Nastasya Parker

Pride and Joy

This Week’s Bit of String: A lick of paint

Last Easter, after nine years living in our house, I realised I hated the colour of the lounge. Dismissing it as beige would be too good for it; it was a dingy, pinkish, dirty-flesh, off-white hue.

At the time, my 20-year-old kiddo was about to move to the USA, my husband was struggling, and I would sit in the lounge not daring to take up a project of my own because either they would need me for something or I would need to convince them to do something, at any moment. And as I stared at the walls and considered how best to help my family, whether to push or to cajole or to leave alone, I noticed that I loathed the room.

It took nearly a year to get round to changing it. I think it took 75% of that time for me to effectively communicate that I couldn’t bear it anymore. By now my little Bear was fairly settled overseas and my husband was doing well also. He has a very good sense for matters of structure and decor, and where I was desperate for almost any fresh paint at all, he was quite sensible and had lots of good ideas and eventually, with a tremendous amount of work, we unbeiged.

*Unbeiged walls best complemented by garden roses and gorgeous baby cat.*

We now have deep teal at one end of the lounge, and clean, pale greenish-aqua on the longest two walls. It’s fresh like a pool you could dive into. Might paint the final wall teal but that end is, unsurprisingly, taken up by large, full bookshelves, so my sense of urgency has faded.

It’s funny how we get these sudden revelations that something is intolerable. It’s funny too how things that have always been there, we’ll only start to discover. I’ve written before about how privilege delayed some of us in acknowledging the struggles of people in other races. I have to admit, as Pride Month comes to a close, that I was similarly tardy in recognising the plight of people in the LGBTQIA+ community.

Early Encounters

The first time I remember someone actually discussing anything other than straight, non-cisgendered relationships, I was in first grade. A classmate used the term “pervert,” I asked what it meant, and my fellow 6-year-old replied, “It’s a man who has sex with other men.”

I wonder why that kid was given such a specific, rather homophobic definition. I wonder what sort of realisations he had as he got older.

Going to high school in the mid/ late 1990s, I had some classmates and friends who were able to be free and honest about their sexuality, and some who could not until later. I was unfazed by it, dealing with my own issues and not wishing to be hard on anyone else. But I did grow up in a church where such things were thought to be abnormal and downright wrong, and I realised during college that I had some prejudices.

This revelation was precipitated by a panel representing LGBTQIA + students from our campus. A girl among them shared how, when she came out, one of her older relatives sighed: “But you’re so pretty…”

My stomach lurched. I’d thought the same thing when I saw her amongst the group. I wasn’t attracted to her (I don’t work that way), but I suppose the implication was: She’s such a pretty girl, must she be squandered on something deviant? It’s a weird thought, because not only does it denigrate homosexual relationships, it also diminishes the value of women, as if beauty may only be reserved for men’s appreciation.

So I recognised that I’d been seeing this young woman as a character or a good-looking avatar, and had superimposed my own ideas of a happy relationship upon her. I had dehumanised her. I tried to be more aware and careful after that.

Going Beyond

You may notice I don’t use gendered language about my [no longer very childlike] child. Our Bear is nonbinary. In their words, it’s not something that can be explained because it’s not a decision.

This makes sense. In the same way no one invents electricity, a person does not necessarily journey toward an identity. It was always there waiting to be acknowledged.

*Love and colour in London during Pride month. “Love is the only language I speak fluently.”*

The brilliant thing about Bear being nonbinary is that we can have discussions about music and baseball and relationships and also about nail varnish and hair length. Of course, any one person should be able to experiment with every one of those things. One reason my kiddo feels “not in between two genders, just above it (or done with it all)” is because throughout history, we’ve created ridiculously rigid definitions for male versus female.

It’s all gone a bit beige and then Pride comes along and freshens things up.

I tend not to say I’m proud of my child because they are their own person; I can’t take credit for the many attributes I love about them. But seeing them settle and feel more free about who they are makes me very happy.

Looking at etymology, the earliest roots of the word proud lie in being forward, first, like a chief or leader. Above things, you might say. I am grateful to those in the LGBTQIA+ communities for marching forward and leading us to be more inclusive and colourful.

What does Pride month mean to you?

Life Raft

This Week’s Bit of String: Comedy face, tragedy face, angry face

Wielding the unholy power we’ve given it, Facebook keeps showing me adverts for a play my husband and I just saw in Bristol. That’s ok, it was brilliant; I’d still be mulling it over without the reminders. I noticed, though, that someone had responded to the theatre trailer with the angry face emoji.

Someone who doesn’t like modern adaptations or diverse casts, I thought. A couple months ago, we loved the RSC’s latest Julius Caesar with women in the main conspirator roles, but not everyone approved. Our latest dramatic adventure was the Bristol Old Vic’s production of Anna Karenina, and you’re not going to adapt that epic without controversy.

I peeked at the comments though, and here was the angry one: “While everyone drowns… The height of sophistication!”

