Finding the Form with Amber Fenik
I feel that for myself, being a writer is akin to madness – or, the closest I’ll ever get to a permanently altered state of mind. I’ll be on my way to get groceries and suddenly the image of a man in a blue coat running through the woods during a thunderstorm will flash into my head. I’ll be washing my hair and a strange phrase will float to the surface of my mind like the unbidden answer from a Magic 8 Ball in response to an unasked question.
Sometimes, on a rare occasion, I am lucky enough to have entire stories pour through my brain and I merely have to sit in front of my laptop, furiously typing to keep up with whatever mysterious indecipherable force is delivering the message. A 21st century form of technological scrying. More often, I have to wait patiently, ruminating on the words or the image or the shadowy half-formed wisp of a character for a frustratingly unknown amount of time until, piece by piece, they fully reveal themselves to me.
I’m not a technical writer. I don’t know the rules. I couldn’t tell you the difference between first and third person point of view and am perpetually confused about the correct use of semi-colons (I probably shouldn’t admit that in an illustrious literary magazine, but oh well, what’s done is done).
I write what I feel about the imaginary people I make up, try to capture the mood of a place that none of us will ever visit in real life. I try, as best as I can, to commune with anyone who unwittingly stumbles across my writing, no matter who or where they may be.
In my short story “Lost Girls” the character of Sonia (aka Dead Sonia) doesn’t matter. The story is about her on the surface, but it isn’t really about her. It’s an exploration of those who are vulnerable in our society and why they might be susceptible to unknown threats. Many of us (myself included) live with those fears, adapt ways of mitigating our weaknesses. Even though we may have escaped the Worst Case Scenario (whatever our horrified brains ultimately think that is), most of us have been in a situation where there was an unsettling implication of what might have happened, if things had gone a little differently.
Inspired by an unsolved case that continues to possess the rural area where I’m from, “Lost Girls” is a reflection of how we are haunted by the past, unanswered questions, lingering doubts. Not knowing who to trust or how to move forward with the limited information we are left with. It’s about what remains behind when a person is no longer physically here. What impact do we ultimately have on other people’s lives? Do we matter? Or are we already ghosts and just don’t know it yet? Much like Live Sonia, Yaz, and Zeke, I don’t have those answers. Maybe you do…
Amber Fenik was born and raised in Perth, Ontario. She has been published in several anthologies and predominantly writes short stories.
Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash