All Hallow’s Eve

Jack-o-lantern

 

Today is All Hallow’s Eve, which as Kim and I were discussing this morning, is one of my two favorite holidays of the year (the other is Thanksgiving, even if it has been years since I’ve sat down to a table with a turkey on it).

 

For the kids, there is the joy of dressing up, the candy gathering and consumption, and just having fun. Who doesn’t remember the home made costume, or the feeling that you had scored tons of candy while traipsing through the neighborhood?

 

As adults, Halloween has come to symbolize in my mind creativity, as well as the one day a year where we actually aim to invoke the primal fears. We create scenes in our yards, plan how to create costumes, and daydream about how to creep out our loved ones. And what’s more primal than fear? Fear of the dead coming back to haunt us, fear of being made one of them?

 

How do we get in the mood? We watch the horror movie in all its variants, creature features to slasher films, though I have no taste for most of the recent additions to the genre, not being a fan of gore for the sake of gore. The one notable exception that I can think of is Cabin In the Woods, which answered the question – what would a horror film look like if Joss Whedon was responsible? It would look like awesome is what it would look like, with absolutely every trope from the last hundred years of horror and terror pulp, with a nice bow on top.

 

Sorry for the sidetrack there.

 

Its even fitting that tomorrow is the start of NANOWRIMO, ie the month of aspiring and almost aspiring writers putting words in order with the goal of achieving 50,000 words of near sensical strings. Today we harness our creative spirits for the fun of terror; tomorrow we uncap that creativity and try to capture a story.

 

Incidentally, tomorrow will also start my (nearly) daily blogging of my writing progress. As somewhat of a tradition, I will have one last shave tonight, and then tomorrow will forgo shaving again until the story (or 50k at least) is done, complete with photographic updates. Its a hoot. If by hoot you mean a month of grouchy, itchy writing updates. Not sure how this is going to work with the way the day job has been consuming 20-25 hours a day lately. Not sure what you’re going to do with all of those blogging updates after months of my barely blogging every fortnight? Me either, pal, me either.

 

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