Monday, October 24, 2011

Halloween!

I love Halloween.  I always have.  I think it's the combination of creepy and candy - and, of course, getting to be someone else for a night. 

I think the disguise aspect of Halloween appeals to my writer sensibilities.  I feel like each of our characters are costumes we put on, extensions of ourselves.  Obviously the degree to which this is true varies for each character (I don't believe all fiction writers are creating Mary-Sue MCs* and implanting them willy nilly into stories) but I think it's a little bit true for all of them.

You may be wonder why I am posting my Halloween post now, rather than, say, a week from now. Two reasons:

One, Neil Gaiman has come up with the concept of All Hallow's Read (If you haven't heard of it, the idea is that you give someone the gift of a scary book on Halloween), and I wanted to mention it early enough to give everyone a chance to choose and buy a scary book, if they are so inclined.

Two, it's been a while since we had a writing prompt, and I thought that since November is likely going to be a slow month in terms of DevCo posts, now would be a great time for one.

It's going to be a relatively easy one, because we all have NaNoWriMo and other things (if I remember correctly, midterms) on the brain, but here it goes:

Write something about fall.  Anything.  Up to 1000 words, fiction or non-fiction, poetry, whatever.  The only real rule is that it has to be about this wonderful season we find ourselves in (unless you live somewhere where it's spring right now.  If that is the case, please write about that).  To be posted anytime between now and October 31st.  Fallish/Halloween pictures would be great, too.

*If there isn't already, there needs to be a male equivalent to Mary-Sue.  My vote would be for Billy-Dean.

3 comments:

E said...

I believe that the male equivalent of a Mary Sue is commonly called a Gary Stu, although some circles use Marty Stu and some just use Sue for both genders. There isn't really one agreed-upon term.

That All Hallow's Read sound like a really cool idea, actually. I might have to try that sometime. /is broke this year - went a little overboard on all the lovely spooky Halloween goodies

Athena said...

Well, I liked the sound of Billy Dean, but I suppose it would be kind of awkward for me to start using it now. Gary Stu is obvious enough for people to get right away, at least.

I am also broke this year, but I'm thinking I might just make a scary book out of some scrap paper and leave it on a bench somewhere... should be sufficiently scary ;)

E said...

Billy Dean sounds pretty cool, although every time I heard it I'd probably think of Michael Jackson.

Making a scary book is a good idea too. I could fill it with ghost stories!