It may speak something to me, and to the research I’ve done over things while I’ve written what I’ve written, but as I’m listening to this back and forth with Stephen King and George R.R. Martin (as annoying as I’m finding Martin as an individual in this clip), it strikes me that I’ve never read a book that really scared me.
I love horror fiction. I seriously love it. I love the prose that will pull a reader in so tight that it will make the reader so involved that it will make them look over their shoulder deep at night. I love the stories, the games, the images, you name it. Scare me, and I’m a fan. But, I’m hard as hell to earn on that front.
I also don’t write it. At least, not yet. I’m just not that good.
Mainly, because I seriously don’t get that from what I read or get inspired by, or have the ability to write. When I write a horror, it’s a horror I put my head in to, and it’s something I write in a way that I hope I can make an emotional connection to the reader with, but I don’t make the claim of being smart enough to write that kind of story that will make the subject of the storytelling hide under his or her covers.
When I write, it’s writing human choice. That’s my connection. I can write something that connects with emotion, but not that kind of primal fear that others seem to be so able to.
It’s writing about free will and what it means to protect it that seems to be where I lock in when telling a story.
I write that, because that’s one of the things that terrifies me. Every day, living the life that means every decision I make can affect others for good or for ill … it’s the game we all play that does and should terrify us. Knowing that every decision we make will have an effect on those connected to us, and on those we sometimes can’t even see.
That shit’s scary.
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