Once upon a time, in a land far, far away.

That's how you have to start if you want a story to be any good. No one ever had any luck with "Just last week and around the corner." Maybe temporary success, in a "no-shit-I-was-there" kind of way, but that's not enduring. Much less endearing.

Which is not to say that Once Upon A Time needs to be a long time ago. It doesn't. Just... something nebulous. It's vague enough that the listener or reader can imagine it being whenever they want it to be.

(When I was little, I imagined Once Upon A Time was a really long time ago. Like maybe fifty years. Practically dinosaur time.)

In A Land Far, Far Away. It can't be where we are, because nothing magical or interesting ever happens where we are. If it did, we wouldn't be bothering with listening to stories, would we?

It's got to be far away. Where they have castles. Or flying carpets. Or strange beasts. Or something that isn't everyday humdrum.

(When I was little, Far Far Away was in New York, because that was the furthest I'd ever been. My uncle and aunt lived there, in positively the coolest house I'd ever been in - it had three stories and a basement - I'd never seen a basement before, living, as we did, right at sea level and on the coast, and you don't build a basement below the water table unless you're some kind of moron, which my dad wasn't, because I wasn't a teenager yet. In the basement was a trunk of dress-up clothes. My favorite was a harem-girl outfit in pink and purple gauze, with sparkly sequins. There were also coloring books and a box of fluorescent-colored crayons, but I mostly ignored those once I'd learned that they did not, in fact, glow in the dark.)

Mind you, I'm pretty happy with my life. I've got a great husband, and an adorable little girl (who today is wearing her "pirate bear" outfit, but I did not lunge for the camera quite fast enough when she decided to put four of her five plastic necklaces around her neck at once and thus capture the picture of the Littlest Pirate all loaded down with her booty and swag) and a job I don't hate and a car that runs.

But every now and then, when the baby wakes up early and is cranky and things are kind of boring and humdrum at work, I do some daydreaming.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away.

--Liz