According to the filesystem on my downstairs computer, the 16th of July of last year, a little before 2 AM, was the very first time I hit "Save" on the most ambitious writing project I've ever attempted.

There was a pretty brutal heat wave here last July. I'm sure that's at least partially to blame for this thing existing in the first place. Suddenly I had an idea for a short story. It was kinda bad and I had no intention of doing anything with it.

(It was actually a rather cursed fanfiction idea - as if I could ever be remotely qualified to attempt Indigo Park fanfiction when my only exposure to it had been watching one, and only one, Twitch stream of the first chapter, in which a person with severe ADHD complained about motion sickness the whole time, talked over the raccoon and didn't listen, and speedran the whole thing in about an hour! As if!)

(Oh, and before anyone asks: I haven't played it myself. I don't have a computer that will run it. Also I'm not sure I'd be able to handle the inevitable resulting brainrot; I was apparently already crushing rather hard even without that, you see...)

And then another idea came, also pretty awful. Eventually, one or two more showed up.

Suddenly, the big moment of inspiration: I realized that I could combine these bad ideas; there was a way to assemble them into one larger thing, something actually coherent, that could also, with some major changes, be potentially even good!

(By "major changes" I mean that, among other things, it quickly became necessary, for multiple reasons, to change the setting, replace all the characters with my own OCs, and put as much distance as possible between my story and what originally inspired it. Basically I had to "Rick-and-Morty" the whole concept - will I need to explain that reference?)

I never felt like a very good writer in the past, but this really seemed like it could be an exception. I was fairly convinced that I might be able to get an actual proper, maybe even publishable, full-length novel out of this. I was very excited about the notion, of course! Thus began over a week of sleepless nights (with the heat wave lasting the full time) typing up stuff like this:

Server racks, a dozen of them. Hundreds of network cables, thousands of blinking lights. The loud hum of hundreds of computer fans. And, mounted in an alcove on the far wall, a large and very heavy-looking screen, which soon turned on with a disturbingly loud click. Rumbleroy's smiling, yet subtly remorseful, face soon appeared, illuminating the otherwise dark room with an almost-eerie green light. "Still got that screwdriver?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied, patting one of my pants pockets. "What is all this?" I feared that I already knew the answer.

"I don't know if you're going to fully understand this part... But... My friends are gone now."

"Yes. Except for--"

"And I must follow them," he interrupted somberly.

"What?"

"Please try to understand. We were all born together. We were always together. My place has always been with my friends."

"But you have a new friend now--"

"I agree, and I'm grateful. But that's not how this works. Your final task... is me."
I'm going to go ahead and declare this a failed experiment, for now at least, although a very interesting one that I learned a lot of things from. Primarily, I got a fairly clear view of what my strengths and weaknesses are when it comes to ambitious novel-writing.

"But then we saw the look on your face afterwards," the bird added. "I almost stackfaulted myself laughing! ...Sorry about scaring you like that!"

"I actually wanted to harm the human," the sable suddenly admitted. All eyes turned to her.

Rumbleroy tapped his foot at a tempo that only a cartoon bunny could manage. "Sable!" he cried in surprise, staring accusingly.

"But only a little," the sable concluded with a sly grin. "Sorry my robot almost burned you to death."

"Programs shouldn't program," I quoted in response. All five of the on-screen characters laughed again in response, although Rumbleroy was clearly mildly embarrassed by the reference.

"Was so much fire really necessary?" the bunny muttered, barely audibly.
One strength, I would say, is characters. There are several in my story, and they all have their unique personalities, interesting quirks, and fascinating contrasts. Considering how hastily I pulled these character ideas out of the air, I definitely surprised myself with how well they turned out, and how much I ended up just plain loving most of them! (Especially the character Rumbleroy Rabbit, who, among all the OCs I've come up with over the decades, is easily among my top favorites, possibly even surpassing my own fursona.)

Suddenly I heard my own voice, my own whispered words being played back at me by Rumbleroy with unexpected clarity: "You're my favorite now. Seriously, screw Pete." The stifled sniffle in the middle of the word "seriously" was especially embarrassing.

