Some Questions for Alicia Evans

Editorial Intern Brenda Lema had three questions for Alicia Evans.

What inspired you to write “Whatever Will Be,  Will Be”?

The inspiration for “Whatever Will Be, Will Be” came from my own life experience. I have made some mistakes along the way but they were all stepping stones to the person I am today. Watching the Hitchcock classic with my mom really happened. It wasn’t until I became an adult that I understood that we don’t know what the future holds for us. We don’t have a crystal ball to tell us what is in our future. The words of the song “Que Sera Sera” hold so much meaning to me: “The future’s not ours to see.”

Another inspiration for this story was taking Fictional Writing with Dr. Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez. She showed us how you can take an incident and turn it into a story.

What was your writing process like for this piece?

My writing process, I don’t know if it is the conventional way, but for this story, I had the title first.Then I knew I wanted it to be about a wedding day. So I just wrote what came to me. Then of course I read what I wrote and was like, nope that doesn’t fit. It was a lot of writing and rewriting before I felt it just might be okay. I also listened to the song “Que Sera Sera” over and over while I was writing.

How has COVID impacted your creative work?

At the beginning of COVID, I was stuck. I could not think let alone be creative. That started changing when my professors started having us include something about the pandemic in some of the assignments. I had to change the way I was looking at this pandemic. Once I did that, it helped me see a story in everything: from the discarded mask tossed on the sidewalk, to the woman that walks past my house every morning at 7:15.

 


Read Alicia’s flash fiction piece “Whatever Will Be, Will Be.”


Image credit: “Doris Day: Qué Será Será, 1956,” Wolf G. Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. 

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