Autumn – Nastasya Parker

My Writingversary

This Week’s Bit of String: Pencils, coughs, and cake

Thirty-three years ago Wednesday, I started properly writing my first book. I was eleven years old, in seventh grade. I hid behind my hair and refused to wear my ugly glasses. When I was forced to speak in front of the class, a classmate hooted, “Turn up your hearing aids, everybody.”

I may not have had much to say, but I had a story to write. I’d planned it for months; drawing up maps and a census, tracing pictures I thought resembled my characters, recording a soundtrack mixtape. I blocked out scenes with my little pencil-people that lived in cardboard tenement blocks, or in drawer compartments above my jeans and sweaters.

And then I finally started writing it. It had taken time to realise I could do more than play-act it in miniature, I could write it. Preserve it. Do the grown-up thing.

On the very evening after I’d begun my writing, I received encouragement at the junior high school’s annual Open Evening. My new English teacher praised my classwork extensively to my parents. She was the first to focus on my writing. It felt like an endorsement on behalf of the universe, the timing of her conviction that I could go far. I remember being giddily pleased, while of course trying not to show it.

In the next two months, with pencils, stacks of double-sided lined paper, and my tiny printing (I’ve no idea why they say that’s a symptom of a control freak), I wrote 386 pages. Whilst maintaining my good grades, too. I have never been able to replicate that accomplishment in terms of volume produced.

Reaching Limits

That draft should have been more than 386 pages. I hadn’t reached the end, even though I knew exactly what should come next. I had thought about it, played reels of it in my mind often enough. I contracted bronchitis and was sick for 3 weeks, then got it again the following month and was sick for longer.

Not only had I entered my Author Era, I was pioneering what would become my Victorian street urchin-inspired cough. To this day, I’m susceptible to it, and it serves as a homing signal for my family to find me.

I was barely able to do schoolwork, and I stopped writing my story. Throughout the following decade, I simply restarted the same story, standing in new sidekicks as I met new friends, and I never got past 100 pages. The first novel I would ever complete, Artefacts, was a very different story although it had a similar protagonist modeled somewhat inadvertently on myself. But my self-perception had evolved over the years requiring a different plot, because my dream ending shifted from being rescued to self-acceptance.

I finished my first novel in 2015, almost 23 years after my original Writingversary. My first published story, in The Bristol Prize Anthology 2010, came 17.5 years after the Writingversary. 10.5 years after my Writingversary, I completed a degree in Writing and Literature while a single mother working full-time. I’ve had quite a few short stories published now. Not so with my novels yet, but I wonder if my 7th grade teacher, and the many supportive teachers and college instructors that followed, might still be impressed.

Marking Success

It’s a bit staggering to consider that I’ve been putting pencil to paper to write planned projects for more than three decades. Naturally, I wish I had more to show for it. Winning the 2017 Gloucestershire Prose Prize and reading at Cheltenham Literature Festival was a highlight, and my story “Pie a la Mode” won £250 in Amazon vouchers from the Funny Pearls humour website. Enough to fund equipment for a pet cat, and even a new hoover to clean up after our dark feline prince Oberon.

*This year’s Writingversary* *destination*

Writing has opened up social opportunities as I’ve made wonderful friends through writing groups, and it’s an integral part of my mental well-being. I don’t feel right if I don’t do it. By building my writing habit over the years, I’ve built resilience as well. I may not have a lucrative career, but I am constantly creating or fine-tuning pieces.

I still sometimes wonder if my bouts of poorliness tend to follow a particularly busy writing stretch. But now, because writing is part of my daily life, I tend to keep working on projects even when a cough strikes, or even flu.

Maybe that’s my best success. Thirty-three years provide many chances to give up, and I didn’t. For this year’s Writingversary, I walked up to the local Garden Centre after work and had a drink in the cafe and a slice of pumpkin cake with maple chai frosting. I scribbled in the golden autumn light. The timing of my Writingversary draws me to this season, and I’m so glad I found a bit of time to celebrate.

Do you remember when you first started writing? How do you celebrate this milestone?

Preserving

This Week’s Bit of String: Jam from the hedgerows

The acers behind the school were already blushing scarlet when our new term started on Monday the 2nd of September. It felt too early, as if I’d missed out on something. Shouldn’t we already have got to know our new students and settled them into routine by the time the leaves turn?

