Wednesday 23 December 2015

'Twas the post before Christmas... - John Dougherty

As is traditional, we're taking a break for Christmas. We'll be back with a post from my editorial colleague, Penny Dolan, on January 1st 2016; but until then we thought it would be nice to leave you with a round-up of all the books by ABBA contributors published in 2015.

On behalf of all our contributors and editorial and technical volunteers, I'd like to wish you a very Merry Christmas.




(And apologies for the technical errors which led first to the video being posted without music , and then to the original post being wiped from the blog!) 

Tuesday 22 December 2015

What is this life if, full of care... - by Nicola Morgan

This is not a whinge about the fact that I'm almost overwhelmed by work and work-related shenanigans. We're all busy. It's modern life. Even when it's not Christmas. And in my case it's entirely self-inflicted, although moving house was not on the cards when I accepted the various things I've accepted.

So, not a whinge but a suggestion. It's a suggestion to myself, to you and to anyone who will listen.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, and however you celebrate it if you do, and however you spend that UK-wide suspension of normal activity otherwise known as the "holidays", let's carve out some thinking time. Because if we starve our brain and soul of thinking time, I think we have a problem.

You know the William Henry Davies poem, or at least the start of it. Interestingly, I started quoting it to the audience of teachers at a school in India where I was doing an INSET recently and they all joined in.

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

I don't make time to stand and stare. My life is the poorer for it. I think my creativity is the poorer for it because we can't create if we can't think. (Well, I can't.) I believe many of us have engineered lives of rush and zip and itch and skim and that we have made ourselves breathless and dizzy and somewhat robotic, reactive, task-focused, target-obsessed. My life is driven not by creation now but by cortisol. I suspect it's the same for everyone who is wedded (as I am) to smartphones etc and constant digital distractions.

We need Freedom to Think. This is author Jonathan Stroud's great campaign to get adults to allow children just to mooch and play freely without organised activity. I support it fully and will be talking to teachers and parents about it in INSET days. But I think we all need it.

And so my suggestion is this: allow yourselves and your families and whoever you're with the freedom to think. During the holiday period, snatch what empty times you can and fill them only with frippery and freethinking and fresh air, with nonsense or nothing. Turn off your devices - are you listening, Nicola Morgan? - and switch into another operating system, where we are not (over-)reacting to and seeking out information from a noisy outside world but letting our brains freewheel.

Although I'm suggesting we make time for our offline world, if you have some ideas or want to tell the campaign what freedoms you or your families or friends enjoyed this holiday (or whenever), there's a space to do that here. Or anyone can email ideas, photos, suggestions to: freedomtothinksite@gmail.com. And on Twitter they are @iamfree2think

Here are my own small ideas, the things I plan to do to give myself Freedom to Think:
  • Get outside just to get outside. On my own, to look at trees, breathe the mist and smell Christmas, because I do love a good Christmas air. 
  • Have a bath and not take my ipad in with me. Watch the bubbles.
  • If it snows, I'm going to build a snow penguin. Hell, yes I am! There may be pictures.
  • I might play with words. Maybe some little poems will come. Perhaps a haiku or two. Perhaps
    (Copyright © Chris Riddell 2015)
    they won't. It doesn't matter. That's what freedom is.
  • I'm going to draw. Just a little bit. I used to draw. I used to sell my artwork. 
  • Most importantly, there will be times when I just do nothing but stand and stare. And think. And not think about the conference I'm organising, the committee I chair, the house move, the book contract I'm behind on, the events I have to plan, the foreign trips that loom. Just think.
The point is that if we fill children's time with classes and activities and we fill our own time with work and admin and domestic tasks, we lose something very human. 

Our lives are poorer if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.

Have a very lovely holiday time, everyone, and remember to focus on the important things: love, freedom, health and humanity. See you on the other side and here's to a very positive and fulfilling 2016 with as much freedom to think as we possibly can! xxx









Sunday 20 December 2015

A Brave and Startling Truth - Joan Lennon

This poem is long and at this time of the year especially, our time is short.  But take a few moments to be with this amazing woman.  I think you won't regret it.

