"It's been a while, old friend." I feel like I need to say that before I start this blog post because it has, indeed, been a while since I've sat down, at a desk, and stared at the screen with the intention of writing a blog post about what I love the most - reading and writing. It's been a terrific summer. I've taught creative writing, sat around tables and discussed film scripts and characters, given feedback, asked to show my own work, visited ten states in America, met wonderful people, seen amazing things and now I'm back at home, currently sat in my parent's living room listening to "Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down" writing this post, thinking about past conversations and future stories. I haven't neglected my writing as much as I have this blog - in fact I have written three short stories over the summer, the odd poem and edited quite a bit but now it's time to return.
Yesterday my mother said something horrific to me. She said, "I read somewhere horror stories are hard to publish. People just don't want to read them anymore." Is this true? I think it is for the first half, maybe not the second. People always want to be scared, people love to read about the cliche horror as well as the new types. What is true, however, is that horror seems to use old ideas and reform them - especially in films. Horror films consist of remakes, sequels, prequels, continuous revisits to the same characters, the same places because there is a lack of imagination. Of course 'Saw' came along and we had a new kind of horror - the torture porn indeed reinforced but it was new, fresh, I liked it. But then they said they were making a number four, then five and we got bored.
What now? A film about exorcisms - another girl wondering why demons are inside her, breaking her bones, mumbling in foreign languages. Then what? A haunted supermarket? Ghosts coming back from the dead? I'm not, for a moment, suggesting that any horror I write - I intend to for my dissertation this year - is a genius idea, in fact horror is a very tricky place to venture into. Horror is scary. I fear that it is dying out, that the lack of imagination is making it hard for horror to expand and grow, instead people are returning to old films - not a bad thing, some films from the seventies and eighties are the best horror films I've seen.
When we come to horror literature, on the other hand, we get into muddier and murkier water. Of course there's the two big horror writers of our time - Stephen King and Peter Straub - and there's the older writers - the great Edgar Allan Poe being my favourite. I am, in fact, taking a Gothic literature module this year in my final year of Uni - scary! - which will reinforce my mind.
Just a scatter of thoughts today, my worries and concerns on a genre I would, one day, like to go into. Is it dying? Quite possibly. Do people want to read it? Only if there's something good to read. And there will be, soon, right?
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