Nastasya Parker

Strange Journeys

This Week’s Bit of String: A pink overnight bus to Russia

When I was nineteen, I had a couple weeks after summer work and before my term abroad in the UK. Somewhat to my mother’s chagrin, I opted to visit Russia during that time while traveling among friends. From visiting Taru in Helsinki, I would go to Yulia in Moscow, then Zuzana in Bratislava.

After obtaining my “entry clearance” at Finland’s intimidating Russian Embassy, which reduced me to tears and impoverished me by $300 while charging the German guy in front of me only $60, I remained determined to visit Russia. I expected further bumps in the road.

*Some building I passed in my St. Petersburg daze. Almost the same pink as the bus.*

I did not expect the rickety overnight bus carrying me across the Finnish-Russian border to be pink. I boarded with dozens of sombre Russian passengers, and secured a window seat. The old woman next to me rested her head on my shoulder and went to sleep.

Throughout the night I peered into the darkness, passing vast swathes of evergreen trees and seemingly abandoned, massive industrial or nuclear plants. We disembarked to have our passports stamped out of Finland, then disembarked again for the Russian entry stamp.

“First time in Russia?” asked the Finnish border guard. At my assent, he slammed down his stamp. “Good luck.”

In a way, I did have good luck. But not in a conventional sense.

After the sleepless night with a stranger leaning on me, I left the bus as soon as it stopped. The sun was just rising, a distant golden glow that could equally have been a smouldering chemical inferno. Only one other person left the bus with me, a guy in his twenties.

As I watched the bus drive away, glad to be rid of it, I heard him say in accented English, “You know we are still outside St. Petersburg?”

I shrugged. “That’s fine.”

“Didn’t you have more luggage?”

I had my day bag over my shoulder, but he was right. My even-more stuffed rucksack, with three months’ worth of belongings, was still in the hold under the bus.

Getting in Trouble

I suppose it’s a classic tale: I caused my own problems. I was frustrated with myself for making such a stupid mistake, in so significant a matter, so early on.

The man on the street with me rolled his eyes as if equally annoyed at my folly. “Look,” he said, “Come home with me while I get ready for work. I’ll help you find your way into the city and perhaps locate your bag.”

Now, this will sound like more stupid decision-making. I was aware I shouldn’t go to an unknown man’s house in a foreign, semi-hostile nation. But if he had truly bad intent, I reasoned, then he would pretend to be more welcoming instead of exasperated. So I followed him.

I experienced my first Russian apartment. Toilet and shower in separated tiny chambers, a mug of bitter black tea. Dmitri, who’d been visiting his fiancee in Finland over the weekend and had returned just in time for work, gave me a St. Petersburg map with Finnish location names, wrote down the bus company’s phone number and address, and saw me off on the correct metro train.

I spent a few hours wandering the city. I only remember fragments, almost 25 years later. Deciphering a couple more Russian letters by noticing a cinema poster for the recent film, The Patriot. Glimpsing the Hermitage, the Tsar’s Summer Palace, from across a busy street, my view criss-crossed by tramlines. Ascertaining directions from an ice cream seller because we could both speak intermediate French. I was miraculously reunited with my rucksack at the coach company’s office, where no one had been the least bit interested in its contents.

Travel Stories

I’ve been thinking about this somewhat misadventurous episode since I’ve just finished a truly inspiring novel with a lot of travel in it: Sarah Winman’s Still Life.

This book has me longing to visit Florence, Italy, wander and look at art and eat amazing food. It’s also been a luxurious read because while the plot has war and flood mixed in, mostly it’s about people being super nice to each other. I might not be making it sound very exciting. But the characters’ love for each other, their tolerance for, even appreciation of, each other’s quirks is a balm as the real world seems to become more bitter and stressful.

In my travels as a student (who probably comes across as naive here), I gained independence but also learned it’s not the end of the world when that independence goes wrong. I don’t often put my travels into story form, although a couple times I’ve been inspired by places I’ve visited.

However, I notice in recounting this that travel puts us in a unique position to understand and utilise story structure. We embark on a journey with certain expectations, but what we want may differ from what we need. Being outside our familiar borders forces us to reflect on who we really are, as we notice we are stuck with ourselves here, there, and everywhere. And even when we bring problems upon ourselves, it can turn out okay.

Amazingly, once I reached Moscow the next day, I had a good time. My Russian friend was passionate about showing me around, and her stories about local history and how the city ran fascinated me. There’s another little twist in the tale for you.

Have you encountered surprising kindnesses while away? How does travel fuel your self-reflection and creativity?

Carried Along

This Week’s Bit of String: A wide range of accounts

Only one exam left. I’m happy for our students that they won’t have to sit through them anymore, but disappointed that it’s the only accepted measure for how they’ve done in secondary school.

My role in exams this year, in addition to reading and scribing for a 16-year-old with special needs, is also to act as language modifier for him. This is a rarely-granted access arrangement, for those with hearing and/ or processing disabilities, as well as reading difficulties.

