  13,537
    •       Mindblower:  Envy and Arrogance:  67,000
    •       Aesthetic:  Ponies Make War:  33,394
    •       Isrozzis:  Of Being Great and Powerful:  20,065
    •       Trotsky:  Antebellum and The Horror In The Bag (dual entries):  2,094 and 1,428
    •       GWFan:  To The End of Drudges:  66,720
    •       DrScratch:  Time For Change:  3,530
    •       Cadence:  Ballad of Autmn Dreams:  50,731
    •       Blue Cord Dragoon:  Broken:  11,275
    •       Soviet:  Amnesia: A Pony's Descent:  55,000
    •       Heart of Aces:  Moonflower:  2,121
    •       Alexstrazsa:  Legacy of the Sun:  23,498
    •       Matt Trepal:  WINTER:  61,416
    •       J. Corwin:  Anomaly Volume 1: Mind Games:  9,882
    •       Artrageous:  Background Currents:  32,149
    •       Loss Thief:  Barriers:  55,368
    •       El_Bronio:  Shades:  14,232
    •       Sam Braden:  The Infinite Pantry:  14,586
    •       The Last of The Brohicans:  Over The Hills and Far Away:  41,451
    •       Taren:  Lost Souls:  24,261
    •       Sebiale:  Gummy Grows Teeth:  242
    •       Mr. Boltitude:  The Sunset Chase:  28,050
    •       Laurence Brown:  Phases of the Moon:  26,827
    •       Lady Moondancer:  Greaves and Rooster 13:  39,001
    •       Banjo:  Stronger Bonds:  14,823
    •       Pyrite Foolsgold:  The Hardest Pony To Forgive:  9,462
    •       Pyrobug:  Fool Me Once:  24,242
    •       Somethingwith_fire:  Black is a Color, Thunder a Feeling:  8,273
    •       Prismatic Pretzel:  Going Postal:  50,099
    •       Evan MacIan:  The Lucky One:  14,638
    •       hatty475:  Foggy Weather:  53,614
    •       Vason Silver Sword:  Traveling Souls:  51,829
    •       Scriber:  Cantering Death:  27,879
    •  
    •       Smashing Good Time:  Shin Equus Tensei:  8,417 


          PHEW! Heck of a list, everypony! That's a grand total of 1,463,054 words! Yes, among the 52 of you (and myself) that participated, for a lack of a heads-up (that was my fault), you all slammed out nearly a million and a freaking half words... I'm in shock, folks, I really am.  Sweet Luna, am I ever PROUD! Just think, next year, I'll be ORGANIZED about this.  Maybe Twilight will stop glaring at me soon.  For those curious, the average word count out of all this?  27,605.  None too shabby in its own right.
          You may notice I didn't include links.  Several authors here have either been posted by now, or requested I not link to their work yet/at all.  So why'd I ask for everypony to send it my way? To see if there was anything that may interest the pre-readers enough to possibly fast track.  Then RL decided to buck me between the withers.  Fun, as ever.
          My ponies, my dear little writers... Well done, one and all.  This is Noble Cause, signing off and going the hay to bed, since it's currently 20 after 4 a.m. here as I write this, and I'm freezing my flank off.

          - Siraj/Noble Cause, immensely impressed.

    49 comments:

    1. O_O

      I forsee many many many stories appearing on my plate soon...

      *gulp*

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    2. So many stories... Must. Read. Them. All! Hmm... This could take a while. If you need me, I'll be reading for the next two years.

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    3. "form a band and put Octavia and her group to shame"

      Oh. IT. IS. ON!

      But seriously, nope. ;)

      Hehe. Nice work all.

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    4. How many of those words are Grimdark Siraj?
      Because those ones don't count.

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    5. All praise the great and power fully Trixie for being so inspiring!

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    6. And thank you, Siraj! Organizing anything, especially with this fandom, is a challenge (Just ask Cereal Velocity about how how often we take his expectations and obliterate them). The fact that you stepped up and were willing to do this is something to be proud of.

      If I could humbly make a suggestion for the next time? Hold it in June, not September. I think June would be better for everyone for several reasons: No school, in between seasons 2 and 3, so no new episodes to distract us (I know I lost two of my precious weekends for writing to Discord), farther away from Nanowrimo so people won't be intimidated about trying to churn out possibly 100k words in a 3 month span, and it also keeps the 30 day time frame.

      Again, grats to everyone else who wrote something, and especially those who beat out my apparently average effort of 26k (My entry is one of those that will soon be posted up here on EqD, knock on wood). Hopefully next time I'll get a higher word count, although I am honestly impressed by the fact that we broke a million as a group! An excellent number to surpass on our first effort! Huzzah!

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    7. @Kits HAH!

      Also, if you average 200 words per minute (which is a little slow), it will take approximately 121 hours and 55 minutes to read them all (203 hours and 12 minutes if you read out loud).

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    8. Words fail to come to mind! Some of the things this community does is just amazing! I can't wait till next year when I will be able to take part in this!

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    9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    10. Really neat, everypony! Great to see that everypony's been so creative over the past month!

      You're sure there's no place we can read them? Some of them sound really cool, from the title at least...

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    11. now, what kind of stories are they?

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    12. I had personal things come-up that kept me from getting more than half-way through the 65k words. And after those things passed, I wasn't particularly inclined to continue what I was writing. I even dropped one I was writing before that, but I'll finish the other one some time.
      It means too much to me not to.

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    13. I can't wait to read The Infinite Pantry!

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    14. @Kits

      HEY!!! Grimdark is the best thing this fandom can offer! Everything else is kinda already done by the official MLP show.

