Are you a serial book launcher?

The last couple of weeks have been bonkers. I don't even know where to start. It's all my own fault, of course. It happened like this.

Publisher: Will you be doing your launch in London?

Me: Erm .... Do you mind if I don't? .... You see, London isn't really me.

Publisher: What did you have in mind?

Me: Oh. How about Aberystwyth and Cirencester?

Publisher: Ok

So I did. Then fever struck! Then snow! We cleared the drive, took the paracetemol and headed for the hills. And we made it and had a ball! It was like an old school reunion. Teachers came - and old school friends - and most of the WI. And I love the fact that no-one in Aber does 'swank' - so when the vicar passed and saw us looking smart, he said: 'I thought there must have been a funeral'. As my children ran wild among the shelves, I momentarily lost my semblance of 'cool':

Me: Mum, can you look after the kids?! (I asked, drawing my umpteenth chicken).

Mum: Leave them love. It's all the more impressive if people see what you've got to cope with.

No Nanny McFee for me, then!

And then there was Cirencester. The home of Jilly Cooper, so I'm told. The launch was held in Octavia's Bookshop - and if you haven't been there - you must!

It's every child's dream - a bookshop with big jars of sweets behind the till! The Karvala sisters made me right at home, and the shop was buzzing with friends. Yes, we'd had ambulances out the night before - and yes, we had to wait for my sister (who was characteristically late test-driving a convertible (!)) - and yes, the road had been dug up because of dodgy sewer pipes - and we only just pulled it off! But it was brilliant. Sort of like getting married again! And guess what?

My little 'Hen in the Wardrobe' matched Jilly Cooper's Record Launch Party Sales. (Statistics aren't usually funny, but that one makes me smile).

But now I must stop. These launches could go to my head!

Are any of you a serial launchers too?

Do you see yourself here? - by Nicola Morgan

First, an admission: this post is really an excuse to use these pictures, because I paid for a licence to use them for some recent talks, and the licence includes website use. And I like them :)

(FYI, this evening I'm using them at a before-dinner talk to "senior women in publishing" and one of the things I'm going to suggest is that publishers sometimes ask too much of writers when they expect us to spend so much time blogging and tweeting. So, let's hope they don't throw bread at me when I say that.)

Anyway, these pictures represent different people's attitude to or behaviour on social networking sites such as Twitter. So, writers, which one are you? And readers, do you recognise yourself here, too?

Are you (or were you at first) reluctant, negative, grumpy? Dragged kicking and screaming to the party?

Plain terrified and absolutely no way were you going to get involved?

Or did you throw yourself into it with all sorts of hysterical OMGs and LOLs and <<<>>>> and far too many SQUUEEEEES and general exclamation-marky behaviour? 

Or regard it as a totally splendiferous way of promoting yourself, a platform to announce all your good news, sell gazillions of books by forcing them at the rest of us and generally punch the air at your own supreme awesomeness?

Were you eager puppy, keen to learn, wanting to be led to all the delicious smells but needing a bit of protection as you did it?

And now, having tried it (and possibly having had a bit of help from Tweet Right - The Sensible Person's Guide to Twitter), do you feel like superwoman (or man), ready to conquer the world, boldly, positively, and yet with a healthy dose of charm and common sense?

There's possibly a little bit of several of those characters in many of us. And I'd argue that success and happiness while using social networking media come from getting the right balance between them all. Though I'd rather leave awesome-guy out of it.

I do apologise that my recent ABBA posts, and my own blog posts, have been so predominantly about this platform stuff and not about writing, but I've been asked to talk about it so many times that it's been taking over my mind. But this is now (after tonight's talk) going to STOP! I am writing. I really am. I promise. I have had some absolutely lovely bits of writing-related news this year and they have put me right back on track.

