{After Note}
Andrew’s Tears was created by a spur of the moment thought process. I started this story as a school project. It was supposed to be a short story, about one to three pages. Instead, it turned into eighteen, then twenty-five and it kept on growing.
I am glad to say that my “short story” received the best grade on a story I had ever gotten. It had been so long that I hadn’t needed to edit and revise what I had because there wasn’t enough time to. So, I had turned it in without edits and boy, was it rough. My teacher, though, graded it not on my grammatical abilities, but on the story telling.
This story is close to my heart because I feel that the character is me. We are very different, of course. But Andrew seems to be a foggy image of me. He and I share the same ideals and the same beliefs on how people should be treated.
Andrew started as a character that I had nothing in common with because I made him that way. I didn’t want to be like him. In fact, I was dead set against him being like me. But as the story progressed, I noticed that Andrew was animated and didn’t seem real. He seemed like a robot that was on repeat. I worked so hard on making Andrew not like me that the story became hard to write, and I stopped writing it.
The story sat for months as a dust catcher waiting to be written. Then, in December of 2011, I found a few of the pages I had handwritten back in the summer. I asked my friends in a writing group that I am a part of if they thought I should finish it.
The consensus was a complete, “YES!” So, I sat down to write the story again and was surprised to find myself escalating in the story. First it was fifteen pages, and then it was thirty. Then, I realized that I had hit twenty thousand words. I was ecstatic! I had never reached that many words before and it was surreal!
I also noticed that Andrew was less animated… because he was beginning to be like me.
My friend, and sister, Sarah Lawrence helped me continue writing. She was like a light at the end of a dark tunnel. I could see her and it gave me hope to finish. I am so grateful to have such a great friend! One of my all time favorite scenes in this book was inspired by her. I can remember when we were talking over Skype and she said, “Have Thomas do something with fire!”
Her smile was so big that I just had to. It turned out amazing, and it was all because of her! Really, Sarah was the reason I moved ahead. She e-mailed me back and forth listening to my ideas for the story. She would tell me whether or not the idea would move the story along, or just hold it back. She was like my comrade in a war of words. In the end, her comradeship is what made this story what it is!
I thank Sarah from the bottom of my heart. She is such a wonderful person and a great sister! I thank God for bringing us together!
Taylor Bomar