The Writing Process – Nastasya Parker

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?

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?

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?

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?

The Excitement of Uncertainty

This Week’s Bit of String: Old, fat, furry cat-puss

There’s an old British children’s show called Bagpuss, starring a pink and white floppy toy cat who comes to life, along with his other toy friends. It’s stop-motion puppetry, with calming background chimes and little animated stories thrown in along with strummed songs and whatever fits with the toys’ imaginings.

In my late twenties as an immigrant parent, I found the episodes quite soothing to watch with our little Bear.

*A pond of time. What might lie beneath?*

One summer, back in New England visiting my family, I showed them a YouTube video of the show’s opening. As my dad watched the slow introduction and brief flashes of black and white photos, he asked in stunned panic,

“What’s going to happen?”

The change of pace was vaguely terrifying, I think. Sometimes, when things are a bit chaotic, I hear that question in my head, repeated the same, confused way. And it becomes a little bit funny, as I found it so at the time.

Happenstance

Not a lot happens in Bagpuss. The lovely characters resume their usual places at the end, going back to sleep until next time. Sometimes my story ideas do exactly that. I think my characters are going to amount to something but they sort of peter off instead.

*Taking on this challenge probably means I will do a bit of waffling.*

On Monday, I decided to join in with the 100 Days of Writing challenge on Twitter. There were 100 days left of 2024, and the idea is simply that you write every day.

I already do write daily—my scribbles that I’m ridiculously addicted to. My notebooks are adding up to take over an entire table. Then of course there are blog posts, and critiques and such. But I haven’t felt very attached to a fiction project in a long time, and my novel about Eve is still out on submission.

So I’m writing 500 words of fiction per day, and make things up pretty much on the fly.

On Monday I was lucky, because I did that many words mainly before work and at my lunch break. For the rest of the weekdays, my work breaks were busy and I had so many chores at home (plus scribbles reflecting on the day’s events), I wasn’t settling down for fiction until at least 9 pm.

I’ve previously ruled out late evening writing, because I don’t have much brainpower or energy left by then. But each day, 6 in a row now, I’ve done my 500 words at least, across 4 different ideas.

Finding a Thing

The premise of the Bagpuss show is that Emily, the little girl who owns the toys including Bagpuss, finds an object when she’s out and about, leaves it with her toys, and they imagine what its story and purpose might be. Every episode begins: “One day, Emily found a thing. So she took it home to show Bagpuss.”

Writing is just finding a thing, and investigating it. So I began by writing about a couple meeting in a waffle house, and getting to know each other. This story is only for me; it doesn’t need an exciting plot. I wanted to introduce an invented character to a version of someone I know in real life. This way, I could chart a possible route to a happy ending, while safely exploring the emotions rooted around a sad situation. I made it just to suit myself.

*Oil refineries near Houston. I found them fascinating.*

Then I started writing a little place-centred piece, inspired by a funny malapropism from one of my sister’s students: “Once a pond of time.” What would the pond of time be like, I wondered? And I played with that idea. For a couple nights, I worked on both small projects at once.

When I’d written what I wanted to (for now) on those, I forayed into a new novel, having a protagonist carry a rucksack through the woods at three in the morning, making her way to an old mansion she believes will be empty. I have in no way plotted this novel. I have lengthy character and setting sketches. But it was exciting to just plunge in. I need to see if I love the idea enough to commit to a plot and many thousands of words. For now, I get to just see what happens, no strings attached.

And Saturday, I put my 500 words and then some toward finishing a story I started in summer, set in mid-20th century Southeast Texas. I lost the thread of it a little, so I needed a day when I have time in order to work on this. How fun, though, to say I’ve worked on four different fiction projects in just one week! Incredibly, despite the late nights, this fills me with delight rather than dread.

Do you sometimes relish not knowing what will come next, or does it throw you into a panic?

Fated to Create

This Week’s Bit of String: Catalog of catastrophe

At the start of this unending term, I changed my contract to leave school 2 hours early on Tuesdays. Just a couple extra hours a week, I hoped to use these as a springboard to cope with all the writing work and the household chores.

Only it hasn’t quite worked out. Last Tuesday, I got some errands done but when stowing one of my purchases under my bed, I noticed a feather or two around my shoes. Then a few downy clumps further back. With growing unease, and knowing that Obie the Babycat in what is surely intense devotion sometimes brings his kills under my side of the bed, I emptied the entire space.

It seemed to be carnage left from a week ago, when he brought a blackbird upstairs–trailing blood spatters over the pale-carpeted stairs and hallway which took me over an hour to scrub out, one speckle at a time. And it took me quite a while again, to sort out my shoes and bags, and hoover up all the feathers that had gotten inside them.