A Brave And Startling Truth by Maya Angelou

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn and scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.


Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.

Saturday 19 December 2015

Thank You and Farewell to Peter Malcolm de Brissac Dickinson, FRSL OBE 1927-2015

Photograph: Robin McKinley
Last Wednesday, we lost one of the great children's authors of all time, on his 88th birthday. Peter Dickinson was a writer of luminous, extraordinary prose, crafted with a delicate and yet always down-to-earth touch. His stories pulled me in, whirled me round and always, always made me think. He threw me right into the lives and thoughts of his characters, whether they were an orphan boy in Tibet (Tulku), or a girl in a valley hidden by magic (The Ropemaker). I read his books both as child and adult, and the influence he had on my own writing is sure and certain. Quite simply, I aspire one day to be a writer even a quarter as good as him. Peter's own words about the writing (and reading) of fiction should be quoted widely to all young writers (and some old ones too):
'It is not part of fiction's job to tell the reader what to think. But it can be fiction's job to show the reader how it feels, because that can only be done with the imagination.'
It is an extraordinary achievement to be nominated no fewer than nine times for the Carnegie Medal (most recently in 2012 for In the Palace of the Khans), and to win it twice. There were endless other awards too, both here and in the US, and a nomination for the Hans Christian Andersen Medal as well. Peter wrote 60 or more novels, and yet, if you ask people outside the book business if they have heard of him, the answer is invariably 'who?'. Why is this? Is it because he was writing long before the days of Potter, when children's books were a backwater at best, long before the days of social media and the 'public persona'? Who could fail to want to read the books of someone who describes himself as:
'a tall, elderly, bony, beaky, wrinkled sort of fellow, with a lot of untidy grey hair and a weird hooting voice — in fact he looks and sounds a bit like Gandalf’s crazy twin, but he’s only rather absent-minded, thinking about something else, or just day-dreaming.'
After the sad death of his first wife, Peter married another writer - Robin McKinley - and together they wrote a series of stories about the elements, Water being the first, and Fire the second (he published his Earth and Air stories on his own account, Robin being busy with other things). It was a perfect pairing in both senses, and for me, to have two of my favourite authors in one book was a marvellous bonus. 

If you haven't read anything by Peter, I urge you to go out and do so at the first opportunity. There is somuch to choose from, but my own favourites are The Blue Hawk, Merlin Dreams, The Lion Tamer's Daughter, Healer, A Box of Nothing and the two Ropemaker books. You can see all his books (and read about them) here. If you like them, tell others. Buy them for god children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews. Read them to your own. That would be a most fitting memorial for a man whose life was filled with the joy of stories, and the desire to tell them to others.

My thoughts and sympathies (and I'm sure of many of those reading this) go out to Robin, John, Philippa and all the rest of his family. Peter, wherever you are now, I hope there are roses, peace, and a great plethora of books. Thank you seems a small and insignificant thing to say for all the immense pleasure you have given and continue to give me with your marvellous worlds and words. But I shall say it anyway. God bless your imagination.

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


Friday 18 December 2015

All the little things... Linda Strachan

The other day I had a couple of very different and entertaining conversations, one over lunch and the other in the early evening. A good 'blether' (as they call a chat in Scotland), can feed a curious mind.

People are of such wondrous variety that we, as writers, can plumb their weirdness and the minute detail of their lives for a fabulous source of character material that is never ending, always changing, and fascinating. 
I found myself considering how often conversations appear to be about the general when in  reality they are actually about the particular, the little things, the details that make us who we are.  

Conversations flow in social situations from the initial 'hello' through casual observations, possibly about the weather or perhaps a question about family or some other aspect of lifestyle. Someone might say they are tired because the baby kept them up all night, or energised and looking well since a recent holiday. Gradually they will reveal that they are angry about something, or sad, depressed, irritated, excited, brimming over with delight or even just bored.

