Sunday Night Sap

When I was eight years old, I wrote my first (thus far, only) novel. It was called Over the Rainbow and it followed a pack of young siblings as they fought a gnome for his gold.

It was magnificent.

For a good deal of my life, it’s been my dream to be a writer. Silly idea when you think of it. All someone needs is a pen or foggy window and bam! Dream realized. But I suppose the idea of being published, of seeing my name (or some clever pseudonym) on the spine of a book I was proud of sitting on a store shelf just seemed like the pinnacle of what I could do.

Writing is my passion, something I’ve always known but have occasionally hid from. Despite spending years toiling on plays and essays in college and currently, putting appliances onto paper Monday to Friday, it wasn’t until the Deadly Doll’s House was built that my words found a genuine home.

On Wednesday morning, my blog disappeared. Some of you may have noticed, either by clicking on the usual link and finding a blank blogger page or through my Twitter freakouts and Facebook warnings. Clearly, whatever issue happened has been resolved but for about two days, I had to live with the fact that all the posts and comments made over the last (almost) two years had evaporated like a vampire on Buffy or Christian in Left Behind: The Movie.

There were shakes. Stomachaches. Lots of kitten cuddling and Google research. Two nights that involved awful dreams and mornings of baggy eyes. Then my Wednesday email opened up with comments and I breathed the biggest sigh of relief known to a 5‘1.5” woman.

The Deadly Doll’s House’s mini-vacation in limbo let me think an awful lot about blogging and what it meant to me and as we start a new year, I can tell you this: it means a lot. 

I realized this mostly when I started thinking of the worst case scenario, i.e., if www.deadlydollshouse.blogspot.com was never restored. What would happen to those 300 or so posts, written on morning subway commutes and after-dinner evenings? It was actually a really easy answer: they would slowly be reposted, somewhere in between the new ones I would write and publish on a new Internet home.

Point is, I love this strange little phenomenon we all participate in known as blogging. I love how it has let me meet dozens of incredible creative folks from all over the world. I love that it’s opened up endless conversations about everything from the merits of dubbing to post-apocalyptic manners. That it’s let me read some of the best writing I’ve ever experienced, even if the majority of the authors are unpublished everymen (and of course, women) tap dancing on their laptops between office work and cooking dinner. I love that writing about film has let me fall completely in love with cinema, and that I almost feel like in some odd bestial way, it’s a mutually fulfilling relationship.

2010 has had some personal and professional highs and lows for me, but ultimately, I’m ending it feeling incredibly rewarded for having--and holding onto--this odd little environment of friends and film. Thank you--readers, writers, and movies--for being contributors to that, whether by creating your own content or responding to mine. It’s not something I take lightly. It is something I love. 

Pfff. All this mushiness is making me nauseous. Time to watch something terrible that involves entrails or doll rape.

Exes and ohs,

Emily