Writing For the Living, Not the Dead

My favourite songs are all sad. I don't know if it's the raw emotion behind the lyrics, the soulful feeling of the melody, or the ability to transform pain into beauty, but I am mesmerised by it. 
It was songs like this, dealing with ideas like grief and heartache, that inspired me to write my first short story, For the Living, Not the Dead. 

When I first started to write this piece, I hadn't yet decided who had died, who was eulogising them, or what their relationship was. I was simply writing a funeral scene as way of exploring the feeling of loss. I decided to keep this ambiguity in the opening paragraphs even after I had decided that the main character, Lacy, would be saying goodbye to her four year old son, Riley. 

Throughout this story, I tried to explore how I imagine the grief of such a monumental loss would feel - I wanted Lacy to feel like she had lost everything; her family, her faith, and herself, while also showing that despite her feelings, she wasn't alone.

Originally, the story ended with Lacy visiting her grief councillor, who she saw often, and speaking outwardly about her improvements, while inwardly reflecting on her inability to move on, and ultimately decided that she didn't need to move on. This ending felt wrong to me - inauthentic. So when I revisited the story for submission to The Last Word anthology earlier this year, I made the decision to rewrite that scene. The new ending not only feels more authentic to me, but helps the story feel more complete and rounded. 

For the Living, Not the Dead, is a story that means a lot to me. Not only is it the first successful short fiction piece that I have written, but it holds emotion I hadn't previously explored or let out in another capacity. 

If you're interested in receiving this story, along with a large collection of other short pieces exploring memory, click the link below and RSVP to The Last Word anthology WordCon Launch party. (If you are unable to attend this launch, but are interested in receiving a copy of The Last Word anyway, click over to the 'Contact' tab, send me a message, and I'll see what I can do.) 

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