Sam left his father’s regret out on the table. His father had been able to cut the worst bits of himself, too. But the parts that were left didn’t add up to much. A man with no regrets and with no strength of character.
Now I’ve got a box full of regrets, Sam thought. The question is: what should I do with it?
A woman, walking her dog on the street below, thought for a moment that it was snowing. But no: it was something like confetti, falling from above. Bits of paper, swirling on the air.
© 2013 Kate Heartfield
Kate Heartfield is a newspaper journalist and fiction writer in Ottawa, Canada. Her stories have appeared recently in the science-fiction anthology Blood and Water and online at Black Treacle. Her story “For Sale by Owner” is coming soon from Daily Science Fiction. For more, see heartfieldfiction.wordpress.com or find her on Twitter as @kateheartfield
How did you come up with “Word for Word?” What stages did you go through in the process of getting the idea down?
As often happens, I was thinking about several things at once and they synthesized into this story. Pandora’s box was one of those things. Typewriters were another. I also had an itch to write a story about an object with unexplained power. The emotional thread of the story only became clear in the later drafts.
In part, “Word for Word,” is a story about family, and about how life’s journey can be taken for granted, if we don’t stop and allow ourselves to experience the details. What themes or inspirations do you find yourself considering or returning to in your work?
This is one of those questions writers don’t think about until they’re asked. So I’ve just consulted the list of my recently published and forthcoming short stories (which you can find at https://heartfieldfiction.wordpress.com/storie/) and it does seem that I’ve been writing a lot about sacrifice and regret the last year or two. (Whether the sacrifice part has anything to do with being a new mother, well, I’ll leave that an open question). I tend to write weird, surreal or fantastical stories, with the occasional fairy tale or science fiction yarn thrown in, usually strongly influenced by history and mythology.
You’re a journalist on The Ottawa Citizen. How has that experience impacted on your fiction writing, or vice-versa?
I’m used to editing and being edited, and I’m used to writing quickly to deadline, and both of those habits help when I’m writing fiction late at night, after I put my kid to bed. My day job probably also explains why I tackle research with enthusiasm – too much enthusiasm, sometimes. I learned a fair bit about early typewriters when I was researching “Word for Word” and it boiled down to a phrase or two of description. I’m currently working on a fantasy novel set in 18th century London, which has required a lot of fun research.
Why write? Surely there are so many other, far easier, things you could be doing?
Like most writers, I’ve had my moments – the rejection letters, the plots that unravelled, the thud a novel manuscript makes when it lands in the trunk for good – when I have wished I could stop. It’s the only thing I have ever really wanted to do. When I don’t write for a long stretch of time, I get a little... odd.
What are you working on at the moment? Where can our readers find more Kate Heartfield?
I blog about my writing life at heartfieldfiction.wordpress.com. My story “A Pair of Ragged Claws”, about giant sentient scorpions in a nightclub, appeared recently in Black Treacle. The Aurora-nominated anthology Blood and Water contains my near-future science fiction story “We Take Care of Our Own.” Daily Science Fiction will publish my slipstream story “For Sale by Owner” soon, probably in May or June. I’ll be at Can-Con in Ottawa in October 2013, and Worldcon in London in August 2014. I’m on Twitter as @kateheartfield.
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