STARING DOWN THE DARKNESS: DISCUSSING HORROR AND MENTAL HEALTH, WITH LEE MURRAY AND TABATHA WOOD.

Staring Down The Darkness: Discussing horror and mental health, with Lee Murray and Tabatha Wood.
 
When I emigrated to New Zealand in 2017, it also heralded my return to creative writing, and promoted an urge to finally publish my fiction. I “met” Lee Murray online through a mutual friend, and very quickly found her to be an incredibly talented, likeable and intelligent woman with an exceptional work ethic and a keen desire to help others succeed. It came as little surprise to me when I discovered that she was instrumental in opening up the discourse on mental health issues within the horror writing community.
 
In 2018, along with some other dark fiction writers, she helped put together a panel for StokerCon, Providence called “Writing from a Dark Place.” What transpired at the conference was a frank and supportive discussion which paved the way for a well overdue look at mental health struggles among creatives.
 
A few months later, Lee used the basis of the panel to write a deeply personal essay exploring her own experiences of anxiety and depression. This essay was included, along with 33 other New Zealand writers, in the Victoria University Press’ Headlands anthology in 2019.
 
Now, in 2020, I talk to her about what’s next for these discussions and how best we can help the community as a whole.
 
A very warm welcome to you, Lee. You got your double diagnosis of anxiety and depression at 50. How did it feel to get diagnosed with mental illness at this age?
 
[Blushes]. Thank you for that lovely introduction, Tabby. As I wrote in my 2018 Headlands essay, Writing from A Dark Place, many of my friends and colleagues struggle to believe that I suffer from anxiety and depression. “But you’re so confident, so outgoing, so bubbly,” they say. Indeed. How could they possibly know the truth?
 
Lifetime anxiety sufferers become ‘masters of the bluff’. Terrified of the stigma that accompanies mental illness and the conviction that there is something terribly wrong with us, we become experts at hiding our pain, internalising our anxiety, and, ironically, exacerbating it in the process. We get so good at hiding it, that even those close to us may not see the hours, sometimes days, of worry and overthinking that might precede an event, the groggy wide-awake nights, the flushing sweats, the panic attacks, and the paralysis. Nor do they see the three-days-on-the-couch melt-down that might occur afterwards. When I think of all the energy that I’ve wasted over the years hiding my condition from the world: my friends, family, colleagues, everyone.
 
Do you wish you had sought professional help much earlier, or do you think the medical profession missed a lot of the usual warning signs?
 
I believe my parents may have possibly missed the signs, although certainly not intentionally. Born in 1965, the Chinese year of the wood-snake, I’ve had a mole on my left shoulder all my life. For my third-generation New Zealand-born Chinese mother, that mole meant I was destined to carry the weight of the world’s burdens on my back. And wood snakes are known for being over-thinkers. Perfectionists. Wood snakes hate to fail. So, for my mother, it was a given that I would be highly-strung and driven. Plus, I’m a first child, and a daughter, which meant there were examples to be set for my younger siblings, chores to be done, schoolwork to complete… the cultural load of submissiveness, duty, and achievement.
 
My dad is Kiwi-European, the educated son of a blue-collar railway worker. In the sixties, multiracial marriages were rare, and sometimes shunned, so perhaps he was compelled to see his children succeed in the face of that opposition. On top of that, Dad had a highly autistic younger sister whom he adored. She lived, and died, in a time where electric shock treatment was commonplace for sufferers of mental illness. Did my parents wilfully deny my anxiety? My Headlands colleague and dear friend Donna McLeod wrote a hauntingly insightful poem for the collection called Voices, which included this powerful line: “We must justify our culture, our being, ourselves.” My parents love me unconditionally. They are kind and generous and want only the best for me. I think they interpreted my anxiety in ways which justified their own cultures, their beings, and themselves, because in their generation, when it came to mental health, there was no other discourse.
 
As for the medical profession, well, like I said, I’d become very good at hiding my anxiety. At 50, after months of sitting on the couch eating chocolate biscuits, my sister-in-law, who works in the medical field and recognised the signs, gently encouraged me to consult my doctor. I made the appointment on the pretext of seeing the doctor about something else. I’m grateful that my doctor truly listened and interpreted what she heard as something other than an old Achilles injury. 
 
Tell me about your Headlands essay, “Writing From A Dark Place.” What made you realise that the time was right for you to start talking about these issues so openly and personally?
 