It means I can assist with clarifying a question, but of course it’s quite restricted. I can’t define or ‘modify’ any subject-specific terminology, and it’s best to leave the engine of the question, command words, untouched (explain, analyse, evaluate, the whole Bloom’s Taxonomy lot). I can help with “carrier language,” the words that form the framework of the question.

Here’s an example. In the first History paper, one of the questions was: “Give an account of how the Korean conflict ended in military stalemate.”

The student asked me what “account” meant. “Like Instagram or Facebook?”

I rephrased it as “Tell the story of how the Korean conflict ended in military stalemate.”

This gave him a clearer idea. While the concession of having a language modifier is rare, I wonder how many students unshakably associate the word account with social media, just as an example. For students who are neurodiverse, a word they’re unsure about can be very hard to see past.

Staying Flexible

Adults have this issue as well. There’s a new writer to the writing feedback group I’m in, and both times I’ve sent her my writing, she comments negatively because she’s made an assumption early on and then the story doesn’t comply with it. In a short story where the protagonist was looking after her grandmother, the reader decided that Nan was the name of one of the protagonist’s children, criticised me for mentioning a “grandmother” because that was adding too many characters, and continued to complain that the character didn’t interact with Nan in a manner suitable for a young child.

Revising our assumptions as we go along is a vital skill. Certainly, it’s more innate to some than others. I try to reserve judgment as I’m reading, and when something doesn’t make sense I go back and work out what I may have misinterpreted. I don’t often read book blurbs anymore because they sometimes distort the significance of plot aspects and lead you to expect something different.

This comes from when I read Jojo Moyes’s Me Before You. The back of the book talked about how the heroine “knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home,” and said “knowing what’s coming keeps her sane.” For perhaps my own personal reasons, I concluded the protagonist was neurodivergent, maybe on the autism spectrum. I was baffled and a bit annoyed when she wasn’t.

My frustration was my own fault and based on my assumptions, so I decided not to read book blurbs anymore. I want to get swept up when I read, not anchored down by my potentially outmoded notions. When we read fiction or poetry, all language is carrier language. It’s all taking us somewhere.

Letting Characters Carry

During the last couple of weeks, I started writing my new novel. It feels as if, in a way, most of the language in the first draft is carrier language. That’s what I’m reminding myself anyway. It’s clunky because mainly, I’m seeing how the characters develop the plot. When I go back and edit, I can polish the voice and streamline the form. Many revisions from now it will travel, it will fly, rather than get shoved along.

*I love these roots at an old canal mill site, but for now I can’t get too attached.*

I’ve done a lot of planning and character research, and I feel I’ve honed my craft in terms of focusing the story structure and understanding the direction, kicking off with inciting incidents and such. But I won’t get super attached to anything just yet. I scribbled many notes on my characters’ backgrounds, considering their needs versus their wants, so I feel I know about them, but I can’t presume I know them deeply. I must remain open to what they do, because they could alter my planned plot.

A few pages in, I’m trying to stop thinking about how to rewrite with improved style. It doesn’t matter yet. My characters are more important. This absolves me for now from having to write beautifully or cleverly, which is great since I’m tired and not ready for that yet.

Stories carried by characters engage me more than stories dragged through certain plot points, and I think that’s true for many readers. However, we don’t want the plot to trudge as characters wield the burden of their thoughts too heavily. Later, I’ll correct the balance.

How do you stay flexible? What carries you when you start a project?

Dreaming Spires

This Week’s Bite of String: Noise in an Oxford museum

While I was admiring Japanese cloisonné vases in the Ashmolean this half-term week, a family came along. They had a couple of primary school-aged girls shining cheap little laser torches everywhere. The slightly older of the two girls was quietly singing to herself, but the other was shouting and running around.

“Beatrice!” her parents kept saying in upper middle class tones, ever surprised at unconventional behaviour. “Beatrice, you’re getting silly… Beatrice, we’re in a museum. It can be quiet and peaceful…”

“It CAN be quiet and peaceful,” retorted Beatrice, without slowing down a bit.

Gotta love a girl no more than 6 who’s already dismantling arguments on semantic grounds.

The brief clamour enhanced my experience. I was on a solo overnight trip, and spending the afternoon in the massive Ashmolean with only myself to set the pace was a treat. I’d browse a couple of galleries, then sit and scribble about my finds, then repeat. Favourites were the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian exhibits, complementing the several Nimrud temple panels at Dartmouth’s Hood Museum in my home region of New Hampshire, and examples of Islamic and Indian geometric patterns and art.

There are exhibits predating those civilisations, and it inspires me to see how early humans, too, were compelled to preserve and create beauty. Feeding my brain on such exhibits felt rejuvenating, certainly unlike revising for standardised GCSE exams. But feasting on snippets of real life conversations thrills me, too.

Rest and Change

People like to say, “Change is as good as a rest.” It’s not strictly true; I think change enables us to push ourselves further without rest which we may need. Long-term, it’s possibly not of equal restorative value.

*A little bit of reading time, Worcester Shrub Hill station*

That said, it felt as if changing up my brain’s intake for a day or two rejuvenated me. In addition to visiting the museum, I read Mslexia magazine on the train rides, wandered along the canal in Worcester during a stopover, explored both the busy streets and the tranquil parks of Oxford totalling 43,000 steps in less than 36 hours, and enjoyed a theatre production of Little Women.

