My ah-ha moment was a little
more big picture for me. I am a reader, writer, and life-long fan of
horror fiction, but my ah-ha moment was the realization that I didn't
always have to write horror stories.
When
I first started writing, "horror writer" was a badge and I wore it with
great pride, if not with stubbornness. I say stubbornness because the
badge meant that whatever story idea I had, I'd then try to shoehorn it
into a horror story framework, even if it didn't quite fit.
My
ah-ha moment happened was me waking up one fine morning and telling
myself that I wasn't a horror writer. Instead, I was a writer who writes
horror. It didn't mean that I wasn't proud to have written horror
fiction or that I would stop doing so. It meant that I was going to
serve the story's needs first and foremost, and not try to force it into
being something that it wasn't. If the story was going to be about a
narcoleptic private detective, then so be it. If it was going to be a
wacky SF/dystopia with people in Chicken suits and exploding donkeys,
okay then, write it. If it was about a secret society of cannibals who
stuff bodies into mannequins who then leave them on train tracks, great,
let's go with it.
I
was never concerned that I was going to leave horror writing; my
interests are too dark, and I always have and always will write horror
(the novel I'm working on right now is horror). But my ah-ha moment was
about my deciding to serve the story--whatever that story would end up
being--to the best of my abilities.
A little bit about the author:
Paul is the president of the board of directors for the Shirley Jackson Awards. He lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts, has a master's degree in Mathematics, has no uvula, and he is represented by Stephen Barbara of Foundry Literary + Media.
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