Wednesday 30 November 2016

Three Books, Three Balls In The Air - By Lari Don

I’ve learnt a lot about writing trilogies in the last three years, mostly things NOT to do. (For example, don’t start more subplots in the first two books than you can tie up in the third book. I spent a lot of last year slashing out minor plotlines.)

But I recently discovered something else about trilogies, especially trilogies that your publisher wants to publish in autumn, spring and autumn (ie 6 months apart).

Bringing three novels out in quick succession (even if they are all basically drafted before you start) can mean the writer is experiencing a different point in three different books’ life cycle at exactly the same time. This month, for example, I’ve been promoting Book 1 of the Spellchasers trilogy (The Beginner’s Guide to Curses), dealing with the final edits of Book 2 (The Shapeshifter’s Guide to Running Away) and tackling the first major redraft of Book 3 (The Witch’s Guide to Magical Combat).


This means I’ve been talking to kids about the decisions behind an action scene in one book, while perfecting the language in an action scene in the next book, and trying to decide whether I should radically rework an action scene in the final book.

So the opportunities for getting tangled up in timelines and for blurting out spoilers to classes of 10 year olds are vast and varied! Particularly given that that one of my characters is a different shape, with different powers, in each book...

I’m having to think about each book in a different way. I’m thinking about Beginner’s Guide in terms of introducing the story, performing readings and discussing creative processes. I’m thinking about Shapeshifter’s Guide at a pernickety level, chewing on word choices and punctuation decisions. And I’m thinking about Witch’s Guide in a broad brush way, reducing wordcount and sewing up plotholes. This feels like slicing myself into three separate writers, each doing different things with the same overarching story at the same time...

But being three different writers at the same time is nothing compared to the challenges I regularly set my characters, so I can’t complain! Also, I love chatting to young readers about stories, and I love editing (yes, actually, I do love editing). So this month has contained many of my favourite things about being a writer!

I thought writing the trilogy was the hard bit. It turns out that promoting and editing a isn’t simple either. I’m juggling three books: each at a different stage in its life cycle, each a different weight and shape, each spinning and falling in a different way... I’m just waiting for one of them to bash me on the head!

But the joys of spending all this time with the characters, the magic and the story still outweighs the many challenges of writing a trilogy. (I suspect my next story idea wants to be a trilogy too. I’ll have to get used to keeping timelines untangled, stamping down on spoilers, and keeping all three books in the air!)

The first book in the Spellchasers trilogy, The Beginner’s Guide to Curses, is out now, the Shapeshifter’s Guide to Running Away will be out in spring 2017, and the Witch’s Guide to Magical Combat will be out in autumn 2017, all published by Floris Books.

Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales, a teen thriller and novellas for reluctant readers.
Lari’s website 
Lari’s own blog 
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Tuesday 29 November 2016

Story fun for Advent by Hilary Hawkes

It's nearly that time again!

In the exciting build up to Christmas, children everywhere will be prising open little cardboard doors (or drawers on the more sophisticated types) and discovering Christmassy pictures (or sometimes not so Christmassy pictures), or finding yummy treats. 

Yes, I'm talking about Advent calenders.

If you're a story fan - a writer or a reader who wants to impart your love for books at every opportunity- then Advent is a great time to get children engaged with stories too.

Why not create an Advent calender that has that in mind? What could be better right now than an idea that gets children involved in stories and prepares them for Christmas all at the same time?

One way is to pick out your child's favourite Christmassy or winter tales - you could include library books to ensure you have plenty ie 24, one for each day of Advent. Wrap each book, or place them all in a decorated box, and let your child choose one a day until December 24th to share and enjoy.


Some Christmas titles





And these are some Christmas titles by SASSIE authors

....including Brenda Williams' Brown Bear, Reindeer and Co which is free to enjoy HERE

And Activity Village have lots of free stories and poems.HERE


Or here is how to use the stories for a Story And Advent Activity:

Using coloured card or paper cut out your Christmas tree shape.

Get your child to colour or decorate this and then hang or pin it up.

Encourage your child to choose one book a day.