After the 2017 StokerCon panel discussion, when I effectively outed myself as having anxiety and depression, a NZ colleague sent me the submission call out for Headlands project, and I knew immediately that I wanted to contribute further to the conversation on mental health and creativity. From now on, I want to live as my authentic self — warts, anxiety, and all. Because a problem shared is a problem halved. Because discourse is important if we want to remove the dreadful stigma that accompanies a mental health diagnosis. Because some of us with shaky mental health still don’t feel safe to speak out, and indeed are sometimes disadvantaged as a result. Because so many of my horror colleagues suffer from anxiety and depression and there is power in numbers—and horror writers are fantastically evocative writers, people who use their creativity and to challenge their fears and push back the darkness, so what better community in which to open a wider conversation?
 
Why do you think talking about these conditions is so important? What kind of awareness are you aiming for when you open the discourse, and how do you help overcome the stigma?
 
Tabby, I’m going to share some comments from a series of private messages sent to me by a colleague in the wake of the Writing From a Dark Place panel. They wrote:
 
“I wanted to thank you for the HWA (Horror Writers Association) initiative through the HWA and the recent article you posted, and all the insights you shared from some of the panelists on the Writing from A Dark Place panel, particularly Brian Kirk and Eric Guignard. I wasn’t aware that you struggle with depression and anxiety. I have a whole host of mental health issues and diagnoses including…[names disorders] along with severe depression and anxiety/panic disorder, so it always means a lot to me to see that I’m not alone and that others, particularly other writers, suffer from these issues as well and that there is help out there.”
 
“I appreciate what you’re involved in this initiative because I find that even though the logical part of my brain understands that many many writers suffer from mental health issues, and that I’m not alone, sometimes it feels like I’m the only one, or what’s wrong with me, or why can’t I get over it and I think that part [of that] is societal pressure, worrying about what people think… that effect on me.”
 
“I’ve been working hard on my issues...but it’s always an uphill climb. And yes, like yourself, because I am a positive and cheerful person, it’s something I feel like I’ve been trained to hide, except under the most dire circumstances, or in therapy. There’s also this really negative misconception that writers have to suffer for their art, or it’s romantic or something, which I think is total nonsense, and very harmful. Thank you for understanding my embarrassment. Even though strides have been made, there is still a huge stigma, and I often have to be hyper-vigilant because, if I’m honest, there is always a chance that an employer or writing workshop could discriminate against me.”
 
“Thank you for listening.”
 
When I contacted this writer for permission to publish their private comments on this site, they advised me that in fact their employer, on discovering their mental health issues, discriminated against them to the point they were forced to close their social media accounts—an act which had a devastating effect on their mental health and led to a very painful suicidal episode. They wrote of their admiration for those of us who speak out openly about mental health issues with a view to destigmatizing mental health:
 
“I’m too scared to speak up for fear of negative blowback.”
 
In fact, a number of my colleagues, many of whom feel unable to take up the torch themselves, have sent me personal messages encouraging me to continue the discussion.
 
My colleague Dave Jeffrey, writer and long-time mental health professional, said in our HWA Out of the Darkness interview: “I often wonder if there is a compensatory element in that writers are, by nature, insecure entities and perhaps coming to the aid of others has a basis in the desire to create climates in which they, too, feel safe.” Such an insightful comment. I suspect he is right: that there is an element of self-interest in my wanting to speak out for others. Nevertheless, I feel strongly that those of us who feel able must speak frankly for those who cannot. We must listen without prejudice. And we should always be kind.
 
How does writing about mental health help you? Whether that’s through introspective essays or within your fiction. Do you ever find yourself writing characters with obvious (or hidden) mental health afflictions?
 
Rather than writing about mental health, or characters with mental health disorders, I write horror, addressing the underlying fears that keep me awake at night, harnessing those feelings in the hope of ultimately uncovering strategies for subduing the wolf. Horror writer Nicole Cushing described it well in my Headlands essay. She said: “For me there is a sense of mastery that comes from using fiction to look my deepest darkest demons in the eye. To look at traumatic events and yet not flinch from them, and then capture them in the cage of a novel feels like a victory.” (Murray, 2018, p. 194).
 
 
Exactly 100 years ago the 1920’s German film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was one of the very first horror films to associate mental health with being evil. Modern movies do slightly better at approaching mental health, but still frequently demonise the sufferers. Why do you believe that mental illness in horror is so often used as a lazy trope, synonymous with wicked or dangerous characters?
 
A hundred years ago, given the context, perhaps filmmakers could be forgiven for the superstition and ignorance portrayed in their films. Today, not so much. Although, horror tropes can serve a purpose in allowing the reader to ‘overcome the monster’ from the safety of distance. As Dan Rabarts says: “What is the point of facing down demons, if we can’t hang their corpses from our battlements, so that others know they can be tamed?”
 
