Writing – Page 6 – Nastasya Parker

Artefacts of a Story

This Week’s Bit of String: Milkweed cradles and postage stamp paintings

As a kid, I never threw away a pencil. Each had its own personality, as I used them up to lengths which would correspond with their ages. From assigning names and ages to pencil fragments and little boxy erasers in first grade, I progressed to grouping them in families.

By the time I got my own room at age eleven, I was ready with cardboard shelves and my entire top drawer. I made a town for my pencil families. They had scrap blankets and I would put plastic sheets from envelope windows to serve as windows cut in the cardboard. I saved milkweed pods as cradles for the shortest pencil nubs, and padded the bottoms with satiny milkweed tassels. I peeled stamps off letters and stuck them up as paintings in the pencils’ houses, reflecting the residents’ professions and talents.

*A more recent artefact. It’s very rough but this mansion WILL have two libraries.*

Naturally, you don’t grow a whole town in your bedroom without the relevant paperwork and a whole lot of backstory. My town was populated by people fleeing the nazis; it was hidden in the Polish woods. In seventh grade, I wrote a few hundred pages on the refugees’ adventures.

I tracked names and ages on an extra-long sheet of yellow legal paper: my census. I remember misplacing it one evening and wandering through the house saying, “I lost my census!” It was easily misheard as me losing my senses.

I’ve always loved a book with a map or a cast list at the beginning. Any visible evidence for the world I’m about to enter is most welcome. We had a poster map of Narnia up in our house when I was little. Did you find supplemental artefacts for any of your favourite stories?

Distraction or Inspiration

Creating meticulous artefacts to go along with our works in progress can be an essential step in story-writing. I often curate a soundtrack of theme songs to keep me going. For my Eve novel, I wrote out genealogies and calculated the exponential growth of the population as generations progressed.

In the early stages of writing a new novel, I’ve been creating detailed character profiles, and an aristocratic family history as well as highlights of a contemporary artist’s catalogue. I think the novel will take place in a half-finished gothic mansion, so I am inventing the history of the house as well as sketching a sort of floor plan. I’ve never done this before and it’s quite fun. How big shall I make the library? What view shall I give it?

*I visited Woodchester Mansion, a local unfinished gothic estate, for inspiration.*

I need to know how things look and where everyone is within the house in order to chart the action, so these things are important. They’re also, in a way, a bit easier than studying the character profiles and considering how they might extend into novel-length trajectories. For me, the hardest part of writing a novel is ensuring there’s a clear, engagingly-paced beginning, middle, and end. Making extra planning documents and visual representations puts off that moment when I have to figure out whether this idea really has the stuff of books.

Useful Daydreams

As writers, we can be prone to fantasies which we’ll never bother writing down. It may sound indulgent to spend time on bits and pieces which will remain in the background. Maybe they’re just decorations for the more integral structure of the plot.

But writing a novel is very hard work. It might go better if we like our characters and scenes enough to while away hours imagining them. We’ll be spending a lot of time with them anyway.

For me, the supplementary bits I do become more than planning tools. The soundtracks I piece together, for example, catapult me at an accelerated rate into my character’s mindset and the mood of a scene. I haven’t developed a soundtrack yet for my upcoming work-in-progress and I’m looking forward to listening and experimenting with what might fit.

As for the paper artefacts, the blueprints and maps and family trees, these ground me in the story rather than just in the plot. In the adult world we still desperately need those fragments which bring the imaginary to life. These are the threads we can snatch–little baby pencil stubs, fantastical maps, fraught genealogies–to connect us to new worlds.

What kinds of artefacts do you use to accompany your creations?

Celebrating Books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Burrowing and Borrowing

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

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

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

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

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

Safety in the Pages

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

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

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

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

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

What makes you fall in love with reading?

Looking the Part

This Week’s Bit of String: Ewoks and hippies

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

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

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

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

Props and Costumes

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

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

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

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

More Than a Feeling

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s in a Name?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Character Names

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Over the Rainbow

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

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

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

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

Real Life or Dreams

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

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

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

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

Haunted Forests

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

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

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

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

“No.”

