Monday 30 November 2015

Meeting my ideal reader and creating my own slushometer - Lari Don

I think I just met the reader I write books for. It was Book Week Scotland last week, so I was doing events in schools, libraries and community centres every day. Which was lovely, but also a bit of a blur. However, I do remember one thing.

I met a reader, who might be the reader I’ve been writing for all this time.

I don’t just want ONE reader, obviously. The more, the merrier.

But I suspect most writers have a particular reader in mind when they’re writing, someone they hope will be excited at that bit, upset at that bit, and desperate to read on when you stop the chapter... just... there...

I’m probably my own ideal reader, to some extent: as I write, I try to recreate the joy I found in books when I was 10. I write for my own kids too. Even though they’re teenagers now, the weekend or holiday when I read an early draft of a novel to them, to get their first reactions, is still when the story comes to life. I write for all the classes I meet, and their gasps and silences when I read (if it goes well!) And I write for all the kids who send me detailed questions about character names and sequels.

But I met a reader last week, who is so exactly the person I have in mind when I write, especially when I write retellings of old myths and fairy-tales, that meeting her became the highlight of my whole Book Week Scotland...

I was testing out a new telling of a legend with the Primary 5s at a local school, with a class who’ve recently read Serpents & Werewolves, my most recent myth collection, and are about to start reading the first of my Fabled Beast novels.

As I got to the end of the legend, in which a female knight saves a young man who’d been kidnapped by an enchanter, then they fly off into the future on the back of a hippogriff, the teacher asked one of the girls sitting cross-legged on the carpet, “Was that ending too slushy for you?”

The girl thought for a moment, then shook her head. The teacher explained to me: “Julianne is not a fan of romance. She doesn’t like soppy endings.”

“I don’t either,” I said. And I said that I’d written a whole book of heroine stories, where as a point of principle not one story ended with a pretty princess marrying a heroic young man. Instead the happy endings were about escape, or freedom, or saving your family, or defeating your own monster, rather than romance or weddings.

It turned out that Julianne (which is not her real name. Her full name is so fantastic that it sounds like a pen-name of a writer trying a new genre, or the heroine of a really successful YA trilogy...) Julianne had read that collection, Girls Goddesses & Giants, and had thoroughly approved of its lack of slushy happy endings.

Julianne also mentioned that she never leaves the house without a book. She takes them on buses and out shopping, in case she gets a moment to read. (This probably makes her quite a few writers’ ideal reader!)

So I decided then and there, that Julianne would become my slushometer. That when I was writing, I would imagine her sitting in front of me, with her high expectations of stories about more than whether two characters will get together, and I would imagine her disappointment if I let my own standards slip.

I asked her if it was ok for her to be my imaginary slushometer, and she agreed. Then I read out the ending of another story I was working on, because I had wondered if it was skating a bit close to the edge of my own no-slush principles. But Julianne smiled, and nodded. She approved. The ending passed the slushometer test!

Of course, Julianne will grow up. She won’t be a P5 forever, and who knows what she’ll be looking for in the endings of stories in a few years’ time. But in my head, she’ll still be my slushometer - I’ll still be writing for her sitting cross-legged on that carpet in that Edinburgh primary school, still hoping to satisfy her desire for endings that give girls (and boys) more to aim for in their lives than royal weddings. It’s nice to know who I’m writing for.

So, now that I know, I’d better get on and write for her, and for anyone else who wants a non-slushy adventure...


Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 

Sunday 29 November 2015

A view from the other side - John Dougherty

The lovely Jo Cotterill
Whoops! It's the 29th and I should have posted first thing this morning!!! Sorry. My life is chaotic at the best of times; at the moment I'm as scatty as anything.

It's at times like this I'm glad I have friends who are more organised and together than I am. And one of the very best of those is the lovely Jo Cotterill, whose powers of togetherness quite frankly astonish me at times.

One of the reasons I'm particularly glad of this right now is that some months ago Jo and I were invited to be guest programmers for the Chipping Norton Literary Festival, or ChipLitFest as it's affectionately known. It's been an interesting process, largely involving me going, "Er... where are we on things again?" and Jo sighing and opening her folder and telling me exactly where we are on things and what additional things we need to be doing.

But one of the most interesting aspects of the whole things has been seeing the publishing industry from a different angle. I'd always imagined the process of booking an author for a literary festival to be something like this:

EMAILS:
LITERARY FESTIVAL BOOKING PERSON: Hello! We'd like to book some authors for our literary festival, please!
PUBLICITY PERSON AT PUBLISHING HOUSE: Certainly! Here is a long list of suitable authors, none of whom is John Dougherty!
LFBP: Thanks!

Instead of which, it's been more like this:
EMAILS:
LFBP [in this case, me or Jo]: Hello! We'd like to book some authors for our literary festival, please!
Jo & I talk about specific authors we might like to book>
LFBP: Hello! Further to our last email, we've decided we'd like to invite the fabulous Author X to our festival. Are they free?

LFBP: Er... Hello! Did you get our email about Author X?
PPAPH: Oh - sorry. The person who deals with Author X was on holiday. They're back now. I'm sure they'll be in touch soon.
LFBP: Oh, good.

PPAPH: Sorry! Been busy. I'll ask Author X if she's free.


PHONE CALL:
LFBP 1: You know, I do have Author X's email address...
LFBP 2: Do you want to just contact her? We have tried the proper channels...

EMAILS:
LFBP: Hello! Has PPAPH asked you about  appearing at our festival?
AUTHOR X: Er... no.
LFBP: Well, would you like to?
AX: Yes! Yes, oh god, yes!!!
LFBP:

I'm not sure why this is, but I suspect in part it's got to do with publishing houses publishing more books with fewer staff. Anyway, if there's a lesson in here, it's probably that more than ever, professional writers need to take as much responsibility as they can for their own promotion. But also, perhaps, that writers and publicists both need to work together and keep channels of communication open. Oh, and that there may be established ways of doing things in the industry, but there are no 'right' ways.

