Mads Alvey’s story “Upon the Fallen Leaves of the Gingko Tree” was published in Metaphorosis on Friday, 10 August 2018.
Many of my story ideas start with a single line—usually the first line in the final draft—which repeats over and over in my mind. “Upon the Fallen Leaves of the Ginkgo Tree” was one of these stories. When I began the story, my walk to school every day involved going through a neighborhood which was lined with ginkgo trees, and the first line of the story came to me while I was walking through the neighborhood in the fall—upon the leaves.
I’m also invested in the idea that fiction is the way in which we as people come to understand ourselves and our world, and that speculative fiction is particularly significant in this. Because of this, I tend towards stories which involve the world ending better than it started. Once I had the starting line of the story, I mulled over a variety of scenarios that would let me have a hopeful or positive ending, and ended up with a draft of the story that (very) loosely resembled the final product.
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