Speedwriting Anthology

by AuroraDawn

When All Else Fails, Use Recursion (Feb 24 2021 - "First")

Sweet Pepper scribbled furiously on the parchment, sweat dripping down the sides of her burgundy cheeks and onto the crumpled parchment that filled the table.

She had to be first.

She paused, wondering what to do next; she had already written the character assuring themselves of how pretty they were, established the sort of feisty and confident attitude she expected them to have, and had sent them out through the door to the world beyond. But what next?

She furrowed her brow. Well, she didn’t know anything else about the world her character was in. She could make it up, but if she was really wrong about it, she’d look bad later on. What could she write that she could go off of?

The ticks of the clock seemed to echo in her mind, growing louder and louder. She twitched involuntarily once, and then gave her head a quick shake. This was no time to be paralyzed with potential terrible horrible outcomes that oh Luna everything’s going to go wrong she won’t get it in on time and—

Pause. Breath. Sip of water, sip of tea. Nopony else could possibly care this much about the latest generation of Daring Do movie, the newest character in the series, and the hint of a plot that had been leaked. She knew some super fans in the club like her, but none of them wrote. Not as fast as she did, anyways.

It was the same Equestria, right? Well, no. It was still set in Equestria, but the teaser said the world was changed, darker, everything that made it peaceful and safe had been lost.

Oh, well now she was in a hole. Why would this new character be spry and spunky in a world like that? Unless… unless they were one of the few who benefitted from the darkness!

Hold on. That sounded a lot like a series one of her fandom friends had written.

She crumpled up the page and tossed it to the side, letting out a whimper of frustration. She had to get something down. This was her one chance to be the first to write about the new generation! It couldn’t be dumb, nor could it be viable to be laughably wrong, but it also couldn’t be a ripoff of her friend’s work.

An idea came to her and she stopped her absentminded pencil tapping, spitting it out when the rapid ticks finally became apparent to her. There was that one pony in the Daring Do fanon who wrote lots, journaling Do’s various hijinks. What was her name? Stiddlefics!

Sweet Pepper jumped up and pumped her hoof, hissing a quiet yesss before she froze and looked around, making sure there was no random pegasus passing by her second story window who she had disturbed with her noise.

She would write about Stiddlefics writing about the new character! Oh, yes, this was perfect. Now she didn’t need to worry about getting the canon entirely wrong, because she would be writing about the next generation in the current generation.

There was a rush of feathers and parchment while Sweet Pepper shot around her room, looking for a fresh pencil and clean sheet to write on. Supplies in hoof, she swiped all the crumpled pages onto the floor with the rest of the trash and slapped the new page down.

Already the idea was flowing in her head, and her blue eyes focused sharply on the pencil tip, watching as the words streamed from brain to jaw to paper. Yes, this was it. She knew it was the right story to write, because her coat was starting to dry and a blanket of calm was starting to wash over her. It was here, in a quiet room with nothing but the lazy breeze and the scratch of graphite, where she was truly and entirely at peace. If the idea was wrong, she would be fretting, muttering, crying, sobbing, but here! It was perfect.

Stiddlefics happened to be a character that she related to a lot, even though they were not well developed outside of fanon. It was relieving to have her doing the work, and the perspective of the character writing the story and not Sweet Pepper herself somehow made it even easier to write.

The pencil snapped, and Sweet Pepper’s wings shot out in fright, but even this was not enough to slow her down. She gave up on that and grabbed another one quickly, reluctant to lose stride. Normally she would have had to get up and sharpen her old one, but today, today she needed to write!

She needed to be first.