Goth-ified
Sometimes they expect you to be Anne-Riced with dead lilies in your
hair, wearing combat boots and purple liquid eye-liner, racing down the
main street on a motorcycle in a leather jacket with a skull on the
back. Or Gothic Lolita with pretty lace petticoats and a bat on one
shoulder, perhaps tongue clicking glossolalia while you write in a suede
antique journal. I often wonder if this picture is somehow superimposed
on me, like I’m wearing a blue floral dress and they hear the word
“horror writer” and see skulls and spiderwebs instead. But when I’m
writing I don’t want to wear bat skulls, I’m most likely wearing a
sweatshirt because it’s cold. Okay, maybe I’ll throw on some doc
martens, but that is the extent of it. At least male horror writers have
been somewhat integrated into normal society – as with the smiling Dean
Koontz hugging his golden retrievers on the back of his books.
You’re pretty for a writer
“You’re pretty for a writer.” I’ve been told this often enough and it
still confuses me. Pretty as a writer but unattractive as a cocktail
waitress? And since when did writers have a standard of beauty? Is the
idea that we’re all mongoloid troll beasts that skulk in an underground
city banging on typewriters and drooling? That we’re supposed to be
ineligible for the dating pool? What about Colette, Sylvia Plath, and
Zelda Fitzgerald? And more importantly, when did this matter?
The boyfriend syndrome
I had this problem. I used to date “writers”. Which is an entirely
different matter than dating writers san sarcastic quotation marks. But
also more likely at my age when it’s incredibly rare to break into the
industry yet and you’re surrounded by a lot of people who have yet to
realize they really should just stop pretending to be artistic and focus
on a career as a carpenter instead. But when you’re a writer dating one
of these “writers,” especially if it’s a boy, most people will assume
that he’s got more credibility. And even though I had a few
publications, was in the credits for writing a video game, and on my
sixth novel, whereas my boyfriend had yet to finish a short story,
whenever I walked into a room it would be, “Here’s [actual name
withheld] the writer. Oh, and his girlfriend.” My ego was wounded.
You should write romance
This one speaks for itself, and is something you’ll most likely never
hear spoken to a male horror writer. “You’re an excellent writer, but
this stuff is a bit abrasive. Why don’t you try writing something nice?
Like romance?”
What? Like Twilight?
No, not like twilight. Twilight is not horror, it is paranormal romance.
And there’s been an idea circulating around that Twilight is “for
girls,” and that anything “for girls” is fluffy and glittery and should
be dismissed. When horror for females by females can be something that
is dark and quite powerful, that is both full of substance and can be
regarded as serious literature.
But with all that being said
I love horror, and I love being female. I love being a female writing
horror, and all the idiosyncrasies and annoyances of it won’t take me
away.
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