Halloween is an excellent excuse for a little drama, and I intend to speak well of any occasion with such good colours. Something black, a deep red lip, lighting that has finally understood the assignment. There’s pleasure in making an effort and enjoying the result without issuing a modest little disclaimer first. My Halloween writing has a similar appeal: take the atmosphere further, give a detail more room, discover how much a sentence can do. The date isn’t essential to any of it. It simply gives everyone else a convenient excuse to catch up.
What interests me is how a small choice can change the mood. A darker shade of lipstick can make an outfit feel entirely different. One lamp switched off can improve a room considerably. A story can become more unsettling because a sentence stops a moment earlier than expected. I enjoy the care involved in those decisions. They don’t all have to be grand or expensive, and they certainly don’t have to announce themselves. Sometimes the most satisfying change is the one that makes everything else fall into place without anyone quite being able to say why.
Taste needn’t be so solemn. A woman can know what suits her and still enjoy a ridiculous hat. She can appreciate a beautifully made costume without wanting to wear it, and she can admire someone having a glorious time in something completely absurd. I don’t intend to spend Halloween assessing strangers as though I’ve been appointed external examiner in black velvet. A little absurdity improves the evening. I spend enough of my working life deciding exactly what a passage needs. Other people’s capes are entitled to exist without my editorial intervention.
There’s a difference, too, between sharing the mood of an occasion and supplying an account of every hour. I can enjoy talking about a look, a piece of writing or a seasonal pleasure while keeping the rest of an evening to myself. That allows the writing to stay personal without turning it into an itinerary. The detail worth sharing is the one that helps a reader feel something about the occasion. A timetable rarely does that. I’d rather describe what makes an evening appealing than give a running commentary on where the evening is taking place.
What interests me about tonight, if anything does, is how many people will discover, for an hour or two, that they rather like being someone with a sharper outline. The man who dresses as something imposing and finds that he stands differently. The woman who wears red and notices that the room adjusts around her. These are small revelations, and most of them will be packed away with the costume tomorrow. A few won’t. A few people will realise that the outline they enjoyed tonight was not a disguise at all but a preference they had simply never permitted themselves to keep, and they will begin, quietly, to keep it. That’s how taste is usually acquired – not in a single decision but in the gradual refusal to go back to what no longer suits.
Writing is one of the places where I get to enjoy this most. Atmosphere has to earn its place on the page. A room full of candles isn’t automatically interesting; the writer still has to decide what the reader notices and why it matters. That challenge is a pleasure in itself. It also explains why I can become so absorbed in a piece of work that an entire afternoon disappears. Halloween may provide the occasion, but the satisfaction comes from making something I like. I’m very happy to be a woman who gets paid for having an imagination.
Halloween suits me. The colour, the atmosphere, the opportunity to enjoy a little drama without pretending it happened accidentally. I hope your own version is thoroughly enjoyable. Mine certainly has excellent material to work with.
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Additional Reading:
She’s Back (from vacation)… Stormy Days & Sinful Pages
Perfect Weather for Writing Expensive Smut: Luxury FinDom Tales
