I am new to writing and so the full spectrum of the creative process eludes me. I am far from strict in my approach. Whatever I may fancy of myself, creativity remains a mystery and a discipline and humility is required to achieve the best result. In this I am deficient. I try to do what I find most rewarding, omitting much and stumbling in to objects of contemplation by habit and the fortune of error. For me, Horror is an entirely unexplored country. The most unfamiliar of landscapes, formless yet free of the prescriptions of my own obsessive mind. In music, I have mastered improvisation. It is the Piano, I play. And Music helps me find the mood to write. Writing may yet be improvised, learned by practice and insight, and not attained by preparation to excess. Learning is a process fostered by a dripping tap of consciousness: one idea expressed after another. And so I have begun to find the my "voice" as a writer. Or a Character. I don't know. Perhaps they are the same. We have become acquainted. The mind is a strange meeting place. Can footsteps echo on an imagined floor? Smartly dressed and designed to impress, with a wave of his hand, he takes a bow. A youthful figure. Graceful in his movements. Cunning in desire. Sadistic in intent. He seems to come out strongest when I write monologues. Inevitably as a murderer of some description. The thrill and the dread, the lust and the fear, the despair and the rage. All speak with a calm voice as they empty on to the page. A sinister voice mail left by a stranger haunting the inside of my skull. I can almost hear the chink of glass as he pours himself a glass of wine, and see him slither in to an old brown leather chair facing me. In serene comfort, he takes a sip. Then with a flash of dreadful intent, the bright eyes fix on me, he swallows and smirks knowingly, entertained by my confusion. A grandfather clock strikes somewhere in the corner of my mind. I have always been, what you would call, a "nice guy". But was that always the whole story? The quiet resentments and frustration of years, hidden behind a studied politeness. I have for some time been aware that I have a "shadow", some facet of my being that has eluded me. Perhaps it is only natural that I might indulge the company of a character who speaks the language of secrets and lies. My lies are small and many. His lies are big and many more. But are both in some way a debt to the soul? Do we deny ourselves by hiding who we are? Is my life as much a performance as his? Who are you? I wonder to myself. Are you a self-portrait? A confession I've tried to forget? A regret taking its revenge? And why do I resist? What does this fiction know about myself that I do not? I enjoy his company. That's the part that requires an alarming honesty. I do enjoy a good villain. A criminal? A murderer? A person free of the inhibitions with which I betray myself? If writing is to be a long journey, this is a strange and unexpected companion to do it with. I chose horror for a reason. But I never expected it to make me my own therapist. And so the murderer summons my attention from the sofa: "Shall we begin? I'm waiting. I have people to kill. And you're going to write them for me."
Over the past week I have cut my internet usage back dramatically. I have got in to the habit of locking my Chromebook with an app so I can not use the internet until 10pm in the evening. When I do, it is usually to check a few sites and then lock it for the next day before I go to bed. This has given me some much needed time away from the internet to clear my head and I feel a great deal calmer for doing so. Today, I decided to go on my laptop early in the morning and took the opportunity to write this blog post just for the sake of writing something. I live with my parents, so when I have wanted to use the internet I have been using my mum's phone instead. my dad's phone has a glitch which means the date resets to sometime in the year 2000 and then limits what websites you can go on. Altogether, that probably amounts to maybe a half-an-hour burst twice a day, which is still much less than the four-plus hours it normally amounts to. I have at least three more hours a day than I would usually have. For now, I have been binge watching episodes of "Heroes" on BBC Iplayer. I enjoy it but the show feels very "cluttered", with too many characters or distinct plots interacting for me to really settle in to it. I would have preferred if they took things more slowly and focused on a handful of characters. You could, for instance, have told the story from Sylar's perspective and made it a whole lot darker. It is nonetheless very addictive as the episodes always seem to end with a cliff hanger that makes you want to hit the button so you find out what happens next. So I will no doubt be continuing with that for a while. I am trying to live as normal life as possible these days. I have depression and have suffered from it for roughly 12 years now. It was my 31st birthday in July and, frankly, I just feel very lucky to have reached that age under the circumstances. I regret being a little overweight, unemployed and unable to support