Who Writes Your Books? Lari Don

Who writes your books? If you’re a children’s writer, does the child inside you write, or at least inspire, your books?

I always thought so. My first children’s books were adventures for 8–12 year olds, set in the Scottish landscape, inspired by myths and folklore. And I definitely write those novels for the child I was in the 70s and 80s, living a rural life surrounded by lots of books. A girl who climbed trees and perched on roofs, always with a book to read high up in the sun. I write the adventures I wished I’d gone on, I write about how I might have reacted if I’d found a centaur bleeding on my doorstep. So my novels are inspired by my childhood, and written by the bit of me that has never grown up and still hopes for adventure.

But that girl is not the person who inspires my picture books. I’ve realised recently that most of my picture books are inspired by my life as a parent. That doesn’t mean I write for adults rather than children. My picture book stories are definitely aimed at kids (though I always bear in mind the adults who may have to read a book 6 times in a row every night for weeks…) I write the stories for the kids, but the initial ideas come from me as a parent.

The Big Bottom Hunt was inspired by a day on the beach with my family. How To Make A Heron Happy was inspired by visits to our local park. Orange Juice Peas was a story I made up to tell my own kids, about chaotic teatimes. 

 And my most recent picture book, The Magic Word, is about the difficulty of persuading kids to write birthday thank you letters and one little girl’s magical attempts to speed the process up…

Beaches, parks, meal times and thank you letters are all familiar parts of the jigsaw of parenting, so these stories have bounced off my life as a parent. Though I’m certainly not claiming these books have anything profound to say about parenting (what a horrendous thought!) I just want to tell dramatic, surprising, funny stories.

And I’m not saying that I write these books as a parent – I’m sure I return to the joys of my small-child-hood for the details of the stories, like repeating rude words – “Is this your bottom?” - and making a mess of the kitchen, which happens regularly in my books. But I don’t remember enough about being a very small child for the full stories themselves to come from there. The ‘what if’s, the ‘I wonder’s, the questions which prompt the stories, those definitely come from my experience as a parent now.

I think I could and would have written most of my other books without being a parent, but I couldn’t have written these picture books if I wasn’t a mum.

Are other writers aware that different parts of their lives, past and present, inspire different elements of their writing?

Lari Don is the award-winning author of almost 20 books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. Some of her books contain the word “bottom” 
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The F Word - Anna Wilson

Fellow Sassie, Fiona Dunbar, recently posted the following question on Facebook:

“To all my friends who write for kids/young teens (particularly girls): do you feel enough is being done in fiction to address fat/thin stereotypes? With all the cultural pressure to conform to certain ideals, is it our responsibility to counter that – and if so, how? *Can* it be done?”

I quickly became engrossed in reading all the comments that were posted under Fiona’s question. I had more than a passing interest for, as well as being a children’s writer, I have two young teenage children of my own who are becoming more and more aware of what society is saying to them. My daughter, in particular, seems to equate “skinny” with “perfection”.

The Facebook debate did, however, remind me that I had once been found guilty of describing a character as a “big fat greedy wotsit”. I remember thinking at the time that it had not occurred to me for an instant that what I had written would be offensive, because the words were spoken by a seven-year-old character in that careless, thoughtless way that children sometimes do speak.

I did, however, edit the comment once it was pointed out to me that if you are a child struggling with eating disorders (which sadly affect children at a much earlier stage in life than they used to) then seeing the word “fat” used in a negative context can be very damaging, as it reinforces the stereotype that “fat” equals “greedy” or “lazy” or “unattractive” or just plain “bad”.

It was pointed out in the Facebook feed that we have, in fact, come a long way and that “we are better than we used to be”. Lord of the Flies was quoted as an example of how not to stereotype large children. I decided to go back and re-read a section of Lord of the Flies, thinking that I would surely not find it offensive, telling myself that the book is a product of a particular time and the characters who gang up on Piggy are hardly portrayed as heroes. However, I have to admit that reading the story again after a 25-year gap, Golding’s descriptions of Piggy did make me squirm:

“The naked crooks of his knees were plump . . . He was shorter than the fair boy and very fat . . .

