Bad as Twilight

While cleaning up some notebooks in my home office, I came upon a black binder with lots of organized paper. I thought it was an old college reader with articles of educational importance. But upon opening this notebook, I found an old "novel" I had written when I was in high school.

I have to confess: I was into that whole vampire thing during my junior year, but my nocturnal fix was satiated by the great Anne Rice and the original Bram Stoker. I loved the mythology that they created to give their vampires a believable human quality: morality and love. There is a beautiful irony about an evil creature who can be moral. People are like that, too: evil by nature because we are selfish, but trying so hard to be good and resist the temptation to engage in selfish acts. That was the fascination I had with vampires: their reflection on humanity, when they themselves are not considered human.

As I read my old high school novella, I cringe at the vampire I created, a dark creature wallowing in grief and guilt over sins she commits. It's so emo that I'm ashamed to say that I wrote this crap. I was no Anne Rice or Bram Stoker. At age seventeen, my writing was comparable to Stephanie Meyer. Yes... my writing was that bad.

The philosophical irony that I tried to embody only eluded me. I really should rewrite this novel. After a decade, I think my writing has obviously matured. And I know I can do better: I'm older and wiser, and I've seen much more of this irony that humans have.