Determined since second grade to be a writer, Kathleen Wagner graduated with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing with a minor in English, cum laude with departmental honors. Since then, she’s taken any writing class she can get into, eager for any opportunity to grow and learn about the written word. Her favorite genres to work with are fantasy and sci fi, though elements of horror and queer romance are frequently prevalent. Believing that everything and anything contains a story, Kathleen is a frequent enjoyer of video games, books, movies and TV shows, manga and anime, and analog horror. Kathleen also has some experience with freelance ghost editing, and finds cozy contentment with fixing grammar and exploring different ways to express ideas and concepts.
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Interview with Kathleen Wagner
about her story "Breaking: Meteoroid Aims For Earth"
Bronze Winner in The Scribes Prize
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What inspired this piece?
The biggest inspiration for “Breaking: Meteoroid Aims For Earth” was the COVID-19 pandemic, easily. The utter nonchalance so many people had toward a deadly disease spreading across the globe and killing millions was both unsettling and expected. After all, getting sick and dying is something that “happens to “other people”, not “us”. But what if the pandemic weren’t so easy to avoid? What if it was downright impossible to survive, like a meteoroid crashing into Earth? How long would it take for people to realize that they, too, are “other people”?
What draws you to the micro-fiction format?
I’m a wordy writer by nature, so micro fiction is extra challenging for me; sometimes I’ll over or underestimate how many words it will take to tell a story, and then it all sounds stilted and awkward. It is a fun challenge, though, and when things line up just right, it can feel really rewarding to express an idea so succinctly. I think that’s why “Breaking: Meteoroid Aims For Earth” works so well. It’s a brief summary of the last few days before Earth’s destruction, and I think it’s because of how little is said that the story becomes so telling. The disheartening disinterest in yet another doomsday event, the short sighted attempts to survive the unsurvivable, the actionless concern, the realization that nothing can be done and the panic that ensues, all brought to an end by a slow, painful death that hurts too much to even be afraid of. In the grand scheme of things, nothing really happens; it just ends.
Who are some authors that inspire you?
My biggest authorial inspiration is Lemony Snicket, no questions asked. No other writer has so deeply affected my writing- and me as a person- than “A Series of Unfortunate Events”. To this day, I still sign my emails with “with all due respect”. The literalness with which ideas are expressed while simultaneously presenting nonphysical concepts through serious dialogue, introspection, and deadpan humor, are all elements that I aspire to share with my own readers some day.
If you could continue writing your story after these 100 words, what would happen next?
Literally speaking, I couldn’t even if I wanted to. The end of the world is pretty final, and there’s no way anyone could survive a flaming Earth knocked wildly off its axis by a giant space rock, including the narrator. Even if I tried to continue with an ambiguous, unidentified narrator, the existence of such a voice would imply that there’s someone to tell the story to. In the same vein of a tree falling in the forest, if a narrator tells a story and there’s no one around to hear it, is there even a story?
What is a story?
To me, a story is any second hand experience that you feel as if it were your own. A thing that happens, a situation that occurs, a feeling that is felt... these are stories to me, and these are the stories I want to tell. It might not end up in a tidy Freytag’s Triangle or Hero’s Journey, but real life rarely does. What matters is if the feeling is there, along with the opportunity to touch someone’s soul as I express it.
The biggest inspiration for “Breaking: Meteoroid Aims For Earth” was the COVID-19 pandemic, easily. The utter nonchalance so many people had toward a deadly disease spreading across the globe and killing millions was both unsettling and expected. After all, getting sick and dying is something that “happens to “other people”, not “us”. But what if the pandemic weren’t so easy to avoid? What if it was downright impossible to survive, like a meteoroid crashing into Earth? How long would it take for people to realize that they, too, are “other people”?
What draws you to the micro-fiction format?
I’m a wordy writer by nature, so micro fiction is extra challenging for me; sometimes I’ll over or underestimate how many words it will take to tell a story, and then it all sounds stilted and awkward. It is a fun challenge, though, and when things line up just right, it can feel really rewarding to express an idea so succinctly. I think that’s why “Breaking: Meteoroid Aims For Earth” works so well. It’s a brief summary of the last few days before Earth’s destruction, and I think it’s because of how little is said that the story becomes so telling. The disheartening disinterest in yet another doomsday event, the short sighted attempts to survive the unsurvivable, the actionless concern, the realization that nothing can be done and the panic that ensues, all brought to an end by a slow, painful death that hurts too much to even be afraid of. In the grand scheme of things, nothing really happens; it just ends.
Who are some authors that inspire you?
My biggest authorial inspiration is Lemony Snicket, no questions asked. No other writer has so deeply affected my writing- and me as a person- than “A Series of Unfortunate Events”. To this day, I still sign my emails with “with all due respect”. The literalness with which ideas are expressed while simultaneously presenting nonphysical concepts through serious dialogue, introspection, and deadpan humor, are all elements that I aspire to share with my own readers some day.
If you could continue writing your story after these 100 words, what would happen next?
Literally speaking, I couldn’t even if I wanted to. The end of the world is pretty final, and there’s no way anyone could survive a flaming Earth knocked wildly off its axis by a giant space rock, including the narrator. Even if I tried to continue with an ambiguous, unidentified narrator, the existence of such a voice would imply that there’s someone to tell the story to. In the same vein of a tree falling in the forest, if a narrator tells a story and there’s no one around to hear it, is there even a story?
What is a story?
To me, a story is any second hand experience that you feel as if it were your own. A thing that happens, a situation that occurs, a feeling that is felt... these are stories to me, and these are the stories I want to tell. It might not end up in a tidy Freytag’s Triangle or Hero’s Journey, but real life rarely does. What matters is if the feeling is there, along with the opportunity to touch someone’s soul as I express it.