I was a little shocked the other day when I asked my nine year old grandson what he was going to be for Halloween and he said he didn't want to dress up this year. The reason? The school had told the kids they couldn't dress up as anything scary.
Hello?!? Halloween is all about getting the crap scared out of you. If you make it through All Hallows Eve without poisoned candy and razor blades in your apples you can survive anything. Even that Vampire lurking in the corner to bite your neck.
Halloween is about fear, about the monsters that hide under your bed and stalk your dreams. Its about walking those evil streets and surviving. Facing your fears gets your heart pumping. It makes you feel alive. It also gives you the knowledge that you can fight evil and win, even if you're wearing a silly costume.
Now, you're probably wondering what this has to do with writing. Well, think about it. As writers we dress up in the guise of our characters and with pen in hand, stalk evil and kill it. Of course, we don't always win but one battle is not the war and so we write on, killing the demons in every guise. From pedophiles to the happy homemaker who kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb. We're the slayers of evil who make everything right in our little corners of the world.
And for your Halloween treat we have "52 Stitches" http://52stitches.blogspot.com/ They open for submissions today. And what are they looking for? Horror flash in the 750 word range. But hurry, once they have their 52 picks for the year, they close until next Halloween. The pay here is $3 per story and at the end of the year the stories are collected in an anthology. You can find their guidelines here http://52stitches.blogspot.com/2008/10/guidelines.html
May your day be full of treats but please, watch out for the tricks, and that evil zombie lurking in the corner ready to pounce on your pen. Write on, gentle storyteller, and slay the evil dragon today.
10 comments:
And Happy Halloween to you.
it's a good old pagan fest so i quite like haloween but this trick or treat thing - doesn't happen in hartlepool!
What!!! No candy??? The tricks can be fun though. I woke up one morning to find the apple tree in my front yard decorated with streamers of blue toilet paper. It's my favorite fall foliage picture.
Paul, you've found a new mission in life: Create Halloween in Hartlepool (or anyplace that doesn't have a trick-or-treat tradition). It's a relatively cheap holiday (compared to Christmas, New Year's and Valentine's Day) and is just a lot of fun for folks of all ages.
This "not scary" thing is going around. In the several events I attended, there were almost no scary costumes. All of the girls are princesses and the boys are Harry Potter or superheroes. I think we are missing the point of it.
The year I spent in England (1994-95) it was just beginning to take off there. But I understand the French are adamantly against it.
Considering what they're watching on TV and in the movies, Patti, scary shouldn't even be a factor in dressing up. And don't get me started on the fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Those alone could give you nightmares if you thought about them.
And I agree with Corey, Paul, you should get the ball rolling over there. I think the adults have more fun than the kids!
Of course now this is completely after the fact, but your grandson could've gone in a suit and glasses. Then when any teacher or adult asked him what costume that was, he could reply, "I'm the scary administrator that takes away Halloween from children and marginalizes imaginations."
He wound up dressing as the monster from "Scream". I guess if it's been on TV it's not scary any more. Of course, he couldn't wear the mask in front of his two year old step sister - it scared her half to death. :-) I do love your solution though, Cormac! Those administrators can be pretty scary.
"He wound up dressing as the monster from 'Scream'."
Uh, seriously? This is along the lines of when Bob Dole said that "Trainspotting" was a pro-drug movie, without seeing one frame of the film.
Okay, let me see if I have this right...The Administrator in question takes exception to such fantastical creatures (that are cultural icons) like Frankenstein and the Wolf Man, as opposed to he or she allowing a character that could be any person that has a sharp blade and serial killer aspirations.
Which of these is actually scarier in the context of reality? Which of these series is rated "PG" by the MPAA (for the DVD reissue), and which has to make cuts just to squeak by to get an "R?" I'm not putting Wes Craven or slasher movies down, I'm just saying where is the consistency?
I have no idea what they had in mind as scary, Cormac. Perhaps they were thinking along the lines of "blood" splashed on a costume or an eyeball hanging down or maybe carrying an arm. Everyone sees scary as different. Kind of like noir.
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