There are three characters in my story. One is the narrator, one is the love interest/father of baby, the other is the baby. We only know of one name, Zoey. Zoey is the baby who passed away of SIDS. The narrator is from a woman's perspective. All we know about the woman is that her name starts with an "L". The man is the love interest. He is struggling with fantasy and reality, drugs over family.
2) WHAT is your story? WHAT genres/modes are you using for your story?
My story has three themes: love, loss, and struggles. Though, I do not blatantly tell you those themes. They are metaphorically shown through the weather and a flower. The flower represents love and life, when it dies, so do both of those. The weather represents the man's struggle with drugs, the snow represents the periods of when he is using, the sun represents his periods of being clean.
Genres: 1st person fiction, Polaroids, obituary, prayer, diary entry, found poem, song, metaphoric poem, dance, 250-word micro-fiction
3) WHEN does your story take place?
My story can honestly take place at anytime. The writing is more contemporary, but the situation can be placed anywhere. SIDS is on the rise in our present reality, so I decided to incorporate it.
4) WHERE is your place?
My place I am trying to focus in on. My place is really in the narrators head. There is also a place of love, loss, and struggles -- the three themes. Also, there are two objects that seem to surface a lot -- a flower and a bed. The flower represents their love and life. The bed represents their togetherness, their common place.
5) WHY do you feel a connection/lack of connection to place?
My narrator shows a deep connection to the place of love and loss. The undying love that she has for a man who abuses drugs. The loss of her baby and the continuous ups and downs that come with loving someone who is an addict. The man shows a deep connection to the struggles of battling an adiction. He is using when they meet, he becomes clean when the baby is born and passes, he falls into his old ways again, and by the end the flower makes him realize that he doesn't want to live an addict life anymore.
6) HOW do you show your audience your connection/lack of connection to place?
While thinking about this piece, I really tried to keep my audience in mind. I am a creative writer. I want everyone who reads this to be able to sympathize in some way. I want them to come away with a sense of mystery, who are these people. I didn't want to give the man and woman a name -- why? -- because I want the audience to connect to them. I gave the baby a name because I wanted the audience to connect to the realness that comes with having a child pass away of SIDS.
I used tangable things like a flower, the weather, and a bed to let the audience see that the simplest of things can mean so much. To an emotional woman, the dying of a simple flower can lead to tears. When that flower is her child or the love of her life, you can see how she would be in shambles. I wanted to write with a sense of "numbness", like this was real.
Though my twitterive is based off of my one tweet -- I experienced this story. I went through the loss of my cousin's child, Payton at 3 months, to SIDS on May 1, 2009. I felt that numbness. I felt that sense of "why her". I also went through family members struggling with drug and alcohol abuse. The metaphoric poem was a poem that I had written last year, with a family member in mind. I had to rearrange the poem to make it seem less of a family figure, but it worked. This is why my sense of mystery works for me. I want whoever reads it to be able to relate in any way possible. It's what I hope for.