Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Seven (7/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: This is probably the shortest chapter in the story, word-count-wise, and yet it's the one I've spent the most time on in edits (so far). It's such a pivotal chapter that I really felt like it needed the attention. The original version of this, Emma was more emotional rather than angry (actually, my first-draft Emma was a lot more emotional in general, which is something I had to reel in during the editing process) and I ended up adding a lot more inner monologue to the narrative.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Six (6/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: One of the things I really love about the Emma/Mary Margaret dynamic is that Emma's so closed off, but Mary Margaret instinctively knows what she has to do in order to reach her. I've tried to inject that in this chapter, with Mary Margaret wanting desperately to do something but knowing she has to do it Emma's way. Also, Regina is still ridiculously fun to write.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Five (5/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: I wrote the first section of this chapter at 11:30 one night and truthfully, I didn't change it all that much during edits. I mostly added clarifications because whipping something out in twenty minutes at 11:30 pm does not lend itself well to clarity. Trying to get a handle on poor Emma's emotional state after a night like that for the second section was a blast.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Four (4/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: The Regina/Henry dynamic is really interesting to explore, and I'm kind of bummed that the plotting of this story didn't allow me to do more of it. I may have to do a oneshot or two to play around with it a little more. Not that I'm complaining about that, ha.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Three (3/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: This was another fun one but this time the fun came from trying to hit all the appropriate emotional notes. From Mary Margaret's confusion and fear to Emma's panic and anger, it was all kinds of enjoyable.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter Two (2/12)

Title: Breaking Point
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: You have absolutely no idea how much fun this chapter was to write. It kind of frightens me how much fun I have with Regina. She's hard to find but when I do finally find her, she's a blast.

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Writing Challenge: Breaking Point, Chapter One (1/12)

So! I've gotten Writing Challenge to the point that I'm ready to start posting now. Picture me squealing like an ecstatic teenage girl. (No, seriously. You have no idea how fun this was. Or how exciting it is for me to actually be excited about having something to post. No writer's block on this sucker!)

And, yeah, it's fanfic. But it was friggin' fun fanfic. I had a total blast with this story. So, without further ado:

Title: Breaking Point
Fandom: Once Upon a Time
Summary: Emma leaving town was out of the question, and that was perfectly fine with Regina. As a matter of fact, Emma absolutely must stay in Storybrooke for a long, long time. And she knew just how to accomplish that.
Spoilers: Up through 1x19, "The Return."
Characters: Mostly Emma, Regina, and Mary Margaret, with special appearances by Henry, August, Archie, David, and Dr. Whale along the way.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language.
Disclaimer: Once Upon a Time and its characters were created by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz and are owned by ABC. I'm just playing in someone else's sandbox. Please don't sue me! You won't get much.
Author's Note: As with Harper's Island before it, I was most emphatically not going to write Once Upon a Time fic. And then hiatus happened. Mad props to ViciousCircle on the TWoP forums for suggesting the basic plot for this story and to Aliasscape for suggesting someone turn it into a fic. I took it as a challenge. My first time writing in a new fandom is always very nervous-making for me, so feedback is much appreciated. Enjoy!

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Writing Challenge

A little while ago, a couple posters on a message board I frequent suggested a writing challenge. Well, actually, one poster jokingly suggested the plot go a certain way, other posters added to it, and a final poster suggested someone actually go write the fanfic because it sounded awesome. My original response was that I would try it myself save for the crippling case of writer's block I had going on.

But then, as it happened, the challenge got into my head. I started thinking of various ways to go about it but at first it was just flights of fancy. When I began dreaming about it at night, I decided it was time to start seriously thinking about trying to write it.

I had a couple of plot details to work out but I got one bit of inspiration from an earlier episode of the show and a final bit of inspiration out of the clear blue sky. So yesterday afternoon, I went out and bought a new notebook, some new pens, and set to work.

I decided to start on paper because, well, paper is my roots. I always used to start my stories in a notebook and do a bulk of the editing when I typed the story up later on. In more recent years, I've been writing strictly on the computer for a variety of reasons, not the least of which included the ease of transferring the file from home computer to work computer and back again. Plus, I type a lot faster than I handwrite, so it saved a lot of time.