‘Can’t catch me breath. I was the only boy at our school what had asthma,’ said the fat boy with a touch of pride. ‘And I’ve been wearing specs since I was three.’”

He is referred to as “the fat boy” until he admits that his nickname was “Piggy” and that is the name that sticks for the rest of the book. We never find out his real name. There is no doubt that the fact he is fat and wears glasses equates to him being unappealing and weak.

There is much debate at the moment as to what extent we in children’s publishing should be the “guardians at the gate” on various topics, including that of body image. Should we watch what we write, or does this restrict our creativity? Is the story the thing, or do we have a responsibility? Many publishers increasingly feel that we do. We publish our books under the clear imprimatur of “children’s publishing”, and that in itself says something important: that children are clearly looking for and need something different from adults. Otherwise, why bother separating the two markets?

Children are vulnerable and impressionable, we know that. As a parent I am constantly worrying about and trying to monitor what they watch on television, see on the internet and in video games, so should it come as any surprise that books, and the words in those books, need to be chosen carefully too?

Or are we going too far when we start to worry about editing our characters’ thoughts, appearances and dialogue? Is it in fact ridiculous to load such a simple three-letter word so heavily with negative connotations, thereby driving it into the arena of “issues”? As Caitlin Moran says in How To Be A Woman:

“In the last two generations, [‘fat’ has] become a furiously overloaded word – in a conversation, when the word ‘fat’ appears, it often alarms people, like a siren going off.’

So is the answer to avoid the issue of body image altogether in our writing? In Fiona’s Facebook conversation, writer Dawn Finch commented, “I try not to include any physical description unless it’s genuinely important to the plot.” She said that she likes to leave it to the reader to decide how the characters look based on how other characters respond to them. It is true that there can be nothing more irritating than being told someone is attractive or ugly because they are fat/thin/blond/tall/blue-eyed. (I recently read Michael Frayn’s Skios and found it incredibly annoying to be repeatedly told that the lead romantic male role was gorgeous and had blue eyes and “floppy blond hair”. Personally that immediately put me in mind of Boris Johnson, so from that moment on I was certainly not going to imagine him as attractive, I’m afraid.)

Inbali Iserles, another Sassie, said that “making it an issue is not a good thing”, while writer Sophia Bennett pointed out that even when books are addressing particular stereotypes, the covers rarely do anything to back this up, and in some cases actively do the opposite. She quoted Cathy Cassidy’s Ginger Snaps and Chris Higgins’ A Perfect 10 as examples of books whose covers perhaps even belie the content.

So what to do? Maybe we should at least not make “skinny” the default position for the beautiful and popular. If we are writing a romance, for example, should we go out of our way to make the romantic lead a larger person? If so, how do we do this without it “becoming an issue” as Inbali warns us against doing? And if we do all this, what about the book jackets? Maybe this, in fact, is where the redressing of the balance should start.

(With thanks to Fiona for letting me borrow her FB question!)

Anna Wilson

www.annawilson.co.uk

Strictly very-little-to-do-with-children's-books: by Sue Purkiss

Now - some of you may well spot the fact that this post has very little to do with children's writing. My excuse is that I wasn't expecting to be writing one for today, so I think that gives me lots and lots of leeway. So - put on your dancing shoes, and off we go!

Because, yes - Strictly Come Dancing started yesterday. I'm a fan - a BIG fan - and having cleared the room last night of all uncommitted parties, I settled down happily to watch it. And as I did so, I idly pondered about why I like it so much. Of course, there are all kinds of answers to that, just as there are all kinds of people who are similarly addicted. But in my case, there is a thread that leads way back into a rather long-distant childhood.


