The Writing Bug

I've been bitten by the writing bug again, after it's been laying dormant for the last 10 years. Ever since I was a kid, I've been writing stories, entered a few in the Young "Arthur's" Contest (as I called it), never won any of the contests though. All through high school and the first part of college, I was working on a novel, and I wanted to be a writer for my career. Then, somewhere along the line, I realized that I didn't have anything unique or better than average quality to write about. So I stopped writing. If I'm going to write, I want to write something better than your dime-a-dozen mass market paperbacks, novels written using a computer template, where the only thing that changes is the character names, the locations, and minor details. (Not that they had computer templates 10 years ago, but you know what I mean.)

But then a week ago, the writing bug bit me again, hard. I was up in the middle of the night, writing because my thoughts wouldn't leave me alone. It's the same theme as the novel I was working on before, essentially it is the same novel because I never got past the first chapter in all those years that I *was* writing. Just kept re-writing the first chapter over and over.

Anyhow, now I actually have a plot in mind. I know where this story is going, I know what it's purpose is, I am more mature now, so hopefully the story will reflect that, be more realistic and honest, and thus better. When I started writing a few days ago, I started writing it as a novel. I let my sister read the page and a half I completed, and she commented that it was very outward looking, I wasn't writing from inside the character's heads. The conflict of my story is the main character against herself, and so for this to work as a novel, I really need to be writing from inside the main character's head. But then I realized that what had woken the writing bug up was a couple of movies I watched back to back. (Cursed and Underworld) And I figured since it was the movies that ignited my writing passion again, it probably should be a movie script that I'm writing and not a novel at all. So the last couple of nights, I've tried writing it as a psuedo-script, as if I were watching a movie, and I was surprised at how smoothly and easily the scenes evolved. And I've unexpectedly found a couple of gentle and humorous moments. I'm really enjoying writing the story, this time around. I'm enjoying it a lot, the writing process is creating joy and inner peace. Happy! I just hope when it's finally finished, after all the re-writes and editing, that it is something unique and good quality, and not just another bad carbon-copy of something that's already been done. I think it will definitely be unique, but I'm not convinced it will be good quality, (meaning it will make an interesting, thought-provoking, and entertaining story.) I will strive to create that, but in the meantime, I'm just enjoying the process. :-)