I am a writer, not a tweeter.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. :)

Nicola Morgan is an author - oh yes, really - of quite a lot of actual books, not just tweets and blogposts, though she's done a lot of that, too, in her wicked past. She regrets to admit that she wrote and published a little book called Tweet Right - the Sensible Person's Guide to Twitter, which people are welcome to buy, for only £2.25 on a certain site and similar elsewhere. She promises never to write such a corrupting and insidious book ever again.

THE STRANGE CASE OF THE TICKING TOMATO by Penny Dolan

Warning. This personal reflection contains Product Placement but unfortunately with no Financial Reward.

I’ve just come back from a weekend conference in Peterborough among some of the lovely people in the Scattered Authors Society, including Jacob Sager Weinstein and his amazing ticking red tomato.

The Conference was crammed with interesting sessions, including a talk by Uber-Librarian Joy Court. However, Jacob’s talk on “Increasing your Productivity” received some surprisingly alert attention.

This might be because it was the first item on Sunday morning after a late Saturday, when one has hopes of the week ahead. Or perhaps because we were far away from our over-loaded desks, Lists of Things to Do (now being broken down into small manageable tasks) it was possible to luxuriate in the fantasy that we might end up in control of our time, dreams and life.

Jacob is a young man and co-parent who, in desperation, studied how to Get Everything Done. I am not sure if he read Mark Fosters’ book of same name but he brought us a variety of useful time management techniques.

Jacob charmed us with tales of “tickler files”, set up for days, weeks or even months so we kenw when everythingh ad to be done by. I noted that he did not suggest tickler files for years or decades, which made me think he does not truly appreciate my personal level of procrastination.

He spoke of the need to break overwhelming tasks down into smaller manageable tasks. This is sometimes known as the“How Do you Eat an Elephant? One Bite at a Time!” concept although this is not a very vegetarian or ecologically sound image.

Jacob also addressed the problem of Procrastination by Proxy – that brief “five minutes” glancing at emails & FB & Twitter & blogs & websites & media . . . and on . . and on . . that begins around 9am and ends around 12..25, which is lunchtime, virtually and truly, and half the day gone.

Jacob suggested using the “Read Later” tool, which seemed as useful button to click (once I’ve found it) as well as various computer programmes that switched things off or hid them from sight and made lots of sense. I may not venture there. With my shallow IT knowledge, I could barricade my information highway forever.

Hmm. Was that my email pinging? Think there was something about silencing such sounds too. Oh. Emails. Emails about FB. Oh. Yes.

Now, where was I?

The moment of definite buzz when Jacob showed his Pomodoro slide, that's where. For those who don’t know, the Pomodoro is a bright red plastic tomato-replica timer. As the big red fruit appeared on the screen came choral mutterings of “Where can you buy one?”

Wisely, Jacob ignored them but explained further. The Pomodoro is a simple but effective procrastination-beating tool, especially when used by for writers.

Briefly, writer decides on the task, sets the Pomodoro for a shortish time such as 25 mins. Writer works fixedly for that time, resets the Pomodoro to give a 5 mins break for coffee, attending to the hungry cat, dressing and so on. Writer resets the Pomodoro for another 25 mins, and so the day goes on.

Jacob suggested that the round scarlet item had gained cult status and was beloved by the NANOWRIMO sect. I can believe that. I’ve used this timer technique and found it useful and am (thank you, Jacob) about to bring it back into action and I know at least one excellent writer who recommends it as a way of getting back into a book.

However, what makes the Pomodoro strategy work is not the cheery red tomato but its root in another anti-procrastination tip, one I’d almost forgotten.

What some – ahem - procrastinators and busy people have problems with is settling the mind on to the task. Especially if one works from home, it is so easy to get into the habit of idling along, half-ready to be interrupted, often for the kindest of reason or the hungriest of voices. So the brain gets into the habit of not fully committing to or attending to the task.

The Ticking Tomato technique is not actually about “writing to the timer”, as it superficially seems. No, what the big tomato does is give permission for you, Poor Procrastinator, to concentrate your entire attention on the task for twenty-five minutes.

