Planning – Nastasya Parker

Big Picture Thinking

This Week’s Bit of String: A hasty clearout

My family moved house only once. I was 8 years old, basically prepubescent and pretty melodramatic about it. I initially vowed that if our new house didn’t have a backyard brook like our old one, I would run away.

We got a backyard swamp instead. Home ownership is hard. But the New House never fully sank into it, and my parents remained there for 37 years. I first raised my kiddo in one of the bedrooms and we’ve returned there every summer.

My sister was in first grade when we moved, and since we all have a storytelling streak, she had moments of drama too. Before the move, she arrived home from school ahead of me one day and later recounted to me that she found our Mom on her knees in front of a closet, grabbing everything and then throwing it behind her like a cartoon puppy digging under a fence. That created image has stayed in my mind all these years when I think about moving: chaos combined with hard, focused work.

*The New House. Taken about 26 years ago.*

At the time, we kids were 8, 7, 4, and barely 3, so on the rare moments when Mom could tackle a sorting or packing project, she undoubtedly did so at a frantic pace.

It was then, too, that Mom started using a certain expression which has stuck with me as well. We’d ask what about this, is that coming with us, or how is such-and-such going to work, and Mom would say, “It’s in the plan.”

We came to dread that phrase and Mom ended up alluding to it more as a kiss of death. Anything “in the plan” was like any garment consigned to her Mending Pile. It wasn’t about to emerge for a very long while, if ever (through no fault of her own, I hasten to add).

Now, my parents plus my youngest sister and my cousin, who both live with them, need to move again, and somehow pack and clear everything my family owns from the last 37 years plus some of my late aunt’s things at my cousin’s house.

Zooming Out

When 2026 began, I knew my parents’ move was on the horizon, plus this summer our kiddo’s wedding. This meant a fair bit of extra transatlantic travel, while balancing my job, growing my little garden crops, drafting at least half a novel, keeping up with two different critique groups and various other deadlines…

My planner had spaces for monthly goals, which proved highly useful. Before returning to work after Christmas, I’d organised 2026 through July, listing where I need to be each month to ensure every aspect of the year runs smoothly.

*Also important to make the most of each season. I spotted my first opened bluebell while foraging for wild garlic.*

In January, we’d decide if my husband would join me on my Easter trip, so he too can see the family house for the last time. We’d book airport parking and meanwhile support kiddos with choosing a wedding venue and setting a summer wedding date. I’d also begin decluttering my own house, and plant seeds.

By February, I was looking into housesitters to stay with Obie during our April trip to the US, my dining room table was covered with seedlings, I was finishing a whole new section of my novel, and buying my plane ticket for the summer.

This past week, as March and school Term 4 draw to a close and my flight is coming right up, I’m cleaning the house as deeply as I can manage for the housesitter, while arranging for the summer’s sitter. It’s a constant organisational cycle. And funnily, making space for someone else to stay involves me frantically stuffing things into closets rather than pawing it all out.

Plot Twist

In a way, I’ve applied story-plotting technique to life. In order for this to happen, that must come first. While engrossed from afar in the travails of my family’s house-hunting—and keeping a wary eye on chaotic current events—I’ve kept up with my novel-drafting.

Depending on how many other writing commitments I have in a week, I write either 2000-3000 words. This is made easier by the plotting I did before I started writing. With a rough idea of events needed in each section, I can keep myself going, even when life is distracting.

*Welcome distraction: the cherry tree beside the church in town*

Of course, the planning is a means, not an end. My characters have to be real and rounded enough so the story doesn’t feel like paint-by-numbers. The fact that I enjoy writing about them might mean I’m on the right track. There’s still delight as I see them in action, as they show me why they do what they do.

In real life, similarly, a plan is never ironclad. Having fewer people depending on me than my parents do gives me more control as I organise, but with our little Obie cat, we do depend on house sitters. And just this morning, at 5 a.m., our April sitter messaged that she’s been injured and can’t drive or walk. Or housesit.

So, less than 24 hours before I have to be at the airport, I’m reviewing the situation. Was it a mistake to put something “in the plan?”

How far ahead do you manage to plan things, and does it ever fully work out?

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?

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?

Choosing a Bubble

This Week’s Piece of String: Adolescents in a Hospital Ward, 1993

What’s the most diverse group of people you’ve ever been part of? Not just racially or politically, but in terms of experience and beliefs. For me it was hospitalisation when I was 12, in a unit later shut down after a surprise inspection. It wasn’t a nice place, but I quickly learned to like the people I was with.