"The little bastard recorded that?" I exclaimed in surprise.

The tiger clutched his chest and emitted an exaggerated pained groan. "Aye! And zounds! That wherefore so egregiously ignoble a barb as this should merit an encore, thus to so mercilessly cut me to the quick for a second time! ...I may yet deplete of quick!"
Another strength: As one writer put it, "Lore is easy; writing is hard." This certainly seems true for me. Lore, back-stories, origins, lore lore lore! Oh yeah, these characters have more back-story than front-story. I could fill pages and pages with nothing but dry overly-detailed history lessons that go back nearly 90 years. (In fact, coming dangerously close to doing exactly this was part of the reason I stopped.)

The shared history of these characters even involves a few dozen episodes of a fictional mid-to-late 1940s cartoon show, several of which I somehow managed to have names and full synopses for, and even favorite lines of dialogue. (I'll spare you the list for now, but there's definitely some fun stuff in here! Ask for an example, I dare you.)

Given sufficient motivation, resources, mental energy, and access to affordable (as in I'd need to win a lottery) talent, I could probably even script and produce some of those cartoons for real. Now that's actually a scary thought.

"Yeah, hah!" Rumbleroy laughed. "I should've known something was up the moment they returned and seemed to be getting along. Or at least when the stew tasted a little weird! I still remember that aftertaste, it was gross! You remember the face I made?"

"Oh yeah," I responded with a chuckle. It was a very funny face, subtle but excellently animated. It was a face that said everything that needed to be said about the taste of the stew. "And it was neat the way the show depicted the random emotional changes you were going through afterwards, with the spinning Wheel of Mood, and the game show sounds. Pretty inventive for the era. That was a clever touch."

"Oh, after that incident we spent weeks discussing how we'd even describe what those weeds did to us... I think the wheel metaphor was Edgar's idea. But we weren't all sure we even wanted to tell anyone about that trip, though! It was traumatic! And, and! When I was furious with Katie for no reason and yelling at her, and she was just laughing uncontrollably? That, especially... took some time... to get over."

I remembered that laugh, too. The first time I had watched that scene, I thought Katie's laugh was hilarious and I had laughed as well. Now I felt slightly guilty about that. "Hard to imagine losing control like that," I observed. "You were all very... out-of-character!"

"Yeah, that was the worst part! Losing ourselves! It was wild! Especially when Sable landed on 'fear' and got stuck in that tree, that had to have been a new experience for her! Served her right, though! At least until Edgar suddenly got 'cruelty' and started teasing her. Maybe that was a bit much. Some of the things he said... let's just say they didn't make it into the show."

"I'm sure that was new for him, too. Where was Pierre during that time?" The question slipped out before I realized what I was asking. Peter Tiger's absence during this part of the episode was an occasionally-discussed topic on a few message boards I had visited; a mystery that had prompted years of wild speculation from some of the more avid theorists.
My book wasn't even really going to be about that cartoon. That's all just back-story, there to be occasionally referenced in bits and pieces by the "front-story" whenever needed. There was a lot of it, though. Perhaps too much. Maybe way, way, way too much.

And that became a problem: The ideas kept pouring in and I had run out of ways to fit them together.

Insufficient planning was also an issue: Basically I just typed and typed and typed as the ideas flowed, and while I had a general idea of where I wanted the story to go, I didn't put enough effort into actually figuring out beforehand how to get there. Things got sloppy.

Also, the ending: I had a dramatic ending - it was actually one of the first things I typed - and I really liked it. Unfortunately, for the surprising twists to make sense, it depended rather heavily on some of the back-story that I couldn't easily squeeze in. The only way I could think of to connect it would have been pages after pages after pages of nothing but characters answering questions. That was going to suck. And the more I tried to salvage this, the worse it got.

So I ended up with characters I love, with back-stories I love, some moments I consider awesome; but all in an overly-ambitious story that, overall, I was beginning to hate. It was imploding under its own weight, turning into hundreds of pages of pretty much pure crap. I had to stop.