myself financially, but that has been dwarfed by the events of the year so far. It does not feel so pressing or have the sting it usually would have because, for once, events are clearly out of my control and I can't blame myself for not participating in a world gone mad. It is a profoundly strange experience to have spent so long with mental health problems only to realise you were the sane one and it was everyone else who had lost touch with reality. Much of my day is therefore organised around prioritising my mental health to manage the symptoms and ensure I have a good day, or at least an easy one. My parents support me financially, with free food and accommodation. As I am not going to out on day trips on the bus to eat out or go to the shops, my expenses have been essentially zero (minus paying for broadband and a charity I signed up to support, which comes to £19 a month). I still have the same ten pound note in my wallet that I had three months ago and it's likely to remain in their for several more months to come. We have a large garden and a summerhouse down the bottom. It's looking very beautiful these days. We have corn field next to us, with the crop growing a mixture of yellow, green and even red as it blows around in the wind. After getting the seeds from the bird seed, my dad has planted some sunflowers in the garden which have now fully grown. They have wilted a little in the heat and lost a few petals, but are otherwise a very impressive sight. The summerhouse has proven to be a godsend as it means one of our number (myself, my mum and my dad) can get out of the house at least temporarily and spend a few hours down there. My mum uses it to paint, my dad to read art books stored on the shelves and for me, it's either writing in notebooks or talking to myself as a kind of therapy to get anything off my chest. Whilst depression is always a drag, I remain very fortunate to be in this position and I am trying to make the best of it. I do wish I could walk up the street in to the village so I could sit in the local restaurant and eat a nice steak pie with the crumbling dry crust, gravy and vegetables. Or maybe that sticky toffee pudding with the treacle like sauce. It's the little things I miss. But I can live without that for now as I appreciate how much is going on and how we all have to make some sacrifices to keep ourselves and each other safe during "plague-time". Of the few friends I do have, I have kept in touch by sending them texts or talking to them online by chatting on discord. As for Jess, our little black cat, she is enjoying the attention she is getting and the trips up and down to the summerhouse where she snuggles comfortably on the wicker chair or stretches out on the floor in the summer heat. If only we could all be as undisturbed as a sleeping cat, perhaps the world would make more sense.
I have never been someone who has read or written a great deal of horror fiction. Nor was I the kind of person who would watch scary movies, even from behind the sofa. It is therefore a strange turn of events to find myself interested in writing horror. The journey to the state of mind is not driven by mere impulse, but by an accumulation of experiences that have made it both possible and necessary. I have a very long history of severe depression with over ten years of fluctuating moods. These have ranged over the day-to-day nature of existence from a fairly relaxed contentment to the pitch black darkness of personal torment. I struggle to attain those "peaks" of euphoria that may come more naturally to other people, though I can occasionally get a flicker of them thinking about certain times, people and situations. I have been very fortunate to have had my parents provide for me as I have been unable and unwilling to work for this time. It has been a very rewarding time in terms of intellectual exploration, but I would happily have filled it with some other measure of accomplishment marked by getting a job, making friends, having a boyfriend or a girlfriend and maybe getting in to a financial situation in which I could support myself and live on my own. I was always a "good" person and the people pleasing "nice guy", but depression encourages you to break those patterns and to seek out the darker and more selfish side of life. You aren't really the good guy if you are doing it only out of fear of what other people will think of you. The authenticity of the villain and the courage to live fearless of the opinion of others are an intoxicating brew that ultimately makes you a better person for confronting hard truths about who you really are and what you really want. You are living for yourself after all and your sense of right and wrong undergoes a considerable evolution as you learn to enjoy things you once thought taboo. It is abundantly clear that I would be better off if I let me demons have a little more free reign to tip the balance in favour of enjoying life a little more. Fortunately, you can do monstrous things in fiction and question moral certainties and get away with it in the name of entertainment. So there is much fun to be had with a subversive intellect, a