So, they were mad that people spend money on the arts during a cost of living crisis.

Anna Karenina *at the Bristol Old Vic–I highly recommend it!*

I am still thinking about this. I’m an empathetic person, which draws me to the arts in the first place, but I try to be pragmatic as well. Could I benefit more people with how I spend my bit of spare money?

Maybe the angry commenter is so strapped for cash they don’t realise some of us can spend money on more than one thing. I pay for shows a few times per year, but I have charity donations set up monthly. They may also not realise that people who work in theatres need money too.

The actors and writers and crew for Anna Karenina did an incredible job, but I doubt they are earning celebrity-level amounts of cash. If we didn’t buy tickets to see their work, they might be “drowning,” too.

Bread and Circuses

I don’t go to the theatre to look or feel sophisticated. It’s not the most comfortable seating or temperature, half the time, so I’m fidgeting and worrying whether my husband is having an ok time (thankfully, he usually is).

I attend shows for the luxury of sinking into someone else’s story, as with reading a good book. I go for the cleansing catharsis of experiencing someone else’s heartbreak and redemption. I also go because I would hate for hard-working creative performances to go unappreciated. Not many of us get to earn income from our chosen art. I’m happy to pay so that some can.

These are the justifications I make to myself. I don’t know if they make me right.

There have been times when I genuinely, if unquantifiably, feel a performance has changed me as a person. It’s as if what I’ve seen blazed so brightly in its heartfelt declaration of humanity, a spark catches inside me and kindles a desire to love better, to create better. This might sound silly. But I felt permanently altered after seeing Miss Saigon’s 25th Anniversary show adapted for cinema, for example. Or when I watched La Boheme as a 10-year-old.

I can’t prove these things have made me a more compassionate, more resilient person. Even if they did, have they enabled me to benefit society as a whole? Still, there’s something much deeper here than entertainment, than a veneer of culture and sophistication. With Anna Karenina, the audience sees the perfect storm gather of misjudged desire, of lonely male domination, of a society obsessed with honour and prone to condemnation. It’s not genteel, it’s messy and raw.

Resurfacing

I do appreciate reminders to be vigilant of all people’s needs and circumstances, and I want to always be sceptical about my practices. The truth is, anyone is at risk of “drowning” for a variety of reasons. I don’t want to act like the gossips in Anna Karenina, and judge people by trivialities such as how they spend their money. (Well… unless they’ve gained a tonne of it by shady means…)

No one has a right to sniff at how those with limited income spend their money. People who need help buying food shouldn’t be judged for spending money on, say, a smart phone. Not in these times.

Just as there are many things that can drag us under the current, there are many that might buoy us up. Maybe we need to build a righteous ark of highbrow theatre and literature, or witness an uplifting musical, or ride a wave of mass entertainment. Sometimes you just have to coast on a Disney cartoon. I’m not saying “Let them eat Shakespeare” or “Let them eat Netflix,” but I wouldn’t want to deprive anyone of those things any more than I’d deprive someone of food.

How do you use arts to keep yourself and others afloat?

Celebrating Books

This Week’s Bit of String: An air of incredulity

“Miss, how are there people who like to read?”

I’d been scribing answers to questions about Lord of the Flies while the severely dyslexic GCSE student dictated. He was then curious about why there are “neeks” (the word “geek” has evolved) like me who actually enjoy books.

“Well,” I told him, “I got to like reading because I was taught so many different books at school, I knew there were loads of great options.”

The openness of the question surprised me and I should perhaps have been more emotive, told him how reading takes me out of my own life and into different worlds. Or that it’s easily as entertaining as TV. I wish I’d had more time to tell him that with books, there really is something for everyone. As long as they can access it–which unfortunately, he physically cannot.

I wonder if this young man gets the sense of luxuriousness from playing videogames which we find with books. Books free us from having to compete. They offer immersive surrender, and that’s what I crave sometimes. It’s liberation from being in life’s driver’s seat.

*Hay Castle: “Love detonates this distance between us to ash holds your flooded heart in the fire of night”*

Again, this only works if you can access it. We all go through stages when there simply isn’t time to read much. Sometimes I find myself reading with a grim desperation to tick books off my reading list.

I remind myself that this is love. As with any relationship, we sometimes get caught up in our duties of care; keeping everyone fed and happy. But the love is there. When it comes to reading, I ensure I take the time to write down my favourite quotes, to reflect in my daily scribbles, before starting something else. It’s not a chore.

Burrowing and Borrowing

I spent last weekend at Hay-on-Wye Literature Festival. If you ever need to rekindle your love for reading, it’s a great place to do so. Sunny but chilled, colourful yet somewhat calming. I guess that’s because even though I’m among crowds, they feel like my people.

Not that Hay’s festival-goers are in any way homogenous. As with writers, there are all sorts of readers. Young and old, Welsh or English or from further abroad, people in motorised wheelchairs or with support dogs. At an evening talk I also noticed another woman on her own, like me, pencilling tiny notes.