But the big problem with writing on a computer, especially when you have writer's block, is that it's so freakin' easy to just backspace and/or delete if you don't like something. Then you get into a constant cycle of writing and deleting and writing and deleting and you never make any progress. Of course with a notebook, you can certainly white-out, but there's more of a thought process there than just, "Eh, I don't like this. *presses Delete*"

I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening and almost all of today writing. It's not coming out as easily as it used to but it is coming out and I like it a lot better than anything I've written in the past year or so. And more importantly, I am having an absolute blast! It is indeed a challenge, but I'm having a ton of fun attempting to rise to it.

Perhaps this is what I really needed. Something completely new. Something to kickstart the creative juices again. I'll keep y'all posted!

A Small Epiphany, But I'll Take It!

I need to know how to like my own writing again.

I mean, I do like my own writing. I read stuff I've written and I enjoy it. In all honesty, sometimes I forget I even wrote it and just get lost in the story. I'm not looking at it in terms of "this sentence structure is good" and "this dialogue didn't really work the way I thought it would." I'm just ... reading it. Like I would be reading a book I bought at the store.

And then I wonder why I can't do that again. If I could do it three or four or five or whatever years ago, I should be able to do it now.

And yet I can't.

I know that it's me. I'm gripping, and I know that I'm gripping. I totally recognize that what I'm writing doesn't really suck and that I don't really need to just delete everything and start over. As a matter of fact, I was reading over one of the rewrite projects I started and subsequently abandonded because it sucked out loud omg, and it really isn't that bad. I just ... don't like it.

I'm not happy with it. Any of it. Not just The Witch of November, but anything. I start something and I stop. That fanfic I posted a couple weeks ago? That was a rewrite of a rewrite of a rewrite. It took me something like three weeks to get it to where I wanted it, and I'm used to being able to whip short little one-shots like that out in a matter of days.

It is inordinately frustrating.

That all being said, however, I think I came up with a small epiphany for my prologue. I was having trouble hitting the correct emotional notes, partly because I felt it was too heavy to start out the book. Maybe "heavy" isn't the correct word, but the prologue was reading as more depressing than I really wanted it to.

So I came up with the idea of having Lillian totally into the idea of the seance instead of choosing to do one because it was a last resort. That way, the prologue reads are more anticipatory than desperate, which I think will help with the tone issue I was having.

At least, I hope so.

So, y'know, cross your fingers for me.

Oh, and one more quick thing: I've mentioned using the Social Security Administration website to get an idea on popular names in various time periods. I've also found a website that will tell you what day of the week any given date was.

(This all came about because I wanted Millie and Lillian's seance to be held on a Friday in August of 1877. I freely admit that I'm a dork.)

Fanfic: SVU: A Night at Casey's

Title: A Night at Casey's
Summary: What on earth could two well-behaved, lovely kids possibly do to run Casey so ragged? Three minutes later, Olivia found out.
Word Count: 4298, so says Works.
Spoilers: None.
Pairing: None.
Rating/Warning: G. No real warnings to speak of, but you might want to be careful of the saccharine and the silliness.
Disclaimer: Casey Novak and Olivia Benson belong to Dick Wolf and NBC. I borrowed them when they weren't looking, but I promise to return them when I'm done!
Author's Note: Lynn and Stephanie Novak have appeared in "Stalemate", "A Day With the Cole Brothers", and "A Day at the Mall" and are completely un-canon. Since no one ever bothered to give Casey a canon family, I figured I was allowed to give her one myself.
Author's Note 2: I've never really given a strict timeline to this little series of stories, but in my head, "Stalemate" took place in the early part of season six (so, late 2004). The two following one-shots take place about a year and a half later, with "A Day at the Mall" ahead of "A Day With the Cole Brothers" by a couple of months. The following is set during the same year (2006), a few weeks before "A Day at the Mall."
Author's Note 3: This is what is known as a majorly insistent plotbunny. It just lodged itself in my head and would. not. leave until I indugled it. I apologize if this isn't up to my usual standard, but the fact that I like something enough to post is kind of a big deal right now. And finally, the following is ridiculously silly. Have fun!

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Kicking Writer's Block In The Pants

Okay, you remember how I wrote in all my previous posts about various fanfic projects? (It's okay if you don't, because I totally fail at updating this thing.) Yeah, pretend I didn't write those posts, because I never finished the fics.