Photo by Jemima Cotterill
 PS Jo and I were interviewed for the ChipLitFest website by the festival's own junior reporter, the fabulous Pheebs. You can read the interview here.











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John's Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face series, illustrated by David Tazzyman, is published by OUP - who will also be publishing Jo Cotterill's & Cathy Brett's Electrigirl in the spring.


Saturday 28 November 2015

Publishing is not a charity - Clémentine Beauvais

On November 14th, at the IBBY UK conference which took place at Roehampton University (see reports there), Nicky Singer gave a fantastic, passionate, moving talk about her struggle to get a 'quiet book', as she called it, published in the UK - a struggle which eventually led her to crowdfund her work, which worked beyond all expectations, ending up with Island, a novel with a cover designed by Chris Riddell.
Lest you should think that this was a fairy-taleish sort of talk, Nicky sternly reminded the audience at the end: "Crowdfunding is not a long-term solution. It worked this time but I won't be able to do it each time I want to publish a not-easily-marketable book. And it ate up nine months of my life. Nine months when I had to teach myself how to raise money, promote the book, reach out to people. I don't want to spend nine months of my life doing that; I'm a writer - if I don't write, I die."

She could barely finish her sentence as she was choking back tears - and then she actually started crying. Her emotion was extremely contagious, and I don't think I was the only one in the audience who welled up. It was extremely poignant, and indeed it should be extremely poignant, to hear about an enthusiastic, sensitive, committed writer having so much difficulty getting a good book out. The kind of book that many children will cherish and reread: the kind of book that was written with passion and talent. But the kind that isn't franchisable, and would not have sold in the tens of thousands.

The kind of book we're constantly told by the publishing industry is funded by the big bestsellers. You've heard this as much as I have. "We need the big bestsellers because they fund the quiet books". Thanks be to the big bestsellers! Glory be to thee, benevolent worldwide franchise! It's thanks to them that they exist, those authors whose books do not sell in the hundreds of thousands. They are constantly reminded that they're indebted to those big franchises.

But where are all these quiet/ politically committed/ socially aware/ aesthetically daring books that we are told get funded so generously by the big bestsellers? sure, there ARE some, but I'm not the only one who doesn't think there's enough of them. Julia Eccleshare, in an equally passionate talk at the International Research Society for Children's Literature conference in August, denounced the sameyness, indeed the copycattiness of much of children's literature production in the UK, and deplored the domination of a tiny number of authors, genres and types of books. And every single author I've talked to about this has had a similar experience: a manuscript or proposal rejected because it was too quiet, or too niche, or too different. Why is it so difficult for Nicky, in a world of publishing bountifully funded by bestsellers, to publish her book with a traditional publisher?

David Maybury, in his talk that same day, gave us a few clues: no book will be a bestseller if you don't invest at least £30,000 in its promotion. These days, he added (I think it was him, but I may be wrong), you can more or less buy your way into bestseller lists. And we authors all know, though we don't mention it very often in public, that publishers split books into two groups: those that will become bestsellers, and those that won't. Those that will are the ones for which there is fertile ground: they might be a bit like another recent bestseller, or very intense/ adventurous, or likely to be turned into a film, etc. They're 'hot' books. And they put their money and promotional push where the 'hot' book is. Some books, but very few, are surprise bestsellers. 

Well, in this context, it's not exactly shocking that bestsellers should 'fund' the quiet books. It's only fair, seeing as they'd had a head start the whole time.  No?

But perhaps that's not the right way to look at it. Perhaps those 'hot' books are just more funded and more pushed because that's what a majority of people want, so that's what brings in money. And UK/US publishers are very relaxed with the idea that publishing is mostly about the money. That's another oft-repeated mantra of publishing: 'Publishing isn't a charity'. We hear this over and over again. So quiet books which don't make money shouldn't actually expect to be funded, even by bestsellers. This is a business. Why would we make books that we know will not sell?

Because we will have made them. I think we really, really need to adopt a different attitude to failure and success. A quiet book, a politically committed book, a book about a slice of society or a theme that doesn't appeal to everyone, succeeds by the very fact of its existence. We need to be much more open to the possibility that a book might sell less than a thousand copies and still be a success, because that book exists.

This isn't just wishy-washy let-everyone-have-their-chance hippie dreaming. It's not like this initial openness to 'failure' would mean never making back that first investment. Because a thousand quiet books that sell a thousand copies each will be ten thousand quiet books spreading their quiet ideas and quiet tone, which gets readers, and, perhaps more importantly, the publishing industry itself, used to the idea that such books are not pointless luxuries or a waste of money, but an important slice of the market.

No one's asking publishing to be non-profit, but it's not true that it's simply enslaved to the market and condemned to producing 'what sells'. It can create its own readerly niches. It can foreground its values. It can pave the way for difference. Children's publishing needs to stop hiding behind the claim that it's 'not a charity'. It needs to accept the fact that it has social and a literary responsibility beyond money-making.

At the peak of the refugee 'crisis', for want of a better word, Fred Lavabre at Sarbacane, my French children's publisher, issued a rallying cry to the whole of children's publishing in France. Being children's publishers, 'We have a social responsibility', he said, 'to talk about this to children'. This launched a never-before-seen collaboration of 57 publishers (!), who published in just two months a picturebook promoting empathy, respect and welcome for refugees, Eux, c'est nous (They are us), written by Daniel Pennac and illustrated by Serge Bloch (two major figures in children's literature), with a lexicon by Jessie Magana and Carole Saturno. All proceeds to a refugee charity.



They were going to print 70,000 copies, they had to print 100, 000, by popular demand (especially from bookshops).

It's been top of the children's bestseller list since it came out.