dark sense of humour and a willing audience. Depression is simultaneously very ugly and very beautiful, a gift and a curse at once. I don't know whether it truly belongs in horror as a genre, but the ability to appreciate those subtle gradations of feelings that mark out the nature of tragedy is really healthy and like learning to see in colour after years of black and white. I have had quite a range of violent and suicidal thoughts over the past few years which have coloured my experience, even though I have never acted on them and believe I have safely reached a point of resilience where I would not act on them. Writing horror provides a therapeutic space to explore these feelings, the moral ambiguities, the complex motivations that bring the darker dimensions of ourselves to the surface. The fear of something is often worse than the thing fear itself. Given these personal circumstances, I was never wildly optimistic about the future, but nowadays it is really important to grapple with the many complex and difficult emotions that the news headlines can elicit. If you have mental health problems, it is absolutely essential to cut down the amount of time you look at the news and focus on doing things for yourself. Ideally, those things that are rewarding, productive and leave you a sense of accomplishment. Perfectly the art of writing, being one example. But we are all caught up in some great storms and they will affect us eventually, if perhaps in different ways and to varying degrees. The breaking point for me has been the grim realisation that people were going to put their own lives at risk in the middle of a pandemic. There really is no rational way for me to process that because I'm not cruel enough to think people deserve to suffer, even if it may be the result of their own actions. Whether it is protesting lock-down, refusing to wear masks or wash your hands, it is so very strange and frightening to think we know ways to keep ourselves safe and we have chosen not to do so. In choosing to endanger ourselves and others, based on some bizarre cocktail of refusing to accept facts or to make necessary changes, we are now solidly dealing with themes that belong in horror fiction. We are our own worst enemies, we are inflicting deep and lasting wounds on ourselves and grappling with trauma. We have unleashed our darkest thoughts, desires and ambitions on to the world and are still complacent to their effects. Future generations will have much opportunity to comment on what these events mean and what the context is, but they belong in a category of profound insight and self-awareness which we are struggling to achieve. Looking further in the years and decades ahead in which I may play out my existence, there is the lurking expectation that things will not radically improve whatever my intentions may be. I could well make a full recovery from my mental health problems and fulfil the obligations and expectations of functioning in society: having a successful career, making money, having a family and providing for them, and all the rest. But that does increasingly feel as a vulnerable island of tranquillity in a stormy sea of torments. Horror provides a set of symbols, images and stories to explore those difficult and complex emotions in a safer and more healthy way. From a mental health perspective, you could say it may increase your resilience and your tolerance to stress- not indefinitely, but just nudge it up a little by having a greater understanding of what you fear and why . As a work of fiction, it is therefore better to hold these problems at a distance, allowing them to filter though in works of fiction rather than their full and awesome intensity. I wouldn't call it outright denial, only a very selective one so that I am not overwhelmed given the vulnerability I have with my mental health. For me personally though, I hold on to some sense that we can do better, even if we chose not to. It is simply that we keep choosing the counter-productive path and it reflects defects in character and our values. It is very weird to be someone who has been suicidal for such a long time and who has decided he wants to survive, even as he looks around and wanders if other people share that conviction by how much they seem to put themselves in harms way. I look forward to getting through this year, ideally alive, sane and intact. Writing provides both a means of occupying myself and working through those aspects of my life and the world that need to be treated with care, even a degree of affection and yet do so in a way that is combines the best of being serious and playful without the dangers of brooding too deeply and darkly. I'll have to wait and see what I actually write when I set pen to paper though, but as a summary of where I am I think this is a fair amount of reflection to encourage the creative process. It is perhaps better to think of it as learning how to be a kid again and get in touch with that emotional core of self that never ages, but is only buried under the myth of maturity. Horror reminds us we are all basically children frightened of the monsters hiding under the bed.