In both the first talks I went to, though they were on very different topics, the writers talked about being magpie-like in storing and selecting detail. Marina Hyde, the Guardian columnist on current events, peppers her pieces with pop culture references. Peter Frankopan, a passionate historian who’s recently written about natural disasters throughout history, drew on so many different sources he ended up with 4000 footnotes in his latest book.

Later I enjoyed wonderful readings from the poet laureate Simon Armitage. He opened with “Thank You for Waiting” (have a listen here!) and he talked about how hard it was during lockdown to be inspired without everyday interactions and excursions. He calls those the “cement” which sticks our writing together. Trying to create in his upstairs office, he found himself writing poems about Velux windows.

The reason there are enough books in the world to interest any reader is because writers are so diverse. And maybe when we love our art enough, we can find ways to write about anything.

Safety in the Pages

Beyond offering inclusion, books throughout history have bestowed security. We listened to Irene Vallejo talk about her volume Papyrus, which uncovers the history of the written word. She shared stories of the library of Alexandria, and told us how things changed with the development of the Latin codex.

*Bookish street art in Hay. Is it secret? Is it safe?*

The codex, with similar etymological roots to the word book, means block of wood, or tree trunk. Instead of being a long, flattened scroll you’d have to roll back up for storage, the codex used sheets bound together like modern books.

This change wasn’t just culturally significant. It also made reading a safer hobby. In times of religious persecution, for example, Christians could read in codex form. Should someone come along, they could close the codex and stow it away as a humble block, thus keeping secret the substance of their reading.

I loved learning this bit of history. Even now, in our privileged times, there’s something reassuring about wandering around an event where lots of people have books under their arms or noses. Just a bunch of bookworms sharing a common love if not common tastes, and although there are plenty of magpies about, they’re the curious rather than vicious kind.

What makes you fall in love with reading?

Persuading

This Week’s Bit of String: A particularly arduous apple pie

Who doesn’t like apple pie? My Year 10 student who was supposed to bake one for Hospitality and Catering, that’s who–or so he claimed. Much of the time, practical work is a fight with him, sometimes even more so than written work. Last week, we made pastry without too much bother, but he refused to make the filling and construct the pie the next day.

I tried impressing him by peeling one of the Bramleys in a mindblowingly long snake–must have been nearly two feet of apple peel. I pointed out that everyone else is doing the work, and he must do it too. I threatened him with workbook pages, and with his keyworker in all her high-heeled, jewelry-spangled, Welsh-accented glory.

He in turn employed the persuasive techniques of emotive language, hyperbole, and sheer high-decibel whining. “I never get to do what I want! You can make me do this but I won’t enjoy it! You’re forcing me to do this, and now I guess I just won’t eat anything tonight.”

“What are you talking about? You’ll still get your dinner.”

*Obie the kitten attempts to be persuasive about rummaging through bags of groceries*

“Apple pie is so disgusting, I’ll lose my appetite forever!”

He realised I wouldn’t give in, so he helped chop the apples and then poured the sugar on and stirred. Then… “Miss, do you think I could taste one of those?”

Of course. He popped a bit of sugared, spiced apple in his mouth. The tension retreated from between his brows, and the corners of his mouth rose slightly. “Mmm!”

Every time, every bloody time. We fight, he finally does the thing, and then finds he likes the thing.

Effort, Innit?

I have to do a lot of convincing while at work. It often feels futile, fighting apathy with logic. “Yes, I know you’re tired. But we’re all tired and we’re all still here and the trick is not to expect that you won’t be tired, but to know how to keep going anyway.”

“It’s effort though.”

Secondary school students are taught persuasive techniques and even examined on them at the end of GCSEs. Some of them can rattle off HADAFOREST quite well (if you know, you know) but the linguistic devices don’t necessarily serve them as methods for getting out of work.

I worry that one day my strength for the constant battling will dry up. One can hardly have an inexhaustible store of enthusiasm in the face of supreme reluctance–not that all my students are reluctant, nor that any one student is reluctant about everything. There are so many factors.

But it can be draining, and then to come home and try to do writing work… Sometimes my mind starts sounding like one of the kids: “A synopsis, seriously? Ugh, that’s effort. I can’t be bothered.”

I do bother, of course. I love my book and I’ve worked so hard on it, I’m ready to start querying agents and I don’t want to back down now. I have synopses (longer version and shorter version depending on submission guidelines) which I don’t hate, in fact I even kinda like them (let’s not get carried away lest I overthink and question the whole thing). The Gospel of Eve is brilliant and funny and heartbreaking, and the pitch for my cover letters is fricking awesome.

Winning Hearts and Minds

Retelling the creation story from Eve’s point of view. I tell people what I’ve written and they say the pitch writes itself. There are plenty who want to hear fresh angles and to consider unheard motives. Retold myths is practically a whole genre now, with Jessie Burton’s Medusa on the Carnegie Award shortlist, and Madeline Miller’s Circe a massive hit from a few years ago. Natalie Haynes is an expert in this field, while Margaret Atwood and AS Byatt tried it out too.

