A short story that changed my life

It's still changing it.

Writing screenplays has turned me into a different person.

Saying that out loud (in writing) feels like the most superficial, nonsensical thing to share at a time like this.

Also, I’ve only written a TV pilot (yay!), and a subversive Rom-Com (yay!) so far, with more projects on the horizon…

But, it’s true. Screenwriting has turned me into a different person.

And I need to thank my short story, “Harold’s End,” for sparking my transformation. (You’ll be able to read it below.)

Last year I decided to adapt “Harold’s End” into a TV series and I wrote the pilot episode. It’s called Lark Life, a name you’ll understand once you read the short story. It went on to place as a quarterfinalist in a couple of contests, and made me want to get even better at telling the stories I want to see on screen.

That process of adapting my short story into a series and pilot led to me constantly hearing, “your main character needs to be more active.” And I was stumped on how to do that because this story was about a woman who’d become passive to survive her life.

But eventually, with the help of N (Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!), I learned what needed to change in the story for it to be successful on screen, and why.

Then, the whole process made me see where I’ve been too passive. It was SO uncomfortable to realize and even more unpleasant to admit. But, thankfully, it ultimately made me want to shift to being a more active main character in my own life.

And while I am grateful (now) to have this new awareness, I’m also dealing with the grief that bubbles up when I pay too much attention to how long it took me to come to that awareness, and how long it sometimes takes for changes to be implemented. I’m still very much in the thick of things, and processing it all.

So while this new awareness is messy and exhausting often, it also comes with a lot of hope. Hope that I’m still trying to notice and conjure all at the same time. And in time, I plan to share more about this shift of mine with you, too.

But for now, I invite you to read “Harold’s End”.

This story came to me when I considered, and dealt with the aftermath of two horrible events that occurred on the same day on May 25, 2020, and the media coverage, editorials, and reactions that continued for months and months and months. Then I tossed in some speculative elements and tried to make it fun for me to keep returning to because the subject was heavy to dive into, and sit with day after day.

I should mention that “Harold’s End” is another story that made people want to fight me.

Just like my story, “The Solitude Booth”, this one, “Harold’s End”, also got me some extremely divided feedback from my writing groups. Some of it was absolutely helpful, and some of it, especially the ones that tried to explain their weird hierarchy of acceptable forms of abuse they’d be willing to read about in a short story… kinda just proved the point of my story.

Also, the ending has been quite divisive.

Curious to see where it’ll land for you?

I am.

Happy reading…

Photo by Sofia Guaico on Unsplash

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Harold’s End

by Olwen Wilson

When Harold’s heart attacked him during their Monday morning hump, his side of the closet became Flora’s before the funeral. For this, her youngest daughter, who adored her dad, called her heartless. She insisted that if her handsome husband, Richard, died first, she’d live out her days shrouded in snot rags and shades of black. Not colourful caftans.

Flora imagined she might have said the same if she’d been widowed soon after her wedding day, and before Harold flecked the flesh of her upper arms with purple pinch marks whenever she didn’t do what he wanted.

Instead, Flora just nodded and said,