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When I was five, or some age around then, my father showed my brother and me one of our first movies, Steven King's IT, starring Tim Curry. I screamed and hid my face, but I also watched in curious fascination. No, I didn't want to become some murderous clown. I like clowns, but I don't like those clowns. What interested me was how such a simple idea could tug on my fears and leave me shaking.
Writing eerie, spine-chilling prose brings its own excitement, which is just as good as reading or watching horror. Watching IT, I had no idea what the characters were going to do or what Pennnywise was going to do. I was victim to the director's finished product. In writing, I find myself getting just as scared. Why?
As a writer, one experiences some things for the first time much like the reader. We feel the startles and lures before the reader. We see what it's like to be in the situation the characters are in, deciding whether to take the stairs up or to jump out the suddenly unbreakable window and be dragged into the closet. Readers only experience the end result, which only takes one direction.
We also experience nightmares like our readers, but ours are much more real: failure. There is not one author out there who does not worry whether his or her work will be the best he/she can do. We are writers because we have a certain amount of OCD in our DNA, but we embrace it with our editing and revising skills. We basically clean a closet until it's perfect for the eyes of others before moving to the next cluttered nook.
My friend made me leap out of my chair when I was finishing my most recent piece. I had begun to pull out of the climax point, and the character is on her bed, crying. She hears the spiritual force knocking around the house then run down the hall, out the door, and possibly take her SO with it. This ending was one I didn't see coming, and I was worried if it was even the right ending to take.
A pinging sounded screeched through my ear-bud headphones and into my ears.
With a quick breath, my body rose from the chair and shuddered, and I cried out. I clicked the Facebook tab (which shouldn't have been open in the first place).
Christine had sent me a photo of her cats with Santa. He couldn't hold them, so the jolly-man held their small paws. She laughed after a good scolding from me, and she told me to get back into my story.