I want to be a writer. There. I said it. The naked ambition is satisfied. Let there be no doubt or hesitation. There is no need for any false modesty or contrived performance of humility on my part any longer. The scripted niceties are done, the words are out and the shameless rampage of ego may commence: I want... ...to be... ....a writer. I know the birth of that ambition well. I will concede that it would be impossible for me to imagine a world and a life without books and that I owe to my parents. There is a certain claustrophobic atmosphere in my parents house among the cacophony of books that seem to poke out of every corner of available space. Cupboards, coffee tables and shelves crushed under the weight of volumes of various sizes. It is perhaps natural therefore to want be inclined to add some words to the rolling crest of waves and tide of texts that mark the shore of experience I have been so acquainted with and habituated to. As one could take a long walk besides the beach, so you could also peruse the bookshelves and contemplate the unexpected twists and turns you may take, guided by authors through their sea of pages and words. But the desire to be an author in my own right belongs to the pilgrimages to second hand book shops I made as a teenager as my parents would take me out on trips to the local city in Lincoln. The City centre is situated at the bottom of the hill, cut through by bridges crossing the river. At the top of the hill is the historic parts of the city, with Lincoln Cathedral and the Castle, home to one of the copies of the Magna Carta. The cobbled streets flow like a river down the hill, with the shops nesting expectantly beside it. The excitement of practically falling down "steep hill" as the street is named was always followed with the breathless crawling pace of returning to the summit for the car journey home. At the bottom of the hill, you have the two Waterstones bookshops. Each is neatly painted with their black store front, the ever hopeful proprietors set out the pristine window displays as if the books were porn stars seeking to entice customers by letting them have a guilty glimpse at their latest titles and best selling authors. One of these stores was originally an Ottackers but then surrendered its dark green colour scheme to the Waterstones black. The WHSmiths is not far from the second Waterstones, next to the Halifax Bank and opposite the McDonalds. So on most of these trips I would venture out and visit each of these three bookshops. You become aware of how standardised these shops are, often having exactly the same titles arranged in the same spaces. This is not to insult the books themselves, but the conformity of their presentation and selection necessary for the stage managed experience of a corporate bookshop. Clinically presented to appeal to any audience and any appetite without giving offence, yet devoid of mystery or eccentricity. I typically head straight for the history section, knowing the route up the stairs and turning to the right almost like sleepwalking and might then glide over to politics, religion and philosophy depending on what is my fancy for that day. Waterstones does have it's black bookshelves, the cafes on the second floor and those black leather chairs that seem to swallow you like quicksand, inducing a split second of fear as you sink deeper in to their sinister embrace than you were expecting. Even before you set foot in the store, you are almost certain what you are getting and you could just as easily find it on any browse on Amazon. It's not their fault, as they sell not for love of books but for love of money. With a certain numb disappointment, I come down the stairs, glance at the McDonalds through the window, momentarily to fantasize about cheeseburgers and head for the exit. But then there were the second hand bookshops at the top of the hill. They were easily recognisable by their hanging panel signs shifting in the wind, the cracked paint store fronts and sagging shelves in the overcrowded windows displays. With the clang of the bell as you swing open the door, you cross the threshold in to the unknown. Gone are shiny paperbacks and in come the ripped dust jackets, the yellowed pages, the smell of dust, damp and old paper hanging in the air. The tidy shelves give way to an organised carelessness of novels and tracts, arranged by an oddity of sizes and shapes, piled one on top or another almost at random. The excited mumbling of caffeinated crowds at Cafes is replaced by the eerie silence, narrow passages and dim lighting of the interior of old buildings. With those first few steps past the counter and the shop assistant as antique and eccentric as the contents of the store itself, you navigate your way through books piled to the ceiling, harbouring that childish hope you can escape the detection of the incessantly creaking floorboards. Yet, for all it's crowded shelves, you know you are in the presence of history as you survey the graveyard of delighted hours now awaiting new owners and new adventures. Pulling one of their number off the shelf, by a single flick of the cover and the inside pages can bring you for a moment to see a name and a year written by the previous owner of the edition in your hands. You look up at the highest row and down to the lowest tier and you are greeted by the company of books and the unknown, faceless people who read and loved them. Whilst many governments have sought to rip and burn such texts out of existence so that they could serve as the gatekeepers to men's souls, words have never lost their power to seduce us with the opiate of imagination. Knowing the books of another is akin to catching the whispers of the secrets of strangers. I came especially to appreciate the rubber stamp print of an "S.J. Artis" of Scunthorpe that could be found in many history books in my secondhand book shop of choice, the Harlequin, stamped usually with a date from the early nineteen seventies. Although he or she was a total stranger to me and we were separated by at least four decades, upon seeing it each time I entered the cover and pages of a slim paperback, it was a stamp of approval of someone who clearly loved knowledge and the books it came in. When I think of what it would mean to become a writer, I can close my eyes and feel the magic and excitement of trying to plunge the depths of this ocean of unknown texts in a second hand store. Whether the journey to those shelves was one of months and years, or even decades, I think of myself as a teenager scrambling on all fours to glimpse the titles and authors of dusty volumes on the bottom shelf, with the determined expectation that I a may yet seize a masterpiece from the discarded ruins of other people's lives. Perhaps someone will one day pull out a battered leather volume from some dark corner, huddled on a wooden self, the pages yellowed with age, blemished with damp and the corners bent over inside, so that their eyes may gaze over the title and a name on it's creased spine. If only just once, let it be my name, so that with my words I may make a faint, desperate stab at eternity and share a journey with another that may outlast my own.