The Steph Bug: a new Bree novella

Fear not, this post is spoiler-free.

So, my brother Mike was pleased to inform me that Steph is sending her latest Twilight novella to be available late June.

Mike knows more about Twilight current events than I do.

(One could actually see the waves of pleasure emanating from him as he reported this item of news.)

Upon hearing this news, I was so pleased and so sad.

I was so pleased, because if anybody needs her story told, it is Bree (the newborn spared by the Cullens in the final battle with Victoria in Eclipse, but then ...), and, as Twilight and Midnight Sun has shown, Steph has a way of writing that inspires others to write (case in point: the gajillion twilight fan-fiction stories out there on ffn, etc).

But I was so sad, too. So sad for Steph. Because of this: I've got the writer's bug bad.

When my muse attacks me, she is mercilessly vindictive, she won't let me rest until I write that piece she's screaming in my face to write. I can't not write that piece, because when I don't my life becomes more and more wretched. I've got the Marcus chapter of my story 13ways on hold now for half-a-year. It's been plaguing me every day. I've started in on the third chapter of "Her Transformation." It's more than a week now, but it just hurts, more and more, and, scarily, less and less (I feel the dulling and the numbing of my will) each day my mind turns to it, ... and then turns away.

It hurts me, almost physically, to keep a piece bottled up inside, and the only way to ease that pain is the publish the thing.

Case in point. The next night of msr. Please, don't remind me. I know exactly what happens. I know why. All I have to do is write it down. After I write the day. After I write the ...

sigh

So I'm sad for Steph for this reason.

Ever since she wrote those pages in Eclipse, she's been thinking about Bree, hasn't she? You have ... I know you have. Some of you even went on to write stories about her. So there's Steph, burning with this for years, until now it's published.

Whew! Glad that torture's over with, eh?

But if only it were so easy. MSR. What has it inspired in me? All my other stories. What has it inspired in others? Some of their stories.

What will Bree's story do to Steph, now that it's out there? Has she now been expiated? I hope so, for her sake, but given my experience with writing msr ...

So I'm sad for Steph, because by writing this world of Twilight, she infected me, and others, with this writers' bug. But, as the publication of the Bree novella shows, it appears she's been infected as well.

Poor Steph!

... and poor me! The Bree novella to come out in June? How can I wait all that time?

You: maybe by writing and publishing that next chapter of msr?

Um, thank you for not reminding me.

sigh