As a child, I was fascinated by ballet, and absolutely longed to be able to have lessons. I'm not sure where the fascination came from; I'd certainly never seen a ballet. In fact, funnily enough, I see there actually is a link here with children's books and comics - because all my knowledge of ballet must have come from these two sources. There was one comic that each week had a gorgeous picture of an incredibly graceful ballerina in a glorious costume with layers of tulle and scatterings of sequins, in an impossible-looking pose - perhaps that was the start of it? And there were books from the library: Noel Streatfield's Ballet Shoes, and a series set in the Sadler's Wells Ballet School, featuring someone called Lorna, or was it Drina? Not sure, but they certainly featured a hugely talented girl from an impoverished background whose talent was eventually recognised, despite numerous setbacks. Oh, and of course she was also beautiful, with dark soulful eyes, high cheekbones and slender limbs.

I had some of those characteristics. Well, one: we didn't have much money. And as a result of that, I never had any ballet lessons - we couldn't afford them. I did my best: I got hold of a book called Teach Yourself Ballet, and tried to do just that, learning the five positions and to do pirouettes without getting dizzy. I read about the history of ballet, and about all the famous ballerinas - Anna Pavlova, Alicia Markova, Margot Fonteyn, Lyn Seymour. I drew pictures of dancers, copying from magazines and Degas reproductions.  My friend Hilary and I used to put records on - The Hall of the Mountain King was a particular favourite - and galumph around to the music in her front room like a pair of gangly elephants. And Mum acquired from somewhere a second-hand pair of real ballet shoes - they were red leather, shabby but beautiful. I used to put them on and lovingly tie the ribbons and admire the way they made my feet look.

Of course, even with money and lessons, I wouldn't have stood a chance. I was tall, bespectacled and geeky without a graceful bone in my body. But never let reality get in the way of a good dream! Mum couldn't manage ballet lessons, but she did track down some old-time ballroom lessons. They were in the Co-op Hall, and I think they were five shillings a throw. The teacher was Mr Bradshaw, who looked and I think probably was fairly ancient, with white hair and thick black-framed glasses. He always wore a dark suit, shirt and tie, and when he was giving instructions had a a trace of a French accent: "Forward, side, together, toe to 'eel - TURN!" We learnt the waltz (not the version they do on Strictly; our waltz had more twiddly bits), the Military Two Step, the Veleta, and even a tango - imagine that, with a bunch of clumsy pre-teen girls in the back streets of a Midlands mining town! It was a long way from the bars of Argentina, I can tell you that. 

Probably the best thing about ballroom lessons, though, was the shoes. Here was a time when Mum made us a new dress for summer and another for winter, buying the material at Griffin and Spalding or Jessops in Nottingham. Similarly, you had sandals and a pair of white shoes for summer, and dark shoes for winter. Cardigans were hand-knitted and there was no such thing as a t-shirt. So a pair of silver shoes - silver! - all straps and twinkly - goodness, what heaven! And there was even the prospect, if you carried on for long enough, of a strappy dress with an enormous skirt made of layers of net, just like the ones they wore on TV on a a programme called Come Dancing. There was an older girl who helped at the classes sometimes who had dresses like that. Oh, how we envied her!

Well, I took a few exams and got a couple of medals. But then it was the sixties, and suddenly the formal dresses looked a bit old-hat, and there were new dances like the Twist and the Shake and the Locomotion and - well, basically the world changed. So I stopped going to ballroom classes, and that was that.

But I never lost the fascination with ballet, and went to see performances when I could. There was a wonderful one called Ghost Dances, to

Ghost Dances, by Christopher Bruce

South American pan-pipe music, and a marvellous version of Dracula and another of Carmen; I don't live in London, but the Ballet Rambert and the Northern Ballet toured, often with narrative ballets that I loved, and abstract ones that fascinated me. Strangely, although as a child I read the stories of all the classical ballets, in performance they left me a little cold.

