The Soul of a Pony
Author's Notes
Well, here we are. The completion of my first ever piece of fanfiction, and indeed of fiction of any kind. It's been a hell of a ride, that's for sure. I thought, at this point, that it would be good to share a few things about my experience. This is going to be rather personal, and probably a bit weird. If you don't care for that, then by all means stop reading here. You can get the full experience of SoaP without ever seeing this.
I guess the first thing to do is to acknowledge all the people who helped me with this story. Frankly, it's a short list. I wrote and edited everything myself; no-one else sees my words until I hit that "publish" button. This is subject to change as I go forward, now that I have a couple of brony friends who have expressed interest in being my pre-readers. I would, however, like to thank Sky Pirate, the EqD pre-reader who approved my story. He gave me some much-needed feedback about the first few chapters, which I took to heart for the rest. I'd also like to thank Sir W. Hammer, for being an inspiration to me, and to us all.
Obviously, I couldn't have written this story without the geniuses behind "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic". It's their vision and their characters that gave me the foundations for my writing. So, to them, I give my humblest and most sincere thanks. Also, I probably should have mentioned earlier, in the traditional disclaimer format, that the show, settings, and characters belong to them, not to me.
I also want to thank all the people who have stuck with my little writing project. It's your support and feedback that have kept me motivated. I know it's been rough, and the waits have occasionally been long, but you believed in me, and for that I am forever grateful.
Now that the sappy stuff is taken care of, it's time for some random information about how I wrote this story. I started, as I may have mentioned in a comment somewhere, by thinking about what a Fluttershy soulgaze would look like. I wrote out a little, freeverse poem about it, and realized I had something good. I then thought about how such a thing might come about. I narrowed it down to either Harry Dresden stumbling across Equestria or Twilight trying out a new spell. I think you can figure out which one I picked.
By the time I started writing the second chapter, I'd roughed out the first six. I knew the order of soulgazes, and I knew what each would look like. Unfortunately, I then decided to rest on my laurels for a bit, and neglected to draft out chapter seven. The result of this was a six-week delay between updates, of which I am still ashamed.
I did a great deal of my drafting in public, which had some interesting results. At the time, I was not quite ready to embrace my brony status to the world at large, and therefore did some pretty bizarre things to obfuscate what, exactly, I was doing. For example, I only ever referred to the ponies' names in code. Rainbow Dash became S-Hog, Pinkie was F-Cab, Rarity was M-Low, Twilight was V-Win, AJ was J-Dan, and Fluttershy was D-Gun. If you can figure out the process of word association and warped logic I used to assign these names, I salute you.
With my basic understanding of Microeconomics, I have determined that, by writing this story, I cost myself about $400. That is roughly the amount I could have made if I devoted the same amount of time and effort into my (part-time) job as I did into writing. As of 3 December, SoaP has been viewed more than 5,400 times. Were it possible to charge people to read my story, that would equate to less than eight cents per view. Maths is fun!
Anyway, that's enough out of me. Enjoy your lives, and pony on.