The room was dark.
Perhaps this was as good as a place to begin with as any. This was an observation, but it gave her something to put down on the parchment—somewhere to start—and for that she was grateful, as beginnings were the bane of her existence.
But now she had a beginning, and already she was feeling the signs of stability and lucidity as the rest fell into place behind the beginning.
She lit a candle with a flick of magic and the room was no longer dark. She floated over the parchment from the desk, and picked up the quill in her mouth. She enjoyed mouthwriting more than simply manipulating the quill with her magic. When she was writing like an earth pony, it felt more personal.
She wrote, the room was dark. Then she pinched her mouth together, and grinded the quill of the feather between her teeth.
Perhaps at this point she would go on to describe the softness of the candle’s glow, just to have something to write about, just to stack on that extra 40 words. 40 words, in the grand scheme of it all, did not seem that important—the figure itself did not, because it was only 40 words—but boy did those 40 words look good when put together to create a large paragraph. Large paragraphs screamed ‘this is important’, but perhaps they also screamed ‘this is intimidating’ for she herself tended to skip those large paragraphs unless she was really dedicated and enthralled in the story.
Although, mainly, her goal in putting in that 40 word paragraph about the softness of the candle glow would be to seem impressive to those who read it—she would perhaps use many adjectives, maybe even some that she herself was not at all familiar with, just to seem educated to the ones who read the paragraph-long description.
She stared at her beginning. Her eyes watered, and then dried, and then burned, for she was weary. Oh, she was so weary. Today had been a long day, and at dinner she had been falling asleep because the day was so taxing. She retired to bed at seven.
She looked to the clock.
It was 10:19.
Three hours. She had been tossing and turning here for three hours, willing to sleep, exhausted in body.
But ablaze with inspiration, and therefore unable to let sleep take her. Her mind buzzed loud and fast, as if in celebration of the dark.
She was a nocturnal creature. Technically, she was not the only one. The brain was the most alert during early evening (and morning, but nopony liked mornings). She had read that somewhere and it had stuck with her because it resonated with her habits and the fact that she was often more alight with inspiration during the evening.
But regardless, regardless.
She stared more at her beginning. The first rounds of heckles and rage consumed her as she found herself unable to add on. She worried the feather in her mouth and glared at the parchment as if it would bring back her inspiration.
It did not.
She groaned aloud and thrashed on the bed like a pouty foal.
Damn this! It was always this way!
She breathed in and out and then she fumed. Oh, how she fumed.
Writing was the love of her existence. She had tried and failed to love another pony the way that she loved writing. She'd tried drugs, and found that they could not bring her to the highs that a story of her own creating could. Maybe it was strange and obsessive, and maybe she was the only one who felt this way about putting words down on parchment, but it was the thing she wanted to do for the rest of her life—it was her talent, as clear as the Mark that Destiny had placed on her hindquarters. It was simply the thing that made her happiest.
And, it was the thing that made her the most miserable.
Writing was an elusive maiden; a lover that always had more to give and in very many ways. But perhaps that analogy was too strange. She was not good at analogies.
Gah! The point was… the point was…
Hmmm. Okay. So:
She had visited the library today. She wanted out of her house, and had always had lingering thoughts of blowing the day off at the library—surrounded by books was her idea of a perfect paradise. Ponyville had a rather unimpressive library, but it was a library and it had books, so she guessed it was better than nothing.
She had made her way towards the romantic fiction, and her eyes passed over the volumes greedily, yet doubtfully—it was a strange sort of gaze, one that said, ‘I want to read all of these, now, but I’ve not heard of any of them, and am ambivalent.’
She then asked herself what she should pick, and resorted in simply picking out a novel. Any novel. Simply reaching out with a hoof and pulling off the first novel it landed on.
So that’s what she did.
Eventually, she’d put it back because the premises seemed dull—but it was a romance novel, keck, what did she expect?
She wandered along to the other towering shelves.
And this was when it hit her: she was one in a billion, a trillion.
Exactly how many books where there?! How could she compete?!
She eyed the novels lining the lofty shelves, their titles running together in her mind and searing her with doubt and longing and jealousy.
Their titles were all so much more impressive than anything she had ever come up with.
Oh good Sisters, if the titles were more impressive, she dare not open a book to find out how much more impressive the damned content was.
She opened a book anyway. She opened several, and glowered down with jealousy. She could not read past chapter one of anything, and she cursed her betraying, counterproductive love of the written word. Why had she fallen in love with writing so deeply and desperately that she could not even read a book for enjoyment without getting jealous and down on herself?
Nothing was original. Nothing was unique; every idea had long since been thought of and written down. Her own novels would be lost in the sea, doubtlessly seen as mediocre.
A writer’s life was a constant struggle. Writing was one of the scariest, most frustrating of all careers and hobbies. Everypony seemed better than you, and giving up was a daily occurrence.
This was the curse of all creative souls. This was the pinnacle of frustration: that moment when you’re so exhausted and blind with your incompetence that you throw in the towel and wail to the sky, “What’s the point anymore?”
And what was the point, anymore?
She gazed in surrender at her parchment, where she had only written the words, ‘the room was dark’.
…And she had been so proud of her ‘beginning’.
What was the point? What was the point? What was the point?
Oh. She was starting to sound like one of those insane ponies. Redrum redrum redrum, and the such.
…Come to think of it, he had been a writer, hadn’t he? Yes, yes. Clearly, writing made one into an axe-wielding maniac. It wasn’t the hotel, after all. Writing was the real enemy.
She chuckled wryly at her own joke. That had been an excellent book. He was an excellent writer—a legend, one of the best.
She shook her head, returning to her gloomy mood. She would never be one of the legendaries. Her writing was nothing special, and gave her more grief than it did release. Perhaps she was not meant for this. Perhaps Destiny was wrong.
What was the point?
She tossed the feather and parchment aside, blew out the candle, and flopped back onto her bed.
Sweet Sisters, she was tired. It was near midnight. How stupid she had been, sitting there for such a long time, staring at the parchment when she could have been sleeping.
She stared up at the ceiling. It was dark. She glared into that darkness, feeling the urge to let out her frustration and rage. She wanted to scream, or perhaps punch something.
She remembered earlier to today, at about four or maybe three in the afternoon—she had come in from a stroll, her entire body humming with inspiration and trembling. She had needed to write, to sit and put the words down or she would undoubtedly explode. She could not focus on anything as she glided to her desk.
Yet as soon as she sat, she could not produce anything. Perhaps it was because she did not know where to start—she often didn’t, for there were too many thoughts and scenes and snippets of fictional conversations running through her mind like the jet stream.
It was hopeless. What was the point?
…
She sighed as if she had just come home. She sighed a sigh that said ‘I give up’, but in a fond way. As in, ‘I can’t fight this feeling anymore’, which was an excellent song.
She sighed, and then she lit the candle up once again. She retrieved the parchment and the quill.
The point was that writing was the love of her existence. The point was that it made her happy. The point was that… there was no way she would get to bed tonight if she did not get rid of this ache to write, if she did not quell this buzz of inspiration.
It did not matter if she would have to force it out. It did not matter if it felt as though she was cutting off her own foreleg, because the blood would be what she wrote with, and the pain was sweet. The pain and struggle was the price for release that she only found in writing.
Besides, she already had a beginning.
With a smile, she started to write, for the simple joy of writing. This time she was not writing a story. She was writing her own thoughts.
The room was dark, she wrote, and then she smirked around the quill.
Perhaps this was as good as a place to begin with as any. This statement was an observation, but it gave her something to put down on the parchment—somewhere to start—and for that she was grateful, as beginnings were the bane of her existence.
Fin