And there were the films: Dirty Dancing, West Side Story, Strictly Ballroom. (Particularly Strictly Ballroom. It's probably surprising, but I have no trouble identifying with the clumsy ugly duckling who eventually blossoms!)

So, for me, there's all that at the back of it when I settle down for the new season of Strictly. In a way, I suppose I can watch the participants living my dream. And my favourites for this year? Too early to say yet - though I would place a small bet on the first three to go out. And I do love the shoes - though they really aren't as gorgeous as that first pair of silver ones...

A sailor's life for me - Lily Hyde

Like Tamsyn Murray in her lovely post a couple of days ago, I wanted to live in the world of some books I read as a child. One such world was that of The Dark is Rising series, another was Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons. 

I read Ransome’s sailing books over and over again. I knew my port from my starboard, my sheets from my stays, my luff from my reach… Another all-time favourite book was Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Armourer’s House, where along with the heroine Tamsyn I got excited about topgallant sails. When I wasn’t reading about them, I drew endless pictures of sloops and square riggers and schooners, I longed to live in that world and run away to sea.

And for the last three weeks, I finally have. I have let out sheets and hauled in stays, I’ve found out that you pronounce topgallant ‘t’gallant’, I’ve been out on the bowsprit hanking on the jib and getting dunked in the salt sea. It’s been just as exciting as my childhood self could have dreamed of (and not a little terrifying, when the spinnaker sail tears free and blasts off into the distance nearly taking a crew member with it). 

I’ve learned that reading books obsessively as a child and drawing pictures of sailing ships doesn’t really prepare you for the actuality of sailing. But it’s been wonderful to realise a childhood dream at long last. And quite a lot of the sailors I’ve met turn out to have been mad about those Swallows and Amazons books as children. Proof that reading really does have a scarily strong influence on who we grow up to be…?

www.lilyhyde.com         

The Trouble with Farty Eggs - Andrew Strong

For the last few weeks I’ve been travelling the length and breadth of the country, from Bath to Oxford, from Oxford to Edinburgh.  It’s got me thinking about place names and the power they can hold over us.

Even when there’s no more reference than the name itself, a place name can give a story so much character.  Sometimes a place name is a shortcut to hundreds of years of history, but so often it can act as a signpost to the sort of story you should expect. 

Bath belongs to Jane Austen, and particularly the muddy streets of Northanger Abbey. Oxford can be claimed by Northern Lights or Brideshead Revisited.  Choose Edinburgh and you choose a treasure trove – Kidnapped, Jean Brodie, Trainspotting and one of my all time favourite books, Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

These novels conjure up just enough for us to be taken to a city, but unless we are that city’s citizens, we can be allowed to dream the rest.  

American cities don’t have such a wealth of history, but they exude glamour.  It always annoyed me, as a child, that so many songs used American place names just to add some sort of distant allure.  The Beach Boys sang about California, and The Velvets went on about New York.  But look for a British city in songs from the sixties and it’s almost as if we were too embarrassed to mention them.  Why didn’t the Beatles ever write a song with Liverpool in the title? It wasn’t until punk that Britain became as exotic to the British as the States had been to an earlier generation.

And who could create a city as exciting, magical and diverse as London?  Why bother? Its streets and boroughs are thick with the atmosphere of so much that has already been written or sung about.

But travel west along the M4 to Wales and the number of place names with any resonance dwindles to just a handful.  I pity the Welsh Tourist Board who must struggle to market the principality’s towns.  They sound so alike. Drive north to south and you can pass through Llandeilo, Llandovery, Llandrindod, Llanidloes, Llanbrynmair, Llangollen and Llandudno.* I get these places muddled, and I live here.  Drive through our country lanes and discover Japanese tourists lost for a decade, desperately trying to remember the name of the town in which they had booked the hotel.

I wonder if it’s any surprise that the one small town in Wales all readers of this blog will know is just three letters long.  It’s a word that suggest sunshine, summer, freedom and books: Hay.

