I started a new story yesterday, wrote just under 500 words. Today I added to it and the total is 1700 (so far, I do want to write more before I go to sleep). It’s not a quick little thing, it’s going to be somehwat lengthy. In fact, the possibilities are endless and I found myself wishing today was November 1 because this story sounds like it could be a lot of fun to make into a novel. So I’ve decided to make this a novel that I can work on in October, take a break for NaNoWriMo to work on the other novel, and then after that’s done I will work on finishing this. And hopefully by December 31st I will have two novels done and ready for extensive editing.

This one, what I have so far, starts with a girl at school. She is a total outcast and likes it that way. She even goes out of her way to make sure she doesn’t get close to anyone. When she gets home we find that her room, all the walls, are painted to be a fairyland full of wonder. As she is about to touch up the bark of a redwood in a corner, the painting starts to come to life in a two dimensional way. The redwood, Quincy, can talk, and he tells her that the rainbow above her bed is fading. She walks across the room to inspect and finds that to be true. The violet is almost gone, while the red is still vibrant. She touches the red and is suddenly drawn into the painting, shrinking and growing her own fairy wings! She decided that since she painted this world, she knows all there is to know, and she has nothing to fear. But she doesn’t know how to get out, so she decides she must talk to Quincy. Only now he’s not a few steps away, it’s going to be a long adventure.

Possibilities are endless for this. Why is the rainbow fading, and what will she have to do about it? How can she get back home? And what the heck is her NAME? (Thus far she is known only as “she” and “her” and I haven’t decided when her name will come out… I’m thinking it could be an important plot point much later.) I plan to draw on my college education for this, which means looking for my class notes on the classical quest story, the hero, etc. There will be an evil something (ogre? witch?) that she must battle in some way, one that lurks deep within the fairyland that she didn’t paint but that exists there nonetheless.

In some ways I suppose I envision this will be something like “The Farthest Away Mountain” by Lynne Reid Banks, at least in spirit.