Why I Write Horror: A Rumination
It’s Halloween, and I’m more-or-less a horror writer, which means that ‘tis the season I get questions like “What horror novels should I read?” (Answer: Mine, of course) and “What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever read?” (Besides a royalty statement?) and, of course, “Why do you write this stuff?”
The “Why do you write this stuff” is the one I’ve been getting the longest, it part because it’s one my mother keeps asking. She wants to know, not unreasonably, when I’m going to write something a little bit nicer, and she often points to the fairy tale intro I wrote for Changeling 2nd Edition as proof I could maybe branch out into something with a lower body count once in a while. And that’s true, but I keep coming back to horror, and I suppose it’s worth noodling around a bit as to why. In no particular order:
I write horror because this stuff made a hell of an impression on me when I was a kid. To a six year old me, the story on the side of the 7-11 Slurpee Monster Cup for zombies was scary as all get-out. I used to lay awake at night debating whether to leave the door to my bedroom open (so the light from the nightlight in the hallway could come in) or closed (so if the zombies came up the stairs, I wouldn’t have to see them coming). By 4th grade, I’d been introduced to Ray Bradbury, most notably stories like “The Halloween Tree” and “Pillar of Fire”, and the simultaneous terror and fascination was locked firmly in place. My thesis was on Lovecraft; my first two published papers were on HPL and Charles Robert Maturin, respectively. In short, it’s been a part of me for a very long time.
I write horror because it’s interesting. What scares folks - the outward manifestations of inward fears, as Ambrose Bierce put it - is really meaty material to chew on. Know what terrifies a character and you know something about that character. Know why that terrifies them and you know the character entire.
I write horror, not because I’m interested in writing critters or spattering bodily fluids on walls, but because it’s possible to write the scary stuff without resorting to fangs in neck or blood on walls. Some of the most enduring pieces in the horror canon (such as it is) offer neither beasts nor blood, but manage to chill the reader just the same. That level of skill and craft is what I aspire to.
I write horror because I’ve spent good chunks of my life scared - scared of getting beaten up on the playground, scared of failing, scared of not living up to expectations, scared of all sorts of things. And while those fears may not be much in the grand scheme of things to be afraid of in this life, they’ve been with me all my life, and writing the spooky stuff is how I finally figured out to take them on.
I write horror because I was told I couldn’t or shouldn’t. Because the stories I submitted to Annie Dillard’s writing class at Wesleyan came back with the words “We have nothing to say to each other” on them. Because bringing along Dan Simmons’ “Carrion Comfort” as my subway reading material on orientation day at my MA program got me instantly labeled as the Not Actually Serious About Books Guy. And yeah, maybe twenty-plus years on I should be letting that stuff go, but old embers can still burn hot.
And finally, I write horror because I’m good at it. Those are the stories that come naturally to me - the small child making a bargain with unseen powers as he plays at the beach, the impossible thing in the man-made lake, the slumbering power underneath placid suburban real estate - these are the things that call out to me when I sit down to write. These are the things whose stories I know how to tell instinctively. These are the things I can wrestle best with in words, and I’m OK with that.
The “Why do you write this stuff” is the one I’ve been getting the longest, it part because it’s one my mother keeps asking. She wants to know, not unreasonably, when I’m going to write something a little bit nicer, and she often points to the fairy tale intro I wrote for Changeling 2nd Edition as proof I could maybe branch out into something with a lower body count once in a while. And that’s true, but I keep coming back to horror, and I suppose it’s worth noodling around a bit as to why. In no particular order:
I write horror because this stuff made a hell of an impression on me when I was a kid. To a six year old me, the story on the side of the 7-11 Slurpee Monster Cup for zombies was scary as all get-out. I used to lay awake at night debating whether to leave the door to my bedroom open (so the light from the nightlight in the hallway could come in) or closed (so if the zombies came up the stairs, I wouldn’t have to see them coming). By 4th grade, I’d been introduced to Ray Bradbury, most notably stories like “The Halloween Tree” and “Pillar of Fire”, and the simultaneous terror and fascination was locked firmly in place. My thesis was on Lovecraft; my first two published papers were on HPL and Charles Robert Maturin, respectively. In short, it’s been a part of me for a very long time.
I write horror because it’s interesting. What scares folks - the outward manifestations of inward fears, as Ambrose Bierce put it - is really meaty material to chew on. Know what terrifies a character and you know something about that character. Know why that terrifies them and you know the character entire.
I write horror, not because I’m interested in writing critters or spattering bodily fluids on walls, but because it’s possible to write the scary stuff without resorting to fangs in neck or blood on walls. Some of the most enduring pieces in the horror canon (such as it is) offer neither beasts nor blood, but manage to chill the reader just the same. That level of skill and craft is what I aspire to.
I write horror because I’ve spent good chunks of my life scared - scared of getting beaten up on the playground, scared of failing, scared of not living up to expectations, scared of all sorts of things. And while those fears may not be much in the grand scheme of things to be afraid of in this life, they’ve been with me all my life, and writing the spooky stuff is how I finally figured out to take them on.
I write horror because I was told I couldn’t or shouldn’t. Because the stories I submitted to Annie Dillard’s writing class at Wesleyan came back with the words “We have nothing to say to each other” on them. Because bringing along Dan Simmons’ “Carrion Comfort” as my subway reading material on orientation day at my MA program got me instantly labeled as the Not Actually Serious About Books Guy. And yeah, maybe twenty-plus years on I should be letting that stuff go, but old embers can still burn hot.
And finally, I write horror because I’m good at it. Those are the stories that come naturally to me - the small child making a bargain with unseen powers as he plays at the beach, the impossible thing in the man-made lake, the slumbering power underneath placid suburban real estate - these are the things that call out to me when I sit down to write. These are the things whose stories I know how to tell instinctively. These are the things I can wrestle best with in words, and I’m OK with that.