I'm not entirely sure why. It could be because I'm up to my arse in Writer's Block Argh-ness. (Yes, I just made that up. Stop looking at me like that.) It could be because my fandom tastes have changed. It's very hard to go back and write fic for a fandom you haven't written for in quite literally years.

But this post is not meant to be about fanfic and certainly not about fanfic projects that never got off the ground. This post is about how I maybe possibly am kicking my writer's black in the pants.

I'm not willing to call it conquered yet. But I am willing to let it know that I am finally ready to fight back with all I have.

A huge part of my issue with the beginning couple chapters of The Witch of November is that I just don't like it. How can I expect anyone else to like it when I don't like it?

How did I get to a point where I don't even like my own writing? I don't really know. But I think a large part of it was because I was trying to write it with the judgments of any potential readers who aren't me. Essentially, I was trying to write for some imaginary panel of judges rather than for myself.

The only problem is you have to write for yourself. It just comes out better that way. I have to tell the story in the way that I want to rather than the way I think someone else might want to read it.

So you know what? Screw the imaginary readers. The only reader who matters (at least right now) is me. The more I write for me, the more I'll like what I've written. And maybe then we can get the confidence level back up enough to edit properly instead of deleting things over and over because I think they suck.

Want a snippet? This is what ten minutes with headphones and writing for oneself can do:

If anyone had told Lillian Blackstone a year ago that she’d be standing in her own parlor with an old card table acting as a makeshift altar while Mildred Albertson arranged candles on top, she would have laughed in that person’s face.

She’d been so young then, so naïve. So unaware that her comfortable, blissful life could be taken away in an instant. So unconcerned about the cruel ocean and what it could take from her. Her entire twenty-three years had been spent in a fishing town, but she’d believed that she and Josiah would beat the odds. Their marriage would last forever, immune to the ravages of winter storms and rough seas.

She’d been so stupid.

Life as she knew it ended on November 23, 1876, the night that a sudden storm had claimed the love of her life. After just barely eight months of marriage, Lillian was a twenty-three-year-old widow. For the past three months she’d done nothing but cry for the life she’d never share with her husband.

The day Mildred Albertson stopped by to offer condolences was the day that Lillian’s life had taken another turn. It was Millie who told her that death didn’t mean the end. It was Millie who offered her hope.


See? Much better. We'll just see if I like it this much tomorrow, ha.

You Guys!

I've written! More than one page! And I don't actively hate it!

It's fanfic (SVU, to be precise) and I'm not sure it's really going anywhere, but I'm hoping it'll be a cute little fluffy oneshot when I'm done with it. When I first wrote a story entitled "A Day With the Cole Brothers" I originally intended to make it the first in a small series of stories with Casey, Olivia, and the two Novak nieces (whom I completely made up). I wrote one more and then promptly ran out of ideas.

It wasn't that I didn't have any ideas. It was that all my ideas were very similar to stories I'd already written. Which was lame and so I didn't write them. Well, while I was sitting there at work this week, not really thinking about much of anything unrelated to work, I got a little idea for a new oneshot for the series.

It's really dry so far, but 1) it's not done, and 2) it's the first draft. My first drafts  are always really dry. But I'm cautiously optimistic about this one. I'm actually looking forward to working on it and getting back into the groove again.

And who knows? Maybe I'll post the finished product here!

Writer's Block Is Evil But Not Unconquerable

So. Writer's block. It's a real thing, a real aggravating, maddening thing, and I've written about it a lot. Because it's real and aggravating and maddening, and when you're in the middle of it, writing about it is pretty much the only thing you can do. If you can even get it out. Yes, my friends, it is indeed possible to have writer's block when writing a blog post about writer's block.

Welcome to my life for the last few months.

But lately I've found myself thinking about writing. And not the "I really should be writing"-guilty thoughts, but the "I want to set aside time and write today"-proactive thoughts. And today, I set aside some time and I wrote.

Since the first part of The Witch of November is so messed up, I decided that I'm just going to start over. Not completely, mind you; just until the point where I haven't messed with it a whole bunch of times. You can read what I came up with if you click the jump.

(Disclaimer: the following was written in about 45 minutes and has not been edited. Tomorrow morning, it will be less tempting to gag at it and just delete the whole thing. Breaking out of writer's block requires baby steps, people.)

