Jaw Dropping Moments Anne Cassidy

When I read a book I expect a range of things. A good story, credible characters, an emotional journey. I like a mystery or a thriller. I like family stories or tales of friendship gone awry. I’m not hard to please but I know what I like.

Sometimes, when I read a book, something wonderful happens. In amidst the perfect storytelling there is a Jaw Dropping Moment. I don’t mean a surprise or a revelation I mean a moment when I sit back and gasp and a thrill runs through me as the writer takes me to another place, shows me another level of human frailty.

I have three examples of this.

FINGERSMITH by Sarah Walters A Victorian melodrama. A terrific read and in the middle there is a moment where I am floored by a plot development. I read on, I turn back. I read on. I am puzzled. I think hard. The penny drops and my smile is wide enough to post the book through.

IN THE DARK by Deborah Moggach This is a fantastic book. It’s set in England during the First World War and is about the people who live in a lodging house. It’s sexy and passionate and at the same time it recreates the genteel poverty of people who lived in such a place. There is a plot development in this book that made me stamp my feet with glee and then shrivel up with embarrassment for previous happenings. It’s stayed with me ever since I read it and it was truly Jaw Dropping.

THE SENATOR’S WIFE by Sue Miller This is a lovely book. A story of a woman who has done everything for the man she loves while retaining her pride and sense of worth. At the end there is one of those moments. I gasp. It can’t be. I close my eyes and think of what human beings are capable of. I shake my head. A thoroughly satisfying (if unsettling) read.

Any other ideas for Jaw Dropping Moments in books?

A Family of Books - Karen Ball

My sister is coming home. Mandy has been living in Singapore for the past ten years and will soon be back in the UK. Thinking of her return, I felt a pang of guilt at the book gifts I had sent out over the years – copies of my own writing, coffee table books of photography, collectors' editions of novels we both knew as children, trashy novels. She'd have to box them all up and have them flown back.

But then the thought of those books made me remember the others that have acted as stepping stones through our family life. Growing up, we were taught respect for books. Dad loves Great Expectations and Mum re-reads Pride and Prejudice every year (or so it seems). My youngest sister, Tracy, still enjoys the classics despite only reading comics as a child. We were taken to the children’s library on a regular basis, and my parents’ loft houses a small collection of childhood favourites, bought not loaned: the Mr Men, Milly Molly Mandy, My Naughty Little Sister, Mallory Towers, the Narnias... Oh no, the Narnia books are now on my bookshelf at home – old, tired, loved, with special inscriptions in Mum’s handwriting.

Each year our Sunday School gift was a book token and we would go to the only bookshop in town – now long gone – and choose a ruby and gilt hardback edition: What Katy Did, Treasure Island, Gullivers Travels. We didn’t have the Internet back in the 1970s but we did have a Children’s Encyclopaedia, which would occasionally be prised off a shelf during homework hours. So much reading, so many worlds to escape into. Ghosts, boarding schools, walled gardens, looking glasses and islands, all embedded into our family consciousness. Remembering this, I quickly banished any guilt about those books I’d sent over to Singapore.

Ours is a very ordinary family, with a special connection that began when books were handed down from one sister to the next. Now I find so much satisfaction in giving books to my friends’ children – some signed by the author! I enjoy wondering if these books will stay with a new generation well into their adulthood.

As I drafted this blog, I went to track down my ancient set of Narnia books and took one from the shelf, only to rediscover a special inscription that is as relevant today as it was all those years ago. Proof, if proof were needed, that children’s books – as writers and readers – are for life, and all stages of life.

Did I mention? My sister is coming home.

Working Girl - Elen Caldecott

I loved Nicola’s post earlier on this week. All the questions made me smile-wince, or swince as it will now be known. But there is one that always evokes a bigger swince than the others; and that is the dreaded ‘JK’ question.

Not that I mind being asked if I’m the new JK, well, not that much anyway. What I mind is the assumption that it’s only a matter of time before children’s writers buy great swathes of Morningside and use £50 notes to paper their new mansions; as though that’s the normal career path. Of course, my friends mean well. Of course, they’re being kind. But there is still a sense – among non-writers – that writing is a solid route to bucket-fulls of cash.

Ha!
Ha!
And thrice Ha!

