Buzzlesnap’s Notebook of the Storyteller

Oh dear. I am writing this two hours before the deadline. Most exciting! But never mind that! Hear me out. Just a week ago I was struck with considerable fortune. An incredible deal that no one will ever believe.

Ah, what a bargain!

I was approached by some merchant. Isn’t it funny how I’m using the word “merchant”? It is a very specific word, but I can’t call this person any other way! Well there he was, looking straight at me, and here’s what he said:

“I can see them in your eyes, stories! So many stories!”.

I know, right? I was as confused as you are now. I was just minding my own business. Is that really the way to start a conversation with a stranger?

“Excuse me?”, I asked.

“Well, of course”, he nodded. “Look no further than Buzzlesnap’s Notebook of the Storyteller”.

He produced a small notebook and handed it to me. It looked just like a normal notebook.

“Ah, but it isn’t a normal notebook, not at all!”, he answered my thoughts. “You see, any ink that touches a page from this notebook will magically transform into an amazing, mind blowing story”.

I smiled. What a joke.

“Oh, it will take your breath away”, he nodded. And he insisted, and then he insisted some more. He just gave it to me for free, can you believe that?

Well I could not care for any of its supposed magical properties. But a free notebook is still a free notebook. So I took it home.

I grabbed my favorite pen, excited to give the notebook a try. Well, to be honest, this happens to any new notebook I own, really. I turn to the last page, although the second to last page works too, and then I write something. Anything! The notebook by itself is just a bunch of paper. No, it isn’t enough, the pen must agree with the notebook too, and the only way to do that is to ruin the end of it with a sentence that makes no sense.

So, pen in hand, that is just what I did.

Will I like this notebook?

Yes, that is really what I wrote. Well, the paper was good. Great texture. But what is that? I was trying to close the notebook when a page came flying out of it. I grabbed it from the floor and inspected it.

Ink! Lots of it. Why, not just ink, but letters, and words! Could this be really a magical notebook?

There was a title at the top. It read as follows: An exciting discovery.

And the story? I was blown away! It was marvelous! I have no words to describe it!

I could not help it. I had to try something else. I almost made a hole in the page. I scribbled Are you serious? as fast as I could, and then attempted to close the notebook. There it was, a new flying story! I quickly read its title: The lackadaisical introspection.

Doubt had a hold of me at this point. What was I playing with? Surely I had to be dreaming. What could be the consequences of such an artifact existing in our very real world? But before I could answer these questions, I was already five lines into this last, amazing story. Oh, it was great! And wait until you hear of the next one. It was called An obvious experiment. The best one yet.

And then inspiration struck. What was I doing, inefficiently producing stories at such a slow pace? How naive. I grabbed a nearby bottle of ink and casually dropped its contents on quite a few pages. I marveled at the twenty or so pages that sprouted from the notebook to fall on the floor.

Some of the best ones were found here.

Vintage suit. Ha! A classic.

The murder that could not be. An extremely smart locked room mystery that I could never write in a million years.

Refining the raw. Great fiction! But, hold on. Could it be?

I decided to put a crazy idea to the test. Again I scribbled on a new page, but this time I wrote one of the titles from the previous stories. What a great idea! The story that was produced, A search with no end, was ten times better than the other ones!

And so I jotted, and scrawled, and I did so with haste. I wrote and wrote, each time using the previous material to generate a new, shinier gem.

My breathing was irregular. The small room was now full of pages. I was literally surrounded. As I moved my hand, trying to get on my feet, I found I was holding to one of the pages.

Unsolved mysteries.

How did this thing work anyway? There were hundreds of pages everywhere, but the notebook was still intact with all of its pages in place.

Memories behind me.

What was I trying to do in the first place? I just wanted to write a simple story to participate in a contest. That’s all I had in mind.

The careful admission.

It didn’t have to be a great story, anyway. My writing could have used some training. And writing short stories is a great way to do that, isn’t it?

No hope to be found.

I stumbled on a particularly tall stack of paper. I knew I could not stop making new stories. Each time I reached the end of one, I was devoured by curiosity: what would the notebook create next? I could not resist.

I almost gave up. I was lying down, looking at the ceiling, with mountains of paper threatening to suddenly fall down on me. But instead, only a single piece of paper left one of the peaks to slowly land on my face. The title was staring me in the face: The simple way out.

Come to think of it, I had just lived an extraordinary experience, didn’t I? Did it not deserve to be told? And tell it I did.

Oh dear. The deadline is upon me. Better finish up. Most exciting!