*Even without fruit, trees are so inviting…*

Comparative titles for my cover letter: boom! Done.

It’s been handy to have widely-known source material to cite, but I can’t assume everyone knows about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, or about Cain and Abel. All those things will be revealed in the flow of the plot, but my main focus is relationships, and reimagining the first ones.

What would it be like the first time a baby was born, the first time people argued, the first glimpse at disability, the first non-heterosexual union?

That’s a lot of weight pressing down on one human. I’ve gone for a spirited, perhaps anachronistic tone though, with pithy observations and selection of detail that shows the light side of life as well. Eve has to persuade people all her long life, and humour is a great device. This is the story of her persuading her family to keep loving each other no matter what, and given that one of her first persuasive acts was inviting Adam to join her eating forbidden fruit, people aren’t always inclined to listen!

First woman, wife, mother, and sinner–supposedly. However, given that even a stroppy adolescent can’t resist tasting a bit of apple he claimed to despise… Mightn’t any one of us humans have stepped out of line if we were given the first opportunity to do so?

What persuasive devices do you use, on yourself or on others?

Looking the Part

This Week’s Bit of String: Ewoks and hippies

For the first Literature class I took at university, my professor resembled an ewok. He was gentle and diminutive, with a pointed snowy beard in place of a neck, and he would pace the room in a curved trajectory as he delivered lectures on Early English Literature or Science Fiction. Soft-spoken but passionate about his subject, he would pause when he’d gone over something significant, and tilt his head, his black eyes twinkling, and say “Hmm?” as he gave the sleepy morning classroom a moment to consider.

Another Literature professor paired silk scarves with sweatsuits, and when she felt she’d offered a particularly profound insight, she’d raise her hands palms up and intone: “Mmmmm!” as if she were a medium for divine inspiration. And I took a British Victorian Poetry class from a woman in her twenties who insisted, with poor reception, that we write “womin” instead of “woman” and “womyn” instead of “women.” She was brittly nervous and read us Sonnets from the Portuguese with her arms clasped across her chest.

At university I relished the quirks of our instructors. There wasn’t a uniform vibe about them; they were quite individually eccentric. I’d had an idea that all writerly folk would be like the storyteller who used to visit my elementary school. She was a hippie type, with loose printed clothes and glasses and long fingers. She liked to sit us in a circle, lights dimmed, and always began by telling us how when people listen to a story, their heartbeats synchronise into a united rhythm.

It’s reassuring to think we can be spectacularly unique yet somehow fit in with a class of creative people. I say reassuring because I sometimes get dispirited by the headshots and bios in hit novels. Young faces with perfect hair. Masters degrees from top-tier universities. A lot of us are slogging through the working world and life overtakes us.

Props and Costumes

How then do we identify ourselves and others as writers, when there’s room for so many types? I doubt my students look at me and think I’m a writer at heart, apart from when I subject them to some dorky etymological or literary tidbit. I don’t have a caffeine or fancy pen addiction, so action figure Mrs. Parker does not come with cute travel mug and posh stationery.

The writing life is partly about accessories. We hoard notebooks and probably have strong opinions about pens versus pencils (the latter for me!) Mugs and hot drinks, window views and scented candles or essential oils, Twitter handles, background music and feline companions join the Generic Writing Starter Pack.

We may have to dress warm, lest the cold in our Bohemian writing garret doesn’t sicken us. Or dress fashionably for writing in a cafe. If I’m writing out of the house, I’ll be hiking there so my outfit will include muddy trainers, a hoodie, and earbuds. If I’m in the house, it’s probably really early morning and I’m in my pyjamas and again, a hoodie. It’s not glamourous, but there is a thrill in having something so important to say, it can’t wait till the world wakes up.

Looking honestly at it though, I work best when I’m properly sat up at the dining room table and dressed to feel awake. I’m best if I’ve eliminated the possibility of going back to bed for a catnap at 9, when I’ve been up at 5. A hot drink is good, and a candle with a stiff refreshing scent–I love something woodsy.

More Than a Feeling

These things sound trivial when stories need telling; these trappings of clothing and seating and utensils. But it’s worth a lot to feel like a writer. Our solitude can be pervasive, and successes sporadic. We are storytellers and we need to first convince ourselves that our voices are significant. Weaving some sort of authorish aura around ourselves is our first essential persuasive task.

*One of my favourite candleholders: the Snowball, from Sweden.*

I imagine being the classy sort of writer who drinks earl grey tea and can write for hours in a cafe wearing stylish blouses and boots without the need to curl up somewhere quiet with a brownie. Wouldn’t I be cool? Then again, being a hoodie-type writer suits me because it connects me to so much outside my writing: my busy Teaching Assistant work, my family, my love of walking and exploring. Those inspire my writing and I’m proud to be tethered to that reality.

