Every Single Time
Twilight meticulously scrutinised the text before her, painfully aware that she could throw it out in its current condition without it making any real difference to the reception. No one cared if the descriptions were crisp and exploratory, if the characters had nuanced and multifaceted personalities, or even if there was more occurring on beneath the story's surface than was made apparent.
Ponies read her short stories for a quick laugh, little else, and she knew that. Sighing, she flicked back to the beginning of her paper copy of Trixie Narrates Trixie's Own Life and began to write a short description, highlighting the hilarity of the language play used to combine the first and third pony in such strange ways. Well, hilarity by other ponies' standards, at least.
Maybe it was the fact that she had written it, or maybe it was her reasonably high expectations of comedy, but Twilight could rarely elicit more than a vague chuckle during even the first read of one of her 'comedy shorts'. They felt vapid and without substance, yet ponies loved them, fawned over them, giggling and cavorting around in their hysterical frivolity.
Cheap, vacuous humour is all it was. Not the type she'd be remembered for either. Comedians were remembered from shows and sketches, not from short stories and the occasional silly novella. Twilight couldn't name any famous comedy writers off the top of her head, at least. Maybe one or two, but they imbued various complementary elements and distinct genres to mold their stories into something more than just simple, mindless comedy.
But Twilight didn't want to write comedy forever, she knew as she set down her quill and cast her eyes away from the new story as if she was ashamed of it. In fact, she had never planned to write comedy in general. She had realised that while the market for sweeping romances and grand epics was already saturated and heavily contested, comedy was an open playing field, and as such had come into it with the aspiration of building up her reputation, then using said reputation to leap ahead of the other unknown writers that were struggling to get their action-adventure published.
She had built a fairly sizable reputation, and it was clear that ponies enjoyed her stories, but they felt so empty, and they weren't what she wanted to write whatsoever. Ponies complemented her talent at weaving together absurd and humorous scenarios, but with each release—and each subsequent shower of praise—Twilight began to feel as if she was on the receiving end of some cruel joke.
Rising and beginning to walk across the room, she eyed a half-familiar stack of papers on her less frequently used contemplation desk. She felt her back arch as she sat against the wooden chair before it, solid and rigid, and with her magic pulled the stack forwards. There was much more content here than there was in any of her comedy stories, that was a certainty.
It was a full blown novel, perhaps bordering on a doorstopper. It contained a fresh and fastidiously constructed universe, complete with a plethora of completely original characters and an inventive, imaginative story line. It was everything she had ever wanted from writing, neatly arranged in a single, linear story, yet she couldn't publish it.
Not because it wasn't ready to publish. No, this mammoth piece of writing had been checked, edited, and redrafted at least a dozen times since its conception, and two dozen more since its completion. Twilight was fairly experienced by now, and she would challenge anypony to find a single scene that could be reduced, a single sentence that could be tightened, a single plot point that had a hole in it. It wasn't that she thought her work was infallible or perfect in any way, just that she knew that in comparison to her regular output—which was barely ever criticised—this was a masterpiece.
But it would never be published. It was why it had been discarded to the desolation of the least used of her four bedroom desks, forlorn and forgotten, gathering dust. Still, even in the face of painful realism, nostalgia couldn't hurt too much.
Twilight didn't use her magic this time; she took the papers in hoof and brushed away the layer of dust atop the first page, slowly picking up the sizable stack and feeling the weight of it in her forehooves. As a unicorn, she had always considered the use of magic to be a matter of practicality, but it was when she had learnt of sentimental value that she realised magic was utterly impersonal in the face of tangible feelings, whether those were the touch of a lover or the feeling of a fresh, crisp page—she wasn't entirely sure which she preferred of the two.
Thoughts for later. Right then, she was content to slowly flick her hoof through the manuscript, the light slap of papers striking against one another sounding as she moved her way through. Stopping on a random page, she opened the unbound novel and allowed her eyes to trace the smooth curves of her quill writing, slightly faded in places. She didn't take in the words initially, only letting the form of the writing sink in. When she was content with that aspect of the memory, she expanded her focus further, reading a single sentence, admiring the syntax and grammar that had constructed that fraction of her story, the lexis and the voice of the narrator, all strong, all moving.
