Letter from America: Notes on 'Man Overboard'

Occasionally I like to post notes on my short stories on this blog. Think of them as footnotes to the published work, a bonus 'Making Of' featurette. I find it helps clear my mind of the clutter that has built up around the original idea. You might even find them interesting.

'Man Overboard' started as nothing grander than a call for stories from Gutter, the Scottish journal of new writing. A friend had recently been published by them, and I liked the look and the ethos of the magazine. A visit to their website told me that they wanted stories about what it meant to be Scottish, and especially the experience of Scots living overseas. My interest was immediately piqued. I could write that.

The story first came to me while staring out across the waters from our house in Gig Harbor, Washington. We were living there at the time, three years into an overseas assignment that had brought my wife and I to America. It made sense to write about the scenery I saw in front of me, the tall stands of pines, the mountainous horizon. It was so like Scotland, and yet so different. Anything I wrote would have to be imbued with its moss-cloaked wildness.

The first draft of the story sat on my laptop for months. I knew I liked it, but there was something missing. Something that would make it special, unique, engaging - something to make it stand out. One day, by accident, I stumbled across the answer in a piece of local mythology. There was something almost mythical about the story, the way it happened on the fringes of society and the wilderness. Alexi Zentner has used the phrase "mythical realism" to describe his debut novel Touch, and I realised that I needed just a little sprinkling of that magic to make my story come alive.

I hope the end result was successful. I hope someone reading it feels the air of mystery and magic that surrounds some of what happens, the sense that our hero is drifting through a timeless landscape that - at times - seems far more concrete than he does. But most of all, I hope you enjoy it. That, after all, is the point.

'Man Overboard' appears in Gutter #8, available now via the official Gutter website.

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