How We Write – Newly Recurring Afterlife
Prompt: The wounds we cannot see
For the month of June, we’re going to showcase some of the political stories we’ve written, starting in June 2016 as we led up to the last election.
First up is Newly Recurring Afterlife, the most recent one we wrote.
Kyros woke up one morning, shortly after the school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, with this story racing through his head. He immediately dashed to his computer and started writing. Normally, when we write a story, we outline the basic idea, then go back over it, filling in details, embellishing here and there. That was not the case with this story. It poured out whole cloth. He messaged Orion to join him before the normal start of their day. He was only a couple paragraphs in at that point. They went to work and the entire story was written in just over an hour. For comparison, a normal short takes about one hour to outline, and about 2-3 hours more to write and edit. This story demanded to be told!
We both felt strongly about the reactions from sitting Congressmen who, rather than actually working to prevent another tragedy, only offered up the hollow phrase “You’re in our thoughts and prayers.” This is the same thing they’ve done since Sandy Hook in 2012! We decided that a bipartisan response was needed, so we wrote one.
NEWLY RECURRING AFTERLIFE
“Physical injuries heal, but it’s the wounds we cannot see that do the most damage because the damage is to our psyche, not to our body.” -K. Starr
The Congressman woke up.
He tried to move.
He couldn’t.
Struggling, he found he was tied to a post.
“Help! Can anybody help me?” (more…)