Just this week there’s been the fuss of the little Welsh settlement of Varteg.  You probably know the story. The Welsh language Commissioner’s opinion is that Y Farteg is historically correct, not the Anglicised spelling used by most of the residents.  Some locals fear they will be ridiculed.  ‘Who wants to live in Fart Egg?’ I heard one villager protest.  It would be a brave novelist who chose to set a serious novel here.  Dylan Thomas parodied the country’s small towns by naming his most famous invented village ‘Llareggub’.  And Matt Lucas has promoted the tiny community of Llandewi Brevi so well that the signpost keeps getting nicked.

Somehow Welsh place names don’t just resist glamour, they are openly hostile to it.  Welsh place names stand at the garden gate in an old cardigan and slippers, puffing on a ciggy, glaring at you to push off.  So, good people of Bath and Oxford, Edinburgh and London’s many boroughs, be grateful you have your city’s evocative name to call upon, and pity the poor Welsh novelist who tries in vain to avoid a reference to the only gay in the village, whilst desperately trying to eradicate the smell of farty eggs, and is so often left with Buggerall.

*It’s interesting that Word does not recognize most of these Welsh place names. It even wants to replace Llandovery with Land Rover.

Meeting Your Heroes - Tamsyn Murray

Is there a single children's writer who doesn't love Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series? If there is, I've yet to meet them. The reaction of every author I've ever mentioned Susan Cooper to is the same - 'Love those books, maybe don't mention the film.'

I think I was around fourteen when I discovered the series. As with the Narnia Chronicles, I started with the second book, The Dark Is Rising, and it was love at first sight. Will Stanton was the perfect character; the seventh son of a seventh son, his chaotic family life meant he struggled to make himself heard so it was perfect when he discovered he was an Old One, destined to battle for the Light against the Dark of the title. Special.

I immediately wanted to be Will and eagerly sought out the first book. From then on, I read them sequentially, and loved the way he grew through the series, although he always seemed wise beyond his years. More than one female author has told me they were more than a little bit in love with Will Stanton (looking at you, Jo Cotterill) and now I come to mention it, I realise I was too. In fact, I think I wanted to marry him. But more than anything, I wanted to live in that world. In fact, I still do.

So when I heard Susan Cooper had a new novel out and was visiting the UK for publicity, I became ridiculously excited. There are a few of my childhood authors who I can claim, hand-on-heart,  inspired my career as a writer and Susan is one. These are authors whose writing stands the test of time - Alan Garner, Robin McKinley, Ursula Le Guin to name but a few - the ones whose books I remember twenty years after I first read them. I immediately booked a ticket to see Susan in conversation with Marcus Sedgwick at Piccadilly Waterstones on 24th October. I can't  wait to hear to hear about her new book, Ghosthawk, which is set in colonial New England and sounds very different to the novels most people know her for. One of the very best things about being a children's author is getting the opportunity to meet the people who inspired you (although anyone is welcome at Susan's events so it's not really an authorly thing) - the chance to meet one of your real-life heroes. It's not often you get the chance to say a quiet and heartfelt thank you to an author who made you a very happy child.

For a full list of Susan's tour dates, check out the Random House website. It's sure to be fascinating.

Everybody's Free (To Wear Pyjamas) by Liz Kessler

Ten years ago this month, my first book, The Tail of Emily Windsnap, was published.

It was a book that I had started writing a few years earlier when I'd left a job as a teacher to pursue a writing career. I left my job in 1999, and in that year one of my favourite ever songs, Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) came out. 

So in honour of both of these events, I've written some advice for new writers setting off today on the path that I began a decade ago. I've written my advice in the style of that wonderful song, so if you haven't heard it (or even if you have, because in my opinion, you can never get enough of this song) do have a listen via the link below. In the meantime, here is my advice...