What a person chooses to talk about can reveal a lot about what is on their mind, at times by what they don't say as much as what they do reveal.  The particular words they use or the subjects they become passionate about.  A holiday or business trip might provide a vivid description of a country or city, although it is interesting to remember that this is seen through the speaker's eyes and their  often long held prejudices.  
As a writing tool this can be useful to mislead the reader, but also to shine a light on a character's preconceptions or needs. 

A keenly observant friend who relates the characteristics of fellow travellers can leave us in hysterics, but any group of people, well observed, can be a source of great interest.  Some of the detail, the little quirks that make each person singular and retained in the memory, can be recalled or packed away in a writer's mind for future use.

The little things people do, mannerisms, oft used phrases, a particular kind of laugh that is penetrating or slightly sharp, hysterical and braying, or a rich, warm chuckle, can tell us much in very few words about the person or character. 

Choices, of clothes, of footwear, perhaps a choice of food can be defining.  One friend of mine used to examine her birthday cards and Christmas cards, and from the pictures or design on them deduce something about the state of mind of the person who chose and sent the card.  I was often amazed to discover, when we both knew the person concerned, that she was frequently very close to the truth.    

We all give ourselves away by the little things we do, say or choose. So no doubt our characters could do exactly the same, if we take the time to do it subtly.

 -------------------------------------





Linda Strachan is the author of over 60 books for all ages from picture books to teenage novels and the writing handbook - Writing For Children.

Linda is currently Chair of the SOAiS - Society of Authors in Scotland 

Linda's latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me . 
She is Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh.

Her best selling series Hamish McHaggis is illustrated by Sally J. Collins who also illustrated Linda's retelling of Greyfriars Bobby.

website:  www.lindastrachan.com
blog:  Bookwords 





Thursday 17 December 2015

For all those Grinches out there: The Best Books for Christmas Haters - Emma Barnes

Lyn posted a beautiful post recently on the joys of preparing for Christmas. Her Christmas rituals and the pleasure she takes in them warmed the heart of even an old Grinch like me. Even so, I haven't been converted to the joys of knit-your-own-advent-calendar while rustling up a batch of mince pies. I deck the halls with holly with some reluctance (usually late, and with a scratched thumb). Hearing Slade in November is guaranteed to curdle my spirits. And I've yet to be convinced that Christmas shopping is anything but a pain, and inflatable glow-in-the-dark Santas anything but a health hazard.

So for all the other Grinches, Scrooges and old sour pusses, here are some Christmas books which are not all cosiness, snowscapes and Goodwill To All Men. Christmas is not always a perfect time of year, even for children.  Sometimes it's good to be reminded that things do go wrong.  And actually, that can be alright too.





Christmas is very hard work for some people.  One person who thinks Christmas sucks is Raymond Brigg's Father Christmas. Can you wonder at it? Getting up early, icy cold, a very long night with too many mince pies. “And a blooming Merry Christmas to you!”




Mog has been much in the public eye this Christmas - see her star performance here.  But even before her recent Christmas Calamity, her original outing in Mog's Christmas has her hiding out on the chimney in order to escape all the unheaval and the descent of all those relatives.  (I'm sure many will sympathize.)




Another moggy, Anne Fine's delightful anti-hero Tuffy, has a fabulous time dancing about in the Christmas pudding and getting locked in the garage.





Horrid Henry can also be relied on not to let any sugariness (other than the tooth-destroying variety) creep into the festive season.








This one might be my favourite funny Christmas read.  The terrible Herdman children take over the church Nativity Play and chaos ensues. The rest of the congregation tries to get them kicked out, and their minister is forced to remind everybody that when Jesus said suffer all the little children to come unto him he meant all the children – even Herdmans.



And finally, let's not forget the Grinch.

Go on then – what is your own favourite not-so-perfect Christmas book?


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Wednesday 16 December 2015

Voices from Syria: The Refugee's Tale

"I never wanted to become a refugee. I always thought I might visit England one day as a tourist, or maybe a student. But one day I woke up and there I was; I became a refugee."