Seeing the literary classic on stage was the main purpose of my journey, which I learned about thanks to well-targeted Facebook ads. It was a terrific show, with energy and heart. They made use of birch trees as set pieces, and seeing those made me feel connected to New England from afar.

After the play, I went hunting for ice cream, as is my late-night, post-show wont, and I didn’t go to bed till midnight. But I didn’t leave my hotel for the next day’s explore until 10:30, and that is pretty luxurious for me.

Spending Time Well

So I took a bit of the morning to recuperate, and keep up with my daily scribbles. I have some novel-planning to work on, but I didn’t get to it; didn’t even read much. As usual when I travel, making the most of the experience involves a lot of walking and a fair bit of writing down what I want to remember.

Before visiting Oxford, I’d made an effort to put all my new novel work into a Plotting Table, with columns for each character and rows for each chapter. The Plotting Table is super helpful for seeing where stakes may need to be raised for some characters, and so forth. I wanted to print this out and pore over it on paper while out of the house, undistracted by chores.

But our printer is at least 10 years old and is suffering memory loss. It no longer recognises paper. I’ll be poking pages into it and it insists said pages do not exist. Or it will pick up a sheet of paper (or heck, two or three at once), load it an inch, then suffer a fresh bout of amnesia and say it’s out of paper anyway.

I had to give up on printing my Plotting Table. I had nearly 2 miles to walk to the train station, with my rucksack of overnight necessities, and I couldn’t risk missing the train. Turns out I was a bit busy, anyway.

Like Beatrice at the Museum, I would say vacations CAN be quiet and peaceful—but they certainly don’t have to be. Just this once, I think I struck a decent balance.

Have you given your mind any change lately?

Voice Check

This Week’s Bit of String: Forbidden conversations

The exams (GCSEs) for our Year 11 students have begun. I’m sitting them alongside a young man with special needs, in line with his access arrangements.

The first exam we did together, we had a power-tripping invigilator who told us off for talking. The student finished dictating answers to me minutes before the end of a 105-minute exam, and I asked how he was feeling. He nodded, and grinned, and said he felt ok. Then he asked what time it was.

We’re not allowed to tell students, because it might unfairly advantage them (apparently). So I silently pointed at the analog clock set up in front, which many students can’t read.

The invigilator came over and said we mustn’t talk. According to her, I could only speak when reading directly from the paper.

“And if you want to know the time, you have to ask me,” she told the student.

“Oh, okay. What time is it?” he asked.

“I can’t tell you.”

Gah! Thankfully, our usual invigilator is less officious. We’re not rebuked (yet) for asking a frightened exam-taker how they’re feeling.

I wonder if smiling at a student and showing mild concern for their welfare does give them an extra advantage. I wouldn’t feel too bad if it did; there are so many disadvantages actively at work. Many of our students with special needs are already convinced they will fail.

My exam student keeps saying, when we’re studying: “I don’t know how I can remember all this.”

I worry about this developing from a mantra to a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I’ve been suggesting fixes. What if the video clip running in his mind said instead, “I’m good at solving problems. I can try to work out the ones I don’t know.”

It’s hard to change an internal narrative, though.

Rewriting the Internal Monologue

How we talk to ourselves inside our minds can be a game changer. My inner voice, for quite a long time, has been somewhat generous and cuts me some slack in a few respects. It cheers me on through busy days, and it might later say, Great job, you’ve done a tonne of work, have a tonne of peanut butter. You know, stuff like that.

*Sometimes we have to allow ourselves a slower pace.*

It wasn’t always that way; as a young person I completely reviled myself. Trauma and peer pressure and mixed-up interpretations of religion will cause that. Then, after a couple years as an immigrant, on some subconscious level I must have grasped that no person especially in a foreign land would ever provide all the reassuring words I’d always longed to hear. And I settled for hearing some version of that from myself.

It wasn’t a conscious effort. I realised how much kinder I’d become to myself because I listened to how my students talked about themselves, and contrasted my own, long growth.

But lately, my inner voice has been harsher. Once again, this realisation snuck up on me. I was summoned to a procedural absence hearing at work, after all those days I missed with a late winter flu, plus a couple days further back in the year thrown in.

The deputy headteacher said I’m great, highly valued and respected by all staff, and they don’t question the reason for my absences. But… do better, Or Else.

That put me in a panic. How do I avoid getting sick while I’m scribing a GCSE paper, leaning in to hear whispered dictations from a boy who’s blowing his nose rather juicily?

Panic Versus Control

The thing is, I had been really down on myself about every sick day. There’s no excuse for this, I’d think while I bundled, practically immobile, on the couch. No one else missed as much work for this bug. There’s obviously some insufficiency in me.

But when told I could lose my job if I get sick again, the terror I felt came from helplessness. I can’t truly be helpless and at fault at the same time. Maybe it’s time to stop blaming myself, and summon some fighting energy.

Fortunately, I’ve had words from others to help me turn things around. Colleagues from my actual work team have been outraged that I felt threatened. In their view, I do way too much already.