EDIT: thank you to Pippa Goodhart for drawing my attention to Nosy Crow's similar initiative, with Refuge, written by Anne Booth and illustrated by Sam Usher. I should add that my point was not necessarily that everything's better in France, but that it is possible to act in a way that reflects one's awareness of the social responsibility of being a children's publisher. I'm not surprised Nosy Crow did this, by the way. Amazing.

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

Friday 27 November 2015

Christmas Reading Rituals by Lynn Huggins-Cooper



For my sister and I, our festive annuals were one of the great highlights of a visit from Father Christmas. I remember hissed whispers of 'I think he's been!' as the deliciously heavy stocking was felt for in the darkness, at the foot of the bed. Satsuma in one hand, selection box open at the ready, the reading would commence. 

I grew up in a reading rich household. Our Saturdays were spent truffling through Mr. Lane's second hand bookshop, and buying american comic books in Brighton (preferably blood-curdling supernatural titles); the whole family always had at least a book apiece on the go and a stack of 'to-reads.' Christmas was no different. Everyone got books for Christmas, and for us children the annual was the crowning glory. 


Teddy Bear, Twinkle and Pussy Cat Willum, then later Beano, Dandy, Whizzer and Chips.  



My football mad sister also got football annuals - Shoot, I think - and I remember Roy of the Rovers.



As time passed, and we grew older, these made way for Bunty, Judy, Mandy and more - until we got to the closing act of Jackie Magazine's annual. Style bible; crush-fest (Marc Bolan, Bryan Ferry, since you ask) and more for the 1970s teen.


We read our own annuals, then swapped and read each other's. Those books were wise purchases on the part of my parents - over the years, they must have been worth their weight in gold in extra hours of sleep until we made them get up to look at our Christmas bounty. I cherish the memory of those companionable early Christmas morning reading-and-munching sessions. 

There were other Christmas reading rituals in the Huggins household though. The must-read Christmas Carol, which I continue to enjoy yearly and the message found inside still speaks to my heart. I still, at 51, have a childlike sense of anticipation about Christmas. I love the baking, the decorations, the singing and the get-togethers. As Dickens himself said, 

'It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.'

 A Christmas Carol


I have enjoyed boozy, student Christmases; those glorious years when the children were young and full of wonder and now, rather more grown-up celebrations once again as the wheel of life turns. Christmas Eve is still, and always will be my favourite, most magical night of the year - there's just something timeless about it. I look back and see all those fifty-odd Christmases, one inside another in a kaleidoscope of love and colour. I don't remember most of the toys I received as a child (although I remember the rather stunning picnic hamper with tiny girl-sized cups and saucers I received from Father Christmas one year - hard to forget, when Father Christmas arrives on a fire engine. To be fair, Dad was a fireman...) - but I do remember the books. I still have many of them, and have read them to my own children and grandchildren. My own children got a new 'Christmas book' apiece each year, so traditional continued. 

Then we come to planning the feast. I love Christmas cookery books. I still swear by Delia (old, battered, covered in sauce and wine splashes - the book, not the lovely Ms. Smith) and love Nigella's Christmas - and bringing out those books heralds the start of the season. I love pondering over what to make this year. 

 


I even buy myself a 'Christmas book' each year - just one, as a special treat. I am a sucker for silly, romantic Christmas stories myself - the one time of the year when I read 'soppy' books. It's a guilty secret - but you won't tell anyone, I'm sure. It's between us...ahem.



So - what are your Christmas reading rituals? (and if you don't have any, perhaps this is the year to start.) I'd love to hear them. The next time I write a blog entry here, the turkey will be a memory and the crackers will have been pulled. I'll not be in a post-Boxing Day slump though. I'll be propped up in front of the fire with a port; my nose buried in a book (hopefully brought by Father Christmas). I hope all of your Christmas gifts are book-shaped and that you have a wonderful festive season. See you next month!

















Wednesday 25 November 2015

Why Short Story Competitions are More Important than Ever by Tamsyn Murray

On Monday, I was a judge for a children's short story competition. It's the second time this year I've done it - the first time was for my own Completely Cassidy story competition back in March and the second time was for the Fire and Fright contest run by Frightful Writers in association with Letchworth Heritage Foundation. And I'd almost forgotten, until I got the latest batch of stories in my hands this time round, what a joy reading stories by kids is. How unhampered their imaginations are, how unburdened they are with a need for everything to make sense, how free their writing is! Each story had at least one thing that made me smile and often I was blown away by the audacity of each writer. I couldn't help comparing them to my own writing, which is firmly governed by rules - writing rules and world-building rules and grammar rules. These stories bent the rules. Sometimes they ate them.

I'd forgotten, too, what an achievement it is to reach The End. Well, obviously I haven't totally forgotten - it's not that long since I last wrote it myself that I could legitimately claim not to remember how it feels - but I'd forgotten how it feels when you're young and it's perhaps the first time you've written those words. For some of the children who entered Fire and Fright, their story was the first piece of creative writing they had finished - I know that several of the stories came from schools where I'd run story planning workshops. I didn't write the stories with these children - all we did was plan what they might write. The onus was on the kids to turn the plan into a story and those that managed it did Frightful Writers proud. Judging was a hard, hard job because the stories were so great.

I often marvel at the process of creating a story - that you take a headful of nothing and weave it into a product that will make people laugh and cry and think. One of the nicest things about short story competitions is that it gives writers a goal - a reason to put your idea onto the page and then something to send it off to at the end. And since the National Curriculum does not encourage schools to teach creative writing, there are fewer and fewer reasons to write stories, something that makes me immeasurably sad. I have escaped into stories all my life; the thought that there might be no one who can write them in the future worries me. But judging from the competition entries I read for Frightful Writers, we don't have to fret just yet. As long as there are stories about Kev the Chicken that end with the words, Evil was dead. Long live poultry! then I think we'll be OK.