- Khaled, from Syria, now in the UK

"Where are you?" I type into Facebook Messenger.
"In Germany," types back Maya. "Refugee camp in Dortmund."

Maya is 22, a graduate in German language and literature. A couple of months ago she arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos off a black rubber dinghy with her two younger brothers in tow, a book by Nietzche shoved into her back pocket. One of the first things she did upon reaching land was to touch up her eye liner and brush her hair. After days of dusty travel and a life-threatening journey by smuggler boat, her way of celebrating reaching the shores of Europe was to make herself presentable once again.

Refugees arrive in the Greek Islands - Photo: Calais Action
Maya tells me her story via a series of Facebook messages - she fled to Turkey via Lebanon with the help of a family member, and from then on to Greece. She was caught up in a traumatic week of ferry strikes during which thousands of people arrived on the Greek islands via smuggler boat, but were unable to progress to the mainland, meaning that both shelter and food were in very short supply. Once the strikes finished, they were in Germany within four days.

"I'm in a tent," Maya writes. "It's cooooold."
"How's the food?" I ask.
"Baaaad," she scoffs. "I'm hungry all the time."

German refugee camp
It's a strange new world, this one; the open window of the Internet makes everybody potentially a participant in world news and affairs, especially the refugee crisis, the biggest humanitarian crisis and exodus since WW2. Through my iPhone I can message people in camps across Europe and they can Skype or Whatsapp me with their stories.

Maya shows me pictures of the camp. It's a new one, built to house the influx of refugees who have arrived since the summer. They live in tents, and the communal facilites of showers and toilets look clean, sterile, cold.

Asylum Seekers
- Germany 
I'm researching a book I'm writing about a Syrian refugee girl making the long journey across Europe with her family, and I'm desperate for information about life back home. "What kind of birthday cakes do you have in Syria?" I ask naively.

Maya does the equivalent of a Facebook eye-roll. "For little boys, it's Sponge Bob. Barbie for girls. But it really depends on the person. We Syrians are very modern people."

"Will you stay in Germany?" I want to know.
"Of course," says Maya. "I always wanted to come here."

Maya's applied for asylum in Germany, and she's still waiting. She could be waiting for a while.

"The waiting is the hardest part of the whole journey," says Sipan, a Kurdish human rights activist from northern Syria. "The journey is nothing to this terrible waiting."

Sipan is a journalist who worked with local charities in Syria to prevent violence against children. When the Daesh militias moved in to his area, people were afraid to send their daughters to school. He campaigned to keep the schools open and for people to keep educating their daughters. But then the government started bombing the area and his salary was stopped. He was about to be conscripted into the government army so he fled Syria with his two sisters, their husbands and his nephew. He left his wife and two children behind, thinking - as many do - that the journey was too dangerous for them. They agreed that he would reach Europe easier on his own and apply for them to join him straight away.

Sipan's story is similar to many who travelled the volatile Balkan route this summer. He walked with his sisters and nephew over the Syrian border into Turkey, and took a boat to the Greek island of Kos. They escaped into Macedonia during a border riot, and walked the long railway lines of Serbia, sleeping on the open ground in the driving rain or in the yards of mosques. His group were stopped by Iraqi robbers in the woods as they walked eight hours over the border into Hungary, and threatened. The incident was broken up by Hungarian police who arrested them all. After they were released, they hired a smuggler's taxi to Germany, and took the bus to Paris. From Paris he arrived in the Calais camps, and was horrified at the conditions there,

The Calais camps. Photo: (c) Becky Matthews
"Many people told me they had been there for months, maybe years," says Sipan. "I couldn't believe that I had left my family behind to come to this. When I went into the Jungle, I asked some Sudanese guys where the Syrians were, They were all staying in a big tent, but there was no place for me. I had to stay outside, but a guy had room in his one-man tent. We slept three people in that small tent."

From the camp, it's a three hour walk to the best place to jump the trains. "I was so tired. We would be up all night, and then a three-hour walk back in the afternoon. People would sleep on the grass next to the railway line, Sometimes they would close the station because there were so many people trying to jump the trains."

