Finding the Form with Rachel Top
I get inspiration in a lot of ways, but by far the most often is when I’m minding my own business and a flash of a character jumps into my mind. This was my first glance into the world of pre-eruption Pompeii—Nydia’s short hair as she stared into a bakery full of flour, drifting through the air.
It would be fair to say that this image was my North Star as I wrote “Baker’s Filia”. I always came back to Nydia’s back and the falling flour particles.
When I was thirteen, right around Nydia’s age, I began my first job working in a bakery. Flour was everywhere. It covered everything, but it also moved and drifted when it was in the air—when the sunlight hit it from certain angles, it looked as though it were suspended, free falling to the floor. It’s a poetic image to have something move so slowly, almost with no care in the world, when bakers around it are rushing to get everything done before complete sunrise.
I’m probably always writing what I know in some way or another. Some of Nydia’s thoughts about making bread are thoughts I had when I was first starting, thoughts not only about the process of baking and how I had no idea what I was doing, but thoughts about life. I remember thinking that I would always have to have a job from then on, and I mourned the passage of childhood and the oncoming wall of adulthood. I’m sure you can tell what kind of child I was—and still am.
At first, I had no idea why Nydia appeared turned away from me in my vision of her. Her hair is the only thing really discernible about her. (As a quick aside about Nydia’s hair; in the beginning, I didn’t understand why her hair was so jagged. But as I wrote, I realized it was because I believe Nydia would be the kind of person who would cut it herself to keep it out of her face. I didn’t find that out about her until later, as I was writing, and I didn’t even bother to include it in the actual story. It just became clear to me when her sister was going to do her hair. Sometimes little details like this don’t need to be included into what makes it onto the page—but I know them, and it helps my understanding of her character.)
The reason I think Nydia is turned away from me in the vision is because she is a character full of longing. She longs for childhood as much as she longs for womanhood. She longs for her mother more than anything; her mother’s touch, attention, and affection. As Appia and Nydia move about the bakery in the initial scene, Nydia is facing towards her mother not only because she’s been tasked with watching, but because it exemplifies what their relationship is from the outset of the story—Nydia longs for her mother, who longs for something else.
“The reason I think Nydia is turned away from me in the vision is because she is a character full of longing. She longs for childhood as much as she longs for womanhood. She longs for her mother more than anything; her mother’s touch, attention, and affection. .”
I wrote “The Baker’s Filia” at least two times, the first time in a deadline-infused-panic because it was an assignment for school, and the second because the characters were calling to me. The best thing about being willing to write a piece twice or even three times is that it takes some of the pressure off of making it perfect on the first go—it’s a gift to know that the characters don’t have to be fully realized in their time on the page.
My strategy is always to start the story from scratch, with a brand-new page. The second time I’m writing, I have a much better understanding of where everything is going, who the characters are, and what they want. Because of this process, the ending changed multiple times from the first time I wrote it to the final time.
How do I finish a character like Appia? How do I wrap up her longing, her need for more, and fully encapsulate that she will likely never have the life she wants to have? It wouldn’t make sense for her character to change so abruptly at the end, to become an entirely new person who loves her life and her children. No, by that point in her life, I believe Appia to be set in stone.
I landed on Nydia’s mother crying in the courtyard because it’s one of those visceral childhood images that changes your perception of the world. The realization: our parents can cry, and therefore, they are just as human as me. At the same time, in the versions that I didn’t have Appia cry, she felt too stagnant to me, as if she were someone without any emotions at all.
Which is, of course, untrue. Her crying is the pinnacle of the story because it’s the landing of her and Nydia’s character arc. Neither of them are changing in their longing—but Nydia is able to understand that her mother is human like her.
What inspires me? I think I would be lying if I didn’t say “my own life.” What else would inspire us other than our experiences? Next time you have a vision, lean into it. Wonder how your own life could make the character’s experience richer.
Thank you for reading—keep writing!
Rachel Top is a brand-new graduate from the University of Calgary where she majored in English. She’s usually behind a computer writing, but when she’s not, she enjoys hiking and baking delicious sourdough bread. You can find her work in the online version of The Banner, The Firework Arts Journal, and on the speakers list for the MacEwan English Conference 2025.
Banner photo courtesy of Nadya Spetnitskaya from Unsplash.