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Does Your #amWriting Scare You?

I often sit and write with other writers. We use writing prompts and then let loose on paper. Last week, my friend put down her pen in the middle of her writing, drank up her entire cup of coffee, and shivered a little.

When I asked her, she said, my writing scared me just now. I was going someplace frightening with it, so I stopped.

I told her the place in writing where it frightens you, moves you, angers you is a good place to go, creatively. If you can harness that energy and spill it on paper, magical things often happen.

I believe this both from my experience and from what I have read of others’.

Have you ever written from a place that frightens you?

Damyanti Biswas

Damyanti Biswas is the author of You Beneath Your Skin and numerous short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and Asia. She has been shortlisted for Best Small Fictions and Bath Novel Awards and is co-editor of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her literary crime thriller series, the Blue Mumbai, is represented by Lucienne Diver from The Knight Agency. Both The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon were published in 2023.

I appreciate comments, and I always visit back. If you're having trouble commenting, let me know via the contact form, or tweet me up @damyantig !

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25 Comments

  • Jai Joshi says:

    Yes, I have. It was like I looked down at the screen and didn't know where that had come from.

    Jai

  • Anonymous says:

    You gave me a much needed tip. Thank You.

  • Donna Smith says:

    I'm not sure if I've ever written to a place of fear. And as I wrote that… I just realized that I HAVE and AM right now. It dawned on me, it isn't frightening because it's scary, horror story stuff, but almost too real potentially and I don't know where it came from nor why. I stopped, too, when it got too close. Maybe that is a good thing to pick up again.
    Oooh, I love when a blog gives me something to really think about. Thanks!
    And thanks for the added blitz on my site! I came here to thank you for that, and I got this!

  • Brian Miller says:

    came by looking for the excerpt from alex…
    and yes i have…its fun and scary to dance the edge…wrote some pseudo horror for a while…much darker than my usual fare, but i enjoyed it…

  • I ventured into the MG waters this month and found there are no rabid sharks. Yay!

  • Nothing wrong with a bit of the dark unknown….as long as you find your way back.

  • EC Stilson says:

    Yes. Especially in my memoirs. It can be scary remembering and then realizing how I really feel/felt.

  • Most definitely – I wrote from the heart once and it scared the crap out of me, so I broke it! Well the damn thing healed, and now it's horrible, I'm writing without fear. It gets worse though, as I even wrote about a strangely related issue, "Can a person without fear really love?" Sunni Knows.

  • M Pax says:

    Yes. I've written what makes me uncomfortable. I consider that a form of fear. It's good to feel those things, though. I think.

  • Angela Brown says:

    Yes. I have done that. It's a been frightening to feel those emotions but harnessing them is the best way to weave in so much depth for pulling the reader into the rabbit hole the character's falling into.

  • In a scene involving death, a little bit.

  • Enjoyed this post. The novella I have coming out in a couple of months scared me a little. It was dark. My first novel was published in 1996 and was a romantic comedy so I wasn't really "prepared" for the evil characters that appeared in this latest. Of course, I'm 17 years older. I'm not as funny as I used to be. 🙂

  • Yes, sometimes when I bring my mother into one of my stories I can feel the isolation she felt when she moved from New Orleans to her in-laws' farm in a really rural section of Louisiana. Without tv, radio, and neighbors, I don't know how she did it.

  • LinWash says:

    Yes. Whenever I write about a character experiencing a tough emotional scene that I've experienced. It's hard to "go there" with your characters. But sometimes you have to.

  • Mia Hayson says:

    Absotively! Both in terms of how I see myself reflected in some traits that characters have (that nobody else seems to see) and just, generally, going to dark places. I think you're right, though, I feel most creative and satisfied when I've gone to that place. 🙂

    • Damyanti says:

      I like Absotively 🙂

      Creative and satisfied is how you want to occasionally feel like, if you're a writer.

  • Jo says:

    Not a writer, but I would imagine that writing like that would eventually appeal to the reader.