Tuesday 24 November 2015

Second book syndrome: by Clare Furniss


I’m just emerging, weary and very relieved, from writing my second book, How Not to Disappear. I knew before I started that second books were notoriously tricky. In the world of music, ‘difficult second album’ syndrome is well-recognised - the Association of Independent Music rather brilliantly awards a Difficult Second Album prize - and many of the same difficulties apply to writing. (I should say at this point that I really don’t want this to sound like a whinge. I know how incredibly lucky I am to be paid to write. It’s just that it’s not always easy, and when I was finding it tough it was
unbelievably helpful to know that other authors found it hard too.)

Perhaps the most obvious difference between a debut and a second book is the time issue. I wrote my first book, The Year of The Rat, over four years on and off. All my deadlines were self-imposed. Of course there were pressures - financial pressure, the pressure of not knowing whether all the time I was spending on it was ever going to result in anything, the pressure of self-motivation when I had many other calls on my time. But external deadlines, set by a publisher, are different. You’re being paid.  This is no longer a dream or an ambition: it’s a job. There’s an awareness that other people need you to get your job done in order to be able to do theirs. I knew that ideally publishers want authors to publish a book a year and to be honest this scared me. Not because I didn’t think I could write a book in that time, but I didn’t know whether I could write the book I wanted to write as well as I wanted to in that time. (As it turned out, I couldn’t, of which more later.)

Then there was the pressure of having an expectation to meet, not only in the sense of ‘Will this book be as good as the last one?’ but also in terms of the kind of book I would write. With a first book you can write whatever you feel like. With a second, especially if it’s a two-book deal as mine was, you know there’s a desire for it to appeal to the same readers as the first book did. And of course I wanted people who liked the first book to like the second book too... At the same time I felt strongly that I didn’t want to end up effectively writing the same book again. I wanted a new challenge, something a bit different. I’d lived with the last book for four years, and it had been pretty intense. I was very ready for something new. At the outset, this book felt like a balancing act in a way that the first book hadn’t.

Meanwhile, time, energy and head space were being taken up by the first book. The launch of the paperback, blog posts to write, talks to give... I was extremely grateful for all of this, but it was undoubtedly a distraction, as were the perennial ‘How are sales going? Is your publisher happy?’ questions.

Of course, I knew from the start that the only way through this was to put it all to one side and immerse myself in the writing, in the characters and their story. This was how I’d written the first book, I just had to do it again. But it was easier said than done.


It’s fair to say How Not to Disappear took a while to get going. There were certain things I knew before I started. I knew it would have two storylines, one contemporary, one set in the 1950s. I knew the contemporary storyline involved a teenager and her great-aunt who was suffering from dementia, and that the 1950s storyline was the great-aunt’s teenage story. There would be some kind of road trip as they visited places from her past and unravelled the secrets from her past. I had an image in my mind of the final scene. Beyond that I didn’t know much.

I felt strongly that this story shouldn’t be planned, that I had to let it take its course. The fact that the road trip storyline is driven by a character whose memory isn’t entirely reliable meant that I wanted it to feel unpredictable - it couldn’t be too neat, too planned. I wrote the 1950s storyline separately, as a series of vivid flashbacks, and then had to make the two plot lines into one coherent story. I have to be honest, weaving the two storylines together was a complete nightmare, but I still think this was the right way to do it. I do think some of the most interesting aspects of the story came out of the fact that it wasn’t planned. But it was all rather nerve-racking and it did mean that my editor, Jane Griffiths at Simon and Schuster, had to take a big leap of faith... I’m extremely grateful that she did.

This book also turned out to be much longer than I’d expected - almost twice as long as my first book - which meant it took a lot longer to write and edit than I’d intended. Deadlines were missed, which was stressful and inevitably I felt that I’d failed. Still, I believed that it in the end it had to be better to write a good book than to write it quickly, and I’m incredibly grateful to my editor for taking the same view. Her patience meant I had the chance to make this story into the book I knew it could be. And once I stopped worrying about all the other stuff and just immersed myself in the writing, guess what? I loved it! It was fun again. I’d forgotten how exciting it is, that feeling when the words are flowing and it’s all coming out just right.

Of course, I don’t know whether anyone else will think the book is any good - only about three people have read it so far and we are STILL doing the very final round of edits! - but I do know it’s a book I put everything into and can feel proud of. And I realised while I was writing it that this was what I had to focus on. Of course I want other people to love the book, but actually that’s one of the many things about being a writer that I can’t control. All I can do is try to write the best book I know how to.

So, will Book 3 be easier or is the terrible truth that, as with parenting, writing doesn’t ever get easier, it just carries on being difficult in different ways? I suspect I know the answer to that one...


How Not to Disappear will be published on 28 January 2016.

Monday 23 November 2015

Finding The Awen Part Two



‘If Music Be The Food Of Love?’

On the first night of my first Charney in July, Ruth, Tortie and John were asked to select the three books they would take to their desert island. They were also asked to select one piece of music. As a person somewhat shamefully ill versed in children’s books, (see final placing of our team in Charney Quiz Night),  I ended up thinking more about the music I would choose.

We must have all mulled over the equivalent of our eight gramophone records and had tremendous difficulty whittling them down to eight. However I suspect that the world is divided into those who do and don’t appreciate music and those like me, who simply couldn’t exist without it. 

I was brought up in a household where we only really listened to classical music. Apart from occasional excursions into the world of easy listening with the likes of Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass, (aaargh) and records of children’s favourites like Thunderbirds, we were resolutely classical with a large C. I do remember Eye Level - the theme from Van Der Valk by the Simon Park Orchestra once sneaking past the guards but, apart from a slight slackening of the regime when my sister and I were allowed to watch the Christmas Top of The Pops on the portable in the “other room’, we got to hear very little else.