There’s no time like autumn to remind us of… time. School starts, orienting students (and those of us working with them) toward exams. The garden outdoes itself and nature accelerates toward harvest. There’s my little Bear’s birthday–they just turned 23 this week. I’ve definitely missed out.

There are new writing deadlines and many special needs care plans to learn. I must jumpstart my diet and catch up on reading while my energy’s still depleted from the summer. Then family crisis strikes, and I’m glad that while I was home I stayed up till midnight scribbling the memories and got up at 5… Preserving things takes a real time commitment.

And yet, or perhaps therefore, I blew off the writing and reading progress I’d scheduled after school and went foraging for berries instead. For one sunny afternoon, I berried for 2 hours, and the following day I collected for over an hour, ending up soaked in a rain shower. The stormwater pooled in the seed-dimples of the blackberries.

Conserving Strength

I’d done this already. In the brief interval between visiting my family and restarting school, I spent hours picking blackberries and elderberries, then making jam. This was all on my to-do list, a great big planned chunk of time: to gather berries, cook it all down, and brutally sieve it smooth. This gave me 4 medium-small jars.

For a fair bit of money, you can get an elderberry concoction at the chemist’s to combat sore throats and infections. I made blackberry-elderberry jam last year, and I swear my horrible, 19-century-consumptive coughs didn’t stick around very long. This could be sheer coincidence, but in case tasty jam can help curtail illness, I’m not taking my chances without it.

This week’s batch of jam came to only half a single big jar. Not very good, is it? After a fair bit of effort. It uncomfortably mirrors certain writing projects once I’ve read through critically and realise the piece isn’t getting anywhere.

But having spent afternoons outside, I felt better than I had since school started. Sometimes the act of choosing what to preserve is as useful as the result. Foraging, alone in a back lane or field, my mind streamlines to one purpose and the many other commitments feel lighter for a while.

And I enjoyed rustling through the hedgerows again. I have great respect for these ecosystems, towering above me at this point in the year. Bright red rosehips like beacons along the top, bindweed buds like kisses and the sun glowing through their flowers’ white petals, the jumbled jewels of blackberry bunches mixing black with still-scarlet. Elderberries are particularly beautiful in my opinion, the delicate network of stems connecting shining berries: black, silvery-red, or pink-flecked green.

Preserving Memories

I realised too why I feel particularly myself when I’m caught in the rain. It’s an unmistakable impression that I’m seizing the day, regardless of the weather. Maybe I’m conflating vitality with inner self, but it’s something worthwhile, either way.

When we’re confronted with the changing of seasons, it can feel as if time picks up tempo exponentially. Every ball we juggle is flying faster, and which one should we chase first? I’m going to work and keeping my house just about clean, and checking in with my family and cooking meals and entering writing competitions and sending out critiques for other writers.

But those hours outside might stick with me most. I scribble daily to recount how I’m building relationships with my students, and my dreams in broken-up nights. Spending quieter moments in the fresh air, focused on hedgerow microcosms or the fine vistas beyond, keeps me in a mindset that livens other descriptions, such as of my walking commute to work. Becoming more aware, I have more to preserve.

I’m probably not the only one who rushes at tasks, clamouring to tick a good variety of them off my list, assuming that the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts. But making jam this week, I realised this isn’t always the case, nor should we wish it to be. Sometimes the act of gathering is more important than the fruit.

This can be true of writing. Staying open to ideas may benefit us more than toiling to write every single one down. It’s definitely true of families–preserving memories is important, but making them will always be the most precious time. And maybe slowing down briefly can be the key to keeping on.

What do you like to preserve, and how do you find the best ways to do it?

The Writerly Autumn Bucket List

This Week’s Bit of String: Falling in love with fall

In sixth grade we had to write a book each month. All right, they were supposed to be booklets rather than books, but mine were more like the latter. Research articles, questionnaires, collages, and there was always a story required.

I would do a few bits early on, but always ‘saved the best for last,’ which was of course the story, which always threatened to turn into a novella once I finally began it a couple days before the due date.

Nothing to do with procrastination, mind. I was saving the best for last. The ‘easy’ part. The ‘fun’ part.

On the eve of the September or October due dates, I set myself up on the unenclosed deck behind our house. I would write for hours as it got dark. Night swallowed the hydrangea bush and its still-clinging, skeletal flower petals; the apple tree which only gave runty, gnarled, pale green fruits now rotting between its kicked-up roots; the marshy back yard carpeted with crisply curling willow leaves. The smell of decay was sweet, freshened by cold setting in, forcing into retirement the moths that would have rushed the light.