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The Trouble With Mainlining and Writing at the Same Time

I mentioned in my previous post that I had an idea for a pre-series Supernatural fanfic, one which I hoped would kickstart my creativity again so I could get back to work on The Witch of November. And I also mentioned that this idea came about because I'd been mainlining Supernatural for the better part of a month.

Well, there's been a little unanticipated problem with that: it seems I have been watching too much Supernatural for the idea as I had it to take off. Want to know why? Because Adult Boys have been talking at me for the last month or so, and that's making it difficult for me to find the proper voices for Wee Boys.

Now, don't get me wrong ... I tend to mainline while I'm doing fic. Mainlining is what helps me get the characters right (or as right as I can make them) in the first place. The issue is I've had various seasons of Supernatural on my television for over a month now, and very few of those episodes include flashbacks. Wee Sam and Wee Dean are, apparently, easier to find for me when I haven't been listening to Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles for a month straight.

But this doesn't mean I'm giving up on the fic. Oh no. It just means I have to set it within the series' timeline and make it a casefile fic instead.

Best I can figure, I should set it somewhere in the early part of season three. For story purposes, I need it set at the start of a school year. Season one starts in October/November of 2005, which is too late. The boys are occupied with Zombie Angela in late August/early September in season two. There is a small time jump, though, in season three between "Sin City" and "Bedtime Stories" that could work in my favor.

See? Really wasn't kidding with that "geek" thing.

My Name Is Danielle, and I Have Writer's Block

It's high time that I admit it: I have writer's block.

Like, for real and for serious. This isn't the "Oh, pooh, I'm bored with this story" kind of writer's block. This is the actual "Everything I write sucks and is so stupid omg I hate it all" kind of writer's block.

It's the kind of writer's block where you spend all day struggling to squeeze out a page and a half (web-formatted) and then the next morning delete everything you wrote because it sucks out loud. Which, as you can imagine, is more than a little frustrating.

Okay, it's a lot frustrating. It's tear-your-hair-out, gnashing-of-teeth, rending-of-garments frustrating.

Nothing comes out the way I want and even my tried and true method of the Rewrite Project hasn't managed to help. (I tried, honest, I did! But I got three pages into it and stopped ... because it sucked. See above re: "it's so stupid and I hate it all.")

So where do I go from here? Clearly, just throwing in the towel is not an option. But neither is sitting here writing and deleting and writing and deleting until the end of time. The last time I had a block like this, I broke through it by trying fic for a new fandom. Unfortunately, that is not an option this time, as none of my new shows have fic potential. (I typically need to be overly obsessed with a show in order to attempt fic for it, and I'm not at the omgsquee-supergeek point with any of the newer shows I've been watching.)

I do have a last-ditch effort up my sleeve, though: a vague idea for a new pre-series Supernatural fanfic. Y'see, at the beginning of last month, I attended a fan convention (I wasn't kidding when I said that I'm a nerd) and have since been mainlining the show. Since I've pretty much been eating, sleeping, and breathing Supernatural, the wheels in my head have been turning.

The basic idea (which is pretty much all I've come up with so far) is this: John is on a hunt in some fictional Massachusetts town, and the middle school that Sam starts at is haunted. The boys--Sam, especially--are fairly new at the hunting thing, but Dean recognizes the signs and tries getting a hold of John, but he can't. So he and Sam have to deal with it on their own (with help from Bobby via phone calls, of course.)

Yeah, the reason John's incommunicado is because John is ridiculously hard for me. But so is writing in general right now, so, y'know. Sue me.

Anyway, my plan is to try to start this at some point this weekend. Here's hoping that this 1) works out at all, and 2) gets my creative juices flowing again!

On Gripping and Searching For Talent

I'll admit it: I'm totally gripping here.

I'm trying for a voice I'm not sure I can achieve, and even if I can achieve it once, I'm not sure I can maintain it over the length of a novel. The closest I've ever come to the voice I'm trying for was in a Supernatural fanfic entitled "Corpse Fire," but even that had its moments of adult voice mixed in with the kid voice.

I'm okay with doing the whole thing in that kind of mixture. (Because, really, I kinda like the way that story turned out.) And it would be easier for me, since adult voice is closer to my style anyway.