Everybody's Free (To Wear Pyjamas)

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’13, wear pyjamas.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, pyjamas would be 
it. The long term benefits of working at home in your PJs have been proved by 
scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable 
than my own meandering 
experience…

I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the freedom and independence of being unpublished. Oh never mind; you will not 
understand the freedom and independence of being unpublished until you get a book deal. 
But trust me, in ten years you’ll look back at those early notebooks and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much autonomy you enjoyed and how many long, lazy days you were free to spend working on a single chapter.

Your opening chapter is not as bad as you imagine.

Don’t worry about getting a book deal; or worry, but know that worrying is about as 
effective as trying to write a bestseller by coming up with an idea about vampire wizards in bondage. The real writing troubles in your life are apt to be things that 
never crossed your worried mind; the kind that ping into your inbox at 4pm 
on some idle Tuesday when your editor tells you to lose 10,000 words by next week.

Write one sentence every day that excites you.

Read.

Don’t be overly critical of other people’s books; don’t put up with 
people who are overly critical of yours.

Edit.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes 
you’re behind. The race is long and in the end, it’s only with 
yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive; forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old readers’ letters, throw away your old rejection letters.

Stretch. (Especially when you’ve been at your computer for three hours solid.)

Don’t feel bad if you don’t know what to write next. The most interesting authors I know didn’t know at 22 what they 
wanted to write about. Some of the most interesting 40 year olds still don’t know what they want to write next.

Drink plenty of tea.

Be kind to your editor; you’ll miss them when they’ve gone on maternity leave.

Maybe you’ll get a book deal; maybe you won’t. Maybe there’ll be a five-way auction over your book; maybe there won’t. Maybe you’ll be a best seller at 40, maybe you’ll go to see the opening of the movie of your book on your 75th birthday.

Whatever you do, don’t
 congratulate yourself too much (especially on Facebook and Twitter) or berate yourself, either. Your book’s fortunes are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy experimenting with your voice; use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of your imagination, or what other people 
think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

WRITE. Even if you have nowhere to do it but your own living room.

Read all of your editor’s notes, even if you don’t follow them.

Do NOT read someone else’s tweets when they are retweeting their latest five-star review, it will only make you feel inadequate and cross.

Get to know your publicist; you never know when they’ll move on to another publisher (and they might end up representing you there as well).

Be nice to your fellow authors; they are the ones who will relate to you the best and the 
people most likely to understand what you’re going through when you feel stuck.

Understand that editors come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to do everything you can to keep your publisher happy because the older you get, the more you need the people who championed your writing when you were the hot new thing.

Go to a publishing party once, but leave before you are so drunk you make an absolute fool of yourself in front of the MD; visit a primary school once, but leave before you get asked to run eight workshops and a full school assembly in one day.

Travel. (And remember, if it’s research, it’s tax-deductible.)

Accept certain inalienable truths: Amazon will always sell your books cheaper than anyone else; e-books will probably one day be as piratable as music is now; you too will go out of print, and when you do, you’ll fantasise 
that when you were young, independent bookshops still existed, books were made out of paper and children got lost in reading.

Get lost in reading.

Don’t expect anyone to keep on publishing you. Maybe you have an agent, maybe you have a stash of cash from a six-figure advance; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your proof copy or by the time you send it back, you’ll have to pay for all the extra changes.

Be careful whose writing advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.

Giving writing advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a bit like looking back at our out of print books, giving them a quick edit and self publishing them via Kindle Direct for 99p.

But trust me on the pyjamas.

***

And now have a listen to the original...

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Turn your passion into a book - Lynne Garner

My latest non-fiction title
published 24th October 2013 

I'm continually surprised by the number of students who tell me they would love to write a non-fiction book but don't know anything. They don't believe they know anything worth sharing in a book. When I hear this I tell them a story, which I am now going to share with you.

