It begins, #2

My fanfiction writing was just for me. I want my NaNo novel to be a little bit closer to something other people would want to read. Yes, a lot of it is going to be crap. But at the very least, I'd like the story to appeal to be people.

That's why I'm stealing the story from someone else!

In college, about a year and a half ago, I read a book called The Monk. It's one of the most famous gothic novels ever, and it's awesome. Sex, violence, weird ghost stories . . . everything you could possibly want in a piece of assigned reading for an English class.

I really loved this book, and I don't know why. It's probably the only time in my whole undergraduate career that I read about 300 pages of an assigned novel in just one sitting.

So I'm taking the basic framework of The Monk and adapting it to a more modern setting, and to more modern themes. I'll be discussing and debating the details of this process in my posts for the rest of this month.

I'm really happy with my decision to take someone else's basic story and modify it and rewrite it. It removes a lot of the stress of planning, and allows me to focus on just writing something. Plus, I know that I've read some version of the story and liked it. That makes me feel like I'm doing something right, on some level.