Guys, I just finished watching "Fifty Shades of Grey" after a rather long hiatus (not intentionally, I just haven't gotten around to it) and I'm once again blown away by the moving nature of the story. The characters I've fallen in love with: Ana, who I feel so close and so attached to and who reminds me so much of me. Kate, who represents any best friend I ever had – always more sophisticated, more charming, and more social than me, but loving my awkward self just the same. Ana's mom who seems like the mom I always wish I had. And of course, Christian, who I hate and love to pieces all at the same time; who put me into such a huge mind fuck in the first book that I almost threw the damn thing into the fire.
E.L. James is a bad writer – fine whatever. The bottom line is, she has created characters that are beyond unforgettable. I've never felt so much passion for a character that I started a story absolutely despising. This is the epitome of good writing, IMO: to bring your audience to love a character that, for all intents and purposes, they should hate. To teach people to love the villain. To give soul to a soulless human. To find the tiny piece of withering heart left inside someone so broken and torn that they don't even know what it feels like to be a human being.
This is my journey. This is my goal. To create a story as mind-blowing as this. To create characters that leave people tethered to their seats, sitting in bewildered silence long after the reading is done. To be so lost in this world, they're not quite sure how to return to theirs. And frankly, to give the world a perspective on human beings that perhaps they've never given flying fuck's worth of consideration.
I would have called Christian an ass-wipe, a dickhead, a total and utter sociopath under normal circumstances. And while I don't doubt I could never be in a relationship with him, I feel like I see the world entirely different now. Things aren't so black and white anymore. It's been very freeing. I suppose that was James' goal?
Thank you so much for walking this journey with me so far. To know that there are people that care for my stories even just a little bit means the world. I hope someday you'll find me standing proudly behind a book of epic proportions that makes non-criers like me bawl over and over and over.
I don't care if my stories are never popular. I don't care if they never make me millions of dollars or they're never "the next Fifty Shades of Grey". I just want to know they made a difference to someone, somewhere. I want to know someone felt the story so deeply that they forgot what world they lived in for a short time. I think we all need that. We need stories that help our problems seem small. We need narratives that give us new insights. We need characters that help us realize that perhaps we have much more potential, depth, and darkness than we ever imagined. And that maybe – just maybe - all three of those things (not just the first two) are what make a person great.
Anyways, I really wanted to share these thoughts with all of you tonight. Please keep reading, please keep commenting, please keep helping me improve. It gets me that much closer to my dream – TO BREAK YOUR HEARTS INTO A MILLION PIECES!
Lol. Love you all. More chapters coming soon. And for those of you following "Muddy Heels", I promise your curiosity and desire to meet the mysterious stranger will be rectified before too long. I just have to string you a long for a little while longer. Because that's what I do.