'ome milady'


The reason for this was simply that my dad didn’t want to listen to things he didn’t like. (Mum just put radio 2 on every morning when he was at work). They had met at a Grimsby Operatic Society and continued to sing in local choral societies until they moved to Somerset several years ago. My mum was a well known amateur soprano who could well have turned professional if she hadn’t had us. My parents still have in their possession, a programme of The Messiah, where mum is the soprano soloist and the later to be Dame Janet Baker is merely in the chorus!

Maybe I should have fought against classical music but instead I came to love and embrace it with a warmth and trust which has never left me. As a ten year old I got up on one of the dining chairs and conducted Bach or Tchaikovsky to my heart’s content. I sang in schools choirs and played flute in school and the local youth orchestra and of course I played a lot of records. At the age of seventeen my dad introduced me to Wagner and The Ring in particular. For my eighteenth birthday invitations, he did me a beautiful white chalk drawing on black of Siegfried breaking the Wanderer/Wotan’s spear. I must have been the only eighteen year old to receive the triple live album Yessongs from his mates and Karajan’s ring cycle from my parents!


Thomas Stewart as Wotan/Wanderer in a rehearsal photo from St Francisco Opera' s production of Siegfried in the Ring Summer Festival of 1985

This post however is not all about my early grounding in the music that I still love, but about how it has continued to inspire and accompany my writing. As I write this blog I am listening to Karajan’s (him again!) classic recording of Mozart’s Magic Flute and before that Simon Keenlyside singing of Schumann songs; my current passion. Music is always with me and normally I I cannot write without it. The book I completed a few months ago was variously accompanied by Dvorak symphonies, Brahms piano concertos and Bach’s Mass in B Minor. I have had many happy creative moments with Tchaikovsky, Smetana’s Ma Vlast and of course Wagner.

I have however an awen composer, one guaranteed to get both my creative and spiritual juices flowing. Such a composer is Vaughan Williams and I am returning the compliment by writing a novel about him. It would not be exaggerating to say that without him there would probably not have been any writing in the last however many years. My book The Seven was written almost entirely to his symphonies number 3 and 5 and some of the most profound and sometimes sad moments in my life have been accompaniment by the final 'passacaglia' movement of the fifth. Writing ‘The Enchantment of Mr Williams’ I have had several pieces of VW as regular accompaniment but particularly Flos Campi. Donna Nobis Pacem and Sancta Civitas, That's a fair mix of an erotically charged hymn based on the Song of Songs, a war requiem, and a vision of the apocalypse.

I have also picked up some wonderful quotes while researching him. When told by a rather intense and god fearing fellow composer that ‘I wrote my requiem almost entirely on my knees’, he replied.

‘Really. I Wrote all of Sancta Civitas sitting on my bum!’


VW possibly sitting on his bum, (image thanks to www.gustavmahler.eu)


For all those intense years of listening I’ve realised in the last few months that I have hardly ever really listened to music properly It has always been either in the background  or accompanying work. What has in so many ways provided me with 'awen' has in others deprived me of listening.

Now I have a complementary experience to the former. Instead of inspirational background I can see and feel more of what is beyond.Like a Shakespeare play which you come to know as director or actor rather than simply as reader or audience member, the resonances go deeper. If you are lucky they also leave you forever changed.

So what took me so long? And how about anyone else? Is music part of your daily diet, awen to your writing, or just a blessed nuisance?


References

Find out more about VW and his music through the official society

http://www.rvwsociety.com/

The amazing archive of the long running radio show which started all the trouble!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/find-a-castaway

My book, The Seven.

http://www.gomer.co.uk/index.php/the-seven.html  




My adventures in story and drama.

https://gwernseven.wordpress.com/


Sunday 22 November 2015

Don't stop children reading facty books - by Nicola Morgan

Two notes first:
It's National Non-fiction November, hence this topic. I've also blogged on the lack of respect in some quarters for non-fiction and on the importance of facty books for dyslexic readers, all in support of #NNFN.

You'll notice I use different words to describe "non-fiction". I don't really mind which we use. I rather like facty. "Fiction" can have facts in, too, and "non-fiction" can have imagination, narrative and drama. But what we tend to call non-fiction majors on its factual truths, so I like facty.

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Anyway.

Recently, a parent told me that "non-fiction" had been removed from (or banned - I'm not quite sure) her son's school. Even though I've heard of this on another occasion, I find it hard to believe so let's say at least that there was a teacher who thought boys would be better not reading fact-based books for pleasure.

Why? Apparently, among other things, because non-fiction doesn't boost empathy.

Oh gosh.

I know where this comes from. It comes from some research - many small studies - which does suggest that fiction has an important role to play in developing empathy. (Read Such Stuff as Dreams for some detail.) Although there's lots of interesting and thought-provoking content to that book and this research, and although I believe that yes, fiction does have a role to play in empathy-building, and that the act of "narrative transportation" into the minds of other people is important for developing one's own mind and Theory of Mind, I urge caution before you wrap yourself in the blanket of some of the conclusions.

For example, it's not surprising that, when a beautifully-written piece of fiction (a Chekov short story is a specific example) is turned into a dull piece of non-fiction (a courtroom transcript, in this case), the people reading the short story might increase in empathy (on certain measures) more than the others.

This doesn't prove anything other than, perhaps, that people reading beautiful writing by a master writer can engage on a more personal level than people reading a piece of dud dullness. It fails to acknowledge the potential of the best words in the best order. It fails to acknowledge (because it wasn't looking at that) whether other things promote empathy, such as having a loving parent or carer to both show empathy and give insights into how other people feel.

However, imagine for a moment that it had been proven that fiction boosts empathy and that non-fiction (any of it, from a dictionary to the most elegant narrative non-fiction) doesn't. 

Even in that case, telling people that they shouldn't read any non-fiction because it doesn't increase empathy is like telling people they shouldn't eat fruit because it doesn't contain protein and therefore won't help their cells regenerate. Or not to eat asparagus because it doesn't contain iron or not to drink milk because milk doesn't contain vitamin C.