“Are the voices telling you to say that?”

“No.”

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

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

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

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

Transferring Power

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

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

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

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

Back to the Roots

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

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

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

You know the drill.

Putting the “Mission” in Submission

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

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

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

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

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

Lost Darlings

This Week’s Bit of String: The adventures of Bugs and Daffy

Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck have it easy these days. They lie about in a languid knot near the pillows of my kid’s empty bed. In years past, they were subjected to all sorts of wrestling matches. They even had a go at cheese rolling; after a family outing to this inimitable Gloucestershire tradition, our Bear was inspired to throw a Baby Bel cheese down the stairs, and toss stuffed animals such as Bugs and Daffy after it, keeping score of who got closest.

When Bear started secondary school, and we reorganised their bedroom, I asked if we should thin out the crowd of stuffies huddling at the foot of their bed. “But they’re my friends!” objected Bear.

This didn’t last forever of course, and for the latter teen years, there were only three stuffies on the bed. Bugs, Daffy, and an old one of mine, Barney T. Moose (the T stands for “the,” of course). When Bear moved across the ocean, Barney went with them. Bugs and Daffy are holding down the fort, so to speak, and the other “friends” are in a very close-knit, backroom box-dwelling community.

*Boxed up! Treasure trunk in a charity shop window.*

Great emotional upheaval precedes a clear-out. I don’t know if it’s actual grief for previous incarnations of my little Bear, or if it’s the anxiety that grief will come. But I always end up so busy that after each massive overhaul, whatever I’ve boxed up does not prey on my mind. I don’t step into their vacant room and mourn the fact that Brown Puppy and Big Baby aren’t still on the bed. Not most days. I accept that life moves on.

Ruthless

These are the sorts of things I tell myself when another editing session looms. Bits I’m fond of will get boxed away. I’ll feel anxious as I cut and paste lines I like from my manuscript into my Rejected Quotes file.

But when I go into this file, I see segments pared from the last edited piece, a year or two ago. I’ve never developed them further. I forgot they existed. Yes, they’re good lines, but by now the story’s already made it into a magazine or anthology without them.

For me, preserving cut lines doesn’t actually benefit future work. It just enables me to feel ok about removing them from the current one. It’s like a little security teddy to cling to while I do the scary revision.

Have you ever turned cut lines or ideas from one story into a whole new project? Maybe I’m just not organised enough.

We are told to “kill our darlings” when editing. Don’t get too attached to passages you crafted, because they might not turn out to be relevant to your story’s core. Simply being well-written and liked by the author doesn’t justify being in a story. I’ve written recently about making writing fun, about throwing things in like a library scene or a favourite snack or song… those things can help keep us writing, but we can’t necessarily keep them in our writing. Sometimes temporary aids or fixes are an essential but impermanent part of the work.

It’s like growing up, isn’t it? The threadbare stuffed animals, the books read down to raggedness, the forays into sports or music. For a while we think we couldn’t live without them, but they may be less vital as we discover who we ultimately are.

Balance

I’m currently editing my manuscript for The Gospel of Eve. It’s hard to put a number on the edits because there are certain parts that I’ve gone over and adjusted countless times. As a whole, it’s the fourth comprehensive, planned revision.

*This statue in Malmo, Sweden is called “Mother.”*

Usually with my first big edit, I have an eye on the word count. I can’t help it. I get so worried about excess weight, I’m seeing what I can cut. With the second, I firm up characters’ trajectories. Then I have to go through again and see if it makes sense, given everything I’ve trimmed out. This time, I am again checking it coalesces around a theme.

I seem to swing from trying to cut, then needing to add… And all the while I’m wishing someone would tell me what’s right. Am I overexplaining, or being too cryptic? Introducing too many characters too fast in my rush to kick off the action? It can be so lonely, trying to get it right with no guide.