Once upon a time there was a man called Gavin Pretor-Pinney and he loved clouds. He decided he'd write a book about them and get it published. He approached publisher after publisher after publisher, 28 in total. But he didn't give up. He knew that if he loved clouds there must be others who also enjoyed clouds. Finally one day he found a publisher who saw the merit of his book. In 2007 his book 'The Cloud Spotter's Guide' was finally published. It became a surprise international best seller. It was so successful that it is now available in twenty different languages. It has also spawned The Cloud Appreciation Society and other books such as 'Clouds That Look Like Things' and 'The Cloud Collectors Handbook.' If you don't believe me then visit http://cloudappreciationsociety.org

Why am I sharing this with you?

Because I wanted to demonstrate how an author took a simple idea, a passion he had and turned it into a successful book. So a non-fiction book does not have to be about your hobby (although it could be), it doesn't have to be a cookbook (although it could be) and it doesn't have to be a self-help book (although it could be). It could be any subject you know something about and feel you could write about in a manner others will enjoy.

So why not give it a go? Turn your passion into a book and share it with the world.

Lynne Garner

I also write for The Picture Book Den and Authors Electric 

Blatant plug for my distance learning writing courses starting 2nd November:

How To Write A Picture Book And Get Published

Five Picture Books In Five Weeks - Advanced 

How To Write A Hobby Based How-to Book

What's an author event worth? by Nicola Morgan

Many authors have real difficulty deciding what to charge for events. I sympathise. This post is designed to help and to get you thinking. And to encourage us to value what we do.

Some people say they set their fees low so that they will get more events because they need the income. That's fine. I take a different view. I also very much need the income, believe me, but my strategy is to charge a higher fee (but still usually below professional, industry rates for public-speaking), to do fewer events but generate the same income overall. (And to leave time for writing.) So, this isn't necessarily about who can afford to do what - it's about what works for you. Let's not become divisive about this. I want to empower writers to work out what will be good for them, their writing and their careers. We are all individuals. ("Yes, we are all individuals...")

Anyway, setting a fee is tricky. There is one main reason why it's so tricky: if an event is an hour long and we charge £150, for example, that looks like a very generous rate for an hour's work. But let me say this three times:

It is not an hourly rate.
It is not an hourly rate.
It is not an hourly rate.

Any hour-long school event takes far more than the hour. In fact, I worked out that, on average, each individual event takes two days of my time, including the day one which the event happens. I have blogged in more detail about this and how I decide what to charge. Moreover, the events I'm choosing nowadays tend to take much more than two days, because I'm doing bespoke brain and teenage stress events.

And that's why £150 is not enough. And that's why I usually (but not always) charge more. What I charge depends on what the school asks me to do. Usually, I offer options, so that they can find one that suits their budget. For example, here's part of an email I sent a school recently. They had said they wanted "something during the day and an evening talk for adults". Note that this involves travel from Scotland to the south of England, so there's at least one day spent travelling but not earning. And please bear in mind that these prices include the preparation time etc, so even the daily total is not the income for that one day alone.

Option A: One normal author talk during day - £225. Plus an evening talk for teachers/parents - £225. Total £450.
Option B: Two normal author talks during the day - £350. Plus evening talk for teachers/parents - £225. Total £575.
Option C: One writing workshop (up to 2 hours) OR a workshop on the brain/teenage brain/or teenage stress OR a talk to a larger audience on the brain/teenage brain/stress - £350. Plus an evening talk for teachers - £225. Total £575. (By "talk" I mean more like a lecture with Q&A, but not workshop activities.)
Option D: One writing workshop OR one brain talk for large audience with Q&A OR one brain/stress workshop for a smaller group - £350. Plus one normal author talk OR a repetition of the first workshop/talk - £175. Plus an evening talk for teachers - £225. Total £750

Note that one talk during the day is relatively more expensive than two. That's because two talks don't take twice as much time as one. If I'm away doing events, I'd rather do more than one a day, so my fee structure works for that. 

Even if they take Option D, that £750 probably has to cover four days, as the preparation will be major. So, it may sound like a lot, but it isn't when you realise how many hours of work it is.

