The Whole Magilla*

All thirty-one fictional obituaries from January in one place

Thank the gods that’s over!

These daily writing projects always seem like such a great idea on the first day or week of the things, but trust me, by mid-month they tend to become a drag.

I’m still really glad I took it on and thank my partner for his suggestion that led to me coming up with this mad idea for a month-long daily writing project.

It’s true on Medium as it’s true the world over: fiction gets very little love. I’m ok with that. The fact is that there’s very little fiction in today’s gatekeeper-less world that I’m interested in reading so I don’t really expect my work to get a lot of traction.

I still strongly believe that great fiction can do something so powerful and direct that non-fiction isn’t capable of capturing (nodding in the direction of Joan Didion here). And the only way to write great fiction is to write a lot of fiction. To write story after story after story. To never stop making shit up.

Here are thirty-one days’ worth of inventing lives and deaths. Enjoy.

(The first time I invented the death of a kid)

(It was easier to kill off the old ones)

(Unless they were people I wished I’d known like Sid here)

(I tried to avoid cliches, but this guy just looked like a jazz great to me)

(Inventing a life and death for a teenager is one thing, but this one was tricky)

(Also tough to kill off someone in his prime, but again, it’s all made up)

(My mother used to make that exact same expression when she was trying not to cry)

(I also tried not to only kill off white people or people from the U.S.)

(Back to taking out adorable toddlers. I’m going to hell)

(Yep, straight to hell)

(I probably shouldn’t have made Mr. Chang a well-known actor because this photo looks a lot like that of a well-known actor even though I lifted it from Pixabay or something)

(This guy looked so white-bread, middle-class that I had to bring him over from Ukraine)

(Late in the month I know, but I finally took out a couple)

And a special thank you to Plan B Vibe for offering a warm landing spot for this project! Do consider following this unique little publication.

© Remington Write 2020. All Rights Reserved

*These are all fictional obituaries using a stock photo from a Medium-approved source.

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