Rather like parenting. Not that books are where near as important as people, but the creation process has its similarities to parenting. How much do we push and lead, how much do we let our kids take their time and figure things out on their own? This happens to be a central issue of my book. Eve, as the first mother with only a sometimes-terrifying God as parental model, tries to discern how much freedom to allow her children, unsure how much she really has herself.

How do you go about editing, and capturing nothing more or less than the most important part of the story?

The Value of Ordinary

This Week’s Bit of String: A blue dress in an empty village

We take somewhat unconventional holidays. They’re often centred around seeing family, since no one lives near us, or else we’ll make it to another city or even country but only find affordable accommodation in the outskirts. Most recently, we combined both these by visiting Malmo, Sweden, where our son had travelled from the US for a gaming event.

We stayed in a hotel a few miles south of the lovely old town and castle. When we hiked there, or to the sea, we passed apartment blocks. Some older, used by immigrant communities, with Ukrainian flags or halal pizzerias. Some with separate car parking space and bike lockup for each flat. We passed allotments for veggie gardens, quadrants of circles carved out of parkland. There was a whole, mid-city village of “summer houses,” too: painted huts with little shared gardens, hammocks, berry bushes, barbecue grills, all vacant for now. Some had small glassed-in porches; I saw a pretty, short-sleeved blue dress hanging in one. Waiting for a party?

*Horse-drawn cleaning cart for the high-rise outbuildings. Hyllie, Malmo, Sweden*

It might be nice to stay in luxurious resorts or in city centres where you can just step out and go to the theatre or something. But I maintain that no vacation is complete without a day when you’ve walked at least ten miles, and seeing a dress in an empty summer house window or passing a preschool blasting out Moana while rosy-cheeked, blond kids in full snowsuits sniffle and shove at each other are every bit as fascinating to me as a museum or a palace.

Checking Out the History

Not to say that I don’t enjoy cathedrals and castles and all that. They’re intriguing glimpses into history, and more and more they try to reflect the wider experiences of citizens. We visited Malmo Castle, and learned about the strife between Denmark and Sweden in the 17th century, reading about the people caught up in it, military and civilian, from both sides. There was also a very creepy recreation of a plague town from the early 1700s, complete with sound effects of children whimpering, because some people believed if you buried a child alive, the whole village would be saved from disease.

And there were horrific tales of torture and execution from the 1800s when the place served as a prison. There was an outline on the floor where a boy would have been beheaded, and child executions trigger me worst of all. Such a horrific lack of empathy.

On a slightly more hopeful note, the building later served as a shelter for refugees after World War II, and we saw one of the Swedish “white buses” which rescued thousands of people from concentration camps before the war ended, made possible by an agreement with Himmler—behind Hitler’s back.

I think travel, even when it’s not glamorous, serves to remind us of stories happening all around, at every echelon of society. It pricks my curiosity for how others live their lives, whether in a castle or in a high-rise apartment.

The Everyday Moments

The ordinary is worth noticing, not just in the places we visit, but in moments we spend with each other. While abroad, we ate most of our dinners at the shopping centre across from our hotel, treating our kiddo as well. In turn, we were given guest passes to the event so we could watch the game our Bear was streaming. It was a fun setup—arcade games, swinging chairs, soft serve ice cream. We cheered and readily made fools of ourselves as fans.

*City view through a window of the Castle’s cannon tower*

Later on, other gamers recognised my husband and I, saying how great that we’d come. It made me wonder, don’t their parents at least tune in virtually for their events? But a lot of people dismiss videogaming. I’ve never had time (or coordination, if I’m being honest) to do it myself, but I always tried my best to listen to the play-by-play accounts from my kid, so I could share in the successes and frustrations of one of my very favourite people. And look where it got Bear, having a blast in a city overseas, a break from the day job. It saddens me thinking how lonely some gamers must be at their families’ indifference, and how much their parents miss out. If people can’t summon the will to listen to their own kids’ interests, what hope for human empathy is there?

Now that I am separated from my child, living on opposite sides of the Atlantic, I miss quick conversations after work, the opportunity to provide a cup of tea or sandwich or cookie and be repaid with a smile and cuddle. I miss Bear popping down while I’m cooking or washing up. They would stand with one foot propped up behind the other knee like a stork, telling me about this or that game, how they might arrange the music, which gamer friend runs it, what time they hope to achieve speed running.

