Nature Future Conditional

Guest post by Rebecca Birch: the story behind the story

Published today, Ice and white roses is Rebecca’s second story for Futures  — her first, Are you receiving?, appeared earlier this year. Rebecca has kindly agreed to offer a glimpse into the creative process behind this week’s story. You can read more about her work at her website and, as this blog post contains spoilers, you should read the story first …

Writing Ice and white roses

As a writer, I love challenges.  When I wrote Ice and white roses, I gave myself the challenge to write a story that begins and ends with the same phrase.  I don’t know what part of me decided that phrase would be “I always preferred white roses”, but once it was on the page, I was faced with a conundrum.  Why would a preference for white roses be important, and what could be the reason for it to come around again at the end?  After some thought, it seemed that a good explanation would be if the person saying the phrase could not remember that she’d already said it.

Once I realized that I was writing about a character suffering from dementia, it suddenly became a lot more personal.  I myself struggle with poor memory.  For example, apparently I rode the bus to high school during my senior year.  I have no memory of riding the bus, or even the existence of the bus, but my mother tells me that it happened, and I believe her.  Often, friends or family will say, “Do you remember when …” and I get a sinking sensation, knowing there’s a high likelihood that I simply don’t.

The possibility of this getting worse, of losing even more of what has come before, is a very real fear for me, so putting myself inside the head of a character who has gone down that path was unsettling at best.

As I explored the reason why white roses were so important to this character, I discovered the deeper story and those bits of memory that have not disappeared — the husband, lost in space; the child who grew up fatherless; the narrator’s unswerving certainty that her husband will some day return — all of it crystallized in the bouquet of frozen white roses.

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