“I know it isn’t easy,” one of my TA friends said, “But you have to put this away in a mental compartment so you don’t think about it, or it will make you sick, and we aren’t going to give them that.”

The SENCo, head of our department, swore she’d accompany me should any further meetings occur. “I’ll tell them that if they let you go, I’d be under so much stress I’d be off sick, and good luck to them covering us both.”

Sometimes, people around us know just what to say. Slowly, our panic and stress ease off. But as wonderful as it is hearing kind support from others, it’s even more important what we hear within—after all, our inner voice is the one we’re stuck with. Might as well make it an amiable one.

I certainly hope to at least keep panic at bay for my students, and more importantly to help them dwell on their positive attributes. I will work on moderating the tones of my internal monologue to be less harsh when I have a slight off day.

How does your inner voice keep you going?

Cracking the Code

This Week’s Bit of String: Letters on on ancient platform

As someone who reads everything around me practically without thinking, I instinctively attempted deciphering signs on our recent trip to Athens. My knowledge of this lettering comes from Russian more than anything else. In 2000, I visited Russia and wandered around staring at buildings and signs.

I identified the letter pi from a movie poster for The Patriot. While out for a meal, my Moscow friend said to me, “The waitress has a name like yours: Natasha.” And I could then spot the symbol for the “sh” sound.

One of my problems was confusing P, D, L, and G. They’re all sort of mountainous little shapes. In Greece, I spent time noting the differences. Other letters came clear through signs for pharmacies, using the phi and the mu. There were inscriptions, such as the mural behind the ionic pillars of the University building. Above marble steps strewn with empty cans and KFC rubbish, the mural portrays the academic subjects as robed women approaching a throned man. Physics, Mathematics, History, with Rhetoric and Poetics gossiping in the rear. Each figure had her subject name stencilled above, presenting me an opportunity to work on understanding the Greek letters.

What really struck me, though, was a votive from 400 BCE displayed under the Acropolis. It was dedicated to Hermes and Aphrodite, with their names carved into the stone in ancient lettering. EPMOY, said the stone. The day before, we’d walked up and down Ermou Street, and I hadn’t realised it was named for the Messenger God. It’s one thing for pillars to stand over a couple thousand years, and really something else for letters to do the same.

Countdown

Translating Greek letters bit by bit is like building a story from “pieces of string” gathered from daily life. It was nice to have a little extra time to contemplate the pieces, being on holiday. At work, we’re running out of time. My year 11s, regardless of special needs, will sit exams starting in just over a week.

For some, reading and processing the questions will be most difficult. I think of the times I’d look at a sign in Greece, work out what the letters meant–and still not know the word because it was too far removed from the English equivalent. Our students with severe dyslexia expend their energy decoding letters, but still have to understand the question, and write essay answers.

For other students, a main challenge is mining the deeper meaning of a text. It’s particularly difficult with poetry. One student on the autism spectrum was upset with a recent mark for poetry analysis. He had worked hard thinking what to write about the poem, and had interpreted it literally.

I told him poets often speak in code. They use symbols to represent bigger ideas. Blake’s “blood running down palace walls” in “London” represents cruel rulers, and Hughes’s terrified hare in “Bayonet Charge,” which I thought was metaphorical until just a month or so ago, a way of describing the hopping, chaotic sparks–this represents innocence harmed in war.

“We’ve got to crack the code,” I told my hardworking, frustrated student. “We have to tell the examiners what the writer might have really meant.”

Beneath the Surface

*Perhaps a bit less left to interpretation here, or perhaps not. Street art in Athens*

The word code comes from caudex, “tree trunk,” early books made of wooden tablets. These would be used to establish rules in writing. So books are essentially code, and whether wittingly or not, some translation will be involved. From the trunk of any volume we read, the meaning might branch out and strike different people in different ways.

Books are a code to the writer’s intent and context. At least, for the purposes of English exams they are. Heavens forbid anyone read or write anything for fun. Another student on the autism spectrum lamented having to revise Jacobean history for Macbeth, and Victorian for A Christmas Carol. It’s a lot to remember, none of which today’s students find clearly relevant.

“We have to know the circumstances around the writer in order to understand why they wrote and what they wanted to teach readers.” I explained, “It’s a good skill because everything we see people post online, they might have a purpose that isn’t obvious.”

“I never do that,” she said. “I just tell it like it is.”

I’m not sure any of us are so upfront all the time though. I’ve certainly seen her excuse herself from class claiming she needs the toilet, while sweeping away with phone in hand. Deciphering the code of an individual person is never fully possible, because our circumstances change and we constantly evolve.

It’s still worth trying, though. An open mind and willingness to take a little time puzzling out another human being is maybe the best reason to hone our interpretation skills. How do you keep yours sharp?

Mythology and Me

This Week’s Bit of String: Candles on a motorbike

At nearly 11 pm on Easter Saturday, the taxi driver from Athens airport told me about the seasonal traditions in Greece.

“From the execution Friday until midnight when it turns to Sunday, many people will not hammer, or cut, eat meat, or do anything with violence. It’s out of respect because of the crucifixion.”

