Tuesday 30 June 2015

I don’t know much about art, but… Lari Don

I’m a writer because I love telling stories with words. And those are two of the few things I’m particularly experienced or skilled at. Stories. Words.

But as a writer, I’m frequently asked to do things that I’m not really qualified to do.

In the box of things I’m not qualified to do, I would include moving heavy furniture to make the best space for an author event, and judging fancy dress competitions on World Book Day. But one thing that I definitely don’t feel qualified to do, yet I’m regularly expected to do (three times in the last month, for example) is comment on the work of visual artists.

Sketches for the Tale of Tam Linn, by Philip Longson 
(My comments were limited to ‘ooooh, isn’t that lovely’ for most of this book!)
As a writer of picture books and a writer of collections of myths, legends and fairy tales, I’m often sent roughs, layouts and proofs of books, and asked for my comments on the illustrations. And I know that the editor doesn’t just want me to say ‘oooh, isn’t that lovely’ (though it usually is!) They want something a bit more … professional.

But at school, I was never taught to look at art, to discuss it, to assess it. I was taught to draw still lifes of teapots and make pottery owls. Now I’m asked for comments on the art of proper professional artists. And my comments might (or might not!) affect the final look of the book.

I have no qualifications or experience to prepare me for this responsibility. Yet, 16 of my 22 books so far have illustrations, even my 6 novels have cover art, and I’ve been consulted, to some extent or another, on every single one of them.

Why? Why ask the writer about the pictures? Initially I thought it was because the publishers wanted me to be happy with the pictures. (!) Lately I’ve realised that it’s probably because, as the writer, I know the story better than anyone.

Striking early illustration from Girls Godddesses and Giants
by Francesca Greenwood, with illegible scribble by me…
I’ve realised that the comments that are most useful aren’t the ‘oooh, I like that’, or ‘oh dear, I don’t like that’ but specific comments actually related to the story. Pointing out that there are three rabbits in the picture when there are only two rabbits in the text, or the fish looks more like an goldfish than a salmon, etc. Not opinions, but facts. Not whether I like it, but whether the illustration works for and with the story.

So perhaps, as the person who created the story, I am qualified to comment on the pictures after all!

And I should say loud and clear that I am always, without exception, bowled over by how illustrations add to the story, and bring it to life. I’ve been privileged to have words of mine appear on pages beside pictures by wonderful artists. And my comments almost always do start with a deeply unhelpful but entirely heartfelt ‘oooh, isn’t that lovely…’

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 22 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers.

Lari’s website
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Monday 29 June 2015

A small grey pigeon - John Dougherty

You may have read this ABBA piece by the most excellent CJ Busby of this parish. In case you’re the sort of reader who can’t be doing with clicking links, it’s the one with the open letter to the education secretary about the way that children are taught to consciously overcomplicate their writing, cramming it with superfluous adjectives and unwieldy subordinate clauses, in order to… er… well, I’m not quite sure, actually. I imagine it’s in order to show that Somebody is Doing Something.

The Guardian picked up on this, interviewing both CJ and me for this article. You’re going to have to click that link yourself, I’m afraid.

I mention this, because the very day that Guardian article appeared, my 14-year old son came home from school and told me that his English teacher had asked him to amend a description in a piece of writing because the vocabulary used wasn’t ‘advanced’ enough. The description was:

“A small, grey pigeon”.

My son spent several minutes trying to work out how to change the word ‘small’ and the word ‘grey’ to make them more “advanced”. “I could say it’s minuscule,” he said; “but it’s not minuscule. It’s just small.” I suggested he ask his mother, who appears to know more names for colours than Dulux and Farrow & Ball put together, for alternatives for grey, or try something like ‘marl’ or ‘slate’.

In the end, rather than change the description, he changed that whole section of the passage. He made the bird much more significant; it became a strutting monarch in an iridescent grey robe, demanding discarded chips from its subjects. It was quite a neat solution to a wholly unnecessary problem, I thought. 

