What Happened Next?

“The truth, as only I can remember remembering it.”

Winter 2022

When I wrote my fiction novels, I strategically prepared an outline for each book; detailing the characters, mapping out the plot and the climax, diligently recording each manuscript’s progress on a spreadsheet.

That was not how I wrote The Deafening Sound of Sorrow. With this book, all I had to do was sit down and just write. What is the advice given to any wannabe writer? Write what you know. Unfortunately, I knew this story off by heart. There was no need to map out plot points to help guide me or a spreadsheet to keep me on track. I wrote the words that formed sentences, which filled pages without really having to think about it. The story just poured out of me. The characters and the plot were fed by my memories that only I could remember. The book would be my personal account of a teenage girl I thought I once knew, based on my own memories from 1986.

I started with writing the ending first. By asking myself three questions: What did I remember most about Kerrie? What did I learn in the short time I knew her? And because of Kerrie, what was I most grateful for in my own life? The epilogue, Because of Kerrie, would be the beacon of light I would write towards.

If I got stuck or if the right words just wouldn’t break through whatever was blocking my heart from my mind—with my eyes closed and my fingers hovering above the keyboard—I would ask myself this: What happened next? The answer would always trigger my fingers forward once again. I coached myself to just write it like I was talking to a friend. So that is how I wrote The Deafening Sound of Sorrow, like I was telling the story to a friend.

If my mind happened to wander or if my fingers itched to try to speculate, to conjure up, or to guess who the faceless nameless monsters were or why they had done it, I would stop writing and take a break. The book’s purpose was never meant to answer the question of who-done-it.

At times, my mind would swirl dizzy from all the lost memories. Snippets of time from my past suddenly offered up detailed scenes and conversations that I had long since forgotten. For some unexplained reason, once I started to write the book, these lost moments would come crashing back. Whether I was driving into town to run errands or riding on my lawn mower, cutting the three acres of grass around our home, or even right before falling asleep. It was so bizarre that once I opened the door to this time in my past; it felt like there was no turning back.

There were a few times I struggled with finding the right words. Specifically, the chapter Only the Monsters Know, which was a fictional—speculative—account of what happened on the night Kerrie was murdered. To date, it is the hardest thing I have ever written. The chapter forced me to recount and to reimagine the horrific things that occurred just north of Thompson, Manitoba, on the night of October 16th, 1986. Deep down, I knew the chapter had to be written and that the words were integral to the storyline. And with all due respect owed to Kerrie, there was just no getting away from writing it or even trying to sugarcoat it.

There was also one memorable “ah-ha!” writer’s moment regarding those teenagers I hung out with way back when…

During those god-awful teenage years in raising my own kids—yes, there’s another book outlined and waiting—I found myself constantly reminding (okay, nagging) Jarrit and Kaitlynn about the importance of choosing “good” friends. “Who you choose to hang around with truly matters,” I’d say again and again, like a broken vinyl record. At the time, I figured it was just another one of those stock parenting phrases—like “Don’t drink and drive.”, “Be a good citizen.”, or “Make good choices.”

But while writing our story, and with each keystroke, I came to realize that my motherly advice didn’t come from an unwritten parenting handbook or a catchphrase. It came from my own personal experience—deeply rooted in the fall of 1986. As I wrote about how my boyfriend at the time refused to let me walk anywhere alone after Kerrie’s murder. Or how Bruce—a teenage boy wise beyond his years—had the steadiness and wisdom to steer all of us down a path of hope in search of a better tomorrow. Or how I came to know one of the bravest teenage girls I would ever meet. As these fond memories of all my past friends suddenly resurfaced, I came to understand how lucky I was to have fallen in with the “right” crowd back then: a unique group of thoughtful, grounded, and quietly courageous kids.

In the face of grief and trauma, we didn’t unravel—we rallied. We supported one another while making a collective conscious decision to move forward with some meaning by creating Youth for a Better Tomorrow. Which brought with it a positive purpose of bringing awareness to our hometown while raising the money needed to establish a scholarship at RD Parker Collegiate in Kerrie’s honor—a legacy born not just from heartbreak, but from the strength and integrity of youth who refused to let sorrow have the final word.

This unwittingly became the heartbeat of The Deafening Sound of Sorrow. Because if there’s one truth that I hope rises above all the pages I have written, it’s this: our youth do have the strength, the resilience, and the vision to lead forward.

In the end, the book would be what it was meant to be—the truth, as only I could remember remembering it.

Coming up next: What Matters More? (Spoiler alert: Kerrie.)