When you snuggle up and share each story, get your child to draw or create a picture of something from it. They don't need to be van Gogh. All efforts are amazing! And just to prove it, hang or stick each day's masterpiece on the tree. Write the day's number on each picture. You willl have 24 by the end of Advent.



You could make the last day the Nativity story and perhaps decorate your Advent Story Tree with a star at the top.

Happy Advent, happy story sharing!


Merry Christmas, Little Owl! By Hilary Hawkes. A Christmas story with extra theme of being glad to be who you are!


Hilary Hawkes - Writer and children's author

Monday 28 November 2016

Translating One - Clémentine Beauvais

I’ve just submitted to one of my French publishers, Rageot, the full first draft of my translation of Sarah Crossan’s One, to be published next year. Yes, I’ve had the privilege (and the insane good luck) to translate that wonderful, beautiful, exceptionally moving book into French.


Neither of Sarah’s verse novels has been translated into French yet, which is easy to understand: verse novels aren’t an easy candidate for translation. Plus, verse novels for teenagers are virtually unknown in France - when my own verse novel, Songe à la douceur, came out in August, my publisher Sarbacane put together a press release explaining that the format is well-known and popular in the UK and the US, and giving examples, because they knew it wasn’t going to be an easy sell.

Having seen that I’d just published a verse novel, Rageot, who are also bringing to the French market my Sesame Seade series next year (ironically, not translated by me), contacted me one day to ask me if I knew Sarah’s work - they’d just read One and were considering acquiring it. I replied immediately: ‘Of course I know it! Please acquire it! And can I please translate it?’ I’m generally not pushy with publishers, so that was very out of character, and possibly the brashest thing I’ve ever done. Amazingly, they said yes.

Translating One has been a scary experience, not just because it was the first time I’d translated a verse novel, but because it was also the first time I’d translated a novel, full stop (apart from my own translation into English of one of my French novels). I was acutely aware that I wasn’t a professional translator and that drawing from my experience of writing in two languages wasn’t enough; I got as much reading done on the matter as I could, talked to translator friends, and studied various theories of translation.

But of course, translating children’s literature has its own theories; translating poetry, yet more theories; translating novels, more so; etc. The answers just weren’t solely theoretical, and most of what I learned I learned on the go. Here are some of the most interesting challenges and difficulties I ran into while translating Sarah’s text.

An intriguing characteristic of One is that it’s a verse novel with only very few, very strategically-used rhymes. At the beginning, I was extremely keen to stick to what I interpreted as the ‘wishes’ of the text in that respect. But I found that it was actually very hard in French. French has many categories of words that end similarly - adjectives, past participles, verbs in the infinitive, etc. - so it was often tricky not to make two lines rhyme.

Not just tricky - unnatural. And, as I gradually decided, unnecessary. I warmed to the idea that rhyming would not be, as I’d first categorically ruled, an easy concession, a tacky poetic embellishment of a text that was, so to speak, ‘intentionally left blank’. I discovered that, in French, allowing rhymes to exist in their natural space rendered more accurately the fluidity of Sarah’s original text. 

The occasional ‘new’ rhymes also compensated for something that I often had to lose in translation, namely the very alliterative quality of the English language. Non-Latinate English words tend to be short, evocative in sound, often even onomatopoeic, perfect for poetic effect in brief lines, often of one or two words, sometimes one-letter words.

In French, this isn’t so easy. Many words are long, overloaded with prefixes and suffixes, and opting for lighter or more sonorous alternatives, while often possible, isn’t always desirable - Grace and Tippi’s words in the original text sound very natural, simple, instinctive, and I couldn’t have my French Tippi and Grace resort to lighter, but weirder, synonyms.

The added rhymes therefore ‘displaced’, so to speak, the sound effects internal to the lines in Sarah’s original text to the end of the lines; they moved musicality to a different place.

Another difficulty in French was to render the minimalistic aesthetic of Sarah’s language. There is something haiku-like to Sarah’s style, which works in English to a great extent because the grammar is so lightweight, with many optional words (especially articles), and minimal machinery for stringing clauses together. Authors can occult words they don’t want; translators can’t.

