English professors have told me that born-writers can sit by a computer and make up a story in an hour, without even having to think. Their stories flow like water from their finger tips. I am most definitely not a born-writer. People like me, people without born artistic talent– we need pain to create. We need horrible tragedies to write our stories. This is how we profit. We take our mothers’ deaths and make the widest selling and most beloved children’s books of all time. We need inspiration. And inspiration will only come from pain.

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I write love stories. Heart wrenching, sob-inducing love stories. A daughter loses her mother, or a young girl and her first heartbreak. That’s what I write. Walk in any book store and there you’ll see my books– my name larger than the title– and posters with promise of a new book coming out this January. They are all essentially the same plot, yet every single one has been optioned for a movie deal. It doesn’t matter, every teenage girl in this country will go with a box of tissues and proclaim their love for the main male actor. This shit happens everyday.

It’s obvious that my books aren’t interesting; but if I told you how I made them, I know you’d stop and listen. Every girl in my story, she is real. Or was real. Every heartbreak was real. Their pain is my sustenance.

I find a girl, twenty and cute. She is eager for fun, eager for love. I profess my love for her after a few dates. Boy, do I lay it on thick. I devote myself to her– she thinks she met the perfect guy. I listen to her, I understand her. We talk about our feelings and we have slow, loving sex. I’m a gay friend who can provide several orgasms per night; every girl’s dream. And when the time is right, I tell her we’re going to my special place. I tell her it’s the place I promised myself I’d only share with girl I know I love.

We drive. We stop for a bite to eat at whatever her favorite restaurant is along the way. We drive for miles, out of the city and into the woods. She’s excited to see what I have planned.

It’s dusk and we’re in the woods. Appalachia, the mountain air soothing. We hike a bit and finally, we’re at the most beautiful view in Virginia. The town below twinkles as the inhabitants light fires and their houses before night finds them. Mountains rise against the back-lit red sky. She tells me how beautiful it is.

And I always say, in a moment of wonted cheesiness, “Just like you.” She turns to me, love glowing in her eyes. Naturally, this is when I stab her in the stomach as hard as I can. Again, in the chest. Then, I slash her throat. Her shrill screaming won’t travel as far as the town. This is my inspiration. The only time anyone ever feels true heartbreak is when they realize one the one they love absolutely hates them. I can see it in their eyes. Her sense of heart wrenching betrayal. She’s crying and screaming from the pain of death, and the fact that the man she loves wants her dead. I want her dead. So, I look into her eyes. I watch her thrash. I listen to her heart break. This is what makes the written snuff-pornography that the teenybopper girls love so much.

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I’m home and I’m writing. I need a book by January. I call this one “The Trail”. The story of a girl who finds her life and love (and eventual heartbreak) while through-hiking the Appalachian trail. Already, I’m getting movie offers from big shot movie companies. Everyday, girls write me letters about how much I inspire them. They have no idea how much they inspire me.