Writing Blog Number 2 (continued)

20260209 Why I Write Horror

Why I Write Horror

Now, I am known as something of a horror writer. Not necessarily at WdC, but in that small niche market of independent short story writers. Yes, I have had fantasy, science fiction, western, comedy and romance published also, as well as a lot of poetry, but my bread and butter, the invites I get from publishers and editors for anthologies are generally horror. That’s fine. We all have our niches.
         Well, this inevitably leads to the question from older relatives, religious relatives and people who just want to be dismissive. The question is always asked with a sneer, and with a derisive tone:

Why do you write horror?

Sometimes I get the follow-up question: “Why don’t you write something nice?”
         I generally shunt the question aside, say something pithy, a rehearsed answer. Basically, I know they don’t care, they are just putting down the genre I find easiest to write in.
         But I have now been asked that question a few times here on WdC. And I think that, being writers, these people are genuinely interested.

This is going to sound trite, but in horror I have control. In the real world terrible things happen all the time and the “evil” (I have come to not believe in evil, because I started asking, “Why?”) goes unpunished too often. It is a depressing world, made more depressing as the politics of the world in all its myriad forms allows people to get away with it.
         When I read horror, I know the bad guy is going to get his. When I write horror, I know the bad guy is going to get his. Okay, sometimes the bad guy is going to come back for another film, but by then he is a figure of fun, a modern day interpretation of a bogeyman, and is not to be taken seriously. Not taking horror seriously is another defence against the world.
         I can take my frustrations out in a horror story, and it is all perfectly legal. I don’t need to kill someone in real life – I doubt I have that in me, barring defence of my kids – because I can write a simulacrum of them into my story and kill them there. My fears can be overcome in writing about them.
         More than all of this, I come away from a horror story with the bad guys defeated feeling somewhat better. I cannot do that with reality, without drugs (which I don’t do) or alcohol (which I do very rarely).

So why do I write horror?
         Because it lets me cope with the world. Because frustrations can be released. And because the horrors I come up with are nowhere near as bad as what exists in reality.

I guess.