I hope you get my point.

My other point is that by telling half the school population (boys, in the example given) that their first choice (often) of reading material is not worth their time both undermines them quite horribly and risks turning them off reading forever. It is misguided and counter-productive. It doesn't make sense. 

Parents, please don't listen to anyone who tells your sons or your daughters not to read non-fiction, information books, facty books, whatever you want to call them. What you want is your sons and daughters first to read and then to read more. Isn't it hard enough to get young people (often especially boys) to read, without making it a load less attractive and judging them negatively for it? Reading for pleasure, anyone? The clue is in the word "pleasure".

SO, people, tell me: what are your recommended facty reads? Tell me the title, writer+illustrator, and what sort of reader you think would love it. And maybe some lucky young readers will receive something really inspiring this Christmas! 

Btw, if you'd like to give one to a child in difficult circumstances, then DO check out the annual Blackwells book tree.

Saturday 21 November 2015

'Getting away from it all' by Anne Booth

I am writing this on a train on the way to Gladstone’s library for a few days. I am taking a novel for adults I wrote 10 years ago and going on a tutored retreat with the novelists  Shelley Harris and Stephanie Butland. I can’t wait to see Shelley again, meet Stephanie for the first time and go to this beautiful place I have heard so much about.


The first time I met Shelley was at Retreats for You in Devon two or three years ago. 


I was there to ‘get away from it all’ as I was very stressed as a carer trying to support my unwell elderly  parents - and I remember embarrassing myself by bursting into tears at the table. I remember being there with a wonderful (as yet unpublished but watch this space!) writer called A.J. Pearce and Shelley and they and Deborah Dooley, the person who runs Retreats for You, being so kind. I remember that when I went to bed at night there was already a hot water bottle in my bed - and I felt so cared for by that small but (literally) warming gesture. I remember sleeping lots, and good food, and walks and great chats with Shelley and A.J and the other guests, and lots and lots of writing. I remember Shelley gave me very helpful feedback on a bit of the unpublished ‘Girl with a White Dog’ I read out to her, and A.J . gave me the invaluable advice to go to Germany if I was setting my novel there! I did, and the final pieces of my first novel ‘Girl with a White Dog’ fell into place.


I am no longer a carer as such. My mum sadly died last year, and although I keep an eye on my 88 year old dad who lives opposite me, & go to occasional hospital appointments with him, he is amazingly independent and cooks for himself. But I still have four children, and life is very busy, and I seem to have been ill alot these last months, so it is wonderful to get away, even if I will miss my lovely husband, children and dogs.

I’m going away to write, but I am also going away to gain perspective. Last night I had delusions of divinity (not really - just a bit of lack of perspective!)  and couldn’t sleep for worrying about the world. It was a bit like the scene in Bruce Almighty with the emails. Like most writers, my imagination can be a foe as well as a friend, and I worried extensively and uselessly about world peace, climate change, war, refugees and (rather self-absorbedly) myself and my family too, and then I said a prayer, got up about 5 am and sorted out the family laundry. That small thing helped. I might not have solved the world’s problems, but my family had clean clothes. And, though it might not be about international relations, for my teenagers facing the stress of what clothes to wear for a non-uniform day today, that does matter! 

Despite my night time delusions, I don’t know how to fix the world, but I do know that if it is going to be fixed it will not be by my worrying or thinking I am God but by my and other people’s practical love and kindness. It will be by millions of people doing ‘small’ things like leaving hot water bottles in beds and letting people cry and rest, it will be by people making people welcome - whether tired writers or carers or refugees- and listening to each other and by people remembering that kindness years afterwards.

So I want to thank people like Deborah Dooley and her husband who welcome writers (and others) who need to get away from it all , for how they make the world better, and for how they make those they welcome feel better for years later. And I want to thank teachers and critics and fellow writers like Shelley and A.J., who are gentle and constructive with criticism - who welcome our words and give them shelter and the nourishment of attention.  Kindnesses last for years - words turn into novels, and the memories last long after we have got away from it all and returned home. 




P.S. I am here at Gladstone's library now and it is GORGEOUS. Highly recommended!

Friday 20 November 2015

Reading for Pleasure in Schools - Joan Lennon

Many years ago a woman broke my heart.  She was sitting in a primary school class room and she was an expert and she said, "Your son will never read for pleasure."  It felt as if she'd taken my beautiful boy and thrown him out in darkness and slammed the door.

Sorry - that's a bleak sort of start to a blog about resources/groups/initiatives.  Except that it isn't bleak, really, because SHE WAS WRONG.  Totally.  I'm not going to trot out said beautiful boy's achievements and nay-sayers' confoundings or the last book recommendation he sent me (well, let's meet for coffee and I just might mention one or two).  But that woman does have a permanent residence in my brain and that memory rings a little bell whenever the phrase "reading for pleasure" is mentioned.

Which is one reason I'm so keen on anything that promotes reading for pleasure in schools, where the curriculum can overwhelm the joy. Here are two I know about - please let us know about more! 

Reading for Pleasure in Schools is a Facebook group/forum that is of interest to teachers, librarians, parents, authors - brimming with questions and answers and ideas and enthusiasm.  It's all in the title, really.  (The photos are from their page.)  








And there's the Patron of Reading initiative.  (This is their Facebook page.)  






(I'm Patron of Reading for the utterly fantastic Queensferry Primary School and I love it.)

Now, tell us more!
  

