My Writing Life: Zombies and Love

I am one of those people who is always working on their first novel. I've gone through bursts of creative energy where I will be able to come up with a concept and a couple of chapters, but then the story dies. Last night I began the first story that I will actually complete, one which will probably become a novella about zombies. I am confident that I will finish because I promised it as a gift to my bibliophile boyfriend (aren't they the best kind?)

Why zombies? It's a matter of taste. I like books like John Green's Looking for Alaska where the manic pixie dream girl makes the lead character come alive and then dies. I don't know why, but whenever I come up with a concept for a story one of the main characters is going to die in the most dramatic way I can think of. My boyfriend likes stories about love and archetypical goodness, the kind that end up being made into Lifetime Original Movies. He also likes fantasy/sci-fi, but I had read so many of these kinds of stories by the time I graduated high school I felt I was reading the same story over and over again. So why zombies? I could make them (theoretically) hilarious.

The rules of writing zombie stories are simple and finite. Zombies are undead, they like brains, kill in mobs, and can only be (reliably) killed via head shot. The rest is up to me. I added some inside jokes by setting the story at our extremely rigorous college, ensuring that it wouldn't be like anything he had read before and I would not feel like I had stolen the story. Like John Nash, I seek to work on an "original idea."

The story began as some funny, scary, Zombieland-ish tale, but luckily I have found room to ask deeper questions. The lead character, George, is an overworked computer science student who has little care for what goes on outside his academic bubble. When he is saved from mugging by a lone wolf-like zombie, all he cares about is getting his homework back instead of for his safety from the murderous creature that lurks in his neighborhood. As the story progresses, I have openings to talk about the ethics of experimenting on people and weather or not George's inability to empathize with the victims (he goes on the hunt so he can get extra credit) makes him just as much of a monster as the zombies. I could also just keep it light and go 6th Sense by making everyone on campus a zombie in search of brains without them being aware of it.

Hopefully my boyfriend will enjoy this story and it will be the first of many that I actually finish.