It’s spooky season. But while horror movies have ghosts and monsters, writers have their own set of terrors. Ones that creep in during the dead of night (or worse, during a pleasant afternoon nap). So, light a candle, grab your coffee and let’s take a haunted tour through 10 things that truly scare writers.
#1 The Blank Page
Every horror story begins with silence. For writers, it’s the ghostly white glow of a blank page staring back at your soul. No matter how many times we’ve done this, that first line is always the hardest. You write and rewrite and suddenly, rearranging your bookshelf feels like urgent creative work.
The good news? The first draft will probably suck but you can edit it into shape tomorrow.
#2 The Client Who Wants Changes After Signing Off
You’ve done it. The final draft has been approved, celebrated, and sent. You’ve even moved onto new projects. Then it happens. The dreaded email:
“So… we were just looking at the whitepaper again, and…”
Your blood runs cold. You thought this monster was buried, but it’s clawed its way back from the grave. Suddenly, “final version” means nothing, deadlines are resurrected, and your neatly archived file is dragged back into the light. They only want “a few small tweaks,” of course, which somehow always turns into a full rewrite involving new keywords, a different tone, and a brand-new target audience.
It’s the undead project. The “Final Final FINAL.docx” of your nightmares.
#3 The Client Who Ghosts You
You send the proposal. You deliver the draft. You even follow up twice with your most polite “just checking in” email. And then… nothing.
Silence.
No reply, no feedback, no payment. Just the cold, echoing void of your inbox. At first, you hope they’re busy. Then you imagine they’ve met with some ghastly office stapler related end. Finally, you accept the truth, you’ve been ghosted.
Like a spirit wandering between worlds, the client vanishes right after saying, “We’ll definitely have more projects for you soon!” Months later, you might even spot them online, posting a blog suspiciously similar to yours.
#4 The Algorithm Who Shall Not Be Named
Once upon a time, writers wrote for people. Now, we also write for The Algorithm. A bit like he who shall not be named in Harry Potter. An unseen force that decides whether our words live or die in the digital abyss. We research keywords, optimise headlines, and whisper small chants to the SEO gods. Then we hit publish and wait. Did it work? Who knows. The algorithm is mysterious, fickle, and possibly evil. Correction yes evil, The algorithm is evil.
#5 Clients Who Say “Just Write Something Quick”
Ah, the ancient curse of “It shouldn’t take long — you’re a writer!” If only clients knew that writing something short is usually harder than writing something long. Crafting a catchy tagline, tweet, or two-sentence bio can feel like summoning creative magic from thin air. And while writers can indeed “whip something up,” it usually involves six drafts, four existential crises, a large packet of biscuits and one very long stare into the void.
#6 The Annoying AI Brief
You open your inbox and there it is, a new client brief. Exciting! Until you read the first line:
“This was written by AI – can you just polish it up?”
Cue my anguished screams. What follows is usually a jumble of robotic phrases, SEO gibberish, and soulless sentences. You spend hours researching their machine-speak while trying to preserve whatever ghost of meaning the AI intended. And then there’s the word count. They want 2000 words but if you covered everything in the brief it would be The Neverending Story. Complete with that traumatising scene of Artax in the bog. You are the horse in the bog, and this horror will never end.
#7 Writer’s Block
The Dracula of the writing world. It drains your creative lifeblood until all you can write is your grocery list (and even that lacks flair and you forgot the eggs again).
But like any vampire, it can be defeated. Sometimes you need to step away, feed your brain some new stories, or simply admit you’re stuck and let your subconscious work it out while you binge-watch something completely unrelated. Or have a nap. A long dramatic nap.
8. Rewriting Someone Else’s Terrible Work
Few things chill a writer’s soul like opening a document and realising… I didn’t write this.
It’s someone else’s draft, possibly the CEO or CMOs so you need to be polite. But still, it’s a tangled web of clichés and sentences dropped in all over the place. And your mission? “Just tidy it up a bit.”
You try to salvage what you can, but it’s like renovating a haunted house. Every time you fix one thing, three more horrors reveal themselves. The tone’s off, the facts are wrong, and the formatting? Pure chaos. And bonus jump scare if the original authors are hovering around like ghouls in the Google Drive doc you’re working on.
#9 The Dreaded Revision Round
You thought the piece was done. You sent it off with pride. Then it returns, covered in digital red ink.
“Can we reword this?”
“Let’s move this to the top.”“@Jason what do you think?”
“Can we make it both more serious and more fun?”
“Actually, let’s change direction entirely.”
Revisions are like Frankenstein’s monster. Stitched together from too many “great ideas” until your once-beautiful draft lumbers off ugly and screaming.
#10 A Client Wanting “A Quick Call”
The phone rings. You glance at the screen. It’s them. The client. You hesitate, your cursor hovering over the next sentence of your masterpiece when the voice on the other end purrs,
“Do you like… quick calls?”
Your stomach drops. The air goes cold. You whisper back, “I prefer emails…” But it’s too late. The voice continues.
“Let’s just chat for five minutes… I promise it’ll be quick.”
That word again. Quick. You know what it means. Forty-five minutes later, you’ll be discussing “brand energy,” “alignment,” and that one comma they’re “not totally sure about.” But refuse and it will be a forty-five-minute voice note. Clutch your pearls.
Being a writer means a world of contradictions. We fear the blank page yet chase it daily. We dread feedback but crave improvement. We panic about ideas and then overflow with them at 3 a.m. So for writers, Halloween is just another day of facing your demons, only these ones live in Google Docs and Slack.