Barbara McDowell

In case you missed my original post, here is the full list of questions I will work through over the next 30 days.

And away we go…

Question: Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you’ve worked with and why.

I’m going to go with “The Gathering,” which is a short story I wrote a few years ago.  That story came to me with the main character’s first line, “Doc says I should work on remembering” and poured out from there.  It was a piece that embodied a “write what you don’t know” area for me because the narrator is telling her story of family dysfunction in flashback while living in a mental hospital.  As I wrote, I remember the sense of her unreliable nature, but felt I had to trust what she said because she was the only one left to say it.

The story is unpublished, but has been shared with my writing group and via workshop at a conference.  I’m haunted by it and the voice of the main character since she is at times telling everything, but yet nothing at all.  It also feels like she may have more to say.  This story is on my list of ones to revisit then get going on the submission trail.