We were aged 12 to 17, representing all colours, with heritage from Puerto Rico, Greece, and Jamaica. There were teens left there by the state for over a year. Runaways brought in from the street, kids stopping off on their way to longer detention, and private school students whose rich parents didn’t know how to handle them.

One boy, a few months younger than I was, had stolen a gun from Walmart. One girl’s entire family were in detox. There was a virulently anti-racist boy who suffered from muscular dystrophy, a junior KKK member, and a powerful African-American girl who didn’t hesitate to enlighten him. My roommate loved vinegar, Aerosmith, and her little foster brother who had spina bifida.

*This puzzle fit together especially well thanks to its oddly shaped pieces…Must get my cheesiest metaphors out of the way before actually writing the next book.*

We kept count of the times we heard The Bodyguard soundtrack on the radio (“Run to You:” 9 times in 2 weeks), and lived for the pizza bagels we were given on Friday nights. We were united against tyrannical psychiatrists and shared affection for the handful of kindlier workers. We jostled for shaving slots, during the one daily hour when we could access “sharps.” Through major personal crises, we cared for each other, and accepted our quirks.

In the midst of a new global crisis, as the government allows us to form “bubbles” of safety, I fear this will result in further entrenching us in homogenous opinions. Every book or TV series I love (and that seem to particularly resonate with readers and audiences) has a motley, diverse cast who beat the odds to save the day. And that’s how my next writing project will be, even if real life isn’t turning out that way.

Weirdos Assemble!

From The Baby-Sitters Club to last year’s joint Booker Prize winner Girl, Woman, Other, from Star Trek to The Good Place, our hallmarks of fiction showcase diversity. There’s always room to include more ethnicities and sexualities, but it’s also important to celebrate different personalities.

I love how Brooklyn 99 features not just multiple people of colour, but also two characters who are particularly emotionally guarded. Guardians of the Galaxy could be a descendant of Catch-22, in which a group of people with various bizarre passions and tendencies are thrown together to fight a common enemy. Isn’t every iconic friendship a pairing of opposites, an appreciation of certain foibles the rest of the world has rejected?

Scout, Jem, Dill and Boo in To Kill a Mockingbird. The Scoobies in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Huckleberry Finn and his travel buddy Jim, the alliances Oskar builds in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Owen Meany and… you know, his best mate who tells his story.

You’ve probably got some favourite examples, too. As the pandemic shrinks our spheres of existence, makes every day similar to the next, and seems to embitter divisions, contemplating variance is refreshing. Have you found that?

Even now that activities are opening up, I still feel trapped in a waiting game. Wondering when I can see all my family in America. Waiting for results from competitions I’ve entered stories in, and still over a month from A-Levels Results Day, when our son finds out his grades and can then know which university he’s able to go to. In the COVID era, this also means that until his results come, we won’t know whether he’ll be able to visit home during university termtime or whether he’ll have to stay there in an allotted “bubble” of people on his course. So after emigrating from my whole family, I might now have to say goodbye to my child, my best buddy, for months on end… Yes, it’s high time to retreat into fiction and plan the next writing project.

World-Building

Starting a new novel is like designing your own plague-bubble. You’re not considering who to allow in the club, but who’s needed for the mission. I’m preparing to bring characters on board, I’m designing a set for them, and I’m coming up with plot points that ideally I’d like them to hit, but whatever, I trust their judgement.

*Inspired partly by a hike past this unfinished mansion, which seemed to have a couple of young squatters…*

It’s going to be somewhat apocalyptic; it’s more cathartic to imagine a better way through them than to imagine they don’t exist. Here’s my wishlist, because as writers we get to Write the Book We Want to See in the World:

A gothic-style setting, probably an abandoned manor house
A hint of the supernatural, because my last novel was about Eve and once you get to incorporate dragons and talking animals, there’s no going back.
Six main characters thrown together surprisingly, from very different walks of life
- The enigmatic older caretakers of the estate
- A spoiled but charming heir
- His girlfriend, an immigrant who’s sacrificed parts of herself to assimilate
- A recovering alcoholic who’d been homeless for months
- A runaway nurse who just can’t take the front lines anymore
Certain personality traits to share around:
- Someone obsessed with jigsaw puzzles, because that is one of my favourite Lockdown activities and why not use it?
- Someone tuned in to religious iconography and symbols, you know, to heighten the drama
- An element of uncertainty as to who’s REALLY in charge here. Which ones are the manipulators, which are the manipulated? Could they possibly, in some way, all be equally obligated to and fearful of each other? Does that mean they all need each other equally?
Art or music or poetry or exotic plants… the estate is bound to have some unique collections which could become significant. I’ll research obscure artefacts and see what I like.