Of course, we don’t want to be overly dependent on our image, even if we think we’re cultivating it for our own sakes. A great story can be told as well on a beat-up laptop as in a leather-bound notebook. Our writerly props may motivate and inspire us, but without them we can still bring stories into being.

Feeling present in ourselves and in our writing is perhaps the best accessory we can acquire as writers, whether we wear blouses or sweatsuits or snowy beards. I say being present instead of being confident because who among us will always be confident? We can use insecurity and anxiety in our creative process to convey those aspects of the world, we just need to face them honestly.

Do you have writerly accessories that feel essential? What’s their story?

Quaint Customs

This Week’s Bit of String: A world of queens

Years ago my kiddo emerged from a swimming pool changing room and treated me to this fabulous idea:

“The reason I took so long was because I invented a new musical. It will use the music of Queen and be all about if history had queens instead of kings.”

How would the British empire be different as a matriarchy? If there had been a Henrietta VIII, for example, would she have gone through 6 husbands? Some of the queens they did have were pretty brutal. Would they have felt less pressure to be so if they weren’t sandwiched between kings?

I suspect the ruthlessness lies not in gender but in unquestioned power, in the philosophy that there’s a divine right to rule for a particular bloodline. How then could a monarch, male or female, not believe they’re better than everyone else? Why should they genuinely take interest in what goes on for any of their subjects?

*I mean, it’s fun to see something a bit different…*

I can’t help thinking about these things with the coronation of the new king. It’s a rather inescapable affair. As an immigrant living in Britain, I was initially bemused by the knitted crowns on top of Royal Mail letterboxes and the bunting strung across main streets. One of my favourite cottages to walk past put up signs saying, “Party like royalty.” Cute.

Then there were £10 souvenir brochures for sale, and you can’t get a chocolate bar without a shiny crown stamped on it, and the public are offered the “opportunity” to participate in the coronation by swearing allegiance to the king… It became unsettling. Especially considering the monarchy’s cruel legacy of colonialism and the slave trade, and the current cost of living crisis.

Class Differences

When the queen died, it was a day or two after the Conservatives made Liz Truss prime minister, and during the first week of school. When you’re running around making sure your students actually have lunch to eat, swapping in new unelected leaders for old ones does not impress you.

I don’t begrudge people whatever small pleasures they find in life. Clearly some people enjoy celebrating the monarchy. I wish they could get that feeling from other things. It’s like my Year 12 student not wanting to join a cooking class in making burgers, because she’s convinced nothing can be better than MacDonalds.

Shouldn’t bluebell-carpeted woods, chips from the local takeaway, maybe a trip to a local production of ChittyChittyBangBang, make Britons feel proud of their country rather than a random guy donning ridiculously expensive headgear?

Many are concerned about the massive cost of this event. I’m happy for the children of our parish if they enjoy the hula hoops our council decided to gift to every schoolchild to mark the occasion. I’m glad if people like getting together for town-funded street parties. But the district Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, for example, has a waiting list of more than 200 young people with acute needs. Hula hoops are fun, but so’s cake and there’s a reason no one liked it when French royalty said, “Let them eat cake.”

Story Selection

I don’t read much about the royal family. I got fed up with it as an adolescent in the mid 1990s when Princess Di or Fergie or the American equivalent, JFK Jr, were constantly on People magazine covers. I do think it’s fascinating how being born to that level of privilege and scrutiny would affect a person and their relationships. There’s a wealth of opportunity for stories there and many have utilised it. For me though, other stories are so much more crucial.

I hope everyone remembers that the queen wasn’t the only person who sacrificed and toiled in WWII; pretty much everyone I cared for in my nursing home job a decade ago did. King Charles isn’t the only person who helps with good causes. So many unsung heroes work hard, or run food banks or volunteer at youth centres or take in refugees.

I’ll spend much of today on housework and editing my novel’s penultimate chapter, featuring the voice of a refugee girl struggling in a new land. It is different from the chapters told by Eve herself, and I must make this extra, incredibly important voice work. I also plan to visit the swimming pool. It probably won’t be too crowded today while children are forced to sit at home near the telly. I hope they come away with wild ideas about how things could be different.

Will you be celebrating anything today?

What’s in a Name?

This Week’s Bit of String: A little baby cat

We got a 4-month-old kitten a few days ago. I will try not to go on about him too much–the photos should speak for themselves–but I’m smitten.

Getting him relatively early means we can rename him. Goodness knows if he’ll respond to it; how powerful can a verbal moniker be compared to Dreamies and feather toys, cardboard boxes and head rubs? But the process of choosing a name was exciting and also, in a way, revealing.

I viewed this as acquiring a new family member. So the name had to fit with our family culture. That’s not something I actively think about, and this caused me to consider it.

Naturally, our family traditions and favourites are a transatlantic mashup of American and British. Should I call the cat something to connect him with my home country? I liked the name Cricket, since he is black like the crickets in New England whose song I associate with home. And as he finds his voice, Kitty McKittenFace has revealed himself to have a crickety little chirp. But the name didn’t fully suit him.

