Sometimes I Scare Myself

I am a total wimp about scary movies--I can only take them if they also have a large dose of comedy. I can handle Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, and movies like that, but I hate the jump-out-and-get-you type especially.

To this day, my husband teases me about when we were watching The Changeling, and I left the room after a moment that I will freely admit was only a "gotcha". A stained glass window burst, and I'd had enough, after all the other spooky stuff that came before that. And as much as I love and admire the LOTR movies, I can't watch them within a few hours of bedtime because they are just too disturbing for me.

As you might expect, my wimpiness carries over into scary books too. I don't even attempt most horror books.

But I've been stepping up the paranormal in this rewrite of my book, and sometimes after I write a scene, I have to set it aside and not look at it for a while. Not because I need to set it aside and come back to it with fresh eyes, but because it scares me! That just might be a new record for wimpitude.

But I do have to say I've had some weird things happen before, so I have plenty of genuinely creepy stuff to draw on. In the end, I don't think this novel will be classified as horror, but I hope I've done my job and at least unsettled a few people.

3 comments:

Angie said...

I think its great that you can scare yourself. I can't recall if Stephen King ever said that he managed to scare himself, but I wouldn't doubt it. This was a fun post!

Angelica R. Jackson said...

Of course, the bar is not set very high for me to get scared . . .did I just see something move out of the corner of my eye? Oh, the furnace switched on and the curtain is moving.

M.J.A. Ware said...

I'm not much for most scary movies either. I just don't find the suspense enjoyable--I always leave the theater feeling stressed out.

But, I love writing scary stories, at least MG and YA stories.

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