Why do you think fiction likes turning mentally ill people into monsters, and what do you think (if anything) is being done to challenge this misleading stereotype, which clearly does not depict the realities of living with mental illness?
 
Tabby, I think it reflects the stigma that dogs mental health sufferers. On that point, Dave Jeffrey says, “Nothing puts me off a book quicker than the thoughtless misrepresentation of mental illness.” To rectify this, Jeffrey’s advice to those who are planning on writing about mental illness in horror fiction is “to treat it with the sensitivity as they would gender and race issues. That way you will take the time to consider what the pitfalls are and ultimately write something interesting and, above all, authentic.” (Murray and Jeffrey, 2018)
 
Some of my favourite depictions of mental health in horror are often predominantly Gothic —  stories such as “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James and Susan Hill’s “The Woman in Black”. These older stories aside, there are a number of excellent modern writers exploring mental health in fiction. Do you have any current favourites?
 
I’d like to call readers’ attention to Dave Jeffrey’s novella Finding Jericho, an early work which, due to its importance, has recently been re-released by Demain Publishing. Listed on the BBC’s Headroom Recommended Reading List, reader reviews also provide some insight:
 
“Mental illness like horror can take on many faces. Not everyone can be diagnosed, cured, and sent on their merry way. For some and their families, it’s an ongoing battle to achieve a balance in which to exist. For the uninitiated, a story like Finding Jericho offers some insight on what it is like to be or to love someone that spends their life fighting off the demons of mental illness. For someone like me that loves a family member who has been and still is in the fight, this book offers a little reassurance that all is not in vain.”
 
“I half expected the book, with its subject of mental illness, to be somewhat depressing and difficult to read, but that just highlights the ignorance that I and so many others had (or have) to an illness whose seed is planted in all of us from birth. Instead, the book is uplifting, humorous and very enjoyable to read.”
 
 
The trope of the “tortured artist” is a common one, but do you believe that horror writers are more prone to mental health afflictions, or do you think that writing about the darker side of life helps to destroy some of those personal demons?
 
Yes, studies suggest that writers in general are more prone to mental health issues.

• Andreasen (1987) found that not only did writers suffer from a higher rate of mental illness, but their first-degree relatives were more likely to suffer from mental illness than relatives of a control group.
• In a study of more than 1,000 professionals, Ludwig (1995) reported that all forms of psychopathology were more likely to occur in people in artistic professions.
• Researcher Kay Jamison (1996) claimed that mood disorders, especially manic-depression, were associated with artistic creativity. She reported that creatives were eight times as likely to suffer a depressive disorder than a control group.
• In a series of related articles, Barron reports that creative writers are ‘markedly deviant’ from the general population, with distinguished writers tending to show schizoid, depressive, hysterical, or psychopathic tendencies. Barron stated:

“The writers appear to be both sicker and healthier psychologically than people in general… The face they turn to the world is sometimes one of pain, often of protest, sometimes of distance and withdrawal, and certainly they are emotional.” (Barron, 1968a, p. 244).
 
As to whether writing dark fiction helps to slay our personal demons, my Path of Ra collaborator, award-winning New Zealand writer-editor Dan Rabarts, had this to say in a recent Reading Room article:
“Perhaps we’re all a bit twisted on the inside and take great pleasure in the awful things we put down on the page to traumatise our readers. Or maybe we really do wrestle with demons, and what comes out on the page is the outcome of those struggles. I’m no doctor, but I know my people, and it’s not that much of a stretch to say that most of us go toe-to-toe to a lesser or greater degree with some form of anxiety or depression on a daily basis. I’m sure this is not exclusive to those of us writing dark fiction, but is there some deeper purpose to expressing these demons on the page, if that’s what we’re doing?”
 
We’ve talked in the past about how I often write about mental health on my blog, and as you know, I’m leading a team of writers who are compiling a horror anthology which will benefit the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand. I feel very strongly that by confronting the Black Dog in fiction I can keep it from sniffing too close at my heels. Does that ring true for you too? Outside of writing, tell me what other things do you do to keep control of your own Black Dog?
 
Yes, absolutely. I believe that creativity and wellbeing are indelibly linked and that the simple act of writing and creating can go a long way to keeping the black dog at bay. Other than writing, I take medication when prescribed; read horror, read Snoopy; browse the internet for pictures of puppies; eat healthily; take a shower; hug my family and cuddle my dog; soak in the spa pool; go to the gym; take long rambling walks in the forest; do some knitting; watch movies; chat with my daughter on skype; take the caravan away for the weekend; ignore the ironing; connect with friends…I try not to let my anxiety swallow me.
 
Can you tell me what’s next for you in 2020?
 