I didn’t want a conventional black cat name, not even Inky or something with writerly implications. A literary name, that would do. A Shakespearean one even, given we just had a grand time in Stratford-Upon-Avon and the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre. No one with a tragic fate though–that eliminates a fair few of the Bard’s characters.

We settled on Oberon. The cat has a royal bearing, I think. We can shorten it to Obie, and link it to Star Wars as well if we see fit. Our Obie does have quite a stare; you’d think he was trying to use the Force on us in order to get his food bowl filled. (Scifi and adventure films are another part of our family culture.) And if he turns out a bit standoffish–which so far he is not, much to my excitement–we can call him ObeRon Swanson, for one of our favourite Parks and Recreation characters.

Character Names

Finding a title for a story can be loathsome. Nothing seems quite right… But naming characters is more painless, even enjoyable. There are so many connections you can make with a name, so many clues for readers. For example:

What: What does the name mean? Courage, humility, purity, illumination–lots of names have meanings like these and they can give a hopeful note to a character’s trajectory. I used to attach importance to this as an adolescent writer, but on the other hand everyone is brave, humble, pure, and illuminating at times, so we can’t lock ourselves or a character into any one attribute.

When: What does the name say about the contemporary events of the story? Is it a trendy name given by up-to-date parents, or a name that reflects indifference to fads? On the 2nd of November, 2016, we bought our last pets before this one–a pair of guinea pig brothers who took up residence in our lounge for the next 5 years. With the [now infamous] American election a couple days away, my husband and I wanted to name them Barry and Bernie, but our kiddo chose Fred and George instead. Mischief managed!

Where: Where is the name from? My name is Russian because my dad loves Russian literature. I have no Russian heritage. But it says something about the family who raised me, and introduced me to all sorts of art and literature. As I’m looking into my next project, I want one of my main characters to be an immigrant with a name that gets shortened to Nil, drawing inane comments now that she lives in the UK. I haven’t found a name that fits these particulars yet. Would it be culturally insensitive if I made one up? It’s funny, the notions we get stuck in our heads.

Who: Who else has this name? Often names come from a family history, but they might link to other figures also. I have a draft of a dark comedy story where some celebrity parents name their kids Ursula and Gaston, after Disney villains to shock people with how enlightened they are.

Why: Why was this name given to them–not by you as the writer, but by whoever named them? Writing my novel about Eve, I kept reading the Genesis account of creation. She’s only called “the woman” until after Eden. That’s not as outrageously disrespectful as it sounds though, since all Adam’s name ever meant was “the man.” If they were the first humans on earth, their species and gender would need no further specification.

How: How do others react to the name, and how does the character feel they are living up to it? I don’t usually give characters unusual names, because I have one and it complicates things. How people respond to my name reveals something about them. They might force it into something they know, like Natasha. They might immediately forget it rather than attempt pronunciation. Or they might say, “How unique. I’ll definitely remember that.” It makes things interesting… Maybe I will use such observations in a story one day.

What’s your strategy for naming characters? Are there any character names you’re particularly proud of?

Et Tu?

This Week’s Bit of String: Big wheels and street songs

We camped near Stratford-Upon-Avon over Easter weekend, our first visit there in nine years. A pretty Cotswolds town fiercely proud of being Shakespeare’s birthplace, it’s added a Big Wheel to rival the church spire and the tower of the Royal Shakespeare Company Theatre.

People snap selfies with the statues of famous Shakespearean characters surrounding his statue in the park. Lady Macbeth’s knuckles and the pate of Yorick’s skull are worn smooth by 150 years’ worth of tourists rubbing them for luck. Narrowboats mass on the Avon in front of them, cherry blossoms sway, and a street musician sings “To Make You Feel My Love.”

What would the Bard think of it all? I suspect he would have been okay with most developments, as long as they bring money in. And it wasn’t as if he was humourless. The range of topics he covered in his plays, he doesn’t seem completely traditionalist either.

A Theatre Trip

*Does contain spoilers for a centuries-old play about millennia-old famous historical events

My husband and I went to an RSC production of Julius Caesar while in town. It’s fascinating to me that Shakespeare chose to write this play, and frame the Conspirators with nuance and sympathy, even admiration, when he lived in a strictly royalist time. What could the preservation of democracy mean to him? This play contrasts with the anti-regicide message of Macbeth later on, for example.

We were completely engrossed by the show, although checking online later, it’s had a few sniffy reviews mixed in with decent ones. The director went for fairly plain costumes and set. There was a solemn, black-robed chorus between some scenes, just as the Greeks and Shakespeare would have intended. Between others, there were choreographed group scenes a bit like marches or parties or riots.

*Daft, I know, but I had to get an “Exuent, pursued by…” photo with this Bear at the RSC Theatre*.

