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You’re going to laugh at me, I know you are. I’m 28–almost 29–and I went to see Disney’s Beauty & the Beast in the theater last weekend. And that’s not why you’re going to laugh, even though Sean & I were the only adults there who did not have children or grandchildren with us as a reason (or excuse) to be in the theater. No, you’re going to laugh because I cried while watching it. And I cried a lot.

You see, I didn’t know how much it would mean to me to see Beauty & the Beast in the theater again, I really didn’t. I knew I wanted to go because it’s always been a favorite of mine, but I just thought it would be fun. I didn’t expect it to touch something deep inside me, something so deep that I spent most of the movie in tears; so deep that even now, almost a week later, I still can’t entirely explain it to myself.

But here’s something else: I’ve done a lot of thinking in the past year or two about who I am as a writer and what has influenced my creativity. Until then, I just went along blithely, writing this and that, happily bouncing from one story to the next without ever seeing the common threads that wove through them. Then one day I took another look at my two biggest projects and had an epiphany: although the characters, plots, and worlds of those stories are very different, they shared several of the same themes. And it wasn’t much longer until I started realizing that those themes have showed up again and again in my writing ever since I was a child… Which, in turn, got me thinking about why those things are so important to me as a writer. And what I’ve discovered is that every one of those themes is something that I was exposed to very early in life through books and movies, and then that theme was reinforced by other things I read and saw over the years, things that I loved and had a huge impact on me.

I’m particularly fond of polite villains, for example. I get a big kick out of any well-written villain, but my absolute favorite is always the one who is a consummate gentleman, who will smile charmingly even as he does his incredibly wicked deeds. Seriously, I love these villains–I’m not kidding, I practically go weak-kneed for them. And do you know why I adore polite villains? Well,  it’s got a lot to do with the fact that between the ages of 4 and 14, I encountered three of the most marvelously evil, charming, and gentlemanly villains/anti-heroes in all of fiction: Captain Nemo, Regis Blackard, and Gerald Tarrant. (Don’t worry, I know you haven’t heard of the last two.) Between the three of them, I got a lot of exposure to courteous, well-mannered villainy while growing up. So, when writing my current novel, I created what is (for me) the ultimate villain: deliciously evil, but oh so very, very courteous about it. And believe me, he’s not the only polite villain to play a role in my fiction through the years.

I know that was a bit long-winded, but the point is this: I was 8 years old when Beauty & the Beast was released in theaters for the first time. Do you know what I was doing when it came out? I was almost halfway through my second year at The World’s Worst Private School, where my classmates tormented me relentlessly for being different from them. And this is what made me different: I was creative, and I loved to read. So it’s not surprising that Belle is, and always has been, the Disney heroine I identify with most strongly. In many ways, I am her: imaginative, a lover of fairy tales, longing for adventure and romance; lonely, misunderstood, and treated harshly by my peers.

But it goes even deeper. This movie plays to many of my favorite writing themes: redemption, identity (man or monster?), sacrifice, love. Beauty & the Beast is a foundational work for me, along with The Chronicles of Narnia, Amy’s Eyes, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and many more. But as much as I have loved it throughout the years, as much time as I have spent considering my influences as a writer, I did not truly realize how important it is to me until seeing it in the theater again.

It sounds a little ridiculous, doesn’t it? It’s a kid’s movie, for heaven’s sake. It’s *Disney*, for heaven’s sake. It could hardly be less accurate to the original fairy tale, and there are singing candlesticks and dancing teapots and a barking ottoman. But I sat in the dark theater in the very back corner of the last row, and it came to the part that has  always spoken for my heart more than anything else, Belle singing, “I want adventure in the great wide somewhere, I want it more than I can tell…” And I sang it with her as I do every single time without fail, not quietly and shyly as I am wont to do when anyone can hear me, but as loud as possible, with all my heart behind it.  And Sean reached out to me and took my hand as I sang those words, and that is when I began to cry.

I cried several more times throughout the movie, including at the end. Bawled my eyes out for most of it, to be honest. And still, I can’t quite explain it to myself, let alone to anyone else. Maybe it’s something to do with the loss of that adventure I have been yearning for–and singing about–my whole life, for my leg injury has put the great wide somewhere far beyond my reach. Maybe it was seeing something familiar and beloved for the 100th time and finally realizing  that this is much more than an old childhood favorite, although I am still incapable of analyzing how it touches me so deeply. Or maybe it was something about the fact that this, this is the story I have been writing for the past 10 years, that I have poured my life and soul into crafting anew, that I need to tell more than anything else I have ever written–or may ever write again. It is not Disney’s version of Beauty & the Beast, not by a long shot, nor is it Madame Villenueve‘s version or anyone else’s, but it is Beauty & the Beast nonetheless.

And really, is it any wonder that this is the fairy tale I have chosen to rewrite, the story that has so captured me? Beauty & the Beast really is a “tale as old as time”–it is a type of Cupid and Psyche, the oldest known fairy tale. It gave me the opportunity to delve into all the themes that are so close to my heart, years before I was even aware of them. And somewhere in between the lines I have written, somewhere in the hundreds and hundreds of handwritten pages stacked in manila folders around the house, there is a little girl who fell in love with ancient civilizations, Sir Percy Blakeney, the beauty of Tolkien’s invented languages, polite villains, fairy tales and myths, and hundred other things; and somewhere in those words is a little girl who sings loudly in the back of the theater as tears 20 years in the making roll down her cheeks.

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