So, I'm still not quite being paid along the lines of a "Lead Practitioner" (see below), but I charge more for keynote speeches at conferences, and sometimes schools take more expensive options, so it averages out to a fee level I can manage. I wish I could afford to do cheap events, but I just can't - or I'd have to do so many that I'd have no time for writing and, I feel, the quality of my events would suffer.

Last time I did a free event, by the way, was for a charity - one I don't support. I discovered there was an audience of over a thousand, each paying £30-£40. I'd spent three days on that. Never again. Sorry.

Society of Authors rates? There is no such thing. Competition laws prevent the SoA from providing such guidelines any more. See here for the current wording. Any rates that people keep quoting as "SoA rates" were historical and are out-of-date. 

I think this quote from the SoA page is particularly useful: "Authors may wish to base their fee, for either single visits or longer residencies, pro rata, on the annual salary they would expect to earn. See Andrew Bibby’s reckoner, which shows daily rates to equate with different salaries. Authors delivering schools events may be interested that the NASUWT 2013 salaries for Lead Practitioners (excluding London and the Fringe) are between £37,836 - £57,520."

Thus, supposing you equated your "value" with that of a "Lead Practitioner" in the teaching profession and imagined yourself on a (dream!) salary of £40k, which is to the lower end of that scale, you'd need to charge a daily rate of £427 - and, in theory, you should build in the preparation and travelling time, too, so you would need to charge more than £427 for the day of the school visits. Remember, too, that people on salaries have sick pay and pensions built in.

Alan Gibbons, in his Campaign for the Book, mentions £450 a day. Campaigning for books incorporates campaigning for libraries and for authors, because without authors there are no books. He told me that he believes we should all consider the following principles, and I agree:

1) "Authors need a sense of a minimum market fee." (You might note the fact that Scottish Book Trust have, since 2005, paid £150 per talk for their funded events, and this is widely used as a basic minimum in Scotland. So, three talks in one day = £450, plus all expenses. Many authors charge more.)

2) "They are providing a service that merits payment." (Yes, not just because of the time involved, which is far more than the hours in front of the audience, but also because a writer's expertise is built up over many years and is valuable.)

3) "More experienced writers owe it to those starting out to set a principle that an author visit is paid work." 

4) "They should be paid a fee, accommodation and travel if necessary." 

5) "They are free to do pro bono events for specific reasons but the previous four considerations should generally apply." (Of course, every author is entitled to do a free event, perhaps as a loss leader, or because of a personal connection with the school, but the organiser really ought to understand that you are in effect giving up your income, and will likely be the only unpaid adult there.)

And I would add a sixth: "A fee is not an hourly rate."

Yes, I worry very much about stretched school budgets, believe me, but funding an event shouldn't start by underpaying an author, who is almost certainly earning painfully little from writing. Everyone is stretched - schools, parents, but authors, too. Yes, I worry that some schools will feel they can't afford an author visit but that has always been the case, I'm afraid, and there are creative ways to fund things. The value of a good event by a talented author/illustrator/speaker is enormous and long-lasting, going way beyond what happens on the day. I worry about schools that don't recognise that, focusing only on that hour and thinking that the hour cost them £150 (or whatever).

But I worry more about us selling ourselves short, suffering because we are uncomfortable about charging what we are worth. I've done it myself - I know how hard it is not to, when we want to say yes, we need the work, we enjoy the events and we like the school which is inviting us. I worry when an author tells me that by the time she got home from a long distance event her fee had been consumed by the travel and subsistence costs because she didn't feel able to charge expenses. I worry about authors being the lowest paid adult at the event. I worry about festivals, such as Cheltenham, asking authors if they'd like to donate their fee back, when they haven't asked the electricians, sound engineers, publicity people, printers, booksellers etc to do the same. I worry about people thinking authors are not worth being paid fairly. I worry about authors not thinking authors are worth being paid fairly.

I worry that if we don't value ourselves, no one else will.