Writer’s Block
By Game-BeatX14
The back office of the Wonderbolts headquarters was quiet, save for the occasional click-clacking of hooves on a single computer keyboard. Soarin stared at his monitor through half-lidded eyes, feeling a wave of dread wash over himself. It was now 4 AM, and he was barely halfway done with his assignment. He groaned out loud, feeling increasingly tired and frustrated as he worked alone in the dimly lit room. It didn’t help that he was getting hungry too, and the snack cabinet was empty. But the more he tried to push ahead and keep working, the more his morale declined.
“Ughhh… Celestia help me, why can’t I finish this thing?!”
Spitfire had tasked him with creating a flyer for the upcoming Wonderbolts stunt show next week. It wasn’t his favorite part of the job, but they didn’t have the budget to hire professional graphic designers. While Soarin was no expert in this field, he was at least skilled enough to throw promotional material together when necessary to help the team out. It only required pictures and text, nothing that he couldn’t format with basic software.
Except today, he just couldn’t do it... The tri-fold pamphlet needed to have lots of descriptions. It was crucial to hype up the event, give short biographies of all the team members, and provide a list of local amenities for passing tourists. He had plenty of photos to add, but they only took up about a third of the space. The rest had to be words.
Just words. Too many words for his brain to think of right now...
He tried to type basic sentences, but kept misspelling everything. The auto spell-checker highlighted every other sentence, taunting all of his efforts with big red underlines until he fixed them.
Teh Wonderbolts aim to perforn an excitng show for ponies of all ages. Bribg the whole famikly to ab experiencr you’ll never forget!
He hated that sentence. Even ignoring his atrocious, sleep deprived spelling, it felt so dull and generic. He quickly backed up and fixed the mistakes, but it didn’t seem to help at all. The content itself was flat out boring. Flyers were supposed to be cool and exciting! This wasn’t going to cut it… He deleted the whole paragraph and started over, but had absolutely no idea where to go from there. All he could do was rephrase the same thing with slightly different words.
The Wonderbolts are Ponyville’s most elite flight team. Composed of many talented stunt performers, they aim to put on a show you won’t experience anywhere else!
No… This was still awful. He needed something with a bit of excitement and prose, but nothing came to mind. After another few minutes of failed attempts at progress, he gradually lost motivation to continue writing. Soarin sighed, put his head down on the desk and closed his eyes. He just wanted this to be over with so he could sleep. But it needed to be done by 8AM, or they wouldn’t have time to mail them out. He tried to remind himself of how urgent this task was, but it didn’t stop him from zoning out for a few seconds at a time. His head felt like it weighed a million pounds, after hours of staring at a screen and typing. But suddenly, he heard the door creak open, and a familiar voice immediately entered his ears.
“Soarin? What are you doing here so early in the morning?”
The tired stallion sighed. He forgot that Spitfire sometimes came to the facility hours before anypony else to begin her training regimen.
“Well, I never left last night... Sorry, but I’m having trouble finishing this stupid thing! It’s like my brain is running into a brick wall. Will ponies think this is interesting to read at all? Will they think it’s lazy that I reused a lot of the same photos of the team? Will they-”
Spitfire gently put a hoof on his shoulder and cut him off mid-sentence.
“Soarin, calm down... It’s just a flyer. Like, of course you should try to make it good, but ultimately, most ponies don’t care that much. They’ll probably just skim through it and move on. Seriously, don’t overthink it.”
Soarin looked up at her, feeling surprised at how gentle she was being compared to her usual strict self, especially considering the tight circumstances.
“You really think so?”
She nodded in affirmation.
“Yeah, nopony even saves these things except for really eccentric fans who collect memorabilia. Ninety-nine percent of them will end up in the garbage, I guarantee it.”
Soarin frowned, feeling rather depressed by her statement.
“I mean, is that supposed to make me feel better, that all this work will go to waste?”
Spitfire looked rather taken by surprise.
“What? No, of course it won’t go to waste... The promotional stuff is all part of the experience! Ponies just need a reference guide to bring it all together and have a good time. My point was that it doesn’t need to be perfect.”
Soarin perked up a little bit. He was starting to feel better, but the stress of the whole ordeal still weighed on his mind. The ticking of the clock on the wall seemed to get louder with every passing moment.
“Spitfire, I appreciate you putting things into perspective for me, but I really need to get back to work. I only have four hours left to get this done…”
Spitfire seemed to brush his stress aside, and gently pushed his rolling office chair away from the desk.
“Don’t worry about it, you’ve worked hard enough. I’ll finish typing up the rest and get them all printed out for you.”
Soarin got up from his chair and rolled it back to her so she could sit down.
“Are you sure? I promise I can still get it done, so you can focus on training.”
Spitfire rolled her eyes and chuckled.
“Soarin, you were already about to fall asleep when I came in here. Please, go home and get a few hours of rest while you can. I really appreciate your work ethic, but it wasn’t my intention to put so much stress on you. Honestly, it’s my fault for making you do so much extra stuff just to save a few bits.”
He smiled, realizing that his boss wasn’t always as brash and ruthless as she seemed.
“Thanks, Spitfire.”
“No problem. Now go head home, or else I’ll carry you back there myself.”
Soarin felt a wave of relief as he trotted towards the door at the opposite end of the room. It had been a while since he last walked away from a responsibility like this, but in the current moment a little break to clear his head was all he needed. However, before he could leave the room, Spitfire called back to him.
“Oh, and by the way Soarin… The parts you finished are pretty good! It’s a solid basis for an interesting advertisement, and you’ve got the right format going. I just need to run it through spell check though, because holy flippin’ feathers, that’s a lot of red lines!”