Sipan finally managed to throw himself on a moving goods train and arrived in the UK, only to have his claim delayed far outside the normal time frame. He's now waiting for his interview, and is getting desperate. Whilst he's been gone, the news from back home is that the village that his wife and children are living in is now under siege. Sipan speaks with his family from time to time on WhatsApp, but they're trapped in a village with no electricity, no gas, and where a kilo of sugar costs over the equivalent of four British pounds.

"The whole journey was like a dream," says Sipan. "But this waiting is like a terrible nightmare."

"People ask, why do you men leave your country? Why do you leave your women and children back home?" fumes Khaled, an aid worker from Syria when I meet him at a parliamentary meeting to discuss the refugee crisis. "They say, why don't you stay and fight? What they don't realise is that the men will be taken by one militia or the other, or the government, a gun put in their hands, and forced to fight and die. But fight for what? To kill other Syrians! It's civil war out there."

Ali, a student from Damascus, agrees. He didn't leave Syria for fear of Daesh, he's running from the Assad government who imprisoned and tortured him for marching in the Arab Spring demonstrations. "People say, why are you a refugee? You are young, you have an iPhone, how can you be a refugee? But we are not leaving because we are poor. We are leaving because our country is not safe."

"Nobody leaves their country for no reason," says Sipan bitterly. "I didn't come here to claim benefits. I came here because I have fluent English and I have better prospects than if I went to Germany where I don't speak the language. But now I am trapped here, and I am still waiting."

Ali is slightly more upbeat. "This thing won't last forever, and then I will go back to Syria and help rebuild my country." Khaled agrees. "And then you can all come with me and have dinner at my house," he says expansively. "Syria has the best food in the world."


Tess says: I volunteer for the grassroots giving group Calais Action who sends donated supplies and money overseas to the Greek islands and the Calais camps. We have a Christmas Backpack Appeal coming up 19 - 20 December at The Total Refreshment Centre Unit 2a, Foulden Road, Dalston N16 7UR - if you'd like to help donate a backpack full of essentials for a refugee man, woman or child;  or come to the Q&A with refugees and grassroots aid workers, check out the flyers below! We're also looking for volunteers - PM Calais Action's Facebook page if you're interested in helping!

                   


Tuesday 15 December 2015

Again and again and again...... by Miriam Halahmy

What makes us want to read a book again and again and again? I am struck by the desire in the reader to repeat because my first grandbaby is thirteen months now and the fave book currently is Peek A Boo, a baby flap book by Jan Ormerod. Grandbaby absolutely never tires of this book. Our day is Thursday and over the course of the day the book will be read maybe ten to fifteen times and each time the flap is opened the grandbaby laughs. Without fail! I love it.


But I love to reread books. When I was a child I read certain of my favourite books over and over again, Little Women and The Secret Garden being two of those. What did I get out of this repetition? I knew the stories by heart, had a picture of each character firmly in my mind and this was before any film or tv drama I saw of these books. There is an ache I get inside me for books - much stronger when I was younger but it still returns from time to time. And then there is that fever to get back to your reading, a desire so strong you can't wait for the moment when you can settle down again and retrieve that fictional world you have had to exit from for so long - school, shopping, work, childcare, whatever. That dream which we all know so well is part of the desire to re-read. Sometimes it doesn't work. That world only overtook you once and once only.

But with some of these books, like Little Women, you slip back in as though you were stepping out of the front door into the snow, away from the roaring fire and Beth playing the piano, to call out for Laurie next door and sigh as Meg walks away with John. We return to the familiar and the beauty of the world created in the book, to the characters who have become old friends.

The grandbaby is of course doing something different - finding the Peek a Boo book each Thursday in GrandMiri's house is part of establishing our bond, the sense of familiarity which will be created by all the senses - smell, touch, sound, sight and taste. We share our breakfast of bread and butter, peanut butter and bananas, although I'm the only one who has coffee. We press the button on froggie dear which plays the same tunes over and over and we reach for Peek a Boo and share the joke again and again and again and the bond which emerges is one which I hope will last for ever.