Dinner was in the oven as I did this, the second night of a cauliflower cheese batch I’d prepared at the weekend. Super efficient, right? Except when I took it out of the oven, it was as cool as it could be on a 28-degree-Celsius day. The oven had died. I had to re-dish it, and microwave individual portions.

We all have times when nothing seems to go smoothly, and circumstances keep us from our writing, or wear us out before we can get to it. To our dramatic writerly brains, it feels like a personal attack from the fates themselves. It’s easier to notice things that stop us from writing, than things that go right.

Could that be because, to an extent, writing is hard work and when life wears us down, we’re almost looking for an excuse not to?

The One and Only

Like many people, I project a grand authorship over life sometimes. I consider the what ifs: What if my husband had missed his train and we never met? What if our kiddo got into a different uni, one that looked after the students through covid so they didn’t have complete breakdowns, ultimately starting life over in another country? I don’t actively credit fate with these things, though. Mostly it’s myself and other people around (and the cat!) that affect my daily goings-on and beyond.

*Maybe someone else could do the history-making?*

The problem with believing in fate or some sort of grand author means we might fall into thinking the full story’s written. This has been on my mind with the Presidential debate in my native USA. Political parties seem to think that just because a particular senior white guy won that one time, it absolutely must be him again. Note that the Republicans have done that with Trump–he won in 2016! (Popular vote, shmopular vote according to them)–He must have actually won in 2020 and will undoubtedly win in 2024.

But was Biden really the only person who could have managed the 2020 Democratic victory against him? Surely anyone with empathy and discernment could do it? Given how life carries on, and the many variables of national and international politics, the aging process, the changes to media consumption… I’m not sure it’s fair to say that only one person out of the whole population could do even this unique and intimidating job.

Desire vs Destiny

Believing only one person is meant to do only one thing subtracts choice from the equation. I’ve looked at that in my novel about Eve. She and Adam were essentially created for each other–but would they choose each other? We’re better at something when we’ve chosen it, when we know we want it.

And sometimes, we will convince ourselves that what we want is what we should have. The friction between wants and needs is crucial in a character’s trajectory. How many people have run for president insisting that God told them to? I wonder how they rationalised it to themselves after it didn’t work out.

Being accustomed to treating my wants with skepticism and refraining from boasts, I’ve lately been researching the querying process for The Gospel of Eve, to make sure I get it right. Apparently we’re supposed to convince agents not just that our book has a market and is super relevant today, but also that it is uniquely ours. I’m supposed to explain, very efficiently and pithily of course, why I alone could write Eve’s story and provide an alternate view of the Creation myth.

Yikes. It’s taken me some time, and late night thought, to come round to this. Anyone could offer a take on humanity’s origins. But I’ve created Eve with warmth and wry humour, and as I worked on my cover letter, it occurred to me that the major beats of my life have orchestrated the book I’ve written.

Growing up in an evangelical family in rural America, becoming a single mother and in a way, transferring my faith from religion to my new little family, then immigrating with my little Bear. I’m a combination of outsider and insider, able to balance questions with respect for those who love and depend on their God.

And I’ve also actually written the thing, and rewritten, and edited, and edited. I created a brand new version of an ancient epic–at just 340 pages, in fact–and plenty of times it felt as if the world were conspiring to exhaust me. Maybe it does take more than just wanting something, choosing it, to manage such a challenge.

What do you think? Are you particularly fated to create certain works?

Following Through

This Week’s Bit of String: Setting out the pots and pans

On busy days, I put out the cooking dishes I’ll need for dinner before I even leave for work. I’m convinced it helps me later on.

It’s a mystery to my husband, the difference it makes to have a saucepan out ready for pasta, or a baking sheet for roast veg, maybe even the olive oil standing to attention beside the stove. I realise it doesn’t actually save me time. But it’s a springboard, a little jump in momentum.

If I feel a task is already started, it’s less daunting to carry on with the whole thing. Not that I have much choice regarding cooking dinner! But if it’s a really awful chore, like dusting or scrubbing the shower, having the space cleared and the cloth or scrub brush out convinces me to get on with it when I get up in the morning or come home from the schoolday.

Writing is similar. Just amending Pages’s silly default settings, titling a document, and putting page numbers at the bottom (to be really optimistic), makes me feel I’ve got going. No turning back. And when a piece is properly in progress, I sometimes utilise the trick of stopping midsentence so I know how to crack on when I return to it.

Finding the Way Through

To write a novel, I plan to a fair degree. After all, it’s so much work; I need to be sure something tangibly happens, that my protagonist is transformed in some way. Then I can write with a sense of what needs to occur in the beginning, middle, and end, stepping stones to guide me through the big project.

Short stories are often more vibey for me. I might have a character idea or an event idea, but almost never both. So I won’t necessarily know what happens, or who it’s happening to. Still, a short story feels less unwieldy, and it’s exciting to dive in without a plan. But the amount of options can be daunting.

In lieu of plot points to get me through, for a short story I like to coalesce around a certain language motif, or imagery theme. In “Pie a la Mode,” I followed the schoolyear’s changing weather and linked it to relationships. In “The Albatross of Albany High School,” I had Coleridge’s poem weaving throughout, a thread to follow. My current short story is about a fairground accident so I have all the carnival imagery to focus on.

The Finish Line

I’ve only just finished the fairground story, which I started writing during half-term. It’s been a long time since I did a first draft, and this is a really rough one. Just write it, I had to remind myself. Keep slamming whatever down; shape it later. And holy guacamole, I’ve got plenty here to chisel.

Winging it with writing a story feels similar to the fasting and dieting I’ve been doing. Fasting removes the usual structure of meals, the timings of a day dependent on treats. What are the markers here, am I even nearing my goal?

In an essay for LitHub, short story writer Yukiko Tominga talks about how she knows when to end a story. It’s “when I feel kindness.” Writing is her process toward loving a character despite their flaws. If she still feels “meanness” toward anyone, the story isn’t done.

This seems a beautiful way to view any process, really. We are journeying toward kindness. Any glimmer of sympathy is a stepping stone toward this, any hint of another’s motives is a thread we can follow toward sympathy or even empathy.

Planning ahead with my chores, placing equipment ready, I’m doing myself little favours, getting the initiation of the tasks out of the way. My diet makes me feel kinder to myself, and gives me more focus in the meantime. My current story draft, slapped down with random idea spatters and sprawling tendrils, has material I can work with to feel kindness to the characters and hopefully point readers in that direction.

What kindnesses are you striving for?

Feed and Flow

This Week’s Bit of String: Starving feet and empty legs

When they were little, my kiddo would sometimes pause their playing and say, “I’ve got my starving foot on!”

I assumed this was Bear’s way of telling me they were hungry right down to their toes, similarly to how my aunt described adolescents as “reaching the empty leg stage.” So I’d scramble to provide a snack.

Years later, I found out Bear was actually telling me their foot had fallen asleep. That pins and needles sensation in their extremities felt similar to the queasy emptiness of hunger in the belly, I suppose.

*Then there’s this little guy, who slept 8 hours straight one day last week after bringing a live bird inside, chasing it around, and then eating most of it.*

“Yeah,” mused Bear, “I always wondered why you gave me food every time my foot went dead.”

It’s an interesting feeling, hunger. Sometimes weirdly similar to feeling overfull, the ache and stretch of a stomach panicking, desperate to adapt its shape to the circumstances. While our minds seek refuge from pain, they are to an extent sharpened by hunger, since surplus can dull us.

Coming Clean

Over the half-term week off I began a change, cutting down my food intake and waiting 18 hours between one day’s evening meal and the next day’s late lunch. It’s a decision based partly on aesthetics, as I would catch sight of myself looking puddly, a bit of a soft mound. I’m proud of being a busy and vibrant person, and although the tiredness of life has accumulated somewhat, I still sort of picture myself as that trim mum chasing a little kid around.

When Eve goes through her first pregnancy in my novel–the first ever human pregnancy, according to the Creation myth–she describes how “hunger and revulsion vied in my belly.” When our appetites have such complex manifestations, it’s easy to convince ourselves that our bodies and minds want things they don’t actually need.

*Saving myself the time it takes to bake goodies like this lemon meringue cake, and saving myself money on peanut butter.*

Over the last decade, I got in the habit of having “a little something,” a la Winnie the Pooh, to get me through whenever I had to do something hard. The problem, as you may swiftly detect, is that there are a lot of things we have to do that we don’t want to. Some days are an absolute litany of them! And my definition of a difficult task broadened to pretty much any job I wasn’t keen on. Even parts of the writing process fall into that category.

That’s why during half-term, when I had some time to do things I wanted to do, I stopped indulging in that way. Weirdly, it hasn’t been super difficult, even this week back at school. I feel a lot calmer not relying on sugar to get by, and probably in no small part because I stopped telling myself I deserved a “treat” at the slightest jostle to my plans.

Treating Myself

I’m still not getting a lot of sleep, but I’m finally accepting that sweets (and peanut butter by the spoonful) don’t cure tiredness. If they did, I wouldn’t have to keep dosing up on them.

It’s a conundrum in busy, tiring lives, keeping ourselves going in the short-term without sacrificing the long-term. I am not angry at myself for waiting this long to return to better habits. I don’t judge anyone else for doing the same, so why be nasty to myself? There are periods in our lives when it’s just not within our strength to make the best long-term decisions.

Instead, we treat ourselves to little immediacies, a pleasant taste on the tongue, a gravity to our middle while everything rushes around us. Now, I think I’m ready to go beyond “treating myself.” I’m going to treat myself… as the person I want to be.