But my problem is I need a hook. I need something to draw the reader in, I need someplace to start. In the original fanfic version of "The Witch of November," I opened with Allie standing at the fence after Charlie had thrown the Frisbee over it. Since that opening scene was meant to be a teaser--sort of a prologue--I tried to expand it for Chapter One in the novel version. Now I'm wondering if that was a mistake.

I've been reading some of my old stuff over the last couple of days, trying to see where I'm going wrong. I'm not sure I've discovered it yet. I'm not sure I've found my voice. But I have to believe that I will, if only because this feeling of being stuck stinks and the thought of never getting over the hump is terrifying.

And Another Batch of Concrit

Okay, one more time. I think I may have gotten myself a little more on track here, but, as we all know, I tend to think it's brilliant the day I write it and then hate it the following day.

So. This is the new opening to Chapter One. It takes us to the same point where I left off in the previous post, but I think this is a lot less exposition-y and a lot more character-y. Also, keep in mind that I've written this over the course of like, 45 minutes and have not gone back and made things pretty. I'm looking for a general idea, here, because there's no sense in making things pretty if I'm not keeping it.

Previous offering still stands: virtual cookies and my undying gratitude!

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Concrit Please!

And here we go again. Admittedly, this plea for concrit is a touch more important than the previous one. The prologue is meant to reel the reader in, give them just enough background to make them interested but not enough that you give away the entire story. Below, however, is the first page or so (Works page ... I have no idea how many book pages it is) of my first chapter. And this is where I'm having the most trouble.

As I've mentioned before, I'm having issues getting the tone right. The characters here are eleven, and my normal style is more along the lines of what you saw in the prologue. However, the proper, reserved tone that works well for adults in 1877 does not work as well for children in the present day. So I'm trying to adapt a little, make the tone a little more conversational and a little less proper.

What I've come up with so far is below the jump. Please, please give me concrit. I don't have much to offer in the way of rewards, but the offer of virtual cookies and my undying gratitude still stands.  (Also, I realize that Charlie comes across as really annoying here ... he doesn't stay that way. But we're in Allie's head and she's annoyed with him, so ... yeah).

Attention! Concrit Welcome!

(I attempted to do this as a Note on Facebook, however Facebook's paragraph formatting leaves a lot to be desired. Actually, there is a distinct lack of paragraph formatting (at least a lack of paragraph formatting that I can make work ... I try Shift+Enter and I get a line break, not a paragraph break), leading to a giant block of text that makes my eyes swim. So I'm doing it here because Blogger will allow formatting like a normal website. *pets Blogger*)

Anywho, I am about to do something I hardly ever do: offer up my prologue for concrit. Basically, I've been having issues with tone and voice for a long while now, so long that I feel like I can't properly judge the quality of my own writing anymore. (I am indeed my harshest critic ... I tend to think it all sucks. ;)) So! If anyone could read this and offer some concrit, you will get virtual cookies and my undying gratitude.

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Writing Exercise #10

Something a little different this time. Two things:

1) This is a stand-alone vignette, not part of any larger universe. I believe this is the first exercise I've done that is neither fanfic nor somehow connected to The Witch of November.

2) It's in first person, and I very rarely write in first person.

As is typical of the exercises, this was written in like, fifteen minutes.

Prompt: airport
Fandom: original

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The little girl pressed her face against the cab window, watching the city buildings pass by in a blur. “Look, Mama!” she cried, pointing as the cab slowed to a stop at a red light. “I see the airplanes.”

I smiled at my five-year-old daughter, Sophie, and ruffled her dark curls. “I see them, too. And you know what?”

“What?”

“In just a couple of hours, we’ll be sitting on one of those airplanes.”

“And then we’ll be flying with the birds!”

“Exactly. And then, after we fly with the birds for three hours, where will we be?”

“With Mickey Mouse!”

I laughed and even caught the hardened city cab driver smiling to himself at little Sophie’s excitement.

With one watchful eye still on my daughter, I faced forward in the seat and mentally ran through the pre-vacation checklist. Did I plug in the timers? Turn off the computer? Lock the doors? Remember to use up of all the perishables in my fridge?

Check, check, check, and check. Not that I could do anything about it now. The airport loomed large in front of us, and in just a few minutes, Sophie and I would be lugging suitcases--a huge thirty-incher for me and a tiny pink Dora the Explorer one for her--through the corridors and going through security.

Then we’d be flying with the birds for my daughter’s first trip to Disney World.