Studies, as they say, have shown that if you give your undivided attention to something for 15 minutes (or 25 minutes) often the problem is resolved, the ideas begin or the words start to come again.

IN OTHER WORDS, THE TICKING TOMATO REINFORCES THE HABIT OF ATTENTION YOU NEED TO RECOVER. THAT IS THE MAGIC INGREDIENT!

Jacob was big on habits, and for something to become a habit, the activity needs to be repeated. So if you are currently finding yourself stuck – not that this happens to readers of this blog - do find a timer and spare some part of a day to try out the ticking thing.

With World Book Day Week ahead, a short story deadline and a particularly trick tome, I’m very glad to have been reminded. Thank you, Jacob, and Useful Writing Times to you all.

Finally, please follow Jacob, who gave me permission to write this post, on Twitter : @jacobsw.

Penny Dolan

Note 1: Other timers and fruits are available.
Note 2. Placing the timer on a cushion softens the ticking but not the final ring
Note 3. Get your own office timer..
Note 4. The breaking down of large tasks into smaller tasks is known, in time management terms, as Batching. It will take you more than 5 mins but less then 25 mins to look it up.

Jacob Sager Weinstein’s book for younger readers “The Government Manual For New Pirates” is out now and his forthcoming book for adults on childcare is called “How Not To Kill Your Baby.”

Writer - Rewrite! Ruth Symes / Megan Rix

                                   Writer - Rewrite!
                              Ruth Symes / Megan Rix


When I started my writing career I hated re-writing. I wrote so fast it seemed to me that it was a whole lot easier to just write a new book than re-write the one I’d just written – which I was usually more than a teensy bit tired of anyway.

 But then a book or two down the line I started to think rewriting might not be so bad after all. Not just tweaking mind – a proper rewrite.  My opinion of rewriting changed  - due to a few rewriting success stories.

The first thing that happened was that after two books being taken and me thinking I’d cracked it the next 3 or 4 couldn’t find a publishing home. Audrey Adams was an editor at Andersen at the time and she kindly made a few editorial suggestions and the next thing I knew the horror story I’d written about the dangers of blind-dating (this was in 2000 – yikes – so long ago!) had turned into a comedy and Andersen published it as The Mum Trap – still in print 10 years on.

The next re-writing success story is even better:

I’ve always written for both print and broadcast and I wrote a script called ‘Merry Meet’ while on the MA in TV Scriptwriting course at Leicester DeMontfort University. Merry Meet was the pilot for a one hour TV show about an ex-witch trying to lead a normal life without magic. The script was selected by the Screenwriters Festival as one of the scripts they wanted to promote that year. They arranged for it to have a professional script reading and I was presented with a script report on my work.

Editors at publishing houses I realised, as I read the report, even the ones who seem fierce, are really sweet kittens compared to the killer dog savagery of a script report writer. No holds barred – that report went for the jugular and tore my script to shreds.

Afterwards I was told by a surprised producer that it was one of the kinder reports and I shouldn’t be so sensitive about my work – who knew???

Anyway, I started to rewrite Merry Meet and as I did so I began to think about what my lead character might have been like before she gave up magic. Was she born a witch or did she become one? And as I was thinking this I suddenly knew just what she was like as a girl and even what she sounded like.

I finished re-writing my one hour script but at the same time I started writing the first chapter and synopsis of a children’s novel about a young witch.

Piccadilly had just published one of my picture books - about a dinosaur called Little Rex - and so I mentioned this idea I had for a series of books about a witchling called Bella Donna to them, and Ruth Williams, the editor there, thought they might be very interested – but would like it written for a slightly younger market than I’d been thinking of.

More re-writes later ‘Bella Donna’ Book 1 in the Coven Road series was published in October 2010, ‘Too Many Spells’ was published in April 2011 and ‘Witchling’ came out at the beginning of October – a fourth’s just been commissioned.