I did an MA in creative writing. Throughout, visiting speakers and the course tutors would do their best to open our eyes to cold reality. ‘It’s tough to get published and it’s tough to make money even when you are published’, they said. Often.
But it’s only now, with a first book out and two more scheduled, that I’m starting to see their point.

But, I am not here to whine. Oh no.
On the contrary; today, I want to celebrate. I want us to applaud the wonder that is the Day Job.
Too often, it’s seen as a dreadful impediment to the ‘real work’ of a writer; your perceived success depends on how quickly you can give it up. But for many writers, you can never give up your day job. And we can sometimes be made to feel bad about that by friends and family who should know better.

Well, I love my day job, and I (probably) wouldn’t give it up even if those rolls of £50-note wallpaper do turn up. I sell tickets 3 days a week in an independent cinema. I work alongside interesting people and our customers are superb too. And, yes, I do get to see the films for free. Writing fits around the job perfectly and having to work makes my writing time even more precious.
Also, the fact I have to leave the house three times a week means I have to shower and get dressed. If I were a full-time writer I’m not so sure that would happen...

Lots of writers are teachers, or work in publishing, or even fly planes (I only know of one who does that, to be fair). We are all real writers, and we can all (mostly) pay the bills.

Long live the day job!

p.s. the photo is of me and some pals at Watershed - I am the Eric nearest the camera!

Crossing Books. Would you?: Gillian Philip

BookCrossing. It's that thing where people set books free in public places, hoping to hear back from them when the finder registers them on the website; BookCrossers also exchange books online, sometimes but not always supplied by publishers. I've never sent a book into the wild myself, but my books have been Crossed, so to speak, and it's been a positive experience for me.
It's on my mind because I'm speaking at the UK BookCrossing UnConvention in Edinburgh on Saturday. It's also on my mind because I talked about the practice on Radio Scotland's Book Cafe a couple of weeks ago, along with enthusiastic BookCrosser and UnConvention organiser Liz Broomfield.
I was playing the odd role of devil's and angel's advocate in the discussion. After all, I wouldn't be speaking at the UnCon if I was against the whole thing, but the interviewer wanted to know: was BookCrossing a bad thing for writers? It's one more way of cutting our earnings, after all, and heaven knows there are already enough ways of doing that.
There are a few answers to this from BookCrossers. Firstly (they say), they try books they'd never otherwise consider, and expanding the readership of books can only be a good thing. Secondly, if they love your book, Crossers will often end up buying it, for themselves or as gifts. Thirdly - and here's what I like - part of the deal, with books passed round web 'Bookrings', is that you get an online review. And reviews in the regular press are almost as hard to come by as royalties from Tesco.
I confess I'm keen on it, and not just because the BookCrossers have been largely nice to me and my books. All their arguments have merit, but more than that, I like their enthusiasm. I like that they are passionate about books. I can't help feeling that as long as there are people like BookCrossers around, books won't die the death that's often foretold.
Of course, I also hope that BookCrossers love books enough to understand that there won't be as many of them around in the future - at least, books not written by Jordan - if writers can't earn a living.
But I know a lot of writers are against the whole idea. I'd love to hear some views. Then I could put on my General and Allied Writers Militant Union hat on Saturday, as well as my Kiss-Me-Quick-BookCrossers one.
And I couldn't think of an illustration for this post. Which is why I've been a chancer and just posted a picture of one of my covers, Bad Faith. Sorry.

The writer goes shopping in a gondola - Michelle Lovric

Here’s a typical morning in Venice, during the period of writing The Undrowned Child.

You go to the San Samuele traghetto for the 8.30 gondola to Ca’ Rezzonico.



You mutter viciously to yourself all the way: the reason you have to drag your trolley across the Grand Canal is that all the food shops in your area have closed down to be turned into mask shops for the tourists.

You’ve already mentally drafted a droll, germane blog about this by the time you arrive at San Samuele. The gondola stazione’s deserted. The boat’s padlocked to the pole. You notice a young gondolier sitting disconsolately on a nearby bench. He whimpers that the two-man traghetto cannot start because his partner has qualche problema – some problems, and won’t be arriving for work this morning.

Ah, you sigh. This is why you go nowhere in Venice without a notebook. You sit down on the mossy wooden steps and write a scene in which your heroine, desperate to reach the other side of the Grand Canal in order to save the city from a terrible disaster, is forced to swim for it, jostling through four-metre sharks and a vast sea-creature’s tentacles, which are currently masquerading as the striped painted poles.

