What Is Meltdown?

I think with the exception of one other person (and you know who you are), no one can really understand what Meltdown means to me. Which is why no one can understand how important it is to me that I have a final story concept rolling, with words meeting paper every day. Meltdown is coming together, and it's changing my life.

But what is it and why is it so important to me? A brief chronological overview:

1997: Coming out of a creative rut that began in late 1996, I began to conjure ideas about a story, mainly in pieces, most of which I brought together by 1998 and said "what a cool idea." A group of friends travel across a country fighting zombies. Then again, the idea had been done before.

1998: Although I despise writing, I decide that fiction is the only way to express my story by any tangible means. I develop a deep back story and history for the story, now titled "Meltdown," to take place in front of. I write three-fourths of a first draft by the middle of 1999. (Ed. Note: Jesus H, after reading that first draft almost ten years later, I can certainly say my writing abilities have evolved a hundred-fold. I can't even figure out what some of the words in my first draft meant or tried to spell.)

1999: I flesh out many details of the story, creating a huge mythology for Meltdown, including a spin-off short story entitled "Project Veronica." By the end of 1999 I put Meltdown aside in favor of tinkering with other creative interests, namely my "Just a Crush, or True Love?" essay series that would begin that year.

2000: Meltdown is a bloated, unfinished, poorly written story that I barely spend time on. Luckily, the constant teasing from a good friend of mine kept me on my toes, and by the end of the year, I decide to return to the story.

2001: Early in the year, I attempt to clean up my first draft of Meltdown. By now I already acknowledge my love for writing, and because I take it in a serious light, I decide to start from scratch with Meltdown. I begin a "Beta" draft that turns into a fully-fleshed story that becomes, even today, my biggest writing endeavor, with about 45% of the story spanning 90 pages of typed text.

2002: Meltdown once again turns into a beast, with countless smaller fiction pieces written on the side, extra characters added. I also allow the story to receive public exposure for the first time, and feedback was mildly good, although not overwhelming as I had hoped. By late 2002, I considered Meltdown to be my "life work" of sorts, considering it having stuck with me for so long by this time. Still, I somehow just could not get it finished. My interests waned.

2003: Graduation came and gone, and Meltdown was officially on the back burner for other projects ("Soul Searched," later to be known as Almost Home, for example). I ran into a huge creative block, and more importantly, became bored with the story that was too much to manage, too bloated to deal with, and for all intents and purposes, put out to pasture.

2005: With the end of college in sight, I decide to complete several projects ("Almost Home 2," "Blocchi") within my time at BGSU, and return to Meltdown after graduation, once my creative writing education was completed.

And of course, here is 2007. In the last week I have been spurred by a creative vision for Meltdown that has put everything else in my life on hold. I am reinventing many aspects of the original story, including the core concept and direction of character development. I'm very excited about the new ideas on my plate, and I am working on overtime during ALL of my free time to get as many of these ideas on paper, and I have already begun a new draft for the story.

I will apologize in advance for my relative unavailability in the coming weeks as I hammer out as much as I can before this creative streak dies.

Stay tuned.