 As for the script – that isn’t doing much - although I might just need to take another look at it. And that blind dating horror idea could be good – maybe it’s time for some more rewriting!

www.ruthsymes.com
www.meganrix.com

How private are you?

How private a person are you? I assume I'm fairly average. I don't think I have any appalling, dark secrets that would ruin me if they came to light, but on the other hand there are parts of my life I like to keep to myself, or to share with only a few close friends or family. Some of these things are thoughts, some are letters or other documents, and there are perhaps one or two photographs and mementoes that mean something special that I would rather not share with the world at large. Other private things are pin numbers and codes that safeguard my bank accounts. I certainly don't want people to see them.

Until fairly recently it was simple to keep these private things as they were supposed to be...private. An old shoebox in a cupboard in a bedroom is pretty perfect for that collection of personal oddments that are an adjunct to our lives. A locked filing cabinet, if we feel the need, keeps all but the most determined away from our most private papers, while our thoughts... our thoughts are wholly ours.

And yet...how true is that today? Some of our storage solutions are looking decidedly leaky. Imagine living in a house with a front door so flimsy that it's hardly worth closing, let alone locking. Imagine if that house was in a city where numerous people were simply waiting for you to go out so they could walk in and sift through your life. Imagine having a private conversation with a group of friends and discovering it broadcast on the six o'clock news.

It used to be simple to be a private person, but no longer. Online information gathering has become ubiquitous. We leak our love of woollen socks, concern about our weight, and interest in Bengal cats through our so called private emails, and see the information gathering evidence in the advertisements that pop up by our inboxes. We gaily delete emails, thinking that they are gone forever, but how many people in public life have found that to be patently untrue? And, as emails give way to social networking, our lives are becoming increasingly leaky.

I'm not sure that we ought to become paranoid about these potential intrusions into our lives. After all, those fragments of conversations we read on a forum, twitter or facebook when the wrong button has been pressed don't matter, do they? Aren't they just like overheard bits of conversation on the bus? Well, mostly yes, but not entirely. If you are so minded you can often trace these fragments back to a careless person who doesn't understand all the ins and outs of online privacy. (And let's face it, that's most of us.) You may keep your own sites personal, but does everyone you communicate with do the same? No. Of course not, and so your words can spread like the water from a leaky washing machine.

It used to be so easy. If you wrote something a little indiscreet, not only were few people able to read it, but as time passed it got forgotten. Not on Facebook timeline, which makes it simple to find out what was said in any particular year. Just as we're encouraged to communicate the minutia of our lives, giving our hastily thought through opinions on this and that throughout the day, we also have to be careful of what we say, for we know not who will read it, or what they will do with what they read. Mostly of course nothing; sometimes comments or photographs might be used by 'friends' to embarrass us, which doesn't much matter if we don't have a public reputation to guard, but if we do, then the potential damage could be more serious.

Big Brother may not be watching us, (though he often is through street cameras and the like) but he is constantly collecting data about us. Some of this is government led, but much of it is fuelled by big business, wanting us to buy. And as well as that invasive, annoying advertising there's more. Some prospective employers are now using social networking sites to research interviewees. If you don't shape up on facebook you don't even GET an interview. In the old days a company would have had to employ a private detective to pick up some of the information that is available now in a few clicks. Do we want our employers to do the digital version of sneaking up to our windows and listening to our conversations with friends? Well no, I don't, but many of us are sleepwalking our way into this new world. Why? because social networking is fun, and addictive, and internet security is terribly tedious.

So is there nothing we can do? Will those unkind comments made five years ago remain for ever to embarrass us? Well maybe not. Word from the wise is that there is a law being discussed. It's the 'right to be forgotten'. Well hurray to that. But make no mistake. There is no going back. We can't un-invent digital data collection, and like many inventions it has good uses as well as bad ones. Society is changing, like it has done many times. Not every culture regards privacy to be vitally important. Maybe we should relax, and learn to value our privacy less. After all, most of the comments we make will be like digital pebbles on a vast beach, and will never come back to haunt us,

will they...

