I think I might have seriously flawed judgment. Does it say something about me that I just watched the entire second season of The Walking Dead in two days? And it wasn’t one of those short six-episode seasons. Nope, it was 12 hours of zombies eating people. I loved it, and hated it, and loved it. I screamed out loud several times. Andre had to come out and ask me if I needed him to turn the TV off for me. I declined. Then I went to bed and had zombie related nightmares. But, one night of disturbed sleep wasn’t enough to stop me. The next day I dug right back in and finished off the season. My rationale was that if I finished it I would have concentrated the fear into two days and the nightmares would go away all the sooner. Right. Like I said, seriously flawed judgement. But that show is freaking awesome.
And in news of other scary things, I was watching the actual news yesterday and I saw a story on who has the most expensive wrist watch, Romney or Obama. And before you say “Laura, TMZ doesn’t count as actual news” it was CNN people! They are electing the next leader of the free world, and the best topic of conversation CNN could come up with was who has the shiniest timepiece. Really people? Can I quit the world?
Writing Exercise:
Are you scared of monsters? Do goblins and ghouls make you run for the hills? Do stories of vampires and poltergeist keep you up nights? While some monsters can be scary, others just seem to be overblown. Consider a character who just refuses to be afraid. They still believe in monsters, and even meet them, but for some reason just won’t cave to the fear. How would that manifest? Perhaps the character would wear garlic to prevent vampire attack and then wander freely. Or faced with a moaning ghost in their home would simply insert earplugs and get a great night’s sleep. How would the monsters react? Spend a half hour writing about your fearless protagonist, then watch a comedy before you go to bed…monster stories can cause nightmares.
Happy writing.
