Why Not?

After "Where do you get your ideas?" the second most frequent question I get is "But you're so talented, why do you write horror?"

If I'm feeling particularly snotty, I'll say something along the lines of "Because I don't want people like you to read what I write."

However, for the most part I'll say, "Because writing horror is cheaper than going to an amusement park everyday to ride a rollercoaster."

Neither of these answers, however, are the complete truth. Firstly, because I really don't care who is reading my stuff and secondly, because riding a rollercoaster is more like reading a horror tale as opposed to writing one.

Don't get me wrong, I completely enjoy both riding rollercoasters (especially wooden ones) and reading the writing of other folks (not even limited to horror in that respect) but writing horror is a fear unto itself.

It's like being in control and totally out of control at the same time. It's thinking you know what's going to happen and then it suddenly changes on you. It's about totally and completely caring about your characters and then crushing them psychologically, emotionally, physically with a swipe of a pen and then laughing and crying when you do so. Not out of insanity, but because you do what you must when it must be done.

Writing horror, good horror, isn't for the weak of heart, but neither is it for the unemotional. Any hack can write a halfway decent scene of evisceration, it takes emotional depth of character to truly care about the person who is getting eviscerated.