C.S. Lewis, in his memoir A Grief Observed, mentioned how he missed the “heartbreaking commonplace,” and that line has always stuck with me. The ordinary is so important. It’s the stuff we learn from, long for, and it’s vital for empathy, because when we talk about walking a mile in someone’s shoes, we don’t just mean their Sunday best.

Have you gained insight into people’s everyday lives from travel? Has it been useful for your writing or art?

Character Interrogations

This Week’s Bit of String: Practising Descriptions

It’s a cover lesson for our neediest Year 10 English class, and on a Friday afternoon no less. They’re supposed to practise personification and metaphors, and build descriptive skills. By the very end, I manage to wrangle a dictation out of one of the boys at the back for a paragraph describing a beautiful woman.

Me: “What’s she wearing?”

Student: “Uh, she was wearing a thin layer of duvet.”

Me: “…You do know what a duvet is?”

Student: “Yeah, like a thing women put on when they get out of bed.”

Me, suspecting he means negligee or some such but not really wanting to get into it: “Okay, erm, so what are her clothes doing? Do they flow when she moves? What do they flow like?”

Student: “Like a, like a bowling ball.”

*Could the sun be rising on a beautiful friendship with your characters?*

So we have a beautiful lady wearing a heavy quilt that flows like a bowling ball. At least she was clothed. Another boy kept begging me, “Can’t she just be nude?” Nope!

It’s not easy introducing characters: describing them, engaging readers with them, not oversharing. But when you’re just coming up with them, before you have to make them presentable to anyone else—that’s quite fun, don’t you think?

Starting Points

I used to start my project planning by delving into the most dramatic details of the protagonists’ backgrounds. I would use a three-pronged Harry Potter-based method: Boggarts, Dementors, and Patronuses. In other words, what was the character’s deepest fear, their worst memory, and their most happy memory.

Very important things to know. But as pivotal as those things are, they don’t control every waking moment of our lives. We’re a lot more than whatever traumatises us or even whatever gives us hope. Of course we add in interests, goals, family ties… But I think too, what reveals a lot about a character is their Default Setting.

What do they think about when they have nothing to do? Is there a daydream world they go to? Do they get caught up obsessing over past mistakes, or planning the rest of their day down to the minute? Do they play music for themselves in their minds, or play back favourite stories? That’s quite relevant to how a character presents themselves.

Rounding It Out

Thinking about it, a woman rolling out of bed dragging her duvet and it feeling like a bowling ball is pretty darn relatable. I might tune out if my student started droning on about a fabulous woman in an evening gown. When we’re creating characters, quirks count for a lot. A flaw can be so much more interesting than heroism.

Since I’ve been indulging in pages of possible character backstories and tastes and foibles lately, I keep thinking of two things. Firstly, there’s a wonderful speech in American Gods by Neil Gaiman, in which a young woman reels off a random list of things she believes, from firm opinions to preferences to faiths (full quote here). Secondly, and very differently, the quirky mini-bios created by Hercule, a Pet Portrait artist on Facebook. I know that sounds weird. But trust me, have a look and have a laugh.

*I wonder what Hercule would have made of these floofy potatoes.*

How do your characters like their herring? Hercule often makes sure we know whether the pets he sketches prefer their herring Goth or elasticated (?!). What can your characters absolutely not stop themselves from doing when the opportunity arises? What beliefs resonate with the deepest fibres of their beings?

Planning for a potential long project like a novel, it helps if I really like my characters. Or at least, if I find them fascinating. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together; I want to make it as enjoyable and motivating as I can. Yes, my characters will go through hard times and at some point, inevitably, disappoint each other or themselves. But if I’m going to list the random things I believe in, my characters had better be included.

So, if we’re trying to make our writing fun, I suggest treating your characters like friends. Sit them down and ask questions that might not have anything to do with your plot, but could have everything to do with your relationship, and your passion for continued writing.