Eventually a substitute gondolier is found. You’re poled across the jade-green water. At the nearest vaporetto stop you ask for the new timetable for the ferries. The summer season officially started five days ago. But no orario di navigazione. The lady at the counter explains that the printer has qualche problema. You make a note: in The Undrowned Child, the ephemera of Bajamonte Tiepolo’s bloody revolution shall be printed in Venice’s most haunted house, Ca’ Dario. And ahead of time.

You go to the erborista for some flax-seed capsules to soothe eyes rendered glassy and red-rimmed by the computer-screen. But unfortunately the erborista’s distributor has qualche problema di consegna – some delivery problems. You should try again next week. Or the week after. Chissà? Who knows? Chissà indeed. (I hear this phrase so often in Venice that I gave it as a name to a grumpy mermaid in The Undrowned Child.)

You set off to Friselle on the quest for rare and precious light bulbs for the kitchen hob. The sign on the door announces that the premises shall open at 9.00am. At 9.20 you’re still waiting outside. A man shuffles up and unlocks the door. One look at his face and you know that he has qualche problema in a big way. You keep your voice low, state your business, and leave him to his misery as quickly as you can. But you take in the moist grooves of his forehead, the mouth dragged down as if hooked on a line, the desperate, shadowed eyes – and you reserve a special place for him as the doomed side-kick of the villainess in your next novel. That’s the face he shall wear as he drowns in the icy waters of the Adriatic …

You drag your trolley back to the traghetto. Of course, it’s on the other side of the canal. Of course, the boys are having their pausa. You listen to the dripping of the gelato melting on your new tea-towels inside the trolley. You scribble a brief description, imagining your heroine lashed to an iceberg in the lagoon, being tortured by the sun shining through a cunningly mounted magnifying glass.

When you get home, your husband asks you, ‘Did you remember my …?’



‘No,’ you interrupt ferociously, running to your computer, ‘no, I did not. I had qualche problema.’

THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK - Nicola Morgan

Other authors, when upset, curl up in a little ball and try to be only slightly prickly - baby hedgehogesque, you might say. I, on the other hand, prefer the full porcupine-after-stubbing-its-toe-on-a-hot-coal method, shooting my spines all over the place. Crabbit, that's me. But all of us tend to get prickly/spiky about the same things. So, for the benefit of the non-authors amongst you, and to prevent painful mistakes by our nearest and dearest, here is a handy list of Things Not to Say to Authors - Especially Children's Authors - (because we need to be mega-prickly, being so little and weak and Not Important ...)

In no particular order (with the politest replies I can muster in brackets):

1. "I've always wanted to write a book but I don't have time." (Get up an hour earlier, lazy-bones - I did. At even 1000 words a day - 3 pages of A4 - you'd be done in a couple of months. Simple, time-wise.)
2. "Everyone's got a book in them." (Best place for it.)
3. "I liked your last book better" / "This is better than your last book." (Could you possibly rephrase? I suggest: "I loved *******" / "This is brilliant.")
4. "How are sales doing?" (I'll tell you how sales are doing when you tell me how much you earn. Besides, do you know what would be "good" sales? So, if I say I sold 1000 copies in three months, have you any idea whether this is good or bad? So don't ask. Pretty please.)
5. "I was in Auchtermuchty and didn't see it in the bookshop." (Ah, that'll be because they sold ALL their copies just before you came in.)
6. "Where do you get your ideas?" (I can't tell you - it's like being in the Magic Circle. No seriously, a much more interesting question would be: "What happens when you get an idea? Like, do you stop whatever you're doing and write it down? Or do you mull it over for weeks? Start writing straightaway? How do the characters grow? In your head or on paper?" Those questions, about process, are interesting to authors.)
7. "Ooh, that sounds fab - I'll buy it secondhand." (Don't worry - I'm sure my bank manager will understand.)
8. "Are you going to write an adult book?" (No, I'm not nearly clever enough .... Arggghhhh, please don't ever ask this without arming yourself with anti-porcupine gear. Actually, if you must know, I am going to write an adult book, when I feel like it, but meanwhile, while my brain is still at its peak, I'm writing for teenagers. We are very, very prickly about this, often unnecessarily so, but it always feels as though people think writing for children/teenagers is easier than writing for adults. So, if you want to ask the question, find a very sensitive way of phrasing it. Otherwise you chip away at our pathetic fragile egos.)
9. "I haven't seen it reviewed in the papers." (Oh, and how many papers do you read every day? Do any of the papers you read have any reviews of children's/teenage books? If so, how many? And did you know that there are 10,000 children's books published in the UK every year?
10. "Oh, are you the new JK Rowling?" (Considering I don't write fantasy or books in a series, probably not. Anyway, fame and fortune are the tawdry trappings of success and I am above such things.)

