…the latest writing prompt came in. How real was I going to get?
I’d already bared my soul this week – aka tried to write a short biography – and now there was more to be done.
Here’s the thing. The things that are really scary to us are also hard to put down in print.
At least, to put down in print and share with others.
So then I tried to work out why:
1) Will people make fun of me if I say what has really scared me?
Don’t know. Haven’t seen evidence of that yet. Strike that off the list of objections.
2) Will the scary thing seem more real if I write about it?
Possible. At least, that’s what my imagination is concerned with. Having a rather over-active imagination, you see, I try to avoid feeding it too much at times. Being scared, thinking about it, writing about it – that’s an easy route to imagining more, and the fear becoming more real.
3) Third possibility. Move the scary thing out of my head, jettison it in cyberspace and run away.Â
Sounds more promising. Admittedly, I’d have to read about it again if I came back to looking at this post in the future – and I do re-read them every now and then. But maybe it would be less scary by then. Possibly.
4) Give it a go?
I’m tapping away, and what comes to mind is that ending of a TV series. And maybe those library books that I shouldn’t have borrowed.
To be honest, I think I should be more scared by stuff in the real world – the things that we don’t want to be real, but are. The things like drugs cartels, and trafficking, and children dying of malnutrition.
But I’m going back to the influences on the imagination – because those are still messing with me, years on.
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Example 1: the ending of the TV series Twin Peaks
I was with the hip kids in the 90s, watching Twin Peaks. Sucked in, by the music, certainly. The permission to drink good coffee – along with having particularly fine cherry pie.
So, like a lot of others watching what is now seen as cult TV, I was all set for the final episode. Unfortunately for the girl with the over-active imagination, that came around the run-up to A Levels, as I recall. (Delayed note to self: avoid scaring self witless before final school exams.)
I remember reading somewhere that the director David Lynch filmed a few different versions of the ending. He kept his final decision unclear to the crew, right up to the end.
Let’s just say that it wasn’t a happy ending. At all. Set up your lead character, and subvert them right at the last moment. This is all understatement, you understand.
I know how much it hit me because I was writing about that ending a while ago, on this blog, in fact. I was trying to find an online link to opinion on the final episode – and it brought up a still from the very end of the show.
I was still terrified. So much so that I had to ask Dan to close the link to that site – I couldn’t bring myself to look at it again.
Why should it still be so bad? Because I think a particularly primal fear is that good things go wrong – and very good things, very good people, can go very wrong. It’s not a new premise – you’d lose half the plot twists in crime films without it.
But, you see, the episode set up the lead character to be happy – to get even happier – and then hit him with it. And the person in his life, a big reason for his happiness, has no idea that he’s gone wrong. Which seems even scarier.
So a nod to Mr Lynch for understanding how to go out on a bang. But no thanks for the ongoing memory.
Example 2: the ghost stories from the library
It’s not the first time that I’ve come across something fictional, and regretted it. There was the ghost story compilation from the library that I should have left on the shelf. But didn’t.
I tend not to go picking stuff that is deliberately and overtly scary. So no slasher movies, thanks, no deliberate horror. The pictures stay too easily in my memory – even the internal pictures if it’s in a book.
But sometimes you chance on something that you thought would be a bit scary but basically OK – and it really scares you. And half the problem is the surprise, and the fear in the moment, wanting to distance yourself from it, but still being gripped.
With the book, I remember putting it under my dresser so I couldn’t see it. It was a hardback, and I lined up the page bits into the corner of my room, under the dresser. I think I was trying to stop the words creeping out.
I just about managed to pull the book out again when it was time to take it back to the library. Avoided looking at the cover. And somehow, I think that mostly worked, because I don’t have a memory of the story that set things off.
But I do remember how I responded. Part of me knew that words couldn’t seep out of a book – and part of me was gripped by fear, and wanted to do something to control it.
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Deep breath. Written down. Done. Will it calm down the memories? I hope so.
Junior Reader has an active imagination too. I am trying to convey the idea that we have a choice about our imaginations – that we can turn off the tap, as it were, when we see something that would otherwise ‘flood the system’.
It’s good advice. I should stick to it myself. But for now, I think this is in the region of aversion therapy – consider the scary thing until it isn’t scary any more.
We can’t always tell what will be really scary. We know that people make TV and films and write books to scare people. We know that some people specialise in it – and we also know there are enough people that want to be scared, at least for a little bit.
So I know this. And I’ve been scared for more than a little bit. And now I’m going to walk away.