 Image courtesy of digidreamgrafix
 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
I say “wholly unnecessary” because to demand the original description be reframed in more ‘advanced’ vocabulary completely missed the point of the description, as far as I could see. The small, grey pigeon was a powerful image exactly because of its commonplace simplicity. To use more flowery language - to turn it, for instance, into a bijou, gunmetal pigeon, or a compact, cloud-coloured pigeon -  would have robbed it of its ordinariness, turned it into something remarkable. The vocabulary might have been more “advanced”, but the writing, frankly, would have been worse, and the description less accurate. As my son put it, in a burst of frustration before settling down to the task:


“It’s just a small, grey pigeon.”
___________________________________________________________________








John's latest book, Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Bees of Stupidity, illustrated by David Tazzyman and published by OUP, will be published on July 2nd.
















In the meantime, you can read these.

Sunday 28 June 2015

Fear and Wondering - Clémentine Beauvais

Let me introduce you to the disturbing awesomeness of Wonder Ponder. Wonder Ponder is a small publishing imprint, founded by Anglo-Spanish writer Ellen Duthie, which produces desks of philosophical cards for children. On one side of each card, there’s a picture, on the other, a number of philosophical questions to be asked to the child about the picture. Simple. The first deck of cards is called Cruelty Bites (Mundo Cruel); the second, I, Person (Yo, Persona).

Look at how great these cards are:


Another one features a family eating cat soup. Actually, that’s even the one that’s the cover image for the box of cards:





 On the other side of the cards, the questions are thought-provoking whether one is a child or an adult. Is it less bad to kill an ant than another animal? Is it never OK to force someone to do something they don’t want to do? As with many works of philosophy for children, those are time-old, ageless questions, meant to be discussed or debated but not solved. They are not, in themselves, exceptionally original questions for this purpose, though they are certainly picked well and phrased crisply.

But Wonder Ponder is different, in its daringness, to other works I’ve seen of philosophy for children. The graphic style, to start with. The pictures are decidedly dark, hectic, perturbing. Daniela Martagon’s visual identity is that of a cheeky, misbehaving, imaginative child, who loves drawing scenes of war and desolation, squashing ants with a pen, and retorting ‘why not?’ to those who ask ‘why are you so cruel?’.

The provocativeness is, I think, brilliant. Of course, not everyone agrees, and unsurprisingly Wonder Ponder have received some criticism for the overt violence of some of the scenes. They’ve responded with typical wit:

More interesting than the straightforward haters, though, are the people who, in order to make sense of these merciless cards, have suggested that they in fact promote kind and positive messages: Wonder Ponder are pro-animal rights, aren’t they? They suggest ways of becoming nicer to one another, don’t they?

No, has been Duthie’s categorical reply. In a blog post, (which also contains some close-ups of other cards, and a video) she noted with palpable amusement that many people have tried to reclaim Wonder Ponder cards for their own ideological agendas - but she immediately specified that “we don't have contents we wish to insert in the reader, nor specific "right" values to transmit to them.” All they want is for the adult mediator “to have the guts not to indoctrinate”.

Duthie also states, again and again, that no one from Wonder Ponder will ever provide answers or guidelines for reflection to the adult mediators. To play the game, adults must lay their cards on the table, too; no bluffing allowed, no steering the child into specific perspectives or opinions planned in advance.

But surely, people enquired, Wonder Ponder could at least do a box showing nice things, instead of all this distasteful cruelty? Another no from Duthie, in another remarkably smart blog post entitled ‘Why we’d never do a box on “kindness” or accepting diversity’.

Duthie’s blog post is one of these calm, matter-of-fact pieces of writing whose radical nature only truly sinks in on the second or third rereading. Here’s a bit for those of you who are too tired to click on the link:

“The children's literature market is full of positive models of kindness, generosity and tolerance. Children are fed these messages non-stop: be good, be accepting of others, share.
To understand to what extent children are bombarded with these commandments and messages, check out a 6-7 year old's comment on the scene below: 

-Is it cruel?
-Yes.
-Why?
-Because he's not sharing it with the baby lions.”



What do you think of Duthie's words? agree? disagree? what do you think this example tells us? that the child is wrong? or right? that society is wrong?

I have a lot of time for didactic, political, committed literature for children - it was my PhD topic, and I enjoyed much of the primary material. And I tend to distrust educational enterprises that insist too much on the freedom they supposedly leave the child. I much prefer an openly committed book with a clear thesis to a benevolently liberal one that doesn’t acknowledge that it has a thesis. 

