State of the Mono + Story/Tec Updates

Hi everyone!

I was on the fence about writing this, but enough people have asked here or on Twitter about my lack of activity, so I thought I should try and write something. Originally I didn’t want to because I felt bad that here was another blogpost explaining the shit I’m going through, but didn’t I leave Fimfiction so I wouldn’t feel that way anymore? 

So here I am. 

I’m going to divide everything into sections, including individual updates on stories, but for a TL;DR, the past six months of my life have been insurmountably difficult on me, and it’s only just begun to ease up. I still want to write but it’s been hard. But I still want to, which I figure counts for something. 

I’ll start with the general life stuff and then go to stories.

JOB
There’s not much to say here except that my current job is draining the life out of me. It has been for a while, and extremely so in the past few months where I get home so exhausted I can’t even think. I particularly had a coworker who would undermine me so much for so long that it just ruined my self-esteem and confidence. They left a few months ago, and though I’ve managed to build some of it back up, it’s still very much still in the ruined area. I’ve also held off looking for a different job because I’m going to school next year, and because my bosses are nice people even if they’re god-awful bosses. But I can’t anymore. I miss feeling alive, lol. I’ve finally just started applying for other jobs, but obviously, this comes with the crushing blow of rejections and anxiety and feeling like I’m not going to get out. It’s been really rough. 

HOME SITUATION
I haven’t really addressed this anywhere else, but I think I sort of can now. My home situation for the past few months was not great—through no fault of anyone, it’s important to add. Sometimes a good situation just comes to an end, and that’s okay. Unfortunately, because of my mental health being drained both at home and at work, for the longest time it felt like I was a shell. I only just recently moved out, and though I think it was the right choice and the relationships I cared about have started to heal, it’s still rough. There’s been moving, and getting acclimated, plus this was a lot more expensive than I anticipated, so it’s just been A Lot. I also had a personal problem spring up that was brutal to deal with, and I’m still dealing with the lasting damages it caused, but… But it’s improving and I’m working on it. Healing is slow, but it’s there. 

MENTAL HEALTH
I’m gonna keep it short, because the next segment will be long. My mental health has been in the shitter. There’s really no other way to put it. Between work stuff, and home stuff, and just stuff happening one after the other, and also world in general stuff, I’ve been dead. I also feel guilt for not writing and guilt for selling my books at Everfree and just guilt for everything. I feel like every day my life is shit, and every day all I can think is “It’s my fault”. I am trying my best to overcome it, and work on it, and going to therapy and all that, but it is so hard. I barely feel human. I feel like I’m on auto-pilot, mindlessly going through it because what is the point?

Which leads me to

WRITING

Welp. 

I miss writing. I miss missing writing. But with just how ruinous this entire year has been, every day is a struggle to want to do it. I’m still doing it and am trying because I want to despite it all, but every day is a fight against the voices saying “who cares, it’s just stories, just cancel them and move on”. 

I remember the saying “writing is a lonely job”. I never got that or felt that way, but now I get it. I feel so alone with my writing (except for with Crimson/Sapphire). Every day it gets harder and harder to not convince myself that finishing stories isn’t worth it, and no one cares, and everyone’s moved on. I wish I had a glory story, that I left Fimfiction, and all was well, and I’m thriving. 

But I’m not! And I knew it would be hard, and it is, but with everything going on it’s just been too much. So many aspects of my life have beaten me down to such a level, to a place where I can’t see the point to anything, so it’s easy to convince myself others don’t. I don’t know. I’m just struggling. But I’m trying. I’m writing little drabbles and oneshots and trying. I am, even if it’s hard. 

There’s a tweet I really love that’s like “If I owe you an email, please find some comfort in the fact that my every waking hour is haunted by my debt to you.”

Well, if I haven’t finished a story, please find some comfort in the fact that my every waking hour is haunted by my debt to you/myself. 

Still in this topic, I will address three stories and give a generalized update on them. 

TRAVELERS OF CAELUM
Quick and simple. This is still cancelled until I finish my other two big fics. I want to finish this, but considering everything going on, I’m not giving anyone hope until I feel it’s actually viable. 

SAPPHIRE EYES
Sapphire Eyes is on pause right now while I recover my writing muse, but it will be updated as soon as that happens. Crimsonverse is probably the only thing in my life right now still beating if only because it’s good enough I’m using it for my Grad School applications. And because I recently saw the theatre version of Moulin Rouge and that really inspired me. But Crimson is okay right now. 

THE ENCHANTED CAROUSEL
I’m going to be blunt with this because I need to be, for my sake and yours. 

TEC is on what could be considered life-support right now. I am so exhausted by life, like I said, beaten down to a point where I don’t know if anything matters anymore, and TEC and the Enchanted Series as always is the one that suffers the most. 

