"Mother of me..."
--Princess Celestia

Good news: After 1 7/8 days of nothing, I finally had an idea!

You can probably guess the bad news...

>>CoffeeMinion
Ooohhh. I see. Neat!

>>Bachiavellian
>>Moosetasm
I mean, it's a moderately common two-word phrase, but it'd be off the charts crazy if another person submitted it, let alone two.

Uhhhh... my prompt already has three votes. Is that normal?

I have an incomplete idea for a story, but... it's just not there. And I could strip it down to 750 words, but the pacing would be absolutely murdered. I don't see myself getting anything in this round. Good luck to those who do!

The show my theatre school was running just ended, so I'm finally free on a Saturday! Is this the round I finally get back into the Writeoff?

>>Soft Sticks

Hey, unless I've seriously missed something, there's no way to DM on the Writeoff site. How can I contact you? Are you on Discord?

Aw fuck. Was that today?

Well, I was way over the limit anyways. Fml as usual, I guess.

I've finally gotten back into writing. Published my most recent chapter a couple weeks ago. looks at Writeoff schedule, looks at personal schedule. I don't know. This is the busiest week of the semester so far, but I'll try.

Well, work happened. Know what didn't happen? Pony writing. I'm off Monday, but I'm afraid that doesn't count for anything.

My sleep schedule plus my work schedule leaves a very messy few hours scattered here and there but we'll see.

Noooooooo! I missed prompt submissions! rip "Slice of Writeoff." (even though this is technically round 101 and not 100)

The streams shall run in gladness
The lakes shall shine and burn.
All sorrow fail and sadness
At the Mountain-King's return.

Thank you all for your reviews! This idea actually came to me a while back when I was more active in Writeoff. Almost everything about how I thought that story would go changed dramatically since then, but the core idea--crystal ponies isolated from the Crystal Empire when it was banished--remained. To this end, I was influenced by the company of dwarves in The Hobbit, a group in exile from their home. Yet it wasn't until recently that I discovered a song that fit. The songs I'd already heard had too much agency to fit with this particular story. The one I found speaks more of a longing to be home than a drive to recapture it. This was the song that played as I wrote my story:

The King Beneath the Mountains by Clamavi De Profundis

(P.S. It's also a fan-made song using a poem by Tolkien that the movies didn't use.)

>>TitaniumDragon >>Foehn

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed.

>>Bachiavellian >>Baal Bunny >>Pascoite

Thanks for the feedback. Definitely a lot to think about.

Two major things I want to improve:

having Celestia appear in disguise and then almost immediately reveal herself

and

What's Celestia's aim here, though?

Firstly, Celestia is canonically a terrible actress, and her act crumbles rather quickly. This was deliberate. There's some light foreshadowing in there

“M-my name is G-golden Ray,” she answered, shivering. Lapis hadn’t noticed her shivering a moment ago.

(heck, even her fake name itself--a golden ray of sunlight) but i guess not enough.

Secondly, this is set after 1) the Empire's banishment and 2) Luna's banishment.

“A vigil through--the night...”

Again, too subtle. Also, the aucience didn't know this was Celestia yet (though suspicions may have been there), and could have overlooked day/night clues which would have stood out like a sore hoof had Celestia's identity been revealed by this point.

I said two, but now you're here. So let's do three.

Individual tongues of fire appeared and disappeared, and much more quickly than the colored leaves had done months ago. ...

He sipped and swallowed, and felt momentarily warm. ...

He caught himself starting to smile, but allowed the feeble feeling to fade.

Somewhere along the line, I forgot that I was going to try and incorporate a theme. Actually, it seems to be about the middle of the story when the couple gets their visitor that the theme gets shoved to the back burner. Nobody even commented on the theme, instead wondering why the first half was so long. For those keeping score, that's Subtlety: 3, Author: 0. I'm not sure whether to abandon the theme entirely or rework it and bring it into the forefront.

But yeah. Definitely gonna send this over to FimFiction before too long. I've got some cut content sitting just below the body of the fic in the word doc, and I've got a pretty good idea for another scene that will go at the end, plus some general polishing of the ending half/third of the fic. Once again, thanks to all; Happy Hearth's Warming and a Happy New Year!

Woooooo! I did a thing! Wasn't soon enough, but at least I'm writing again.

I've forgotten what it's like to enjoy writing. I've left my most recent story on "incomplete" for months, and there's a similar gap between that chapter and the one before it.

So I've come back to where I started.

Funny how life works...

>>Dubs_Rewatcher Lord of the Writeoff: The Prose Towers

Hey look. It's that group I wrote for a few times and pretend to still write for. Let's hope my propensity for procrastinating doesn't screw me over again.

>>007Ben
Aw, horse feathers. Found myself asleep at my laptop this morning. Betrayed by my own body. Apparently I need sleep...

Sleep? Sleep!? Who needs sleep? Sleep is for the weak! Why sleep when you could write horsewords!?

...

What are you talking about? I am completely fine! :pinkiecrazy:

>>Baal Bunny
I thought NaNoWriMo was last month...

>>Baal Bunny
Yup. Been there.

>>Trick_Question
Forgive me for setting the bar low, but if I can muster up the motivation to write, it's a good day in my book.

That awesome moment when the prompt fits your preplanned idea. I'm quickly running out of excuses for not putting forward something good this round.