Look, I know I'm a crabbit old bat but we're sensitive souls, we writers, doing a really hard job and exposing ourselves (not in that sense, thank goodness) to public criticism. We're often bad at accepting praise and too quick to see the negative. Thing is, the one thing that many of those questions seem to say to us is, "Well, you're not doing as well as you'd like, are you?" (No, I'm not, but I'm trying, trying really hard.) "And besides, what you're doing is not that clever or difficult or important." I happen to think it is.

This wasn't really meant to be a whinge. We love you all, you lovely, lovely readers, really. And we certainly need you. But our skin is very thin and sometimes it's our closest friends who quite accidentally say the wrong things. So, I just thought it might help if I told you what those wrong things were.

Just sayin', as "they" say.

Writing for Pleasure - Sally Nicholls

I was recently at a celebration for the summer solstice. As part of the event, participants shared poems and stories which they had written, many on appropriate themes.

Now, as you can imagine, most of the poems were dreadful, but that wasn't the point. They were fun. They were silly, and irreverent, and the authors had obviously had a great time writing them. They weren't intended to be published - at least I hope not - they were simply a way of having a good time, and creating something personal to be shared with the writer's friends.

Which got me thinking. Everyone who kicks a football round the park doesn't want to be a professional football player. Everyone who cooks doesn't want to be a chef. So why is there this assumption that if you write, you must want to do it professionally?

Whatever happened to writing for fun? Not to have it published - be that in a book, in a magazine, or on the internet. Not to worry about how many people have bought or downloaded it. Not for someone else to read at all. Simply for yourself or a few friends. For itself.

I used to write a diary, many years ago. I used to write funny sketches about the madness that was my university house - for my university friends to read. I have been known to write bad poetry for the eyes of my forgiving boyfriend only.

What happened to that? To writing for fun?

Writer's Block: N M Browne

First of all I don’t believe in writer’s block. I believe in butcher’s block – I used to have one in my kitchen and plumber’s block – the kind that costs a fortune to unblock in my experience. I even believe in builder’s block the process whereby nothing can happen because the electrician can’t start before the plasterer, the plasterer can’t start before the plumber and there’s no way the plumber can do a thing until the electrician’s finished, but writer’s block, no. Writer’s block is the figment of an author’s imagination, an excuse for melodrama, existential despair and excessive drinking ; it is another word for idleness.
Secondly, I would like to explain that I am not personally ‘blocked’. I eat plenty of prunes, walk my dog regularly and, apart from the red wine, caffeine and chocolate habit, have quite a healthy life. The only reason I am not writing at the moment and indeed haven’t written for months is...
Well there’s the weather – we get so few nice days and I can’t see my screen outside and I can’t remember how to write with pen and paper – I get cramp just signing my name these days ( and not because I do so many autographs.)
Then there were the exams and the fact that now they are over, well,it seems only kind to let my poor overwrought children take over my work space. They do need to catch up on Facebook, MSN and Youtube so much more than I need to write a new novel. And again I think some ideas need to – how shall I put this - germinate slowly. This is especially true of ideas you haven’t yet had. The unthought story seed is as elusive as a windblown dandelion clock, that great high concept thingy waiting in some kind of inchoate state for the mind to be receptive enough to allow it to exist, needs time and patience. Of course this is not another way of saying I’m clueless, how dare you suggest it! I’m merely waiting, biding my time, not stuck at all.
In the meantime, I feel the author’s mind needs plenty of sunshine – to aid germination, fluid (preferably of the pink variety, rose, kir maybe even pink champagne) and rest. I also recommend plenty of visual stimulation, sales shopping is particular good for this as it also allows the writer to engage in useful imaginative thinking: this yellow, sleeveless sundress would look wonderful if I got a tan, worked out, lost the bingo arms, had breast augmentation surgery, botox, new teeth and wore very high heels.
What me? Got writer’s block? Whatever gave you that idea?