Beyond Happily Ever After

I tend to write in cycles. I will spend a couple years working on a novel, all the while I come up with great ideas for short stories and poems. When I am done with the novel, the editing begins. I do not like editing, so I take all those ideas for short stories and poems and write them in between editing. When I run out of ideas for short stories, it is time to start on another novel.

I did NaNoWriMo, wrote a novel that happened to be a month after my gushing river of ideas for short stories turned into a trickling stream. A month is not a long enough time to come up with a billion ideas, so my trickling stream was a dry bed.

Through most of December I did absolutely nothing. No writing what so ever.  I could not go on like this! It would take a while for story ideas to build up. If I do not wait for them to build up I write maybe once every couple months, and that makes be depressed. So...I figured another novel was in order.

The last week of December I kicked around the idea of a fantasy set in a world inspired by an old west feeling. I thought this was so incredibly original. Who has ever heard of a fantasy set in the old west? Then I found Rapunzel's Revenge, which is basically a fantasy set in the old west. True, it is a graphic novel, but I can no longer claim to be the first who thought up the idea of an old west fantasy. Ah, well.

I wrote half of the first chapter to the old west fantasy, titled The Magic Thief, by the way, (and would you know it? Someone took that title right out from under me. I thought of the title for this story before the book of the same title came out.) For some reason though, I was not feeling it.

Typically, I have to carry an idea for a novel around in my head before I can write it. The plot, idea's, and characters need to be nearly complete before I can put them down on paper. I still make changes to those things as I write as I feel the need, but the major things need to be already formed. Until then, I find myself unable to write more than a couple of pages.

I had, had this idea of The Magic Thief for quite a while now, a couple years at least. Nevertheless, I could not get pas the first chapter. I really would like to get back to it sometime, but the whole world is still only half formed in my mind.

Then, not really thinking it would go any where, I started writing a novel I had given the title, Beyond Happily Ever After. I have had this idea for a shorter time than The Magic Thief, so I was not really expecting it to work. Then bam, we click, and I am well on my way to writing another novel. Why this one works so much better than The Magic Thief, I cannot really say. Perhaps the world of Beyond Happily Ever After is simpler, so I can imagine everything in it better. Maybe it is something else. Either way, that is what I am writing right now.

The synopsis is rather long, be fore-warned.

Beyond Happily Ever After begins with the author, a person named Alex Quilan, (the name may change, as I kind of took the last name of Quilan from a character in my sister's, KatySue, book,) talking. When Alex Q. narrates, he speaks in the first person and as if he is giving a monologue to someone right next to him. The story begins with.....

So…a fairytale. That can't be too hard. Right? Surly I can bang one out. They are so inartistic any moron should be able to write one. There are no descriptions besides how beautiful the heroine is, or handsome the hero is, and how ugly the villain is. The personalities are carbon copies of each other and are simple and flat. The dialog is tiresome and jumpy. Last but not least, the plot is scrapped together from the refuse and left over from stories that only act at being original. I should be able to write one then, shouldn't I?

The real problem though, is not that I cannot write one, it is that I do not want to write one. It is obvious from the glowing description that I gave fairytales before that I am head over heels in love with them. Yet, that is what my publisher demands of me.
 
It continues in much the same way until the narrator writes the actually fairy tale. So the 2,500 word fairytale is written, the ending words being the old-as-time phrase, "...happily ever after." Yet, the author feels slightly unaccomplished.....

Wow, that was so amazing, so epic, so unlike anything I have ever done before…so un-fulfilling. What was that? Can I really do no better? That was worse than even the most cliché, predictable, and boring fairytales ever! Well, that is what my publisher will get.

Though, it might be fun to add a bit more. Give this tale a little twist, you know? I will have to be careful and not fall into any of the clichés fairytale parodies have acquired. One of the largest being the prince always ends up being a jerk. Why is that?
Anyhoo…

The author then continues the storied only to suddenly be torn out of his stride, and hit a solid wall of writer's block. So solid, it almost seems unnatural...

Wait, what's, what's happening? Ow, it was going so well, I wasn't even really trying. The story was just coming. Ow, why does my head hurt so muc?. Ugh, my fingers are suddenly stiff. Good thing I can go back and correct my mistakes, otherwise this paragraf would be full of misstaks. Still, it is so odd, I can't explain it.

Ow.

I should just stop. There really is no need for going on. I will just be submitting the fairytale anyway, no need to finish it. Besides, already I have fallen into a fairytale parody cliché. But…then again. It did just seem to flow out of me. Honestly, I'm really interested in it now. But I have such a huge metal block right now. Before it was like a saw it all so clearly, but now it is almost unnatural how hard it is to write anything.


Never the less, the narrator struggles to enter into the story once again, only to stumbled on a scene where nine people are sitting around a triangular table, and all of them are glaring at him.
 

Wow, it's not every day images I make up are so clear. Seriously. It feels like I can almost touch this scene inside my head, and it came from nowhere. It is an old battered room, there is just enough room for a table and for nine  people to sit at it. It's a triangle, and there are three people at each edge. The walls have some sort of weird wall paper, or they're molding. No, wait, they are bookshelves. The whole walls from top to bottom are made of book shelves. There are no doors. Only book shelves and the ceiling. Oh! There is no ceiling. The books shelves just go up forever and ever......

..... After all, the image is remarkably clear and it would be a shame to waste it. I can keep this scene in la-la land until I find a suitable story to find it in.

"You will do no such thing."


That was a man. Younger, than the lady, perhaps forties? No older than forty-eight, yet he is bald. Shiny head. And, oddly reminiscent of the sixties. Are those bell bottoms? And they're khaki.


"You shouldn't even be here."


I'm confused. It's almost like I don't have any control to what happens.


"This is because you don't," the sixties man says, sitting back down in his chair with a sigh. "And would you stop narrating everything I do. It's annoying."


They call themselves the FairyTale Council, and any fairytale written must first go through them, before the author can set them down. Usually they do not bother to contact authors, but for some reason, they do not want Alex Q. to finish writing this particular fairytale.....