*Inside the Byzantine Panagia Kapnikarea on Easter Sunday*

Then, at midnight, there are fireworks and prayers, before family feasts on Easter Sunday. Freshly arrived in Athens for a city break, my husband and I wandered out at midnight. Down a narrow street we saw the bobbing lights of a candlelit crowd, and we heard the prayers chanted in a nearby Greek Orthodox church. People poured from its marble steps carrying lit tapers—all manner of people: goths, senior citizens… One middle-aged woman came out with a bouquet of 5 lit candles, and climbed behind a man on a motorbike and they rode off.

Not everyone participates, I’m sure. As Iakovos said, “It depends what you desire.”

And of course there’s the other side of the coin, be it Euro or drachma. He told me how much he loves being a driver, especially for tours when he takes people to further ancient sites, such as Delphi or Mount Olympus.

He has particular praise for Mount Olympus. According to him, there’s a spot up there known as the Throne of Zeus, where no wind or snow or rain ever strike, as if it’s divinely protected.

“It makes you think they really knew something,” he says of the ancient Greeks.

Building a Religion

How we interpret such things and act upon them does, as he said earlier, depend on our desire. How often do we believe something we really don’t want to?

When we first learned about Greek myths in school, I was in 8th grade. That’s a lot older than British students learn about them, and maybe for that reason, I did not enjoy the subject. To me, the gods seemed selfish, not to mention cruel and misogynistic. My opinion hasn’t changed much on that, to be honest. I had to read lots of ancient Greek play in high school and college, and I like the genre of modern retellings, but the original stories don’t appeal much to me apart from being cultural references.

*Gorgeous weathering on these pillars from Hadrian’s Library*

I do think myths have huge value in what they might tell us about the people who believed, maybe even created them. What does it say about people that they would make sacrifices from their own, struggling lives to such seemingly callous deities?

What we found breathtaking in Athens were the monuments made by people. The stunning Propylaea, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the Porch of the Maidens alongside the Erechtheion. How incredible that parts of the Pantheon still stand after almost 2500 years of invasions and natural disasters. And the beautiful little Byzantine church the Panagia Kapnikarea, nearly a millennium old. These are marvelous places, designed and built by humans with much toil and cooperation. Yet they make me wonder about a presence even more powerful.

I guess that’s what art can do, inspire you to believe in something greater, even if it’s just a previously unimagined hope for the future.

Likeability Vs Relatability

Looking down at the city of Athens through the Propylaea above, or through the Roman arches behind the Odeon, we had a stunning view over the chaotic crush of buildings, the worn, aged mountains, and the sea beyond. I imagined ancient people coming up here to sacrifice, worship, or be entertained, and wondered what their view was like. Maybe that was enough to keep them worshipping.

Raised in a Christian family myself, we were always deeply attuned to the suffering that Easter springs from, and I like the Greek orthodox idea of acting on that seriousness by refraining from aggressive activities for a couple of days. Maybe my upbringing contributed to my complete horror and aversion of anything execution-related. I am still mystified how Christians sit with the belief that an innocent deity suffered and died for their sins personally, and don’t constantly agonise over that.

*Getting the right balance… Porch of the Maidens, Erechtheion, Athens*

I once wrote a novel scene between American educators preparing for the 7th grade mythology unit. The Christian teacher describes the Greek gods as “petty and selfish—no better than people.”

On the other hand, he says, “Jesus actually became human, and that’s as accessible as it gets.”

But He never sinned, thinks the teaching assistant. Being human would be a cinch without guilt.

Could it be that ancient Greeks appreciated having dieties with lusts and impulses that reflected their own?

Conveying a religion must be like the constant political tussle over how to best message people. Meet people where they are, or urge them to strive for better? And as writers and creatives, we work to establish that same balance: creating characters who are likeable and also relatable, events that are dramatic and also recognisably everyday. It’s getting that juxtaposition between majestic ancient ruins and the settlements below; the prayers on loudspeaker and the candles on motorbikes. Our ability and taste for this will vary, one might say depending on our desire.

What do you think of the classical myths? Do you find the supernatural accessible?

Asserting Authority

This Week’s Bit of String: A new monarch in town

“How do you spell author?”

“A-U-T-H-O-R,” I obliged the boy. My family was providing childcare for another family from church. Their oldest was maybe 8 at the time, not quite a decade younger than I was. I always had a soft spot for him, found him gentle and reflective.

We were at my parents’ kitchen table, colouring. The boy had decided to make a picture book. I was probably doing homework, and wandered off after a while on other pursuits.

*Me with the crown they gave me (ok, not just me) at Goodrich Castle*

Later on, my brother told me our young guest had written his book. It was a kingly tale of Arthur and his knights. Only, when I’d assumed the little boy wanted to spell author so he could do a little “About the Author” page, he was actually asking me how to spell Arthur.

I had caused him to create an entire picture book about King Author and his glorious feats of derring-do.

This made me giggle, and it’s resurfaced in my memory as I plan my next novel. In a way, is an author a monarch? Do we rule over the kingdom (queendom, perhaps) of our imagination?