I am struggling to find a reason to finish this. I thought I could do it support entirely by my own love for the series, but when I have no love or life left to give, I don’t know what else to do. I feel so alone writing this series. And right now, in this state, I can’t bear another year or two of the effort it is to write this and write it well, only to feel alone, like I’m putting so much work for something that so little will enjoy. 

I recognize that’s toxic. God, I know that relying on external validation is the root of all evil, and it’s not right, and you shouldn’t, but God, I am fighting and failing to find a point to trying to finish it at all. It’s part of the reason I haven’t updated even though I know how the next chapter goes. Because I’m so afraid that I’ll go through it, get excited about the series again, post it, and feel like it didn’t even matter, like it was a blip in the radar. 

I don’t regret leaving Fimfiction, that place was not good for me (highlighted by some really disturbing stuff that was said about me there recently), and I thought TEC would survive the transition and loss of audience, but every passing day, I’m starting to feel it won’t. Maybe if my life hadn’t been a shitshow for so long, it would have.

And yet. 

And yet, I was recently re-reading Crimson Lips in preparation for selling it at EFNW and I came across an excerpt that felt strikingly apt. Painfully so, almost. 

I turned to the Lady when she sniffled, the both of us looking at each other as we earlier had when I’d first arrived. There was still love there. That’s the worst part of it, I think. The fact that there was still life beating in the mangled pulsing flesh that was the heart of our relationship.

Everything I was, I was because of her.

Crimson Lips, “22. ‘Till The Streets Bleed Like Our Hearts”

In so many ways, I am who I am right now because of The Enchanted series. I am living in Los Angeles because of it, I met my closest best friends because of it, I am who I am as a writer because of these stories that are so much a part of me that they’re the first to bleed when I am bleeding. 

Nothing hurts me more to a visceral level than struggling with TEC. But I’m struggling, and it hurts, and it feels like shit, and it feels so much easier to quit just so I can stop feeling this way. But I can’t. I don’t want to. 

A long time ago, when I was struggling with finishing The Enchanted Library, I was telling my dear friend Cynewulf about it and she said this to me: 

It would be a sad thing to quit. (It is always a sad thing to quit just about anything that isn’t a drug of some sort. And even then, subjectively one FEELS sad, as if some thing or other has been lost. That is the cruel thing about addiction.) Not only would it be sad for your readers and, I confess, myself, but it would also be sad for you. The relief that comes from throwing off a long-held and dear burden is immediate but shortlived. The regret follows you for much, much longer. 

I think about this quote so much. Because it’s true. If I choose to quit the story, it will haunt me until I die. But I am struggling. The regret is starting to feel like something I can live with, and I don’t want that. I don’t want to quit, I have been thinking about the ending of this stupid series for so fucking long, I want to see it through. 

So, I am fighting agains my shame and guilt to ask a favor of you, if you are reading this and care. 

If you care about TEC, if you are in any way invested in seeing it finished, if you care, then please help me. I’m asking for help. If you have favorite passages, post them, or talk about them I don’t know. If you’re on the Discord server, you have my blanket permission to harass me for updates, to poke me about it, I don’t know. If you care, if you want to see this finished, help me believe that there’s a point to it. 

I know people care. I know this on brain level, I know this, but right now I am so deep in the hole, that I need to be pummeled with hammers to see it. This isn’t about my writing. It’s just about TEC and The Enchanted series. If you care about them, in any way you can, please metaphorically hold my hand and help me walk until I don’t need the help.

“I have to help Princess Luna and the others. I’m sorry. I can’t give up on them.”

Now Rarity reacted, her hoof flying down to her chest. “I know that. I would never dream of asking you to do that. I’m just… If you get hurt, or…”

“I know,” Twilight said, gently. Remorsefully, her ears folding back. “And I wish I could, but I can’t promise you I won’t get hurt. I can’t promise you something won’t set me off, or I won’t lose myself again, or Discord won’t hurt me, or… Or that I won’t blame myself anymore because I’ve been doing it for centuries! That’s a lot of years of bad habits to break! But…

“But I’m going to get better. Even if it’s hard. I won’t be great at it all the time, and even though I’m statistically likely to have tons of regressions, I’m still going to keep getting better no matter how long it takes me, whether you’re there or not.”

The Enchanted Kingdom, “Chapter 22 – The Filly Who Believed”

I’m going to finish TEC. I know this. Sooner or later, I will, be it in ten years or twenty or three or four. Just like Twilight will work through the fifty million traumas I saddled her with even if it takes ten years or twenty or three or four. 

But if you, like Rarity, care and want to be part of that journey, I am stuck real deep in my underground library and could use some help in getting out of being dead displaced.

-Mono