Yesterday an online acquaintance asked me if I had any advice about horror for someone who’s just getting started. “Do you have any hard-earned nuggets of wisdom that you wish you had known at the beginning of your career?”
I started typing, and here’s what came out:
Advice on horror depends on which angle you’re asking from. Writing craft? Approaches to publishing? Philosophical perspective? Or recommendations for reading, viewing, etc.? From the craft and philosophical perspectives, I’ll simply offer my own riff on what Thomas Ligotti told Jon Padgett as Jon was undergoing his personal authorial mentorship under Tom’s guidance:
Zero in deeply, deeply, on what really frightens and horrifies you. Become absolutely clear on that. Use any writing or other creative activities that you do in this field to help you accomplish that act of inner knowledge. Seek the supremely perfect articulation of your personal horror, the summit of your private, individualized Mount Doom, the apotheosis in language of whatever naturally offers itself to you—and only to you, in your for-all-time uniqueness—as the absolute nightmare. Explore and perfect ways to describe this nightmare to yourself.
If you approach the writing of horror in this way, as the most deeply personal discipline of self-interrogation and dark epiphany that you can achieve, what you write will automatically, and paradoxically, prove magnetic to other people.
Additionally, and speaking solely as myself on a spiritual or philosophical note: Always remember that your horror is only as real as you are. This is both the way in and the way out.