Uneasy Lies the Crown

Writing, as with any truly driving creative endeavour, is a tough gig. You want to express yourself genuinely, but you want to be widely accepted and received. It’s emotionally bruising.

But what I really struggle with sometimes is making decisions, then forging on alone. It’s up to me to invent an entire story, develop intriguing, complex characters, then come up with plausible trajectories. In the words of King George III as portrayed in Hamilton, “You’re on your own…” There are certainly times when I imagine I’d like to have democracy, some sort of constituents to steer me.

*My very own fritillary, growing in the front garden*

The etymological root of the word author is ‘one who causes to grow.’ In fact, it has the same root as actor: a doer, a performer, an initiator. However, no one really does this solo. An actor takes direction and usually works with an ensemble. A gardener doesn’t cause a seed to grow all on her own; there’s sunlight and water involved. That’s why, as writers, we are constantly developing our ideas under the glow of other literature and art and the hydration of feedback.

In our writing, we also have characters to keep us company. While perhaps not as vocal and irascible as human voters in a democracy, they’re still more volatile than planted seedlings. You don’t always know what you’ll end up with, nor should you. At work, our Art students are heavily cautioned against deciding too soon after receiving their exam brief what their finished product will be. It’s called “design fixation” and it would lower their grade. Instead, they need to show evidence they’ve explored a range of ideas, researched various artists, and grown through the process.

Wrestling with Authority

So our creative work draws from all sorts of sources, and can evolve. We’re not creating free of influence, far from it. But it’s up to us to get things moving and keep them moving. We’re pretty important. It’s obvious, but worth noting that the word author also links strongly with authority.

For a lot of us, assuming authority goes against our nature. We might particularly shy from it when watching it run amok in current administrations with distinctly authoritarian leanings. (The term authoritarian was coined in the late 1850s, early 1860s–I wonder if it started in the US, and whether it was the South or the North first using it?)

In my job, I have to inspire respect from my students, but as a teaching assistant rather than a teacher, I can be friendly and nurturing too. There’s an added dimension this year. We have so many special needs students, we require quite the company of teaching assistants, too many now for the few medium-paid TAs to line manage.

That’s why at the beginning of this year, I became a line manager on half the pay grade required to manage staff.

The head of our department framed this development as potentially forcing the administration’s hand. Maybe one day, they’ll realise they have to pay us more. Seems unlikely; if they’ve got us doing it now, why change?

She told us: “I will do my best to make you believe this is worth your while.”

Those semantic gymnastics impressed me. I remain skeptical that there will be any financial value to the endeavour, but it showed me that even those with authority aren’t always comfortable with it. If she’d been confident about what she was initiating, would my head of department have twisted her language so tortuously?

Several months into being a line manager, I’m getting better at navigating the computer programme required and meeting the deadlines. The person I’m managing has valuable working experience and a masters degree, so my role isn’t to boss her around, it’s to help channel her tremendous strengths in support of our students and team.

That’s more like what we do with our creative ideas. We serve as conduits, not just despots. How do you exercise authority over creative endeavours?

A Flaw-Finding Mission

This Week’s Bit of String: A 30-year-old reading list

Last week when I couldn’t sleep, I invented a new game: Trying to remember which books we studied each year of high school, back in the mid-1990s. This joins other such spectacular entertainment forms as How Many Second Grade Classmates Can I Remember? and Recall the Layout of All the Holiday Cottages I Used to Clean for a Living.

One of my British secondary school system gripes is the paltry amount of books read for English. Two whole years studying nothing but Lord of the Flies, Macbeth, A Christmas Carol, and 15 war poems is such a drag.

On the other hand, we read quite a few books in our slightly deprived rural American high school. In 9th grade alone, we read Romeo and Juliet, Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men, and I think some form of The Odyssey. We also read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, which I didn’t like much, and Cormier’s The Chocolate War, which I detested. It seemed clear he’d written it, with masturbation references and stupid boy behaviour, to impress his teenage son. Not my demographic.

*“Everyday Use” is about historic quilts–whether to display them, or use them. These quilts are part of the annual show at Billings Farm, Vermont.*

In 10th grade, we read Macbeth, Lord of the Flies (sound familiar?), Old Man and the Sea, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I was not a fan of the latter. We also read a volume of memoir essays and short stories, the first things I loved reading in high school. My favourite was an Alice Walker story, “Everyday Use.”

If we hadn’t been required to read such a broad selection, I might not have connected with any of it. I’m glad I didn’t lose interest, because the curriculum had terrific offerings in our junior and senior years.

I don’t remember what I was reading for fun during the first two years of high school, or if I bothered. I had plenty of homework, and my own made-up story-world I constantly nursed. Maybe that was why I resented certain assigned books. I preferred my own stories, woven around my experiences.

So at 3 in the morning a few days ago, I realised: my adolescent self was a narcissistic reader.

Inconvenient Truths

I see it in a couple of my students. Simon Armitage’s war poem “Remains” is great for spotting narcissistic readers. It’s written clearly in the vernacular, sometimes using collective pronouns which almost make you feel complicit. Most of the chatty girls and fidgeting, shouting-out boys stop and fall under the spell.

