When writing a scary story becomes a nightmare - fight on or quit

I've been working on one particular short story for months now. Months. I've written 7000 words, and I'm still nowhere near a satisfying conclusion. I'm not even sure if the conclusion I have planned is very satisfying. I don't think it is. I'm not even sure the beginning or the end are very good either.

What I thought was an idea that promised so much dark wonder is turning into a nightmare. For all the wrong reasons.

I now find myself in the kind of position all writers, and, I suspect artists of all kinds experience. I have a decision to make. Do I fight on and try and salvage something worthwhile from the jumbled mess I've spent countless hours of my time on, or do I cut my losses, accept the idea was never going to work, and spend my time on something fresh and new that will work?

If I give up, does that make me a quitter or a pragmatist? After all, you can't polish a turd. Or can you?

All I can do is follow my gut. It's time to bail on this flawed tale, as infuriating as that feels. It could've been a contender, but it wasn't to be. Would a painter carry on with a picture where their brush had slipped, or they'd applied the wrong colour? No, they'd tear that fucker up and start again.

Time to create something new. And that is why we do this.

Tonight's Star Prize - 100 words of primetime tv terror! A National Treasure returns.....

Tonight’s Star Prize

He didn’t look like he did on TV. He smiled, but it wasn’t the charming, cheeky smile of Saturday night tea time. It was fierce, leering. His eyes burned, wet and bulging as he reached for me.

Said I’d won tonight’s star prize, just like on the telly. He laughed then.

Forty years ago now, but I never forgot that night. Ever. He died last week, it was in all the papers. “National Treasure Dies”. I was glad when I read it, smiled.

But that night he came back to me. His hand, cold and white, reached under the covers.

It's Under the Bed - More 100 word flash fiction horror. An ancient evil lurks amongst the dust and toys beneath a young boy's bed

It’s Under the Bed

Mummy says there’s nothing under my bed but dust and old toys. Daddy says the same, gets angry when I try and tell him. Hits me. Tells me to be a man.

I go to bed hurting. Trying to cry quietly so it doesn’t hear me. The thing under the bed.

It’s old, it tells me. Older even than my Granda. It’s seen everything, knows everything.

And it’s done bad things. Tells me about them, its croaky voice coming from under the bed. Chuckling as I quake.

It says soon it’ll take me to the bad place under the ground.

No Comfort Breaks Required - 100 Words of Terror as a businessman finds a ghastly way to solve his staffing problems...employing the deceased!

No Comfort Breaks Required

I should have thought of this years ago. For too long I suffered the burden of a demanding workforce. Never satisfied. Forever bleating about their “rights”. Damned socialist nonsense.

Mama DuChance changed all that, came to me with an idea. Employ the dead to work my call centre. Their needs, as far as I can tell, are few. Being dead, they enjoy no protection under discrimination laws. I can pinch the women’s bottoms with impunity.

What’s that damn noise coming from the trading floor? Some kind of chanting. One word: flesh.

Chairs scrape as they rise. They’re heading this way.

Out of Town - 100 Word Horror Tale of Retail Atrocity, that'll make you GA(s)P in terror!

Out of Town

I pull into the retail outlet. My wife’s birthday tomorrow and I haven’t got her anything.

They all look the same: the stores, the cars, the people. Same clothes, same vacant eyes; dead black holes, lifeless but for the embers of greed. They want things. I think I’m supposed to want them too.

They sense my lack of belonging. Manicured hands grab me, carry me into a department store. My clothes are replaced with designer garments, a needle jabbed into my neck, freezing my muscles.

I’m lifted to the window and positioned with the other mannequins.

You’ll probably see me.

In the darkest reaches of the Hebrides, buried in the frozen peat it lay. My novel stirs, takes shape and prepares to rise.

It's been far too long since I posted anything on my blog, this is partly due to the excesses of the festive period, my own engagement to my now fiancée, and extensive research and planning of my first novel.

I've written many short stories; both flash fiction horror and longer stories, but the business of writing a novel really is something else. It's both incredibly daunting and intimidating, but also tremendously exciting. It has given me a sense of freedom I've never experienced creating short works of fiction; the possibilities are literally infinite. Where do I take these characters, what drives them? How deep into the world of the occult and supernatural do I want this novel to go? Am I writing a horror novel or a fantasy novel, and does it matter? These are all questions I'm currently asking myself, and at the moment, changing my answers on a daily basis. Slowly but surely though, I'm whittling down the possibilities, like a sculptor watching a piece of rock gradually take place.

All I can really reveal at this stage is that it will be a gothic horror tale set in the Highlands of Scotland, set partly in the modern day and partly at the time of the tragic 19th century Highland clearances.

I hope people will like it. I do anyway, so that's something.

100 Word Horror: Gunpowder, treason and seditious literature; a Guy must burn!

Remember, Remember

Every year they burn a Guy in our village. We all gather round, young and old in the dark autumn night. Tall shadows. Smiling faces in the blazing amber glow. Hot dogs and mugs of steaming tea, enjoying the crackle and pop of the burning wood.

And the screams of the Guy. The sizzle of his scorched flesh. Roasting meat.

There’s always someone to be made an example of. A dissident, a traitor to be sent screaming to hell.

This year it’s going to be my son. I feel no sadness, he was caught reading banned literature and must die.