Joan Lennon's website
Joan Lennon's blog

Thursday 19 November 2015

Instagram and the Creative Mind - Lucy Coats


Autumn Roses - https://www.instagram.com/lucywriter/

Last month I wrote from the depths of a bad depressive episode.  I am very grateful for all your kind comments on that piece, and I'm glad it helped some of you. Unfortunately there is no quick fix for the black dog's grey fog. It's not something I can turn off with a switch, however much I want to. Writing a book right now is like wading through a sea of frozen treacle with lead boots on. Doing events is exhausting - because I have to put on that 'mask of normal' I talked about, and that takes its toll. But, and this is important, I survive. I am here. Every day that happens is a victory. Within that, the pleasure of small things becomes vital - as does acknowledging them.

Vitis Cognetiae - https://www.instagram.com/lucywriter/

Because my creative well is so dry, I have turned to another sort of creativity to try to fill the gap. I've always liked photography, so I've started keeping a virtual diary of gratitude for those small things on my Instagram page. Trying to put the joy back into the creative process is essential for me, and I'll try anything to get a tiny bit of that joy back, even for just a minute. For now, it's playing around with filters and layouts, seeing things in both colour and black-and-white. It's about really looking at objects - textures, shadows, light - and trying to convey that through the media of word and picture. As every picture book writer knows, it's the marriage of image and text which makes the whole thing light up and come alive, but in this case it's the image which is important for me. I want so very badly to move out of the monochrome world I'm living in and get back to the place where colour sings.

Fire - https://www.instagram.com/lucywriter/

I know this type of laid-bare honesty isn't for everyone. But for me it's a survival tool.

OUT NOW from Orchard, Cleo (UKYA historical fantasy about the teenage Cleopatra VII) '[a] sparkling thriller packed with historical intrigue, humour, loyalty and poison.' Amanda Craig, New Statesman
Also out now: new Beasts of Olympus series "rippingly funny" Publishers Weekly US starred review


Lucy's Website - Twitter - Facebook - Instagram

Wednesday 18 November 2015

How I Became Kirkland Ciccone - Guest post - By Kirkland Ciccone

Today  we have a guest post by Kirkland Ciccone who burst onto the Scottish YA writing scene only last year and has already made quite an impression with his exuberant, enthusiastic and very distinctive style. His third YA novel North of Porter has just been published.  Kirkland also spent a lot of time and energy setting up Yay! YA! (I blogged about it last April), an exciting and very successful festival of  Scottish YA books and authors, and generously gave up his own spot so that other YA authors could take the stage.  He is now working on Yay! YA!  for 2016.   - Linda Strachan



I spent years preparing to be an author of amazing YA fiction; and if not amazing, then at least interesting.


 Entire schooldays were wasted daydreaming about all the questions I would answer during interviews. I was too geeky to do well in PE, so I would get my mum to sign me off and head, instead, to the library. This became a pattern in my life. If I ever feel a certain way, I’ll escape to a library and write. I practically grew up in my town library: it was cheaper for my mother than hiring a babysitter, and in those days libraries opened until late. “Son,” she would say to me, “I’m off to the bingo. If I win I’ll get us a fish supper.” As a result I never tasted fish supper ever until the day I bought it for myself. 

 But sitting alone, amongst the shelves, it didn't really matter. I read until my eyes smouldered. Whispers In The Graveyard by Theresa Breslin, anything by Robert Cormier, Summer of Fear by Lois Duncan, Doctor Who books by Terrance Dicks, The Three Investigators and much more. The only thing I ever wanted was to be on those shelves. It hurt because I wanted it so badly. 

But living where I did...such a thing seemed unlikely. I remember telling my career advisor at school this dream in one neat sentence: “I want to be the most fabulous not drabulous punk rock author of cool juvenile fiction!”
 (In those days “YA went under the umbrella of ‘Juvenile Fiction’.) 
She responded by giving me pamphlets for a local plastics factory in Cumbernauld. Ah yes, Cumbernauld, a town so strange that it won the Worst Town in Britain Award. 
The day I told my family that I wanted to be a writer was akin to admitting that I wanted to be a serial killer, that’s how upset they were with me. Mum demanded I get a normal job. But I knew what I wanted...I just didn't know how to get there. When you have no money or prospects in a town full of warped architecture and poverty, you quickly learn to use your imagination. How different would I be had I not come from Cumbernauld? That’s why I love libraries so much: you can be rich or poor but everyone is equal in a library. All those books are there for you to take out. 

Entire worlds you can access for free! I lived in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. I investigated mysteries in River Heights with Nancy Drew. Rocky Beach in California became my ideal vacation spot with The Three Investigators. All those books were mine for three weeks. But I didn't need that long to read them. I was at the library every single day. 

Eventually I wrote one-man shows for theatres and created opportunities for myself. My first major gig was a show about the history of Cumbernauld. I made the whole lot up on the spot! By the time I got to the part of the story where Boy George invented Pritt-Stick, the audience were in on the joke. Terry Wogan name checked me on his radio show too. 

 When I was finally ready to join my favourites on the bookshelves, I headed to the one place that felt more like home than my actual home: the library. I made up a list of publishers I wanted to sign me by looking at the books I admired. Strident Publishing, publisher of edgy YA fiction from Gillian Philip, Linda Strachan, and Janne Teller found and snapped me up. Strident Publishing is based in Coatbridge, a few miles away from Cumbernauld. How ironic that the first publisher to notice me were just a bus trip away! 

Fast forward two years and “The Kult of Kirkland” is spreading fast and I'm now on the shelves where I belong, alongside the authors I worshipped. Those people were my footballers/superheroes/popstars. That’s what I want to be to a new generation of YA readers. 
I won the Catalyst Book Award for Conjuring The Infinite, a weird supernatural murder mystery that was published at the height of the big dystopian teen fiction boom. 
Timing is important, in hindsight, but I didn't know that at first. My new book – North Of Porter – is heavily inspired by Cumbernauld except with aliens, murderers, and food banks.
I think it’s the closest I’ll get to an actual autobiography, even if the main character is a teenage boy with a handbag! 

