~ The Darkness Within ~

As I lay listening to my book, I think about this morning’s writing pages. Then, I wonder if I am doing it wrong. Should I be literally writing instead of writing in my head? The truth is majority of my work is done in my head first. The only problem I find with this method is that many of the writings I’ve accomplished sound a great deal better in my mind then they ever do on the page. But as usual I digress. I rarely get to the point right away, which is a difficulty I admit to. Most writing experts will tell you that you need to get the point in the first few lines of your story/novel depending on which you’re working on.

Right now, I’m taking Richard Thomas’s Short story mechanics and loving it, I’m on lesson two, which is all about the hook. The thing is I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand, retain, and assimilate this aspect of writing. The hook is something I worry about often. It concerns me from time to time because I wonder if my first page is as good as I’d like it to be. Who knows, and half the time, who cares?

Anyway, I want to write about darkness this morning. The reason I’ve chosen the topic of darkness as opposed to light is because often, I find myself accepting my light over my darknesses, as if there’s something wrong with the darkness inside me. I have always been told by family, friends, and society that darknesses are wrong. From Sigmund Freud to sit coms on the tele, everyone eschews darkness. Sigmond Freud attributed all our impulses and instinctive needs to the id. Our ego wasn’t very much better than the id, and the Superego is what we were left to deal with, the suppressor of animal instinct. The thing is that there is a part of all of us that we tend to look away from.

We’re taught to shame ourselves over dark impulses such as wanting to be spanked during sex to more salacious desires. We’re taught to think of the things that the darkness wants as wrong and the light needs or wants as right. the thing is that no corner of who we are should be missed by our love for ourselves. I want to explore the darkness within me because it’s as much a part of me as the light.

I often wonder why it is that I fight against the label of horror so much. I remember the year before when I was working on the Cursed and someone said that it could be considered a horror. I was actually a little insulted and horrified to be labeled as such. Stephen King has made a living from such a genre and is considered one of the greatest writers of our times. People quote lines from his works. They talk about his book On Writing. They adore him and think of him with hope and great deference. No one says he’s wrong for what he writes even those of us that don’t write horror. I prefer the label of fantasy or paranormal. I frown upon the label of horror. Notice the wording I use. The actual word that is used in fiction or in distribution circles is category. Why do I have this aversion to horror? I won’t even really read it either. It’s an interesting part of who I am as a reader and writer. I stopped reading horror long time ago. I stopped reading the Anne Rice novels, Stephen King, Dean Koontz and a few others years ago.

What’s even more interesting is I loved these author’s books. I’ve never really been frightened by them, and I didn’t really mind reading them. Once upon a time, one of my favorite books was the Dean Koontz novel, Lightning. Now, not so much. I guess the categories I read now would be called fluff. The truth is if a person can sit down and write a novel and make it work in their audiences’ favor, they’ve done something great, whether their Stephen King, a well-known and world-renowned horror novelist or someone just beginning to be known to her audience like Helen Hoang, a new romantic comedy author. There are so many kinds of great. And there are so many kinds of horror, and I’m not talking about just in a novel.

I want to reach for my darkness, embrace it, and put it in my novels. It’s a part of me, and it leaks into the crevices of my works anyway. I might as well embrace it and let it flow like lava over my dreams to be a part of the process and drip the blood of reality into my fantasy and layer itself across my happily ever afters.

Thank you for joining me this week. What do you think about darkness? Is it something you allow to leak into your work? Or do you prefer only to allow the light glow on what you’ve written? Curious minds want to know. Tell me about your darkness in the comments. I look forward to seeing what you share.

Till next we meet, stay well & keep creating! CSA

E-mail: Nell@letsgetpublished.com

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