Why you should let go of Stephen King
Here I go again with a controversial opinion!
Imagine you are an aspiring horror writer. You grew up reading or watching the classics. H.P Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, Mary shelly and, of course, Stephen King. You indulge in their masterful craft, honed through a combination of sheer talent and years of practice.
Now that you imagined that, you can stop because you don’t need to imagine, I can tell you from experience.
Part I: The time I stoped shining
I am that aspiring horror writer/filmmaker and for years I have loved and admired these grand storytellers. And to be honest, I still do! Is almost impossible not to have a good time reading a King book or to shiver with the ideia of cosmic creatures coming to distroy everything you know.
However, in the last couple of years I started to feel like my writing was becoming unispired, almost bored at itself. Being complitly honest, that scared the hell out of me! Unlike before, where where I would have a great time refencing this storytellers that I love, it felt like I swimming in deep waters, drowning in thair words. It didn’t feel honest.
After I while, I just didn’t feel like telling stories anymore.
Fortunately, I have been bitten by the storyteller bug — also, therapy helped alot — and I couldn’t stay too long without writing. So I started to investigate what was happening to me.
Part II: I might not float, but I sure can swim!
The first thing I did was to return to the classics. May be, I thought, I don’t enjoy them anymore! Gladly I can confirm I was wrong, they were still good. But they did feel different, it felt almost like I had déjà vu while reading them.
However, it wasn’t because I had already read them. I read them endless times, but it never felt like that! What is it then?
I thought really hard about it, but nothing seemed to make sense. So, I decided to let go for some time and come back to it later.
Like anything in life, the moment I stoped thinking about it, the answer came to me. It all happened when talking to my partner about the creative process (his an artist as well), his words went somewhat like this “The only original thing in your work are your references”. In that moment I felt like someone tossed a lifebouy to me!
I could finally swim again!
Part III: All work and no play makes Lívia a dull artist
Okay, you might be wondering “Lívia, what exactly made sense, you make no sense yourself!” First, yeah sometimes I lose myselself in metaphores… But that is not the point, let me try to explain how that statement by my partner made thing shift in my brain.
After he said that, I started to pay more attention to what was being referenced in the art I consummed. And, not surprisingly, every single thing referenced the classics. You see, that is not inherently a bad thing, they ain’t classics by mistake! However, what I realized was that when everybody has the same arsernal of references, all our works start to feel like the same!
It shouldn’t be a surprise, but if you been long enough in the rodeo, there’s this thing that starts to happen where if you don’t like this especific group of authors or filmmakers, your work is considered to be less then ! Therefore, slowly but surely you start to abandon all things you like that are not “real art”.
In my case, I had to ditch things like High School Musical, Twilight, Doctor Who, even teen or national literature. I became a pasteurized version of myself.
With that realization, I decided to pull the breaks and start over. So, the first thing I did was to read something outside of the “canon”, just to see how it felt. And let me tell you, it felt great!
I started to read “Immaculatus” by Raíssa Selvaticci, a teen drama full of mistery, romence and murder! It didn’t take longe for me to start to feel like myself again, ideias rushing into my mind and I felt like I could write after a long time.
Just the act of allowing myself to enjoy the things I like, without judgments, made me a better artist. After all, as my partner said, what I like and why I like is what makes me the artist I am!
