Can you remember the first story you wrote? While I can’t say with absolute certainty that I do, I’m pretty sure it was a horror story.

It’s officially spooky season, and I am thrilled. October holds a special place in my heart. It’s a month when the strange and usual are celebrated. I myself am strange and unusual. (If you know, you know.) Seriously, though, the month of October was made for those of us who are outcasts. As queer Latino in a red state, I’m all too familiar with the feeling.

How Scary Movies Influenced My Writing

And of course, it’s the time of year when people dive headfirst into their favorite horror movies. Having a mom who’s obsessed with horror, I grew up on movies like Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Child’s Play, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and of course, anything by Stephen King.

As a result, I started my writing journey by writing horror stories. The first story I remember writing was basically a riff off the Child’s Play movies–a poorly drawn little four-to-five-page book crudely stabled together. I also remember it being a duology–the first book having a little statement in the back that read: For part two, see Eric. I must have been five to eight years old at the time.

From then on, I wrote horror story after horror story. A lot of them I handed in as assignments for school. God bless the teachers who had to read them. They must have thought I was going to grow up to be a serial killer. Sorry to disappoint Mrs. Smith.

While I wrote a lot of stories as a kid, I didn’t keep many of them. The oldest one I have is from middle school. A story about a group of teens going on a camping trip who get picked off one by one by a number of things lurking in the woods and in the river. The story was called “Nowhere River.” It was written on notebook paper with a cover made of construction paper. It was also crudely stabled together.

Your Writing Journey’s Inciting Incident

Regardless of the inciting incident that led to your writing journey, I think it’s important to take the time to reflect on it. For me, the genre of horror was kind of an escape. Just like Halloween, the horror genre celebrates the strange. It celebrates the outcasts. In some weird, twisted way, I felt seen watching horror movies. And that is all I hope to do with my writing. Make those outcasts like me feel seen.