As adults the rereading of books my also be the desire to slip back into the world created and to re-engage with old friends. But there is something else too. There are the books which are not quite finished, even though we have read the last page. These are the books which are so tremendously layered that we need to reread them to deepen our understanding and layer our pleasure, our wonder, our questions and our completion of the work.

This year I read Lila by Marilynne Robinson on my Kindle and it had such a profound effect on me I bought it in hardback to reread. But in the past I have made the mistake of rereading a book too soon and so I have put it on my bookshelf to pick up at the right moment when I know it is the only book I really want to be immersed in. Lila is the third title in a loose trilogy which was written over several years. Gilead is the first and I had tried to read that and felt bewildered when it first came out. For me, once I had read Lila, Gilead made so much more sense to me and I would recommend reading them in that order. I wasn't that keen on the middle title, Home.


Again and again is a gift to the reader - it doesn't happen often particularly for me as I have gotten older. I do remember my friend's nephew saying that he and his friend had both read my novel HIDDEN and gone back and reread it immediately a second time. To me that was an enormous endorsement of my book.
But if you are lucky enough to feel that tremendous ache in you to return and reread the book and it rewards and delights you again and maybe again, then I wish you many more agains and agains.

When my youngest was six the Ugly Duckling had to be read aloud every night for six months. Now that was a real challenge...

www.miriamhalahmy.com

Monday 14 December 2015

"Interesting Times" by Lynne Benton


During a recent school visit, a Year 6 girl asked me “Why do you always write books about war?”  I was slightly nonplussed, because I hadn’t thought I did.  Then I realised that the class was currently reading “Jimmy’s War” (set in WW2), which tells how Jimmy has to take on the responsibility for getting himself and his little sister out of London during the Blitz,


and "Raiders!" which tells how the Anglo-Saxon Edric sees the Vikings heading for his village, and knows he must warn his family and stop the raiders from burning down his home.



So as far as the Year 6 girl was concerned, I always wrote about war.


(In fact most of my books are light-hearted and funny, with not a war in sight… but then, they are for 5 year-olds!)



Afterwards I thought about what she’d said and realised that she was (partly) right – I’d set those two books during times of upheaval, because I was interested in how people coped when their lives were turned upside down through no fault of their own.  In the case of “Jimmy’s War” I was particularly interested in how children who were evacuated during the war dealt with it.  The theory of evacuation was good: children should be moved away from the big cities targeted by the bombers and sent into the country for their own safety.  Unfortunately nobody seemed to consider how this would affect the children, either by being forcibly removed from their own families or by being placed in highly unsuitable foster-homes.  In some cases these problems affected the rest of their lives.

There is a (possibly mythical) old Chinese curse which goes, “May you live in interesting times”.  On the face of it this sounds fairly benign for a curse, until you start thinking about it and realise that “interesting times” usually means some sort of upheaval over which the individual has no control, such as war, invasion, famine, flood or persecution.  At such times each person has to deal with the consequences in his own way, and although some survive, others are less lucky.  A curse indeed.

On the other hand, "interesting times" can make for great stories.

A couple of years ago I had a major operation, after which the surgeon wrote on my notes that it had been “uneventful”.  And I realised that in terms of operations this was very good news – nobody wants to have an “eventful” operation - but should you apply the adjective “uneventful” to a story, it would not be a compliment.  Who would want to read a story in which nothing much happened?  In fiction you must have drama, and the hero should have to overcome all sorts of obstacles and setbacks as he aims for his goal. The goal will seem a great deal more worth having if he has had to struggle for it.  And how much greater the struggle if the obstacles are set against a backdrop of war.