But one boy from our Trio of Fortitude has to always be the victimliest victim who ever victimmed, so he slouches through the succinct tale of war, PTSD, and substance abuse. This boy can’t pick up a pen because he has a cut on his finger, or his stomach hurts. He is cross that no one has helped him during class with his homework yet, and he might get a detention because obviously he’s not going to do it in his own time.

Now, as a teen I generally behaved myself in class and did the work, mostly on time. Ish. But I wonder if I had it in for Maya Angelou because at the age of 14 I, too, fancied myself the victimliest victim.

For at least a couple years of my adolescence (I think I got better), I was limited in my ability or desire to truly support other people. I became painfully aware of this years ago. I hadn’t realised that maybe this self-centeredness affected my reading. I just kept assuming the books weren’t very good.

Ready or Not

I’m a big advocate of reading for fun. So I won’t begrudge adolescent me for being self-involved 3 decades ago. If we’re honest with ourselves, we all have phases even as adults when we don’t have the strength to read certain things. It’s useful to remember that’s not the books’ fault.

Against the backdrop of negative news in my native country, I like to read books of plucky individuals banding together. I probably won’t attempt rereading Maya Angelou’s memoir of tribulation at the moment, but I do know now that I actually like some of her poems quite a lot.

*These caged birds were painted on a Glasgow wall, 2019.*

While there are always plenty of reading options to suit any mood and even, I daresay, any impending apocalypse, what to write can be a conundrum. I had this issue during the pandemic as well. When the world is suffering severe pangs, and we don’t know what it will give birth to, how do I bring forth a new big project? If I plot and start a novel referencing the current situation, that’s going to change by the day. If I start penning a contemporary novel without referencing current circumstances, is that callous? Does anyone even want to read more about the present chaos, after exhausting ourselves with the news?

Considering all this, I’m setting my next project in a place I love, and I’ve decided to set it during the first Trump election and administration, 2016-2017. We still had the “Not My President” fig leaf that he’d lost the popular vote, and we thought some people just didn’t realise how greedy and racist and misogynistic and authoritarian he was. This parallels the journey of my characters, as they wrestle with learning that maybe they’re not as kind and upright as they have tried to present themselves.

Which brings me back to my discovery about myself. Recognising our own flaws opens us to appreciating more outside ourselves, and I feel as if starting with my characters’ flaws makes me a little less protective of them, a little more open to the courses their journey can take. They say we should never judge a book by its cover. We shouldn’t judge by our adolescent opinions, either.

Have you encountered any books you ended up really changing your mind about?

Staying Creative

This Week’s Bit of String: An accident-prone day

You know those days when everything goes wrong? Last Sunday, I had a few chores left on my weekend list. I needed to change the sheets, but inadvertently laundered a tissue with the bed linens. It avenged its fate by leaving sticky fragments all over everything.

I stepped outside to put some recycling in the bin, an opportunity also to chat with our neighbour in the adjoining half of the duplex. This brought up a fencing dispute which is provoking grief and peevishness on both sides.

While we attempted to reach a compromise in the sunshine, I saw my cat speed round the house and dart in the open back door with a pigeon in his mouth. I spent the next 20 minutes waiting for him to finish tearing into it behind the couch, and at least as much time after that shifting the furniture, picking up pieces, hoovering feathers, cleaning the carpet, and wiping bloodstains off the lamp cable.

In the afternoon, I needed to clean the fridge. I dropped an egg, it slipped underneath the appliance, I had to empty the fridge completely and move it and clean behind it. When wiping the worktops in preparation for hoovering, I tipped a bit of water on my laptop, which has thankfully survived unscathed.

With half my chores taking up more time and aggravation than planned, I reached the evening exhausted (but with a clean house!) and thought, am I actually going to write today? I barely felt human, let alone like a writer.

The Great Humaniser

Maybe I was a walking disaster because, after a week of flu, I was still battling extra fatigue and some headaches. My husband was now in the throes of the virus so the house was generally miserable, had been for a little while, and wouldn’t be imminently abating.

*Thank goodness it’s been sunny and springy or I’d have been seriously depressed.*

When I’m sick, or drained after being sick, I refer to myself as “running a reduced service.” I still have to do laundry and basic cleaning and cook and if not get groceries myself, arrange for them. Have to help my family in whatever way possible, and must get back to school to do my job as hastily as I can. The result is I’m doing nothing but work and chores; no extra exercise or writing sessions. No social gatherings or outings for entertainment, or long hikes. It’s a drag and can continue for weeks because a reduced service is still fairly demanding and I’m rarely getting a decent night’s sleep.

I don’t know if it’s the best physical remedy, but the best emotional one might be to write anyway. That’s what I did Sunday. I bashed out 500 more words of a character sketch, prepping a new novel. I went from feeling I was barely surviving, to remembering I am capable of adding beauty and empathy to the world through what I create.

Any creative endeavour brings out our humanity and even transcends it.