This aspect was quite different and a little confusing. I’d looked at the cast list already, though, so I could pick out Brutus and see that her motions represented her inner conflict. I do wonder if some of the same people who criticise the choreographed segments as being too gimmicky, too distracting or confusing—might those not be the same people who advocate for opaque literature, for leaving things up to interpretation? So, I have interpreted it, and find it interesting, and thoroughly believe I would pick up more detail if I had the time and means to see it again.

Both Brutus and Cassius were played by women, which I felt made their friendship more moving, particularly in their parting scene. They were sisters-in-arms. Maybe I’m being egocentric and enjoying a chance to see my gender reflected more in traditional theatre. But perhaps there’s also an objective poignancy in seeing two women take on the accepted power structure, rather than two men do it.

At least one reviewer, as well as an elderly theatregoer my husband overheard, complained about how these two leads kept male character names while using female pronouns, and also kept some lines referring to the characters as men. I was not flummoxed by this. When Mark Antony repeats in his famous speech, “But Brutus is an honourable man,” it’s obvious who he’s referring to.

I wonder again if people who quibble over the lack of matching names/ pronouns/ gender language will wax lyrical about symbolism and analogy in Shakespeare. I suspect they know he’s not always literal. Maybe they just have certain buttons that get pushed when a young Black woman plays Brutus.

Death Scenes

The actress playing Brutus is Thalissa Teixeira, and she was riveting, with a cool elegance befitting an honourable soldier, and moments of passion which showed why she would have such loyal friends. She has ties to Brazil, and you can read how that influenced her portrayal of political upheaval and rebellion.

Brutus’s servant Lucius was played by Jamal Ajala, a deaf actor of colour. So some scenes at Brutus’s house were signed as well as spoken, and the director Atri Banerjee chose to have Lucius reappear in the final scenes as the friend who assists Brutus’s suicide. Brutus’s request to him and his acquiescence were completely silent, only signed. This made it much more striking.

I had to read a lot of Shakespeare in my American high school and university years, much more than the strictly exam-based curriculum in Britain demands. Having been inundated mainly with his tragedies… they get a bit samey. There’s a lot of hand-wringing leading-up-to-death scenes, and this version put the hands to good use. For a taste of what I mean, here’s a video of Jamal Ajala performing Hamlet’s soliloquy in British Sign Language.

Shakespeare bestows an element of control on his characters’ deaths. People get to have little speeches and even Caesar, after he’s been stabbed by several people, doesn’t die until he’s sort of consented to do so: “Let fall Caesar!” This must have been how Shakespeare wrestled with the brutality of life in Tudor/ Jacobean times, when there probably weren’t many poetic farewells. Not during executions and plagues. I doubt he would have begrudged today’s directors and actors using his work to make a mark on society, to make it more inclusive and diverse.

What do you think about Shakespeare, and about reinterpretations of it? Is adding a Big Wheel to the literary landscape a betrayal tantamount to what Brutus did to Caesar?

Over the Rainbow

This Week’s Bit of String: A few hundred definite articles

When I was young and had energy–aged three, to be exact–I started eschewing naps. My mother would put me down for a “Quiet Time” instead, with a stack of books to look through. I knew their stories well, but I wanted to properly read them. Logically I started at the beginning, and as my mother settled me down, I asked what the first word of the top book’s title was.

It was “The,” as in The Wizard of Oz. Now able to read my first word, I went through every book I had and counted how many times “the” appeared in my books. I kept counting wherever I went, well up into the hundreds, until I noticed the word “there,” and counted those. I was in the midst of counting “thens” when all the other words started making sense and I lost count, too busy reading. Sucked into new realms.

Our copy of The Wizard of Oz was a big, almost A3-sized book with illustrations based on the film version. Since it became my first reading experience, I have a soft spot for the story–but clearly I was already drawn to it, since it inspired me to try and read in the first place.

Real Life or Dreams

One thing that bothered me about the movie was how it framed Dorothy’s whole adventure as a dream. I preferred the Chronicles of Narnia, in which all that happened was incontrovertibly real, just occurring in a different dimension (which I tried to reach through many a wardrobe). I felt it diminished Dorothy’s experiences to portray them as just a dream.

Even now, I get a bit ruffled when creators use the “But was it all a dream?” cliche. Hopefully this doesn’t make me too simplistic or uncultured, but I like reality clearly delineated. If an unreliable narrator misleads us for their own ends, or for their own survival, or if they’ve been misled, I’m all in and I have colossal respect for the storytelling (Elinor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Fingersmith, Life of Pi). But if, for example, a TV show or film implies the entire premise has only happened in a character’s mind, as one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer tried to do, I’m offended. How dare the whole plot be minimised in this way?

The secondary school where I work just finished an energetic, 6-performance run of The Wizard of Oz. My husband played in the band and I helped a bit with front of house and quick changes. When a production ends, it’s like waking up from a dream. There’s that sudden cessation of energy and the unwinding of a massive, intricate knot as everyone goes their separate ways.