PAULINE FISK: On Writing the Gap Year Novel

'The gap year novel has arrived, hot from Belize and Pauline Fisk's capable pen.'

The Irish Times

I was going to write about heroes this time, in particular Hans Christian Andersen, who influenced me much as a child. But after last month’s post I was left with the strongest sense of a story only half told, so I’m leaving Hans Christian Andersen for next time and heading back to Belize.

As some of you may know, in 2008 I went on a research trip to Belize. My son, Idris, had returned from that country several years before, utterly changed by the experience of gap year volunteering. I’d waved goodbye to a white-faced youth incapable of even locating his vaccinations certificate, let alone surviving in the jungle and upon return had greeted a great hulking man who inhabited the same body as if landing from another planet.

I’m an author, so I know a story when I see one. Did gap year volunteering make as much difference to other people as it had done to Idris? And, if so, how? And how important were the projects these young people worked on? According to the press, gap years were the province of privileged young people working on cosmetic projects sandwiched together by beach-partying.

But how true was that?

Years passed whilst I waited for an author better qualified than me [who’d never been to the jungle or looked a snake in the face] to write the great gap year novel. Finally, however - courtesy of the Arts Council and the Author’s Foundation - I had a go myself.

And I’m so glad I did. My six weeks in Belize was without doubt the most challenging time of my life. Highlights included being hustled in Belize City, stumbling upon drugs-running on the Guatemalan border, hitch-hiking for the first time in forty years and staying with the indigenous Kekchi-Mayan people. And then there was the jungle too…

I’d come to Belize with a story to find, and I certainly found it. This is me doing that old cowboy-film thing of filling my hat with water and sticking it on my head. Ahead of me lay the largest rainforest outside of Amazon - a region so remote and rough that it was much used by the British military for jungle training. I was in the Chiquibul, home to jaguars, ocelots and scarlet macaws - not to say anything of gold miners, deadly gangs of poachers known as xateros and Trekforce volunteers. And it was these volunteers that I was being trekked out to meet.

The region we had to hike across was called The Devil’s Backbone. It didn’t take long to find out why. Days later I stood on a hilltop seeing for myself why the volunteers and I were in this lonely, wild place. It’s not everybody who witnesses the destruction of the rainforest with their own eyes - and with it comes the responsibility to share what you’ve seen.

That day I saw trees cut down. I saw a forest floor stripped bare of plants. I saw bare earth left to bake. I was told of jaguars and monkeys being poached, of fabulous forest birds, like scarlet macaws, being trapped and carted off. And all of that, I was told, was coming our way. At the rate the forest was being destroyed, unless drastic action was taken by the Belizean government, including utilizing the efforts of young volunteers - who, on this occasion, were building a bunkhouse to create a ranger presence in this remote region - the trees that shaded us now would be gone in a year.

It half-killed me getting out to Rio Blanco. I was no adventurer, just an asthmatic old writer hauling herself over the jungle-clad foothills of the Maya Mountains. But it was worth it to see the tragedy of destruction taking place in the Belizean rainforest, and the efforts of young people, mostly straight from school but prepared to live and work out in the wild, to help stem that tide.

At the end of my trek, I met Rafael Manzanero, Chief Executive of the organization that takes care of the Chiquibul Forest Reserve. He shook my hand and thanked me for coming in person to see what was happening to the Belizean rainforest, and he agreed that when my book was written he’d write a Commendation for it.

I was so proud of the young people I met out in the jungle. I hope I’ve written a book that does justice to their endeavours, and to the great beauty of the rainforest and the threat it’s under. If ever I’ve written a book that I want people to know about, this is it. In going out to Belize, I had a wonderful time, but some of my research came at a high price. More than anything else, strangely enough, what I learned was that it wasn’t just governments and major NGO’s that make a difference in our funny old world. Ordinary young people, with no particular skills, can make a difference too.