What kind of reading and writing makes you feel better about the world? May your bubbles be safe but exciting, your books and your life studded with colourful characters.

2016: Nothing But a Number

The general consensus seems to be that 2016 was a particularly rubbish year. It’s a bit facile, though, to assume recent international disasters sprouted randomly in response to the page-turn of a calendar.

Attack of Trump Man: children's book — Saw this children’s book in a Cardiff shop at the end of 2015. Attack of Trump Man. Was it a sign?

As writers, we tend to reject such premises, and to root around for causes. With minimal detective work we can see that Brexit and the Trump election were a long time coming, thanks to economic disparity, normalising of white supremacist ‘alt-right’ rhetoric, mainstream media obsequiousness, the hubris of established party politicians…I could go on.

The cancer that killed various celebrities was proliferating in their cells before. The citizens of Aleppo have been suffering for years; politically oppressed perhaps for decades. Extrajudicial killings of black people and the militarisation of police was already going on, racial bias and mistrust of law enforcement existing since before the United States signed the Declaration of Independence.

I bear no ill will towards 2016. I’ve watched it be rather kinder than its predecessors to those dearest to me. But I feel trepidation at saying I’ve had a decent year, because who knows what strife or loss germinates as I write this. The same is true for all of us. I only hope the hard work I’ve done this year, particularly in my writing, will later blossom into more success. (Although unfortunately, hard work in actual paying jobs seems to guarantee me very little security, particularly this year.)

Spring leaves and broken windows — Looking from the broken windows of 2016 to the fresh leaves of 2017…Or maybe I just liked this picture.

I’m always fascinated by stories which use the tiniest misstep to accelerate into a wicked tango of tragedy. Stories such as Atonement, Nicholas and Alexandra, and the novel I finished reading the other day, Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture. These books give me a sense of awe as I contemplate their what-ifs. In my own work, I’ve laid out a similarly inevitable, escalating path in my novel Artefacts, as characters’ niggling insecurities feed off each other until they reach monstrous, crippling stature.

This year I wrote a new novel, The Wrong Ten Seconds, in which a man’s reckless deed becomes a viral video. Disaster ensues—not chaos, because it’s a particularly sequenced chain of events as other characters are drawn in. I’ll be editing my quite rough draft of The Wrong Ten Seconds in spring 2017, aiming to tighten up that chain.

Next year’s other plans—not goals, because I’m actually going to do these things—have their roots in projects from this year. I’ll finish my current novel, Society of the Spurned. I wrote the first half during November for NaNoWriMo. After editing The Wrong Ten Seconds, I’ll research and query agents.

A Night at the Armoured Cars Sub-Division cast — The amazing cast for last September’s production of A Night at the Armoured Cars Sub-Division

Then I’m going to expand my one-act play, A Night at the Armoured Cars Sub-Division, to a full-length one. That’s the bit I’m most excited about. Starting to explore playwriting last January and February, developing an unconventional but exciting premise, and then having it performed in September in its current short form, were highlights for me this last year. Reading at the November Stroud Short Stories event was another exciting moment.

Bank Cafe, Dursley — Preferably, I’ll be working relentlessly while sitting on a comfy couch scoffing posh cups of mint tea and the occasional brownie, such as here in Dursley’s Bank Cafe.

There have been plenty of rejections. I will need to work relentlessly, to read and improve and network. I’m fortunate to have support from my extremely discerning brother—my number one reader—plus a warm and talented local writers group, loads of inspiring connections on Twitter, and a husband who knows how to set up websites.

And of course, I have my beloved characters to motivate me. For example, Charlie’s expression of my general philosophy, in The Wrong Ten Seconds: ‘Suffering adds a whole new depth to beauty.’

And the words of Helen’s brother in Artefacts: ‘Sure, we all make our own beds. But we don’t have to lie there forever! If we don’t like the bed we’ve made, we can jump on it. We can throw the covers off and tear up the sheets!’

The possibilities are endless. I just have to keep my eyes and ears open, to gather bits of string until I find myself entangled in the next project. What threads will you be pursuing in the new year?