Treating myself to a few extra minutes of sunshine taking the long way home on a nice day, instead of rushing over shortcuts to get chores done after work. Treating my stomach to a long rest. Treating my brain to concentrated periods of writing work instead of little bits here and there.

When thinking through this issue, I looked up the etymology of related terms. Words like food and hunger are so tied to basic physical needs, their roots have no surprises. The etymology of nourishment, though, reminded me of its Latin ties to nursing, as in feeding a baby, and before that, it shared the prefix nau: to swim, to flow. I do feel as if I’m getting into a more natural flow.

When my kiddo was a baby and I nursed them, they caught on quickly to the fact that milk hormones put them to sleep. Bear never wanted to sleep, even as a newborn. So they’d hum, kick, even bite to keep themselves awake while eating. It was not a tranquil experience. But it’s interesting, that link appearing again between a sated appetite and sleepiness, between hunger and staying awake. Exercising discipline physically, I feel, helps my discipline mentally.

How do hunger and satisfaction affect your mental and creative states?

Making It Up

This Week’s Bit of String: Near-misses and resistant materials

“Miss, did you ever almost cause the death of a small child?” a year 10 boy asks casually as we sit on the high stools around a Design Technology table. Three boys with various tools and MDF fragments, me with my laptop and notebooks.

This is Resistant Materials. I know very little about CAD, woodwork or metalwork, but I’m supporting a student doing the GCSE. When I told my husband I’d be helping with Resistant Materials, he quipped, “Is that the course, or the students?”

Fair question. But I’ve clearly won some trust. The boy who’s asked this surprising question explains to me that he was once on a ferris wheel with a friend, and her shoe fell off and almost hit a toddler on the ground. Hence, he feels he was beside someone who almost accidentally caused the death of a small child.

Story ideas pivot on crucial moments like the one he mentioned. A slight change in breeze, an incremental rise or fall in the Big Wheel, and the shoe might have hit. I noted the exchange with the Year 10 boy and preliminary thoughts about the alternate scenarios in my daily scribbles, ready for half-term when I have a few free hours to sit, and wrestle out my first new story of the year. I’ll have my latest novel edits all typed up by then.

Exploring Options

Around the time the Resistant Materials boy mentioned his anecdote, I was reading through a literary magazine called Story. It’s based in the US, and I discovered it because I was looking for submission possibilities and Googled “short story magazine.” Sometimes we forget to keep things simple; we look through comprehensive listings of publications and deadlines and fret over word counts… This was more a case of “ask and you shall receive.”

There were some great stories in this issue. My favourite was about a group of boys and their scout leader who got trapped in a cave for several days. The dynamic among the boys before, during, and after was fascinatingly written. It made me realise–and again this sounds SO obvious but it’s another thing that I lose sight of now and then–we get to make stuff up.

I’m pretty sure the writer hadn’t been stuck in a cave or been close to someone who was. But they did a great job making up the scenario and tracking its impacts. I’m going to do that too, I thought. Make something up.

I tend to be a bit timid with my ideas, whether it’s from actual fear or more likely, lack of mental energy. Starting from scratch is EFFORT, to borrow the ultimate disparaging statement from my students. That’s why it can be useful to begin with a memory, with a favourite setting or even person, or with a retelling, a twist on something old.

What About the Future?

Lately, I’ve indulged in inventing future scenarios. If my imagination is slightly inhibited regarding stories, I severely limit it when considering how real life could turn out. I’ve done this from a young age, to avoid disappointment. I specifically remember preparing for my 8th birthday, to be celebrated at Chuck E Cheese’s, something I’d wanted for years. Rides! Games! Pizza! I’d wanted it, but wouldn’t allow myself to picture it, because that would risk building expectations.

If we’re tuned into the world, and we have an ounce of empathy, it can’t escape our notice that we’re clinging to some privilege. Whatever tough times we’ve had, billions in the world are substantially worse off. My husband and I remark to each other sometimes about the Event, an imaginary but tacitly half-expected reversal of world fortunes.

“This would be a strategic location in the Event,” he says when we take in hilltop views on a hike.

“For the Event,” I say when I add to the ranks of canned goods in the cupboard.

But it’s also possible that amazing things will happen in the future. You know, on occasion. Struggling to sleep with exam stress on behalf of my students recently, I started imagining what, for example, our 30th or 40th anniversary might look like, having just celebrated our 20th.

Maybe we will be surrounded by family next time, instead of on our own. There could be a new generation of children on the scene, and though another decade could see further health complications for my parents, I imagined my own kiddo helping to ensure they’re looked after, and this brought comfort.

We can’t get attached to any single projection of the future. But envisioning positives—perhaps especially in the form of small, everyday details—is a new bravery for me. Part of appreciating what I have means letting go of my expectation of disappointment. And if events look to go in a different direction, then I’ll just make up new hopes.

How do you keep sight of the freedom to make things up?