Expanding further, she began to scour the text in search of wordplay: Similes, metaphors, and the occasional double entendre within the diction contributed to the soft smile forming across her face. It felt as if it was yesterday—writing the scenes, drawing inspiration from her surroundings, conjuring scenarios from her wildest imaginings and lacing them into the plot with practiced care and attention to every detail, however minute.
It was something different to the drivel she published without thought or care these days, something special, yet there was a stigma surrounding it, one that she couldn't shake no matter how she might have tried.
Twilight Sparkle was a comedy writer. Her friends had made that clear, her fans had made that clear, heck, even a couple of magazine articles had contributed to the notion, the fact. Another fact was that comedy writers—and comedians in general—tend not to be respected or taken seriously when expanding from their niche, and as such shouldn't stray from the path they've already outlined for themselves.
In a state of heavy disbelief, Twilight had tested the theory once, in hope that such a label couldn't be so easily applied to her solely for the content she had produced over a short period of time. She released a novella, around a hundred pages long. It was the culmination of weeks of planning, along with months of writing, and as far as she and anyone she asked were concerned, it was brilliant work.
That didn't matter once she had published it, however. What was the problem? It wasn't the negative criticism she was receiving, nor the outcry from fans and readers that she had changed her course, gone against the tide and produced something against the preconceived norm. Rather, it was the lack of criticism, the lack of an outcry, and the lack of, well, anything, really.
Ponies simply didn't read it. It sold half as many copies as her least successful comedy story, it featured in no magazines or publications, yet the incredibly small volume of readers that did pick it up all sung its praises. It hurt Twilight, it really did.
Not that she wasn't grateful to those who had appreciated it, not at all. Rather, it was the issue of her situation, that after so much work and even a significant amount of time built generating hype, the result had been so lacklustre, so disappointing. It was as if ponies didn't appreciate that she had actually put thought and effort into something, rather than just drooling out whatever inane idea had tumbled and crashed into her mind that day. It was the fact that she could toss that stupid Trixie story out of her bedroom window right now and somepony would catch it and sell ten thousand copies.
Wasted time, wasted effort, wasted talent. She had built up her reputation, her alone, so why couldn't she reap the benefits? Why had she created this expectation from others that she could only fill with one thing, and one thing alone? Why was it that no matter how long she spent attempting to make this story perfect, and even after months of knowing
that it was ready, she couldn't bring herself to publish it and risk seeing the same thing happen again, seeing all of her hard work go to waste?
There was a piece of her soul in that story, an iota of spirit. She was offering to share a small piece of herself with her reader, to push forth her true voice and inundate their minds with pure, unchecked emotion. She yearned to share it, but she never could. No matter how she might have attempted to, no one would ever truly appreciate her brilliance. She was a comedy writer.
...And it was about time she came to peace with that. Despite her complaints, she still had success, she still had fans, and she still found enjoyment in writing, even if it wasn't exactly the content she wished to be putting out. There had been fun in writing that silly Trixie story really, even if she didn't wish to freely admit it.
And other ponies would like it. They would laugh at it, and it would brighten their days, and they would feel a little bit happier for having read it. Some of them might even remember it for a little while, even if it was a transient thing. Maybe it wasn't the impact Twilight had anticipated making on the literary world, but it was still a lot really and she was grateful for it.
With that in mind, it was time to go and finish off her Trixie story. Maybe one day she would find the courage to persist in the publication of her most important story, but right now there were other things of more importance to her. Perhaps she might even publish it under a pseudonym, so ponies didn't draw a correlation between the work and the comedy writer trying to step a hoof outside of her field.
But that meant that she would be unable to put her name to it, and Twilight wasn't sure if she was comfortable with that. Scowling, she pushed away the manuscript into the evening shadow of a looming crystal wall, where it sat in solitude as she rose, slowly trotting back over to her waiting work in progress.
Behind her, she spared a glance back towards her magnum opus, which glimmered from the other side of the room like an unearthed gem waiting to be discovered and valued.
There laid her work of art, a novel to defy all conventions and truly captivate its audience, the result of so much time spent writing, thinking, preparing, going over each and every scene in slow, beautiful motions.
It was a shame that Backdoor Alicorn: You Can Be My Teacher would never see the light of day, but Twilight could live with that.
Nopony would want to read that, after all, it wasn't comedy.