The Story Behind the Story
Check out Talking to Myself in issue #43 of Elegant Literature. Download the issue.
WARNING: Here Be Spoilers
Talking to Myself started as a shower thought, though, not actually in the shower. I was in the car, chatting about the usual nonsense with my spouse, when he said something that made me think, “Can a ghost and a zombie come from the same person?” I shared the thought with him, and we laughed, but then had discussion about it (like proper nerds). That is where the idea for the story was born.
In the initial drafts, the narrator being a ghost and the body being a zombie wasn’t explicitly stated until the end. I was hoping the title was enough. But beta readers made it clear that wasn’t really landing.
Then I saw the Elegant Literature prompt for submissions to issue #43: ghostly gardens. That sparked an idea of where to set the scene and led to some of the language of how the narrator thinks about their spirit in relation to their reanimated corpse. The story really started to take a firmer shape from there.
I’m really pleased with the result! This was my second acceptance and first publication.