The worst part is, even though I haven't touched this project at all since last September (aside from recently attempting art of Rumbleroy, and putting him into my C64 game, assuming these count), the occasional ideas are still coming. They build up. They have weight, and I'm really feeling it.

So what do I do with this thing now? Three options occur to me, none of them ideal. Of course just giving up is one of them; that's the worst for obvious reasons.

"What would've happened if it hadn't worked?"

Rumbleroy stopped smiling and winced at the question, clearly terrified at the thought. "What, if my plan failed? If any part of the test was not passed? If Katie had not regained her confidence, or if Edgar flaked, or if Peter put his pride above his honor, or if I had to stop Sable from trying to actually kill you? What then? ...Do you really want to know?"

The rabbit was scaring me again. I nodded slowly.

He suddenly stood up. His colors darkened again. Slowly, steadily, he raised his hand to his neck and made a very gradual horizontal slicing motion from one side of his neck to the other. "Any of that... would have meant... we were too far gone... and... weren't... worth... saving."

I stared in shock as he took off his hat briefly, reached into it, pulled out a single large dark-colored rose, and dropped it on the virtual ground in front of himself. There was a moment of silence before he continued.

"If we can't be a family, we can't function. We can't run the Palace. The Palace dies, and when that happens, we go with it. That's how high the stakes were: Us! Our lives, our very souls! And the Palace! Papa's dream, Papa's sacrifice, his life too, and everything he built that we hold sacred! It all nearly came crumbling down! If I couldn't save it, if I was forced to give up... Good gravy, do you know what giving up would have meant? It... It would've meant having to put us all out of our misery, once and for all. Tear the whole thing apart. Gone for good. Pull... the... plug!"

"Damn."
One possibility would be to just start the novel over, this time with more intensive planning, and lots (and I mean lots) of help from more experienced and skilled writers (assuming I find any who are actually able and willing to give me that kind of time - and for free). This would mean, naturally, a serious investment of a lot more time and effort that I'm not sure won't end in the same disappointing result. I doubt I could go through that again; and of course it would be worse if I drag others down with me.

I rubbed my head. I was so tired, I was beginning to question the reality of everything that had happened to me in this place, and it was giving me a headache.

"I guess we have more in common than I thought," I finally observed aloud, speaking to no one in particular and not even really caring whether any of this place's residents heard me or not. The walls themselves felt like enough company for the moment. I stood and looked at all the walls of this room. I noticed a portrait of a middle-aged Papa Petals; an old framed faded color photograph of him holding up a piece of paper on which he had drawn his characters, while standing in front of a shelf full of awards and memorabilia. He seemed happy. His smile was large, friendly, and clearly genuine. His mustache was huge. I had to stare at him for a while.

"Mr. Pietlovich," I muttered under my breath, "you've created a monster."

"You're right," came the unexpected reply from behind me, making me jump. My heart skipped a beat as I swiftly turned back towards the reactivated monitor, nearly falling down in the process.

"Rumbleroy!" I exclaimed. "You scared the... bleep outta me!"
Another thing I'm considering is that it could be cool to convert the whole concept into an "ask blog". That's still a thing, right? I believe these characters have enough personality and history for that to be a viable alternative, and the story wouldn't need many changes to be compatible with the format either. There's just one major obstacle to this option: Art. I've got the style I want pretty much down (I've even been working on a program to automate adding my own custom scanline effect to images), but I don't quite have the art chops (yet?) that would be required to do the art regularly and repeatedly, nor the budget to hire. Oh, allowing these characters to be interactive, though, would be really fun. And I'm sure they'd be perfect for it, too! (Assuming I gain an audience that asks the right questions!)

I'm not very confident in general, really. I don't know if any of this would be worth it. I may be a better writer than I think, but I could very easily be worse. I'm not sure which direction I should take this idea, or even if I should continue at all. I like a lot of what I've done so far but I don't know if it's enough.

I'll probably be posting a few more excerpts soon. And then I'll be relying a lot on any feedback that results.

For now, though... Any opinions?