It struck me, watching it again after a long while, that actually the way the story unfolds is just the way a child might imagine it. As a conquering hero, but innocent, with devoted friends and all sorts of magic. It’s not a diminishment of childhood experience, it’s an ode to their imagination, and I was quite moved by it.

Haunted Forests

It also serves as a reminder that even in our heads, even as children, we’re not completely safe. I don’t know any child capable of constructing a fantasy where nothing bad happens. Otherwise, how would we prove our heroism, and our comparative innocence? Dorothy tries to invent a place where there isn’t any trouble, but trouble gets in anyway.

It’s all those anxieties about the future and those fearful spectres from our past creeping up. “Just try to stay out of my way,” they cackle. “Just TRY.”

One of the reasons I’m quite sensitive about stories being dismissed as “all in your head” derives from my experience in a psychiatric ward when I was 12. I was withdrawn and always thinking about stories. The staff wrote in my records that I seemed to be “responding to internal stimuli” and I was put on anti-hallucination medication.

“Are you hearing voices?” the psychiatrist, a toneless woman with an unfortunate resemblance to Jabba the Hutt, asked.

“No.”

“Are the voices telling you to say that?”

“No.”

But the doctors had become too entrenched in their own reality to decipher mine.

Fortunately, the pills didn’t affect my imaginings in the slightest; I could still escape. It shocks me that it never occurred to those medical professionals that a young patient would wish to imagine things outside the immediate reality of strip searches, iron-meshed windows and straitjacketed children screaming for help.

In my opinion, it should have been as obvious as Dorothy dreaming her way from black and white into colour. I suppose it proves how powerful our inner lives are; they can transport us so fully that people watching us have no idea where we’ve gone. I probably looked as if I was responding to internal stimuli when I was three years old counting “thes” and “thens,” and I go round mouthing dialogue to myself sometimes even now. I know what I’ve made up though, and what I haven’t. You can see why I’d find it irksome if someone tried to tell me otherwise.

What takes you over the rainbow? Has it ever gotten you into trouble?

Transferring Power

This Week’s Bit of String: Exclamation points and everything

Disappointment stirs among some of the A-Level Creative Media students. One of their teachers has been unwell for several weeks, and they miss her.

“She’s STILL not back!” This statement greeted me on Monday morning. Wide-eyed, the Year 12 girl explains, “And we sent her a get well card last week, so it’s just rude not to mind it. We put an exclamation point on and everything. That makes it a COMMAND.”

She’s half-joking, but I suspect they did hope their greeting would have strong restorative powers. It made me think a bit about power dynamics. When we ask someone–or even tell someone–to do something, we may think we’re wielding control, but in a way we are giving it away because we rely on the other person to comply.

Back to the Roots

Interestingly, the word “command” is rooted in Latin for to order, but also to entrust. That’s reflected, I suppose, in our English phrasing: To give a command. We extend an order to another party, but it’s then up to them if they take it. The power is not entirely with the person giving the commands.

This sort of control exchange is on my mind because… it’s submission time again. I only have a limited number of short stories, and I’ve thrillingly just had one accepted. (It’s super fun and you can read it here!) My semi-depraved brain only rejoiced in this for a few hours before starting to panic that this means I don’t have anything currently in the Out on Submission column of my writing spreadsheet.

It’s time to start all over again: researching publications and competitions, editing and wondering if I’m going in the right direction at all, amending format to the exact requirements, drafting cover letters, etc. And then, waiting, very possibly getting rejected, and then repeating the whole process.

You know the drill.

Putting the “Mission” in Submission

To psych myself up for this (and maybe I can psych some of you other writers up in the process!), I looked into the etymology of the word “submit.” There are a lot of connotations to this word: religious, marital, and so on. Indeed, the Latin root means just what you might respect: “to yield, lower, let down, put under, reduce.” It does feel sometimes as if, when we submit our work in hopes of publication, we are prostrating ourselves before an almighty authority.

But separating out the sub- (under) from the -mit gives the idea more nuance. We forget sometimes how that second half of the word means to send out, to release, to bestow. While submitting our work does leave us vulnerable, it’s the primary route available in order to share our gifts with the world.

Sure, it would be nice if acceptance were guaranteed. I remember finding it really tough to convey when my child was little that just because they used their newly-learned manners, it didn’t mean they’d get what they asked for each time. “But I said please!” they might insist, when a request to stay up later or to have more “clockit” (chocolate) was refused. As John Green wrote in The Fault in Our Stars, “The world is not a wish-granting factory.”

As writers and artists, often particularly sensitive and empathetic people, our mission tends to be deeper than getting recognition for ourselves (although given the hard work we put in, that’s definitely part of it). Maybe we want to illuminate darkness, amplify silenced voices, add beauty to the world, or make readers laugh. That’s the mission, it’s why we send forth our work into the world, and our successes are worth the many failures.

How do you encourage yourself when it’s submission time?