It's the most spook-u-lar time of the year
Happy days if you write horror...
What’s new with you?
Hi!
It’s Mat here. I hope all’s well with you and yours.
It’s October! Wooooooooooooooooooo.
(That’s a spooky ghost noise. Chills, right?)
Don’tcha just love this time of year? The leaves are all fiery, mushrooms are sprouting and sporing everywhere you look, and horror anthologies are dropping more rapidly than highschool kids in a 1980’s slasher film.
I’ve had a pretty eventful couple of months since my last bulletin.
Thanks to Writers’ HQ, I delivered a workshop, encouraging a bunch of talented scribblers to submit rebellious stories and poems to some top-flight magazines. It felt like a genuine act of rogue magick and the session gave us all a huge buzz of renegade energy. If you attended, then THANK YOU SO MUCH for taking part.
I’ve got a few new publications out in the world too…
There’s a haunted vis-po hybrid thing in the latest Suburban Witchcraft Mag (page 68, if you want to skip to it), a reprint of my PunkNoir story came out in the Alien Buddha ‘House of Horrors’ Halloween Compilation, and a brand new (utterly disgusting) body-horror tale features in Ethereal Nightmares: The Second Sleep , a horror anthology from Dark Holme Publishing (ebook and print versions released any day now).
I also rediscovered my writing mojo after a few months of hiatus, which brings me rather nicely on to…
What am I writing?
I’m writing poetry right now.
Gasp! I know!?!
I seem to have hit a flow. And I’m playing with the way I write too. I’ve been experimenting with cut-up techniques: writing chunks of text, chopping them into bits, rearranging them, mashing disparate pieces together, letting a little chaos enter into the writing process. And you know what? It’s exhilarating. There’s a thrill in it. The unexpected juxtapositions, the thematic echoes that emerge across different passages, the strangeness and unfamiliarity that’s injected into language when you treat it in this way.
I don’t find cutting and remixing instantly spits out results I’m happy with. It’s definitely not a shortcut. There’s a lot of picking, choosing, refining and polishing to be done when I apply this method — but I’m enjoying it. Something fresh and exciting is emerging and it has fully rekindled my writing fires.
Top tip: Be uncomfortable
Inspired by my cut-up experiments, my tip this month is to try something new and unfamiliar. Force yourself out of your writerly comfort zone. Go off-map. Write a story from a weird perspective (an inanimate object, or an animal maybe). If you normally write prose, write a poem, or vice versa. Write your piece as a monologue in the voice of a horrible, unsympathetic narrator. Kill off your main character, or drastically shift the narrative perspective halfway through. Reverse the order of your paragraphs and see if you can still make sense of the story. Challenge yourself. Write outside your comfort zone. The results can be exciting.
What am I reading?
I’m thrilled to be part of the first issue of Frazzled Lit, which dropped just a couple of weeks ago. My li’l poem is part of a bumper edition, alongside genius words from a whole host of incredible writers. Ever since the magazine came out, I’ve been dipping in and finding wonderful work. Here are just a few highlights:
Two gorgeous, musical poems from Heather D Haigh: Anna and I Will Be Dragons & Beyond The Stratosphere
Dark, hard-hitting, gritty fiction by Barbara Byar: Rubble
A beautifully twisted flash fiction tale from JP Relph: The Lies That Bind Us
Writing prompt
This month’s prompt is inspired, in no small part, by my buddy JP’s prompt machine submission call, which she ran over at Trash Cat Lit — but my version is much more home-made and raggedy round the edges.
Go grab some dice from a board game. Or just one die. Go. I’ll wait. Got it?
Now you’re going to roll that die three times to generate a location, an object, and a character. Then you have to write them into a story. Don’t like my lists? Fine, make your own, I’ll allow it.
Locations:
1-Hospital, 2-School, 3-Graveyard, 4-Moon, 5-Ship, 6-Office
Objects:
1-Gun, 2-Shoe, 3-Award Statuette, 4-A Scalpel, 5-Jar of Jam, 6-Roller Skates
Characters:
1-Nosy Neighbour, 2-Sexist Boss, 3-Anxious Chef, 4-Bored Deity, 5-Feral Toddler, 6-Serial Killer
Now get rolling and writing…
Signing off
I hope you enjoy Halloween, Samhain, Diwali, or whatever festival you choose to mark at this time of year. I’ll be back at least once more in 2024, with more writing prompts, tips, and news.
Until then, take care and enjoy your writing.
Best wishes,
Mat