CRP's Blog

In honor of Halloween, we asked a few of our authors about the scariest part of the writing process. Check out their spooky answers below!

The entire process is terrifying, from writing your lede to worrying about your facts to clearing quotes to hitting “send” on your final draft. But the most terrifying part, for me at least, is trying to get people to care about something you spent more than a year of your life on—whether that’s setting up events or begging friends to write Amazon reviews.  —Andrew Beaujon, author of A Bigger Field Awaits Us

What’s the scariest part of the writing process for me? The beginning, the middle, and the end.  —Jim Elledge, author of The Boys of Fairy Town

Alfred Hitchcock, the master of film suspense, once said it frightens an audience more if you tell them there is a bomb under a table set to explode in fifteen minutes, rather than simply having the bomb explode. The anticipation is what creates the fear. Writing is like that. Coming up with an idea, fleshing it out in writing, and sending in the finished book help establish the primordial fear that comes with the subsequent reviews, criticism—and yes, sales figures.   —Cory Franklin, author of The Doctor Will See You Now

The scariest part of the writing process is not the actual writing at all. It’s the fear of losing what you already have. There’s nothing more terrifying than being attacked by the technological demons that stalk your computer while you sleep. Once they succeed in crashing your hard drive and wiping out your memory and hence, your entire project, you are forced to recreate your work completely from memory (and sometimes without the aid of any notes because they suffered the same fate). That has to rank as one of the most terrifying writing experiences EVER. Solutions — No. 1: Keep your data in three separate locations. In other words, make PLENTY of back-ups. No. 2: Have a phone number handy for a good exorcist. You’re going to need it! —W.R. Wilkerson III, author of Hollywood Godfather

For me, the scariest part of the writing process is the fear of forgetting something, waking up in the middle of the night suddenly haunted by a fact missed, a name misspelled, a mistake made, and wondering if it’s too late to correct any errors, no matter how insignificant they may appear to casual readers and reviewers. The price of being a perfectionist for this author is the fear of being imperfect. —Eugene L. Meyer, author of Five for Freedom