Sun lights up autumn leaves and a hill view. — Dursley Orchard view of Cam Peak, Gloucestershire

I was afraid of the dark. Wildlife lurked in the strand of woods beyond the back yard—I’d had a terrifying encounter with a fisher cat the summer before. But I felt brave to be out there in it. I felt clever and grown up keeping such hours. And I felt my pencil was adequate defence and protection.

That’s possibly when I started to love autumn, and to see it as a great opportunity to create. And if a small Twitter poll I conducted this week is anything to go by, it’s the favoured season for a majority of other writers, too. Why is that?

Starting Over

Despite the Facebook memes, there’s a lot more to fall than horror films and pumpkin spice lattes. I think the reasons we love it and get motivated by it are sociological as much as meteorological.

Fall is back-to-school time. It’s basically New Year’s but without the misery of January. We are embedded with memories of restarting education, mixing with different groups of people, setting higher goals, opening up to fresh ideas. This timetable stays with us well past graduation.

In the thirty-one years since I started kindergarten, I’ve only had three when I wasn’t either heading back to school myself (as a student or teaching assistant), or supporting my son through the start of his school year, or both. And in one of those three outlying Septembers, I had a baby, and in another I emigrated.

Talk about new beginnings.

For writers it’s also the time of quite a few literary festivals. I’m reading at Cheltenham Literature Festival in two weeks (event L322), and Stroud Book Festival in November. Plus I’ll be in the audience for several other events. Perhaps the cooling temperatures make us crave coming together to hear stories. Other writers may be preparing to participate in NaNoWriMo, to have a frantic write before the holiday season.

To be sure, there’s a lot going on. I’ve written before about how winter can be a great time for writing, and that showed to be a relative favourite among writers on my Twitter poll, as well. Autumn is my greatest love. But I often feel as if Thanksgiving comes and goes, I look up from all the work I’ve been doing, and I feel as if I’ve missed the fall.

I’m guessing that happens to other busy writerly types too, so I’ve written this helpful checklist for us.

Autumn Bucket List for Writers

Walking through the spiderwebs: Take advantage of wet weather to wander and observe rain glistening on the spiderwebs. Make sure to look from every angle. Isn’t it rather inspiring that these gems come from hideous creatures we avoid, produced against a backdrop of weather we might prefer to sleep through?

Rainy cobweb over a canal lock mechanism — Stroudwater Canal, Gloucestershire

Make like a tree and leave: Get out and gather as many glorious specimens of autumn leaves as you can find. I strew them along my mantel and shelves and ride them through my memories like tiny magic carpets. Study the intricate network of veins that binds them. And the ones you can’t take home, crush them. Go on, you know you want to.

Can it, dammit: Find some foodstuff and preserve it somehow in a jar. Or in the freezer, but if you use jars you can pretend you’re a pioneer. Then you can feel resourceful, and write about it.

Squirrel! Kick some leaves around in a park and watch the squirrels gathering nuts. What does the world look like through the eyes of a squirrel? I think the animal world has loads of fascinating detail to write down and provoke the imagination (More on this in a future post).

Take yourself back to school: Pursue nonfiction reading, to jumpstart the autumn-as-new-year mentality. I’m reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, with Natalie Haynes’ book The Ancient Guide to Modern Life up next.

Get thee to a book festival, go: The vibe is terrific to get you reading and writing afterwards. I’ll be extending my learning opportunities at a few different talks and literary events. Expect updates soon!

Wear the heck out of your sweaters and scarves: Cultivate that Bohemian artist freezing in a garret look so you can pretend to be a whole different type of pioneer. I may need to refresh my stock of these accessories, but that would mean clothes shopping and would completely counter my goal of enjoying autumn to the max.

Fire at will: Never miss an opportunity for pyrotechnics. Spicy scented candles, an electric blaze in the hearth, Bonfire night—whatever the autumnal occasion, let your imagination be transported by the smell of woodsmoke, the bright dancing flames, the warm crackle and the collective awe.

Celebrate anniversaries: If you’re anything like me, each school year epitomised a new musical revelation. Eighth grade was Les Miserables, eleventh was Tori Amos. Take the chance to revisit how these phenomena might have changed you. And look out for new revelations as the seasons change again.

What will you be trying to fit in this fall?