What would their favourite childhood books have been? The songs or artists that helped them survive their teen years, the movies or shows that recharge them in adulthood? What’s the kindest thing someone ever did for them, and the cruelest thing? What’s their favourite way to eat cheese, and how do they like their chocolate? Do they have a favourite thunderstorm memory? A favourite seaside one? Who would be their ideal animal sidekick, what would they most like to be famous for?

I hope you have a great time with your characters this week!

Make Writing Fun Again

This Week’s Bit of String: A library getaway

A couple of weeks ago, a Sixth Form student I’d been working with not only passed her English GCSE re-sit—she aced it. It was a marvellous hullabaloo; the whole school was thrilled.

Now that I’m not accompanying her to re-take lessons with obstreperous peers, or helping her hunt down alliterations and pathetic fallacy, we can spend her supported study periods preparing for independent life, and pursuing her own creative interests.

One of these is writing. She is determinedly working on a novel about a teen with superpowers.

Last week she said, “I know what will happen next. They’ll escape to a library that’s full of magic spell books.” She leaned in with a little smile. “I’ve always wanted to write a story set in a library.”

I had a little, goshdarn-it-why-didn’t-I-think-of-that moment. Should we be thinking in these terms more frequently, focusing on what we’d really love to write about?

Love What You Write

Maybe you already do that. Hopefully you do. I fumble around in the chaos of daily life for my little bits of string and try to judge which ones might be the most publishable, the most profitable. Maybe that’s not the best measure of what I should be working on.

Often I seize on a concept, a what if… what if I became intangible and my hands had no impact when I tried to clean or shape or touch, what if eye contact between humans was literally hazardous? I write notes on these and compile images, but find myself disengaged when I start my process with mere ideas.

I’ve noted this before, but need reminding. We have to write what we like. Otherwise, the slog will be evident. And of course, this is supposed to be fun. It’s necessary to our beings to create, but it’s also supposed to feel good, at least after a fashion.

I’m a bit jealous of poets; I feel as if they’re allowed to take a particularly striking tree, or a memorable event or cherished location and craft with it, run with its imagery and emotion, unfettered by plot. It’s not that I think poetry is simple. You have to imbue it with rhythm and beauty yet make it look effortless… Admit it though, finding a beginning, middle, and end for prose can be a wrench. I’m not convinced every idea is MEANT to be plotted.

A Bucket List for Writing

Or if we could be ancient Greek astronomers, designing constellations, grasping at our favourite stars and assigning shapes to them. I know, trying to make a story out of some random thing that interests us can be as far-fetched as dragging out a concept that doesn’t grip our soul. But it can’t hurt to play around with such things a bit, and see what ends up working.

I’m coming up with a bucket list I want to write about. People (literal-minded characters feeling at odds with their own time period), settings (the sea, a couch cushion den, fairy castle tree stumps with moss-lined turrets and mushroom spiral staircases), props (lilacs, root beer, doll collections…)

I’m not going to force a single story to revolve around these like a jukebox musical. But they could make good starting points, or exciting background details to add when I’m feeling stuck.

In a sense, we can incorporate poems, odes to what we love, into the scenery of our stories. What sort of character might love the things we love? Or, what could some of these images mean to someone who’s experienced them completely differently–to someone suffering acute grief, or addiction, or whose perception would be different due to sensory impairment?

I’ve just started another rewrite of my Eve novel. I love those characters and that world, but it’s brutal going through again, making my sentences fear for their lives. I’m also finishing a draft of a short story, and always doing my daily scribbles and fiddling with other ideas.

Watching my student discover the creation process, though, makes me pine for that fresh taste. So I’ve been taking notes on a cast of characters for a new, long project. Pages of family history, sense memories, likes and dislikes, beliefs. It’s such fun, like when you start a relationship that’s all your own and you don’t have to worry what anyone else thinks because they’re all yours; you haven’t introduced them to anybody yet. What a luxury!

Do you relish the creation stage? What would be on your writing bucket list?