Why We Write

The past couple weeks reminded me why we write (or make music, or create art). Even while I was sick, if I could get a few minutes of fresh air, and perk myself up listening to quality tunes, I could then engage in some writerly activity most days. That creative feeling fought off some of the glumness.

Here are ways creativity elevates us:

Wearing pyjamas for the 4th day running doesn’t mean we can’t write a piquant description of the flowers sprouting outside or the cat’s sleeping position. Tip: Take 5 or 10 minutes, scribble about what you see. Write your favourite line from those scribbles on a post-it or take a picture on your phone as a reminder of your formidable talent.

The more we practise bits of writing, the more we notice without trying. When an articulate description comes to mind, we feel observant; we feel less like we’re missing out on life. Even if that’s a clever phrase about how cough syrup tastes, or the pound of a headache.

We can still be part of a community. Being on Twitter isn’t always a positive experience these days, but I was running the profile for the Women Writers Network while I was poorly. My Tweet about a recent visit to Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, an independent bookshop in Bath, received over 350 likes, and dozens of responses with other writerly/ literary types adding their indie bookseller recommendations. It turned into a real bright spot. If you’re low on energy, taking a few minutes to encourage and lift up others on social media can boost our mood.

When we’re forced to take a break, it knocks our confidence. I found that, though I’d kept some semblance of writing in my life, I still felt disheartened about picking up bigger projects again. On Saturday while I was feeling a bit better, I sat in the sunny dining room and did a watercolour based on a favourite place, where I’m setting my next novel. I’m not an artist and don’t have much experience with watercolour, but I made myself complete it. This took less mental energy than writing, but plenty of courage. And I don’t hate how it turned out. It reminded me it’s ok to bash out writing too. We just have to go for it.

Do you use creativity as an antidote when things go wrong? What are your tips for maintaining a creative state of mind when low on strength?

A Creative Start

This Week’s Bit of String: “What shall we make?”

In our first year of married life, my husband started a Saturday morning pancake-making tradition with our little kiddo. While I hiked the hills, they’d make pancakes from a Jamie Oliver recipe, my husband fluffing up the eggs with a hand-cranked beater. Our preschooler helped measure and mix.

Despite them doing it almost every week, it stirred in our little Bear an almost unspeakable excitement. Early on a Saturday morning, they would plonk next to their dad in our bed and ask, wide-eyed, almost vibrating with elation:

“What shall WE make?”

The correct answer, of course, was pancakes. But it was as if it couldn’t mean nearly as much if Bear asked directly for them. They had to be Daddy’s suggestion, every time.

My husband would draw out the game. “Mandrakes? Bran flakes?” Until at last: “Pancakes!”

I often think of this when I’m starting a new project. That relish, that possibility. What shall WE make, I ask myself, summoning some semblance of youthful vigour.

Whose Idea is It, Anyway?

There’s a perennial hope, too, that the idea I work with may appear from an external source. I mean, to an extent, all ideas do. But as creatives we must at least invite them, if not invent them. We have to wake the muse from her blissful weekend sleep and badger her until she divulges something. When she’s sleeping extra tight, we must remind ourselves, perhaps, that we’ve known what we want all along.

Funnily, a lot of my story ideas materialise in the night. Sometimes between dreams and sleep, sometimes when I’m trying and failing to relax into slumber, a line pops into my head. What on earth does it mean? What sort of a person would think this? What happens next?

“My sister devoured the whole of history.”

“In the boys’ minds you left so fast, you didn’t bother wearing shoes. Just ran barefoot down the dirt road.”

“As a boy, Tom believed every grandpa came with a matching grandfather clock.”

It is possible, when interrogating a line or an idea, to over-beat it. I devise so much backstory, I lose sight of which bit I might zoom in on to convey the pivotal moment that is a short story. At the moment, I’m trying to find my way through that predicament with my third random short story of the year.

Traps and Tricks

Similar to making their dad suggest pancakes anew every single week, our Bear had other funny, roundabout ways. When we went on walks, they’d try to make my husband chase them. They’d stick goosegrass on his clothes or sneak up and tickle him.

Then our kiddo would say, “Do you want to catch me? Do you have any traps for me?”

They’d be hopping in place, not wanting to run away because they loved the game of being tackled and tickled, or dangled upside down.

That’s another great challenge when concocting something new. It must be exciting, but we can’t force the stakes. Sometimes an idea remains just a concept because I can’t work out how to nudge it toward a plausible, engaging crisis. Embarrassingly, I’ve developed and drafted whole novels only to feel the climax falls flat. Does that happen to other creatives? Or do they have more exciting imaginations?

Maybe I need to add more ingredients. More dark secrets, a love triangle, a dragon? But not necessarily. I might just need to be bolder, to more fearlessly mine the ideas I have, and to get messy with them. Currently planning a new novel, I’ve got my characters’ flaws in mind from the beginning. Sometimes I like them so much I’m determined to keep them blameless–not this time.

Creative habits are hard-won. I’m proud that I sit down at the end of a long day and push myself, wearily, to make up stuff. But it needs to be fresh, too, and that’s one reason why I like remembering our family tan-snakes…scran-bakes… PANCAKES tradition.

What makes you smile as you craft chaos into order?