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    15. @DeRockProject

      Shipping is done by the show? Since when?

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    16. @wackyteen

      I was going to say we saw it in 'Feeling Pinkie Keen', but then I realized that the transportation of items by pegasi wasn't what you were talking about.

      But yes, I agree with you. I'd also say that the show doesn't do actual sad stories, crossovers, and long, multi-part epics that can't be done in one or two episodes. Also, I'd point out that while the show covers a broad spectrum of topics, fanfics can give them a much more in-depth and mature exploration that might be lost or over the head of the target audience.

      tl;dr: Grimdark isn't the only thing not covered in the show, nor is it the best thing to come from fanfics.

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    17. @T'laren

      Funny, I thought it was 'Swarm of the century' when Rainbow Dash's eyes went to Rarity's butt when she was bowing to Celestia.

      I'm still waiting for someone to write 'Trots Master' a parody of 'Bots Master'. But then again people don't parody old cartoons anymore, how come no millionaire pony from 'Buck Tales'?

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    18. Thanks again for setting this up; it was a great challenge and made me actually apply myself to writing (before this I'd be lucky to do 16K words a year, let alone a month!). Not sure I'll ever get to the 1.6K/day to do it fully (that's about 3 hours for me at the moment, and I have to work for a living), but I can dream!

      Truly impressed by the effort everypony's put into this (I can see by the titles alone that there are a few that I really want to read).

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    19. Whyfor am I not there? I sent my count in too :(

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    20. *points* Look ma! There I am! Dual entries, ma! Your son's a star!

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    21. It's official: ED wants to kill me with backlog.

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    22. The whole thing was an interesting exercise in both speed and pre-planning. I'm just glad I got finished on time.

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    23. Yes. I'm actually surprised I finished this at all. Between school, chores, and college applications, I don't know how I found the time to write the 50.000
      Now to edit it, so maybe I continue it later.
      50,000 was too few for this story.

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    24. I had gotten to about 2000 words and the real life kicked me in the face for the entire month. And then completely forgot about this.

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    25. Loss Thief here!

      This is awesome to see just how much work everypony here did! I'm planning on submitting mine this weekend, but...I'm not sure if it'll come in. It gets..."kinda" grimdark if you catch my drift?

      Still, great job to all the wonderful writers who worked on this! I'm also wondering, will there possibly be a tag for stories that were written, in part or in full, for NaPo? Just so people know how quickly it was written?

      Also BUCK YEA on being in the top 6 for word count. Next time, I'm totally gonna break 60,000! MINE IS THE FIC THAT WILL PIERCE THE HEAVENS!

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    26. Well, this event was certainly a blast! I didn't make it to 50k, but I got a loooot closer than I thought I would! And had a lot of fun, which is the main thing!

      My fic isn't actually complete yet (lol subplots, why you attach yourself to story?) but it's getting there!

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    27. Ponies. . . More prodigious than War and Peace.

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    28. Damn this community always suprises me. I will actually need sometime to read even one of these stories...

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    29. You'll get to read my fic soon enough. I'm having it edited first, then I'll put it up somewhere and submit it here.

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    30. D:

      Mine's not up there... did you not get the emails, Siraj?

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    31. Heh, I got the lowest word count. :P
      I've actually written more of the story (over twice as much) in the last seven days than in the whole month before.

      <<Was formerly known as Sebiale.

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    32. So, I have to come up with about 500 words to add to chapter one before I submit it...FUCK.

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    33. Wow, I'm kinda surprised I didn't have the lowest wordcount even though I'm doing the entire series out of a notebook this time. For those of you who want to read it but don't want to look it up, go here: http://www.ponyfictionarchive.net/viewstory.php?sid=268

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    34. I totally dropped the ball. I was going along good but a lot of really crazy stuff happened and I lost my way. I hope to get back on this book soon.

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    35. @Dark Horizons

      Oh you wrote that?
      Does... does that get as painful as it sounds? ^^;

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    36. I actually sent my 'finished' in on the 20th, which apparently he didn't look for email that came in that early when compiling this so I am not in the list. So yeah, add another 53,000 words to that for my "Substitute Harmony" fic (most of which is posted).

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    37. Oh snap, it's there.

      Never again, you read me? (until next year)

      I was surprised that there were no links to the stories themselves. Sending the actual files gave me the impression that they would be up, but it's probably for the best (Rush jobs, anyone? Ohohohoho)

      Anyhow, nothing we can't edit and fix to submit at our own pace. So glad this event got so much participation.

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    38. Woo! Glad to see so many ponies participated! And that many of you are posting their fics for reading too. Myself, I ended at a sort of awkward place story-wise, so I'm working on another 5-7k chapter, then I'll submit Part 1.

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    39. This was a rewarding experience. Rewarding for who? I have no idea.

      I'm glad to see some of the writers gearing up to submit their work. I don't think any amount of editing could save my work.

      Or rather, no reasonable amount of editing could save my work. If I changed the plot, characters, setting, and tone I might get some results.

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    40. I am not realy sure this is a good place to ask this but here gose

      I need someponies help. I have wirten a short story but I am serviley dyslexic and aloth I like the story I need help with the spelling and grammer just things like where sentances go and paragraphs and making sure all the words are spelt corectley and are the write words. a spell checker will only get you so far and the person who usuley helps me with this refued to read a pony story

      if anypony can help I would be much apreached

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    41. @mm1145
      How long is the story? I don't mind having a go if it's of similar length to the other stuff on your DA account.

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    42. @Luna-tic Scientist

      yes it is about 2.5k words how is best to share it with you?

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