But in the case of Wonder Ponder, I’m completely on board. Perhaps it’s because of the iconoclastic, deliciously naughty feel of it. Perhaps it's because I like Duthie's coherent, plucky position, displayed both in the cards and in the extra-textual material - online, in her promotion plan, etc. Perhaps it's because I'm always in awe of people taking risks to launch cultural and educational projects like these, especially when they're sure to make at least a few people squirmish. But also more simply perhaps because it makes me want to sit down with some kids, and adults, and play the game with them.

Note: A big thank you to Celia, who got me my first Wonder Ponder box
_____________________________________

Clementine Beauvais writes in French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia. 

Saturday 27 June 2015

Where will you go Today? Lynn Huggins-Cooper

I love being an author - but I love being a publisher nearly as much! I have been published for over eighteen years, and I recently started my own small publishing company, The Forest House Press. It is a small concern, but sits snugly in its little niche, producing educational, craft and self help books. This week, we had a fantastic meeting with the Just for Women centre. The centre stands in an old mining town that has suffered terribly from the pit closures in the 1980s, and has never recovered. Yet the women who go to the centre to craft, and share their lives, have created a vibrant, wonderful community. The women are telling their stories and sharing their crafts - and we are creating a book from their writing.



The central idea of the book is how therapeutic crafts can be. I am a crafter as well as an author, and I understand this feeling. I write craft books, as well as many other types of book, and I get to play with lots of beautiful materials in the course of writing my patterns and instructions. Today, I went to Woolfest in Cumbria, and played with everything from sari silk to soft angora wool (and angora rabbits). The materials were beautifully inspiring, which is a great thing as I am in the middle of writing a book about making textile faeries, called Faerierealms.


For me, though, as therapeutic as crafts are, reading (and writing) are just as good. Books take me out of myself, whether I am reading them or writing them. When I read a novel, I drift from my world into a new one. It's like taking a holiday without leaving home. Where will you go today?





Friday 26 June 2015

Under Cover by Julie Sykes


In the good old days if you’d asked me what I was reading I would give you the title of my current book. Ask me the author and I’d know that, too. Ask me the publisher and you’d have yourself a hat trick.

   
Fast forward to now. Ask me the title of the book I’m currently reading and I would have to think about it. I might remember eventually. Then again, I might not. I would struggle to tell you the author and as for the publisher. No chance.

So what’s changed, apart from my age - and seriously, I’m not anywhere near old enough to start blaming that for a poor memory.

Well, I think it’s the way I’m reading. In the good old days I bought books. Lots of them. My guilty pleasure was to have a stack of books, lying horizontally on the shelf, all waiting to be read.


These days I read on a Kindle. It’s SO transportable. When I go on a journey I can take as many books as I like and all in the one handbag. It’s much easier to buy books. I finish one and can purchase and download the next, immediately. And (I’m VERY ashamed to admit to this – probably a post for another blog!) e-books are cheap.

And here lies the problem with my poor memory. When you put a book down the cover is there, waving. Goodbye. It winks each time you pass it. Remember me? We were having such fun together. When are you coming back? It shouts LOUDLY at you when you finally pick it up again. Yay! Knew you couldn’t resist me.

The author’s name plays along. On the cover, nudging you gently. Whispering in your ear. My name’s…..Can we be friends?

The publisher’s name is there, too, a little more discrete, often on the spine, but still a presence. Ahem, excuse me for butting in, but did you know that The Little Fox Paw Printing Press brought you this story?

There are many excellent things about the e-reader, but trust me, the cover isn’t one. For a start, unless you read on a tablet or something similar, the cover is grey. It’s also very shy. You see it once, at the start, and sometimes not even then if the book automatically opens on the first page.

So here’s a challenge to any clever inventors or techie types out there. Design a cover for an e-reader that displays the book currently being read and in colour. Can it be done? Is there a market for it? What do you think?

ps My current reading book is a real one. Bits of its lovely cover are shown here in the text. If you haven’t guessed by now, then it’s I’ll give you the Sun by Jandy Nelson, published in the UK by Walker Books.

