About “The Keys”

“The Keys” is a much more autobiographical story compared to “A Crazy World”. The protagonist and I share many similarities, both in personality and circumstance. For example, both of us are sentimental people. That’s about all that I will confirm publicly though.

There is a link between “The Keys” and “A Crazy World”, as they both deal with a disappointment in my life. “The Keys”, however, deals directly with my sense of loss, instead of skirting the issue. At the time I wrote the story in early 2002, I was acutely aware that some part of me still felt a longing for the way things were in the past. Writing the story let me express that feeling.

It should be noted that though there are many parallels to real life, this is still a piece of fiction. Events and circumstances described are not exact parallels of what happened to me, but instead are meant to capture the essence of what transpired in real life. Similarly, there are embellishments to characterizations, meant only to make “The Keys” work as a better story.

Having said that, I do believe that one should write about what one knows. There must be something in the story that you can relate to closely, so that the writing is sincere. That’s what I did with “The Keys”; I wrote to capture my sense of loss and longing.

I’ve made one edit to the original version. In the third paragraph, I replaced “sad” with “cheerless”, since the original was redundant. It now reads:

… I’ve never seen my own sad smile. I can’t bear to look in a mirror when I think of her for fear I might see her standing next to me. A friend of mine described it for me: cheerless, nostalgic. I guess I’m a sentimental kind of guy.

I think it reads better with this slight edit.

To the person this story is about, you may have read the story now. It is history now, and I’m glad we can move past it.