Once I started thinking about it I realised how many children's books are set in “interesting times”.  From Captain Marryat’s “Children of the New Forest”, which deals with how one family of children deal with the dangers of living through the English Civil War, 
through Kate Saunders’ “Five Children on the Western Front” which imagines E Nesbit’s “Five Children” ten years on, and how they cope with the First World War, to Michelle Magorian’s “Goodnight Mr Tom”, about a boy evacuated during WW2 to live in the country with a grumpy old man,




and Leslie Wilson’s “Saving Raphael”, which shows how ordinary people in Germany who were not Nazis were treated during the same war.
And coming up to date, Jo Cotterill’s wonderful “Looking  at the Stars” deals with a young girl's experiences during a fictional war in an unnamed middle-eastern country,
   
There are also dystopian future novels such as “The Hunger Games”, which, like the other books mentioned, are about individuals doing their best to survive against the odds in "interesting times."  

And it is from reading stories about individual people who live through those times that we find out about the problems they faced and learn to empathise with them.  When we read a story about the plight of one person, as opposed to a mass (or “swarm”) of people, we are more likely to understand and feel empathy with them.  We have all heard politicians and others grumbling about “these foreigners coming over here to take our houses and jobs and claim benefits”, but reading about one person who has struggled to make his way here against the odds, and finding out why he even attempted it, can surely make you understand him, and others like him, a little better.  

Miriam Halahmy’s powerful book “Hidden” is set in the present in a climate of hatred and distrust for migrants.
This book was written before the current refugee crisis, but it tells of the plight of one illegal immigrant and the children who try to help him.  I would defy anyone who has read it to continue to maintain that “they’re only coming here to claim benefits”.

It would be great to think that a story about a fictional person could change people’s minds more effectively than a newspaper report dismissing vast numbers of people as “scroungers.” 

The other day on a film programme someone said “I think Steven Spielberg must like war – so many of his films are about war.”  Clearly Spielberg also knows that although “interesting” times are difficult to live through, they make for important and inspirational stories.  Inspirational, because they make people think.



Sunday 13 December 2015

Cats and Dogs

I’ve recently fallen out of love.

But it’s OK – I’ve found a new one. Or rather, I have returned to an old flame, one I abandoned a couple of years ago despite its never having done me any harm. I had thought there was no chance of rekindling the relationship; thought I had ‘moved on’. But I was wrong, and it took me back, generously, without question or recrimination, letting us pick up where we left off.

No, I haven’t mixed up ABBA and True Confessions. I’m talking genre. And dogs and cats.

I’m a cat person. I’m also a dog person. Some people say you can’t be both.

                              

Since 2010, when my first novel was published, I’ve mostly written novels. Mainly YA. I haven’t thought much about this – at least, I have given the novels themselves a great deal of thought, but I haven’t really questioned the fact that the novel is what I do, and YA is where I do it.

My first publications, starting in 2006, were short stories, mainly historical, all for adults. I loved writing them. The discipline needed to achieve that sense of a world in a grain of sand was excellent training. I also liked entering them for competitions, and sometimes winning. But for years I was so busy writing novels that I wasn’t getting any short story ideas. There wasn’t any space for them. 

Being so small, the short story needs space.

This time last year I’d a novel coming out (Still Falling), and, though I didn’t know it, was about to be commissioned to write another one. (I blogged about it here in May) I was editing another YA novel, Street Song, and, because I’ve always earned about two pence per book, I was doing as many school visits and workshops as I could to pay the bills.  I was busy, busy, busy. I certainly hadn’t time to stop and think.

And when Street Song went on submission, I sat down at once to write another contemporary YA novel. (I blogged about that here too, in July.  Maybe ABBA is a kind of True Confessions after all.) Even though I wasn’t 100% in love with it. I did it because that’s what I thought I did.

And then I stopped. About 10,000 words in. It wasn’t making me happy and I wasn’t sure how sane it was: to spend another year, at least, writing another novel on spec? When publishers weren’t fighting each other for the one I’d just spent eighteen months on?

But that’s not why I stopped. I stopped because, on 12th October, I visited Dunham Massey in Cheshire. Like many other big houses, it was used as Red Cross auxiliary hospital in the First World War, and the National Trust had done a fantastic job of reconstructing the ward. As soon as I walked in a short story came to me, all in a rush, as hadn’t happened for years. I sat in the tearoom and scribbled down the idea. I knew it would work. All I had to do was write it.