I knew all that without having to think about it!








Thursday 25 June 2015

Deadlines in the Rear View Mirror by Tamsyn Murray

"I love deadlines," said Douglas Adams. "I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

This has been my mantra this year. Well, one of them anyway. It's been a difficult year, personally, although excellent on a professional front. I've got a few books out and lots of more to write. I'm giving up my day job next week, which has been a dream and a goal for seven years. The trouble is that the personal stuff gets tangled with the professional and it's impossible to unravel the two. For me, on a tight writing schedule as well as juggling two jobs and a three year old, that's meant there've been more whooshing sounds than I'd like. And the problem is that deadlines love to whoosh: once one does it, they all get in on the fun and before you know it, there's more whoosh than a rave in an ecstasy factory. Even this blog post is late.

My editors have been fabulous, despite having little or no wiggle room in their schedules. And I know books sometimes are tricksy, writhing creatures that defy all your efforts to pin them down: they're often delivered late. The trouble is that I like to consider myself a professional and I hate failing to do a job by the agreed date, no matter what the circumstances. I've had to rely on the kindness of my publishers, admit that there's a problem and deal with the feelings of failure that has engendered, on top of everything else I've been going through. Grief is a bugger too; just when you think you've got it licked and you're back on track, it twists its sly fingers into your heart again and you realise it never really left.

I think it's important to acknowledge that writing isn't always easy. There's a tendency to pretend everything is fine, everything is SHINY and AMAZING when it might not be. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining in any way - I know I am very lucky to have deadlines and normally I thrive on them. I'm just looking forward to a time when I see them in my rear view mirror and can put my foot down before they whoosh by.

Wednesday 24 June 2015

Riding the wave of procrastination - Liz Kessler

My actual job at this moment is to write a book. It will be my second YA novel. It is due with my editor in September. I am loving writing it. But because I am cursed with The Procrastinatory Mind Of The Writer, my days involve a LOT, LOT more than actual writing of this book.

And by the way, The Procrastinatory Mind Of The Writer is an actual thing. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself – why are you here? What are you REALLY meant to be doing whilst you are instead reading this? Huh?

Exactly.

Oh, and before you accuse me of having written about this before. Well, yes. Maybe I have. Twice. But it’s a big subject and there’s a lot to say – so I’m saying it again.

My daily work target is to write 1,500 words. In theory, I do NOTHING until I have done at least half of this. No internet, no walking the dog, no phoning my mum. Nothing.

Here’s what I did yesterday before writing a word of my novel. I think the first group of activities count as work.
  • Watched the live feed of the Carnegie Medal award. (It’s about writers.)
  • Looked up methods of exorcising ghosts. (Research for current book.)
  • Made about seven cups of tea. (Fuel?)
  • Answered some questions for a friend’s article in The Author. (A magazine for writers.)
  • Looked up articles about gender and language to prepare for a Radio Three programme I’m going to be on this week. (Raising profile.)
  • Replied to many emails. (Mostly work.)

The next few activities might not be quite so easily classified as work:
  • Made arrangements for meeting up with my mum next week.
  • Ditto for meeting up with sister.
  • Started a long thread on Facebook about a splinter in my toe.
  • Removed said splinter with the help of partner, tweezers, needle and iPhone torch.
Yay!
  • Frightened myself silly over various friends’ splinter-related horror stories.
  • Ordered a birthday present for partner.
  • Generally chatted with friends on Facebook.
  • And Twitter.
  • And maybe posted a photo on Instagram.
  • Perhaps had a few goes of a ridiculously addictive game called 'Dots'. (Don't look it up. Don't do it. Take it from me: you will lose days of your life to it.)
  • Looked out at the sea and wondered about going surfing. 
  • Ate fridge cake.

At some point, meandering through all of this like a river determined to reach its destination despite looking very much like a half-hearted trickle in places, the words got written. They got written! All 1,500 of them.

There's a voice inside me somewhere, shouting: ‘But this isn’t how I want to work!!!!!’ It’s disjointed, it’s messy, it’s lacking in solid focus, it’s undisciplined.