 I've also put my background in alternative theatre to good use, and my live events have resulted in school librarians passing me around their colleagues in other areas; yet another example of libraries helping me. Bless them all. They really know more about books and authors than anyone else and to replace them would create an amateurish service. Besides...how could Buffy The Vampire Slayer save the world without the help of a librarian and school library? 

Tired of libraries, tired of life I say. 

All of life can be found in your library. And one of the best things about my local library is...there’s a fish and chip shop just down the street from it. 


 Kirkland Ciccone is a performer and author of quirky YA novels including the award winning Conjuring The Infinite, and Endless Empress. His new novel North Of Porter is out now. www.twitter.com/KirklandCiccone
www.KirklandCiccone.com



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Tuesday 17 November 2015

“Winter Is Coming”: Favourite Books for Long, Dark Nights by Emma Barnes

Not for children!
The days are dark; night creeps in early; there is frost in the air. 

I'm not a fan of winter. (I always get that frisson of dread whenever the Starks declare “Winter is Coming” in George RR Martin's Game of Thrones.  And I don't live anywhere near any Wildings.) Partly that's because British winters are grey and damp, rather than snowy and crisp. But while the reality of crawling out of bed on a dreary, dismal morning doesn't grab me, winter in children's fiction is a different thing.

Snow. Woods. Wolves. A crackling fire. Stark leafless trees. Shadows everywhere. This I enjoy.


Real life adventure

Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood, in a log cabin in the deep forest of Wisconsin, always gave me the same winter glow. There really is no better winter read than The Little House in the Big Woods. (Ma, bundled up against the cold, whacking a bear that she thinks is a cow. Pa playing the violin during the long nights. Christmas, when Laura receives her beloved rag doll, Charlotte.)

Unless, that is, you prefer The Long Winter, where the township is trapped by blizzards, the train lines closed, the Ingalls family are using a coffee mill to grind out their last handfuls of wheat and slowly everyone begins to starve...

Classic Fantasy

That sense of threat is also there in The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. Ostensibly it's the fantasy “Dark” that is the danger, but much of the menace comes from the weather itself: the snow that falls and falls, the numbing cold, the village community that is slowly being cut off so that finally everyone has to take refuge in the old manor house.

I've always felt that Susan Cooper must have read another winter classic, The Box of Delights, as a child – for there are all kinds of echoes, most of all in the particular blend of English landscape and history, magical threat and snowy weather. Who can help a shudder of anticipation on reading that cryptic warning “The wolves are running...”


Urban snowscapes

Yet winter doesn't have to be about deep woods and rural landscapes. As a very small child, I was transfixed by Ezra Jack Keat's The Snowy Day, which uses an urban setting to explore the feelings of fascination and wonder of a small child confronting something as amazing as SNOW. It's something about the simplicity and immediacy of this book that makes it so effective.

It brings home the fact that children's books still, often, ignore the urban landscape. The Snowy Day was, apparently, inspired by Keat's childhood neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York. (It also has the distinction of being one of the first American children's books to feature a black lead character. That was in 1964. Decades later, diversity, or lack of it, is still a hot issue.)

Narnia

In general though, winter seems to be about magic, rather than real life, for children's authors. Maybe it's because it reasserts the power of nature – of snow, storms, the biting cold – in a way that makes us feel less sure of our human technology, more aware of the power of our natural surroundings. In the depths of winter, it is easier to believe in supernatural forces. Perhaps we feel less in control, more in touch with the past, more in need of help?

The excitement, magic and danger of winter is perhaps nowhere better expressed than in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When spring comes, it marks the beginning of hope and the end of the dark magic. And yet CS Lewis draws every drop of excitement from his winter setting: the fun of sledges, the terror of wolves, the wonderful warmth of hot chocolate or of snuggling in a fur coat. (Even if you don't approve of fur coats, you can still enter into the Pevensies' enjoyment of them.)

 Fairytales

This link between winter and magic seems so strong that it even percolates into adult literature. Most mainstream adult fiction keeps its distance from the magical, but the bestselling The Snow Child combines the setting of Alaska and a pioneering couple determined to make a life there (almost Laura Ingalls Wilder in its way) with a traditional fairytale fable, when they meet a child who seems strangely at home in the icy landscape, and surely possessed of magical powers.

A Russian folk tale is the inspiration for the story, and is just one of those included in the classic collection Old Peter's Book of Tales by Swallows and Amazons author Arthur Ransome.

The Snow Queen, the most wintery of fairytales, is still going strong of course.

 And in case anybody doubted the combined power of fairytales, princesses and snow, Frozen is a recent reminder of their continuing appeal to the child's imagination. (Visiting schools for World Book Day, I've met  dozens of little “Elsas” and “Anas”.)

My Winter Tale

illustration by Emma Chichester Clark
Wolves, forests and fairytales were all at the back of my mind when I wrote my book Wolfie. Even though it is a contemporary story (with a helping of fantasy), about a girl called Lucie, and her adventures at home and school, as winter closes in the atmosphere becomes mysterious and magical.

The feeling I aimed to create is brilliantly evoked in this illustration by Emma Chichester Clark.


New Titles
Its fascinating to see that even in these days of central heating and cars chauffeured by mum and dad, where bad weather might seem just a passing annoyance to children glued to screens, winter has maintained its magic charm. The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell and Frost Hollow Hall  by Emma Carroll are two recent books which use winter – and its motifs of snow, woods, magic and wolves - to work their magic.


 I'm planning to curl up with one or other of them when the long, dark nights draw in.


What is your favourite winter read?








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Emma's Website
Emma’s Facebook Fanpage
Emma on Twitter - @EmmaBarnesWrite

Emma's Wild Thing series for 8+ about the naughtiest little sister ever. (Cover - Jamie Littler)
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman

 Wolfie is a story of wolves, magic and snowy woods...
(Cover: Emma Chichester Clark)
"Funny, clever and satisfying..." Books for Keeps