Happy solstice! Don’t trauma dump, write horror instead

Happy summer solstice! It’s time to say goodbye to the darkness and embrace the light.

Today’s post was inspired by a conversation with a friend, who lamented about a colleague trauma-dumping on her out of the blue. The person was someone she knew from the office, but wasn’t close enough to even call an acquaintance. She offered him a lift home last week, during the rioting across Belfast when Translink had suspended all bus and train services after a Glider bus had been set on fire, and he proceeded to tell her all his personal woes during the twenty minute journey, leaving her reeling in horror. Since it’s the summer solstice, here’s my advice on shedding the darkness.

Don’t trauma dump, write horror instead. 

Such a thing has been a staple of many a horror author, for many a decade.

Got internal pain to process? Don’t worry. 

You can get it all out on the page. Hey, it’s free, unlike therapy, lol.

Have some psychological ‘demons’ to exorcise? It’ll be ok.

Write some dark poems, or turn those monsters into a great scary story.

Writing horror fiction makes art out of fear.

And make sure you do it the old-fashioned way, writing it yourself. It doesn’t count if you use AI. That’s just stealing from the work of the authors who have done it the hard way, and their copyrighted work was stolen to train those AI programmes.

Anyway, Happy Solstice… and don’t have nightmares!