But then there’s another voice. This one is coming from the side of me that has learned about mindfulness techniques where you accept what ‘is’ rather than battle against it. And it’s the side that remembers many conversations with my lovely friend Jen who introduced me to the idea that the process of writing a book has seasons.

This voice says: look, the book is getting written. It’s happening. You’re on schedule. So why sweat it? Yes, you could switch off the internet a bit more. Yes, you could write maybe a little more than one sentence at a time before distracting yourself with yet another activity that is not writing the book. But maybe all of these things are what you need to do, while the story brews in the background.

I’m liking this voice. 

And in fact, I only have to look outside my window for confirmation that it might be right. Watching people surf – or being on the waves myself – is a good example of how this whole thing works. See, there is a lot more to surfing than the moment when you ride a wave. You have to hoik yourself into your wetsuit, get your board, go down to the beach, do a few stretches, run down to the water, paddle out to the breaking waves, sit on your board and wait, then paddle like crazy and then, THEN, you get maybe ten seconds – at most – of that exhilarating feeling of riding the wave. That moment is a fraction of the whole experience.

So perhaps that is how it is with writing, too. All the other activities are the warm-ups and preparation. The writing – the bit that does in fact make my heart sing – is the moment of riding the wave. 

Once I accept this fact, I can already start to relax. This doesn’t mean I can give myself permission to faff for almost the entire day. The background work needs to feel more focussed, I admit, and genuinely needs to be part of supporting the writing process in one way or another. But there’s no point in thinking that I can just jump out of bed and onto a wave. It simply doesn’t work like that for me. 

I’ve often told beginner writers that they need to learn what their own process is and be happy with it. So I need to do the same.

On which note, I am off to catch a metaphorical wave.

But I might just do one or two more metaphorical stretching exercises first.



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Tuesday 23 June 2015

Things I used to think about publishing - Jess Vallance

Next week my first book, Birdy, will be published. 

It’s been almost exactly a year since I signed my contract and nearly two years since I started submitting to agents. There’s still a LOT I don’t know about publishing but there are some things I know now that I didn’t know two years ago, and so definitely some of my assumptions have shifted. 

These are the main ones that come to mind:

I used to think: Time, as a concept, is basically the same for all of us on this planet.

Now I think: Publishing exists in its own special time dimension (along with conveyancing).

Publishing is S L O W.

There’s a LOT of waiting. I’ve written whole books while waiting for a reply to one email. (You can see my own artistic interpretation of this waiting here).

It doesn’t help that the other area I work in is digital media where things bounce along quite quickly. Right now for example, in publishing, I’m in the later stages of a project due to be released in 12 months. Meanwhile, in digital media, I’m just finalising a project that’s due out in 12 minutes.

I’m getting used to this now though. It’s not any one publisher, not any one person. It’s just how it is.  

I used to think: Publishers will shut down any factual inaccuracies in my book pretty quickly.

Now I think: I can check my facts now or I can check my facts later but I will have to check them.

Sometimes when I’m writing, I come to small details where I need to check the facts. I’m not writing heavily researched historical fiction or sci fi or anything like that, so the kinds of things I’m talking about are more like bits of police procedure or the flammability of a specific material. (That’s a little insight into Birdy there, by the way.)

Before, whenever these areas came up, I assumed that if I’d got anything wrong, somewhere in the publishing process, someone would pick me up on it. 

Of course the reality is that editors do not carry around in their heads an in-depth knowledge of every imaginable subject. They might question something that doesn’t sound quite right, but ultimately, I’m writing it so getting the facts right is my responsibility.  

I used to think: Someone will tell me to change my story – and how to change it.

Now I think: There’s advice and there are questions but it’s still my story.

I think I used to think that an editor would edit my book – as in, they'd take it away and change it into what they wanted it to be. Or at least, they would tell me quite specifically what to edit – what to remove, what to add in, where the story should go. But actually the editing process isn’t really like that. 

Questions are asked and suggestions are made and usually these are good questions and good suggestions, so I take them on board and make changes accordingly. But at no point has anyone ever specifically said that I must change something (even the swearing, which I’d assumed would be whipped out straight away). 

