With the Writers Guild strike seemingly about to end, I thought it would be fun to share how "Halo 3" has impacted one striking writer's life. Justin Marks is a good friend of The Cut Scene, and also a supremely talented writer who, before he put his pen down in November, was working on feature adaptations of He-Man, Voltron, and Street Fighter, along with a DC supervillain prison break movie.

Justin was cool enough to take a little time out of his schedule -- though let's be honest, he has plenty of free time on his hands these days -- to write about how the Forge map creation application on "Halo 3" has consumed his life while on strike:

Which is why, on that fateful November day when we put our pencils down, I picked up my Xbox controller and haven't turned back since. They tell me it's been three months since we went on strike. Three months of glancing forlornly at the "work " folder on our desktops and sadly looking away. Three months of  rumors, letdowns, and dashed hopes.

I wouldn't know. I've been in a fog. Because it's been four months since "Halo 3" became my life.

You see, writers are creative people. And creativity is like a chronic disease --- if it doesn't get out of your system every day, you literally back up and die. Doesn't matter how it comes out. When I was a kid, I used to go to summer camp every year, where I had no access to word processors for several weeks. So I wrote screenplays longhand by the waterfront. I really wanted to be like the other kids, to just play all day in the sun until I dropped, but we don't write because it's our favorite thing to do, we write because if we weren't getting it out we'd blow up like that girl in "Cloverfield."

To the uninitiated, one of the great innovations of "Halo 3" is a multi-player tool called "Forge," where users can generate their own maps and game modes to play with their friends. Suddenly, a game predicated on shooting each other until we're dead can turn into capture the flag set inside the rules of the movie Tremors, or dodgeball with hand grenades, or soccer played with motorcycle-like vehicles.

There's no limit to the amazing games you can download or create.

More of a "Gears of War" fan? Try the maps built to replicate Gears of War maps, complete with falling energy coils where that train goes by in the Tyro Station. Someone even built the Millennium Falcon.

Literally. It has the little radar antenna that Lando knocked off by accident. Another guy proposed to his girlfriend on the Valhalla map by spelling out her name in weapons.

My friends now know me for pestering them at all hours online, inviting them to test my beta work, begging for them to switch over from "Call of Duty 4," pleading with them to stay online for just one more hour. My girlfriend has found me asleep on the couch with a bluetooth controller in my lap. I haven't seen my dog in weeks.

In 1988, the strike resulted in the emergence of "Cops." Everyone said this time reality TV would flourish again. But they were wrong. I hated "American Gladiators"... but if you want the real experience you can play my version on "Halo 3."

And in the middle of this, suddenly I feel creative again. What energy I can't get out on the proverbial typewriter I now can get out by coming up with ways to spawn sticky grenades in front of a man cannon so it can literally rain fireworks. I consider Forge maps to be a new art form, somewhere between Warhol's Campbell's Soup cans and those 60s New Wave experiments where "anybody can create." If I could develop my next spec script as a map set in the Narrows, I would.

So the studios can keep their strike. In the meantime you can see me every night online, forging away. Get me and [studio negotiator] Nick Counter in a slayer deathmatch and I'll end this strike faster than you can say "gravity hammer to the face."