The Princess

One day, I got a hankerin to write a fairy tale. ‘Cuz gosh– could anything be more enjoyable than that? In about the same mental breath, I decided that a fairy tale as a baby gift for Erin would be the perfect way to do it, so I went to work on a plot.

Now, I have to say, plotting is not the easiest thing. (Well, ever, for me. But especially in this case.) Thinking back to traditional fairy tales.... you’ve got Cinderella whose mom dies and what does she get as her consolation prize? An evil family. Or Snow White who almost gets killed, then has to go into witness protection with short guys. Rapunzel whose mom is so mean she locks her up in a tower until she gets so desperate for company that she resorts to letting just anyone who happens by pull her hair with their entire body weight. Sleeping Beauty, who goes comatose for so long her muscles would surely have atrophied, leaving her a crippled invalid (they forgot to mention that part in the story).

And it goes on and on.... My point is, none of those things are the type of thing you can put in a fairy tale about a little girl still cuddled unborn in her mother’s stomach, and then give to her mother. I mean, who wants to hear that their baby grows up to be kidnaped or her family destroyed? No one I know. So, the conflict in the story couldn’t be life / limb / family threatening. It had to be something that, while unpleasant to watch your child have to deal with, isn’t terrifying.

I kinda liked Erin’s story being realistic. A plot that was not only possible, but probable, just put to fairy tale language. Which, I have to say, is dang fun to do! You just can’t get that flowery with normal stuff. (And as I wrote this, I suddenly had a vision that I could be writing the most un-fairy-tale-like story ever written, and Tammy and Kellie would probably still appreciate flowery descriptive prose. Thanks for that, btw.) But, fun as fairy tale language was to write, it was so much more difficult! Word choice makes an amazingly huge difference. Just because a word, by definition, fits exactly in the spot it's needed, doesn't mean it sounds right in that particular sentence. The whole story was 4,000 words, and probably took as long to write as something four times that size.

So, about the plot-- here’s how that went down. I got help. A lot of help. Erin, you so conveniently wrote a post on your blog (if memory serves, it was titled "The Ocho") listing your eight favorite qualities of Mark. He so conveniently followed that up with a list of his favorite qualities in you. I just took those lists, paired them up with a quality from each of you, and let that drive the plot. I could have come up with my own list of Erin qualities I love plenty easily enough, but something just isn’t quite right about coming up with qualities I appreciate about a guy when that guy isn’t closely related to me. So, thanks for doing it for me, Erin.

The wicked witchling just happened to fit so well as the antagonist. It was a conflict that could use all of the qualities Ruby will probably inherit from her parents to solve, and it didn’t tread on the risking life / limb / family thing. And it’s more than easy to imagine that the female offspring of Mark and Erin would be beautiful, smart, hard working, focused, patient, thoughtful, helpful, fun, have a love of exercise, betters herself, shows faith in others, and is a good leader.

Well, there you have it. The origins of The Princess. Erin, I hope you liked it well enough to someday read it to your daughter when she gets the urge to dance around in her nightgown while wearing a princess crown.