CRP's Blog

Writers beware, you’re in for a scare! In honor of Halloween, we asked a few of our Fall authors about the scariest part of the writing process. Check out their spooky answers below…

In writing my book, I found it frightening to learn how many people trust anecdotal evidence and celebrity testimonials more than science. Evelyn Wood was like a Dracula who couldn’t be vanquished by a series of would-be Van Helsings. I saw how people, and sometimes the media, buy into something simply because it’s popular, and this makes me fear for the future. —Marcia Biederman, author of Scan Artist: How Evelyn Wood Convinced the World That Speed-Reading Worked

You might figure that staring at the empty page or a blank screen is the scariest sight for a couple of writers who know they need tens of thousands of words to fill them, but for us, especially in this case, that was the easy part, the fun part. What we found to be the spookiest, most bone-chilling—and scariest—was the prospect of getting something very wrong or leaving out a subject that needed to be included. Several editing passes and other eyes saved us a few times along the way. —Jeff Abraham & Burt Kearns, authors of The Show Won’t Go On: The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers Onstage

I don’t think any writer of a memoir, especially a tell-all narrative about crashing parties in Hollywood, doesn’t feel a cold trickle of sweat dripping down the back of their neck. Every time I sat down to write my book I had to confront my deepest fears and anxieties—how much to reveal about myself, encounters with celebrities and other party crashers in LaLa Land. In the end, I just had to write the truth and that provided some needed calm in my literary storm. —Adrian Maher, author of Uninvited: Confessions of a Hollywood Party Crasher

Since it’s Halloween, I think it’s appropriate to talk about ghosts and goblins… The scariest element of the writing process with a memoir like The Dog Log was that many long-buried skeletons and ghouls had to be faced down, but then—soon after—set loose to wonder about freely once again.  —Richard Lucas, author of The Dog Log: An Accidental Memoir of Yapping Yorkies, Quarreling Neighbors, and the Unlikely Friendships That Saved My Life

What do you think is the scariest part of the writing process? Let us know in the comments below!