I’m excited to announce that my friends at Things in the Well Australia, will publish my first short fiction collection, including some of my favourites stories along with four new works. Grotesque: Monster Stories will release in July of this year. Here is the blurb:
 
Two-time Bram Stoker Award® nominee Lee Murray delivers her debut collection, and it is monstrous. Inspired by the mythology of Europe, China, and her beloved Aotearoa-New Zealand, Murray twists and subverts ancient themes, stitching new creatures from blood and bone, hiding them in soft forest mists and dark subterranean prisons. In this volume, construction workers uncover a hidden tunnel, soldiers wander, lost after a skirmish, and a dead girl yearns for company. Featuring eleven uncanny tales of automatons, zombies, golems, and dragons, and including the Taine McKenna adventure Into the Clouded Sky, Grotesque: Monster Stories breathes new life into the monster genre.
 
And together with my Australian colleague Geneve Flynn I’ll be co-editing Black Cranes, a long overdue anthology by Asian women of horror, featuring Nadia Bulkin, Gabriela Lee, Rena Mason, Rin Chupeco, Grace Chan, Angela Yuriko Smith and Christina Sng, and with a foreword by Alma Katsu. Releasing in July 2020 from Omnium Gatherum, I feel very privileged to be working with these incredibly talented women.
 
Readers and colleagues can meet me at StokerCon UK (April) BaltiCon 54 USA (May) ConZealand (July), and New Zealand National Writers’ Forum (September) as well as numerous local events.
 
And on the topic of horror and anxiety, I am working with a US publisher on an exciting new project, which I hope to announce in April of this year…
 
Thank you so much, Lee, it’s been a real pleasure to talk to you. I think I speak for many writers and creatives when I say thank you for taking the mic and speaking out, and helping us see the light at what can frequently be a very dark tunnel.
 
Refs:
 
Andreasen NC. Creativity and mental illness: prevalence rates in writers and their first-degree relatives. Am J Psychiatry.1987 Oct;144(10):1288-92.
 
Barron F (1968a). Creativity and Personal Freedom. Princeton NJ. D Van Nostrand.
 
Kay Redfield Jamison, Manic Depressive Illness and Creativity, Scientific American 272, no 2 (Feb 1995) 62-67.
 
Ludwig AM (1995). The Price of Greatness: Resolving the Creativity and Madness Controversy. New York, Guildford Press.
 
Murray L (2018). Writing from a Dark Place. In Headlands: New Stories of Anxiety, Naomi Arnold (ed), Victoria University Press, Wellington.
 
Murray L and Jeffrey D (2019). Out of the Darkness: A Conversation by Lee Murray and Dave Jeffery, HWA, Mental Health Awareness Month, May 2019.
 
Murray L (2019). Horror, in real life: writers and their mental illness demons. Newsroom, Reading Room, 30 October 2019.

Lee Murray is a multi-award-winning writer and editor of science fiction, fantasy, and horror (Sir Julius Vogel, Australian Shadows) and a two-time Bram Stoker Award® nominee. Her works include the Taine McKenna military thrillers, and supernatural crime-noir series The Path of Ra, co-written with Dan Rabarts, as well as several books for children. She is proud to have edited thirteen speculative works, including award-winning titles Baby Teeth: Bite Sized Tales of Terror and At the Edge (with Dan Rabarts), Te Kōrero Ahi Kā (with Grace Bridges and Aaron Compton) and Hellhole: An Anthology of Subterranean Terror. She is the co-founder of Young New Zealand Writers, an organisation providing development and publishing opportunities for New Zealand school students, and co-founder of the Wright-Murray Residency for Speculative Fiction Writers. In February 2020, Lee was made an Honorary Literary Fellow in the New Zealand Society of Authors Waitangi Day Honours. Lee lives over the hill from Hobbiton in New Zealand’s sunny Bay of Plenty where she dreams up stories from her office overlooking a cow paddock. Read more at www.leemurray.info. She tweets @leemurraywriter
 

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Tabatha Wood lives in Wellington, New Zealand and writes weird, dark fiction and uplifting poetry. A former English teacher and library manager, Tabatha’s first published books were non-fiction guides aimed at people working in education. She now teaches from home while writing in her spare time. Her debut collection, “Dark Winds Over Wellington: Chilling Tales of the Weird & the Strange” was released in March 2019. Since then, she has been published in two “Things In The Well” anthologies, plus Midnight Echo and Breach magazines. Tabatha is currently working as the lead editor in a team of twelve for upcoming charity anthology from Things In The Well, “Black Dogs, Black Tales,” which aims to raise money and awareness for the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.
You can read stories and articles, and keep up to date with her upcoming projects at https://tabathawood.com. ​​

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