For six week Idris and I walked, hitched, drove and even flew around Belize, meeting people from that country’s many different cultures and all walks of life. All the while I kept a detailed travel journal. Only at the end of the trip did I start writing what would end up being my gap year book. I happened across the novel ‘Kidnapped’ and in the predicament of its hero, Davie Balfour, the plot for ‘In The Trees’ came bursting out.

I’d always known Kid Cato wouldn’t be a posh kid, not a typical gap year volunteer as depicted by the press, but a south London boy of mixed race. But how to get him out to Belize, where he’d meet a group of young gap year volunteers, fresh from school, with everything to learn? I now had the answer, courtesy of Robert Louis Stevenson.

If you want to know more about my trip around Belize, do click this link to my website, where serialized extracts of my travel journal can be found. Or if there’s a school near you who might be interested in my story, or a local festival or book event, do let me know. Usually after finishing a novel, I move on seamlessly to the next. But I saw things in Belize which will live with me for ever. The beauty of the forests, for one of them. And the destruction. And the efforts of young people to help to save them.

In the words of Rafael Manzanero, who wrote the Commendation for ‘In The Trees’: ‘Everyone can make a difference to protect wilderness areas. It is not only moral to do so, but the survival of forests will make the planet a better place for human life’.

Boffins In Books: Why No Science In Children’s Fiction? by Emma Barnes

Science is not “sexy”. At least that it is the strong message you get on scanning the children’s fiction shelves. Fairies abound, as do spies, wizards, pirates and ballerinas, but scientists? Either absent – or the villains of the piece!

Ever since Enid Blyton bestowed “Uncle Quentin” upon her Famous Five, children’s authors (seldom scientific themselves) have taken for granted the archetype of the bad-tempered, impractical boffin, locked away in his study or laboratory (it’s nearly always a him, of course). This stereotype probably arrived in children’s fiction straight from Dr Frankenstein, and even such marvellous books as The Strange Affair of the Dog In the Night Time have tended to reinforce the notion that brilliance in abstract thought must mean personal strangeness and zero social skills.



Of course, there are excellent non-fiction books about science for young people. But with a very few exceptions – Russell Stannard’s Uncle Albert or Malcolm Rose’s scientific thrillers – science as a theme is either absent or else – in teenage books – portrayed as evil, with techniques like cloning bringing about terrible dystopian futures.




When I wrote Jessica Haggerthwaite: Witch Dispatcher it did not occur to me that an eleven year old girl who wanted to be a scientist, was unusual in fiction. I like humour, and I like exploring ideas, and when I devised the story I loved the possibilities of a scientific daughter (rational, enquiring, persistent) ranged up against a mother (vague and mystical) who is convinced she has magic powers. Jessica's heroine is Marie Curie - but her mother thinks a test tube is only useful for storing love potions.




Jessica’s scientific interests have their quirky side. Would an eleven year old really be reading a book called Astrophysics Made Simple? But they are not just for effect either. To achieve her ends Jessica conducts a scientific experiment – a serious experiment, with a hypothesis and a properly demonstrated conclusion. The whole plot depends upon it. Only after the book was published did several readers – teachers in particular – point out how unusual this was.

When I visit schools, I rarely get asked to focus on this element of the book, however. Perhaps this is because teachers, like writers, too often place “science” and “fiction” in different compartments. And for too many children, the “science” compartment can become the “bad” compartment. When I’ve asked children or adults to describe scientists as characters, “dangerous”, “mad” and “nerdy” are some of the words they have come up with.

It’s a shame. Science is exciting. And fiction is an important way for children to explore the world – the whole world - that lies beyond their own immediate surroundings and understanding. So why exclude such a vital perspective on it?

Which books would you recommend that include scientific themes or characters?

Emma's latest book is How (Not) to Make Bad Children Good and she also has a web-site.