There have been times when I’ve said I’d rather leave something as it is, and so far, this doesn’t seem to have been a problem. All in all, I feel quite happy that the book is still mine, and still exactly as I’d want it.

I used to think: “Publishing” likes/doesn’t like/wants/thinks…

Now I think: There isn’t really any “publishing”, just people who work in publishing.

When you’re on the outside of something it’s easy to think of everyone on the inside as one group, with shared knowledge and opinions and personalities. Kind of like this:



Now I still feel more on the outside than the inside, but this feeling has change a bit now, so it’s more like:



I used to think: “All best“ is a weird way to sign off an email.

Now I think: I still think this to be honest, but it doesn’t stop me using it with gusto.

I swear I’d never even heard of ‘all best’ as an acceptable email sign-off before I started querying agents and they all included it in their replies, but it’s much better than my usual ‘thanks’ so now I drop it in all over the place.

I put it in a work email the other day and my colleague (and friend) replied:

“All best? You what, mate? Is that like ‘All THE best’ or what?”

Well, I thought. Quite.

Web: www.jessvallance.com
Twitter: @jessvallance1

Monday 22 June 2015

300 Words to Unputdownable - Leila Rasheed

(Here's an unexpected treat; for unforeseen reasons, today's slot was going spare - so I decided to have a rootle through the archives and find a post to revisit. This, by Leila Rasheed, formed part of the ABBA Online Literary Festival in 2011. It has some very helpful advice concerning beginnings...)

Here’s the thing: it isn’t that hard to get an editor or an agent to read your unsolicited submission. What’s hard is getting them to read beyond the first paragraph. Lack of time and the sheer number of manuscripts they receive mean that they will reject a submission as soon as it loses their attention.

Your challenge as a writer is to grab that attention and hold it. You have to make them think: “I must read on.”  - the sooner, the better. My theory is that you can do it in under 300 words. Sound impossible? Read on.

I learned that my first book, Chips Beans and Limousines, was one of only two unsolicited submissions that had been published, out of 5000 unsolicited manuscripts received in the five years the list had been running. The numbers made my mind boggle a bit, so I went back to the book to see what might have worked in this case that didn’t in 99.06% of others.


The first line is:

Dear new Diary,

Have I got your attention yet? Probably not. It’s slightly interesting that it is a diary because you know you’re going to get the character’s unedited thoughts – but also not exactly original. Diaries can be deadly dull, too.

The second line is:

I have a surprise for you.

When I read my book to a class of 9 – 10 year olds, you can feel their attention switch on at this line. They want to know what the surprise is. On a subtler level, they want to know why this writer is talking to her diary as if it is a real person.

So there you go – it is possible to get the readers’ attention in as little as two sentences. And it doesn’t even require a startling event as in the first line of Iain Banks’ Crow Road:

It was the day my grandmother exploded.  

Of course having one of those is great – but then you have to live up to it. What you don’t want is for your first line to be the best line in the book, so the rest of the reading is a progressively more disappointing experience. You want it to tease, to promise, to set the scene, to lay out the red carpet. Like this:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

When I first opened Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, I stopped right there and read it again, aloud, noticing for the first time ever how the name Lo-li-ta does exactly what he says on the palate. I was hooked – not by plot, for no event has been mentioned - but by the promise of rich, original language that re-shapes the world for me.

I am Sam. Sam I am.

Shorter but equally irresistible!

But a good first line is not enough. You have to deliver on your promises; show that your characters are people we don’t want to walk away from, stir up a language soup that tastes so good the reader wants more and more and more.

220 words into Chips, Beans and Limousines, the surprise for the diary turns out to be:

You never thought you would belong to a celebrity, did you? (The whole first page can be read at: http://tinyurl.com/5tp7fwg)

As it happens, that isn’t the-truth-the-whole-truth-and-nothing-but it pays off  the debt to the reader created by the original promise of a surprise, and also builds on it to promise more exciting things to come. The reader is probably interested to find out what kind of things a child celebrity gets up to and confides to her diary (and why she persists in talking to that diary as if it was her best friend). And so they read on.

