Oh the Horror …

"...I shall try to be crazy and twisted, I shall try to be brave. I shall try to believe that severed heads can be lying around someplace, and that I may come across one ..."











Despite the fact that I host a yearly Halloween fiction special over at the Campfire Pages, horror is not my preferred genre. For one, it’s simply too scary for me, and two, it’s hard to write. As Stephen King often says; in clumsy hands comedy turns to dirge and horror turns to comedy. My horror always turns to comedy. My mind just seems to go that way.

While I love Stephen King for his contributions to American letters, I prefer his less graphic work, the creepy stuff, the stuff that seems normal, then twists and turns and tingles the spine. Not necessarily bloody, but unnerving; some of it borders on existential horror even.  I mean, reading about someone rearing up out of a grave and coming back to life is interesting, but I suppose my sensibilities are much more subtle. I prefer the quiet and off-center type of stories, which can scare the daylights out of me all the same.

When I first started reading submissions from my Twitter friends and writers, I was kinda shocked; some of the stuff these people wrote was rather disturbing. I don’t know where they got their ideas from (I don’t wanna know!) but they set the bar pretty high in terms of creativity and spookiness. I remember being overwhelmed and intimidated; how could I match these fine writers in creepiness and style? Should I start hanging out in grave yards and abandoned mental hospitals?

Which brings me to the reason for the Campfire Halloween Special; I love to read stories. And I love to learn from them.

Sure, I’m not the greatest horror writer, but I can always learn, and reading all those fine tales of death and horror, ghostly hauntings, slitherings in the dark, I began to get a sense of what a good scary tale is.

Recently I came across a man who told me a creepy story about a severed head.

Back in High School, so he says, a classmate of his showed up to class with a strange gym bag. He placed it on the floor beside him and sat there quietly. Naturally the kids began to razz him; they wanted to know what was in it. The student remained quiet, and rather ashen, but eventually let his class in on his little secret once the teacher was out of the room.

It was a severed head, found out behind the school along the Canadian National Railway tracks, which he walked along on his way to school in the mornings. He had seen the thing lying there and brought it to class.

Now, I don’t know if this story is true or not, or If this man was just pulling my leg, or if he thought he could pull one over on me, or if I looked like the type of person gullible enough to believe that someone would take a human head, put it in a duffel bag, and bring it to class to show his friends,  but the fact is it’s a sufficiently disturbing little anecdote. Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant – the tale takes on a myth of its own, doesn’t it? And we ARE in the myth-making business, aren’t we? I know it’s rather gross and disturbing, but I still find a horrific kind of humor in it; you laugh so you don’t cry.

Listening to this man telling this ridiculous story about a severed head really gave me an insight into this horror genre. The insight is this: you gotta be crazy to write horror. You gotta be a little twisted. You gotta be a brave writer, because If you write a story about a student bringing a severed head to class you’re probably going to get a lot of funny looks from people.

So, with respect to the Campfire Halloween Special, I shall try to be crazy and twisted, I shall try to be brave. I shall try to believe that severed heads can be lying around someplace, and that I may come across one. I can try to creep you out a little, and maybe I can give you a few nervous and hesitant laughs in the bargain.

That’s the best I can do …

Will you join me?

Addendum:


Okay, so now that I have your attention, I need your scary stories. Got a good one? Here are all the details for your submission to the Campfire Halloween Special ...

Brought to you by the Halloween Arts and Horror Association (HAHA)
 

I'm opening up the Campfire Pages in October to anyone who wants to share a scary story. Just DM me on twitter at @TheWritersDen, or leave a message in the comments section below. Don't send attachments, just cut and paste the story into the message box. Oh, and keep it at 2000-4000 words or less; and make it scary....so scary it'll make Stephen King's toes curl with fear!

Hoping to hear from you soon. I'm off to write some scary stuff....

Note: If it's a really great lengthy story, I'll consider posting it in parts.

Get Scribbling!

On Writing: More Quotes too Fat for Twitter ...

I love posting quotes on Twitter and Facebook, but often they’re chopped up and edited to fit stringent character limits or are just too long to post because friends and followers alike prefer short sound bites, and if a phrase is longer than Gone with the Wind usually they’ll tune out after the first few sentences. It’s a shame because a lot of the longer quotes on writing are very interesting, and I feel a twinge of horror when I have to edit one of them down into small edible bits. So, here are more Quotes too Fat for Twitter!









❝Quoting, like smoking, is a dirty habit to which I am devoted.❞ ༺༻ Carolyn Heilbrun











❝In conversation you can use timing, a look, an inflection. But on the page all you have is commas, dashes, the amount of syllables in a word. When I write, I read everything out loud to get the right rhythm.❞ ༺༻ Fran Lebowitz

❝Read, read, read. Read everything- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write.❞ ༺༻ William Faulkner

❝Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.❞ ༺༻ William Strunk, Jr.

❝A writer's voice is not character alone, it is not style alone; it is far more. A writer's voice line the stroke of an artist's brush- is the thumbprint of her whole person- her idea, wit, humor, passions, rhythms.❞ ༺༻ Patricia Lee Gauch

❝Usually, when people get to the end of a chapter, they close the book and go to sleep. I deliberately write a book so when the reader gets to the end of the chapter, he or she must turn one more page. When people tell me I've kept them up all night, I feel like I've succeeded.❞ ༺༻ Sidney Sheldon

❝The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.❞ ༺༻ Robert Cormier

❝Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing.❞ ༺༻ Richard North Patterson

❝Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill.❞ ༺༻ Edmund Morrison

❝What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.❞ ༺༻ Thomas Wolfe

❝The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it's a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work.❞ ༺༻ Janet Frame

❝If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not -- and the odds are against it -- go to your desk, no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper -- write.❞ ༺༻ J. B. Priestly

❝Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties.❞ ༺༻ Bonnie Friedman

❝Finish. The difference between being a writer and being a person of talent is the discipline it takes to apply the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair and finish. Don't talk about doing it. Do it. Finish.❞ ༺༻ E. L. Konigsburg

Note: I've posted this next one previously, but I like it so much I'm posting it again ...

❝If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting.❞ ༺༻ Ray Bradbury

 Got a long quote that won’t fit Twitter? Send it along and I’ll post it in future additions of Quotes Too Fat for Twitter ...

Thanks for stopping by the Den. Take care now, and keep scribbling …

In case you missed it: Quotes too Fat for Twitter || Part one

The Campfire Halloween Special ... Submit Your Creepy Story!

Brought to you by the Halloween Arts and Horror Association (HAHA)
 

I'm opening up the Campfire Pages in October to anyone who wants to share a scary story. Just DM me on twitter at @TheWritersDen, or leave a message in the comments section below. Don't send attachments, just cut and paste the story into the message box. Oh, and keep it at 2000-4000 words or less; and make it scary....so scary it'll make Stephen King's toes curl with fear!

Hoping to hear from you soon. I'm off to write some scary stuff....

Note: If it's a really great lengthy story, I'll consider posting it in parts.

Get Scribbling!