And then I had another idea. And another. 


It was as if short stories were saying to me, We haven’t had a look-in for years because your head was crowded with big fat novels. Gallumphing great Labradors taking up all your headspace.  We’re small cats, and we’re too proud to push in where there’s no room for us. But we’ve been waiting, and as you seem to have left the catflap open, well, we don’t mind if we do…

And in they came. And now that the catflap is open, in they keep coming, washing their faces on the hearthrug and making themselves comfortable. I’ve set myself a goal, because I need goals, I’m that kind of writer: six stories in six months. That gives me time to think, research, plan, write, leave aside and edit. It’s exactly what I do for novels except on a smaller scale.

I don’t know what I’ll do after the six months is up. Perhaps Street Song will have sold by then. Perhaps I’ll be asked to write a sequel to Name Upon Name. Perhaps one of the short stories will spark an idea for a novel. (Actually, that might already have happened…) Or perhaps the short story cats will keep sidling through the cat flap. There’s always a welcome if they do.













Saturday 12 December 2015

Writing and Not Writing - Ruth Hatfield



Having changed the baby’s variously-stained clothes for the umpteenth time today only to observe the heartening sight of her instantly vomiting again down the clean ones, I sat down to finish my blog post on Patricia Leitch. The thought process went a little like this:

Patricia Leitch.

Wine.

Patricia Leitch.

Wine.

Patricia Leitch and wine.

Wine.

I mean no slur on Patricia Leitch – she’s one of my favourite ever authors, and I’ll finish my tribute to her in January. But, the temporary relief of wine aside, a far more pressing topic for me this month has been: why is it so difficult to take a proper rest from writing? Is this a problem common to all writers, or do the experienced ones actually learn how long they need after finishing a manuscript before they start a new one? And what on earth can I do to convince myself that sometimes you have to let go of the handle on the crankshaft of creativity and watch it happily slow to a halt?

It’s been a month since I submitted my last manuscript to my editor. During that month, instead of having a nice rest, doing some long-overdue admin and accepting it as an important part of my work, I seem to have built myself up into a whirling fever of guilt. Guilt that I didn’t write my last book well enough. Guilt that I’m not working every single available hour building my writing ‘business’- planning workshops, organising events, considering exactly what the Message in My Books is, and how I can convey it to a wider audience through hilarious slapstick comedy, hypnotically entertaining talks and quirky slide-shows. Guilt that I’m not writing a new book, that I’m only thinking about writing a new book, and I’m not even sure if it’s the new book that I want to write. Guilt, in short, that I’m Not Doing Enough.

I talked to another author recently who said that she’d submitted her last book 3 months ago and hadn’t written a word since. Writing the book had exhausted her, and she needed to get over her exhaustion before writing another book. I listened in awe at her confidence. I went home, certain that I could find that confidence myself, that I could say, it’s fine not to write for a while.

I went home and tried to stop.

I had a meltdown.

It wasn’t possible. I couldn’t tell myself that it was ok not to be writing. I still can’t say it. I know that it’s ludicrous and completely counter-productive to try and keep forcing stories out of my pen when my imagination contains nothing but a few bleached bones and a dry desert wind. But the dilemma that I face – and I assume many other people trying to write for a living – is that there really always is something more I might be writing. My bookshelves are stuffed with dozens upon dozens of books by Agatha Christie, Dick Francis, Georgette Heyer – they kept them flying out, year after year. Surely they never took a break?

But logic tells me they must have – that’s how they kept it up for so long.

How did they do it?

So when I sat down to talk about Patricia Leitch this evening, I realised I was still trying to write, and still too mentally exhausted to write anything resembling a nice coherent post with a central point and a conclusion. And I thought, instead of providing an answer, can’t I use this blog to ask a question instead?

What do writers do when they need to stop writing?

What do any of you do?!