Over the time that I was composing this blog post, I was also re-reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. These are the first 276 words of that classic, first published in 1865:


Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation? Notice how the writer builds his character. She is a natural, rebellious, realistic little girl who gets bored by the same things his readers do. She is someone they would want to play with, someone we would want to spend a book with. He neatly mirrors (pun intended) the reader’s own feelings – who doesn’t remember checking through a book to find the illustrations before starting to read? – and reassures them that this author understands the kind of book they want. So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy- chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.  The sudden physical movement ups the pace. We sit up and take notice just as Alice does. There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so verymuch out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, `Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' This is the most overt attention-grabber, the ‘Why? How? What next?’ moment for the reader – but charater and voice have been working their subtle attention-getting magic even before now.  (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat- pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity,wouldn’t the reader too be burning with curiosity? she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.  At this point  I would defy any child to put the book down. How is she to get out and what on earth is down there?
Obviously, C.L. Dodgson was a genius and I’m not. But I do think it interesting that our first passages, though so very different and separated by nearly 150 years, both make a clear play for the reader’s attention well within 300 words. It makes me think there must be some kind of universal rule there. And I think that practicing getting those first 300 words right can only help set high standards for the rest of your novel.


My advice
· Dare to be bold – but remember that you have to pay your debts to the reader. Only blow your grandmother up if you are absolutely certain that you can live up to it.
· Alternatively, challenge yourself. Blow your elderly relative sky high in the first line and set yourself the task of constantly being even more interesting than that in the rest of the book.
· Think about creating an impression with voice rather than event.
· Don’t be afraid of subtlety. A seductive glance can make more of an impression than streaking.
· Remember to build pace and tension, don’t just pile incident on incident.
· Be true to your whole story. It’s not about showing all your cards at once, it’s about making a good entrance.


Sunday 21 June 2015

The launch of 'The Fairiest Fairy' - Anne Booth

This month I have had so much fun launching 'The Fairiest Fairy', my first picture book. The amazing illustrator is Rosalind Beardshaw and she has created such a gorgeous world for Betty, my muddled, messy fairy with a kind heart.


Now, Rosalind and I could not get together for the launch, so I had to try to recreate this gorgeous world with the use of props.

First of all, a fairy needs a dress and wings. I went to a local fancy dress shop and had a scary moment getting stuck in the changing rooms in a Red Queen dress which was a bit too small for me and not quite the right look for a fairy story teller. My idea to hire that and add some wings was not going to work. That was a bit disheartening and I left feeling the shop, finally out of the dress and back in my own clothes, feeling rather flustered.

However, on my way back to the bus stop I passed an AMAZING shop which sold these:







HUGE flowers so just right for scale, and a rainbow coloured umbrella - flowery headbands - and wings!


Which I wore: (NB lovely biscuit wands my daughter made and which were very much enjoyed by young customers)




And spare wings which some gorgeous fairy people wore:












These last weeks I have sung umpteen times (to the tune of 'The children on the bus...' ) 'The fairies at the school scatter dewdrops like this, wake the flowers like this, paint the rainbows like this…' and we have all waved rainbow scarves.

I also had a singing blackbird toy and a toy rabbit but the last time I saw them was at the summer fete and they weren't in my props bag at home when I looked. Someone very cleverly pointed out on twitter that it was like the plot line of Shirley Hughes' 'Dogger' - although I replied that I don't remember that wonderful story being about a middle-aged writer losing her props. I REALLY hope I find that little rabbit and bird soon…or that if they got sold by mistake that someone nice bought them...

Basically, I have had a lovely time. I am so grateful to Rosalind for her wonderful illustrations - and I have loved seeing the children's faces as I have read the book out. I have also loved talking to the children and hearing their reactions too. I have read out 'The Fairiest Fairy' at playgroups, a school and a school fete - to about a hundred children since the 4th June. One little reception class boy said his favourite bit was when Betty was crying. I was a little taken aback but when I said 'is that because you know how it is to feel sad?' he nodded his head very seriously. I found that very touching. They all loved the happy ending and I have found this whole experience so rewarding. Basically, writing children's books is about writing books for children - and  seeing my story come to life illustrated by an amazing artist,  and seeing 2,3, 4 and 5 year old children fall in love with Rosalind's depiction of my characters,  has been the best fun in the world!