In fact, that very sentence - ‘Authors can occult words they don’t want; translators can’t’ - is a good example: in French, a literal translation would have to be ‘Les auteurs peuvent occulter les mots dont ils ne veulent pas; pas les traducteurs’, totalling 5 more words than the original English sentence. Such inflation is a well-known phenomenon in translation; texts are expected to swell in size from English to French.

This is all very well for a ‘normal’ novel, so to speak, but for a verse novel, we couldn’t have Sarah’s small lines suddenly take up a paragraph. Plus, her discreet use of ‘that’, ‘who’, ‘since’, ‘why’, etc - soft sounds in English - would be disastrously unpoetic in French: ‘que’, ‘qui’, ‘jusque’, ‘pourquoi’, are harsh-sounding, chunky words you don’t want to overuse.

One of the tricks I found was to resort to verb-less sentences, which in French are relatively rare but have a dreamlike, stream-of-consciousness quality that rendered, in some places, Grace’s reflections much more fluidly than the stolid French grammar would allow otherwise. I also very rarely fiddled with lines or enjambments, but I did when lines ended too clumsily on brick-like connectives like the ones listed above.

I can’t conceal that I’m a bit terrified, in part because it’s the first time and in part because I know that I’m not a professional translator. I’ve wrestled a lot with the nagging thought that I’m doing someone else’s work, and that I’ve come at it from a weird place. But I feel I’ve learned a lot, and worked and reworked again and changed my mind and fiddled and tweaked and rewritten; in other words, I’ve done my best. It’s now in my editors’ hands, and I look forward to reworking it, again, when it gets back to me.

Sunday 27 November 2016

Goals and Aims - Lynn Huggins- Cooper

Lots of people make New Year resolutions - but I am making mine at the close of the year. It seems like a better time, for me. We are nearly into the last month of 2016, so I am looking back and assessing the year that has nearly passed. It has been a difficult year for me for a variety of reasons, including bad health. This has meant that I have not been able to work as often as I would have liked, or write all of the things I had planned.

I have a good manuscript to finish. I have enjoyed writing this YA book, and I have shown it to agents who have thought that it 'has legs.' It was meant to get finished this year, and sent out into the world. Now, it is close to being finished. It needs a second sweep through, having had a first draft and a second draft. I am pledging now, in front of you all, that I will spend the next month (when I am not stuffing my face with mince pies, or baking, or wrapping presents) polishing this book, so that on or before NYE 2016/2017, I shall pack its bag, wipe its nose and send it out into the world.

Wish me luck. Time is passing...



Hold me accountable.

I'm doing this!

Saturday 26 November 2016

The Joy of Writing by Eloise Williams


Writing is hard work sometimes.

That’s a pretty obvious thing to say.

What I mean, if I’m a bit more specific, is remembering why you write is hard work sometimes.
 

Before that first deal you write for the love of writing.

The joy of taking yourself off into another place. Creating characters is so much fun isn’t it?

Inhabiting different worlds, living different lives, you have adventure and excitement at your fingertips. The words flow, gush, tsunami out from your fingertips. The world is a bright and exceptional place and you have found your inner creative genius. You have discovered what you were always meant to do and in that you have revealed the best part of yourself, to yourself.

Enjoy this bit!

Now, if only you can get that first book deal, everything will be outstanding for the rest of your life. You’ll have that book on a shelf. You will be validated. Nothing will ever be wrong ever again.

Right?

RIGHT?

Well here it is!
 

 

They love your work! They are willing to take a chance on an unknown kid – or rapidly aging adult in my case. Your book is out there in the shops. You get sent photographs of readers chortling along, scared witless, crying real tears – not necessarily on the same page.

You have made it.

Enjoy this bit!
 

 

So now you have everything you ever wanted.

Right?

RIGHT?
 

 

Except isn’t so and so having their twelfth book deal over there? And have you heard that so and so has just won a prize for being the best writer the world has ever seen and of course, that has led to a twenty-seven-figure book deal, which will last them for the rest of their lives, and beyond if they are cryogenically frozen and manage to come back?

And why can’t you write anymore?

What has happened to your magical fingers?

Why does your ideas bank feel like a squeezed out, dried up, mouldy half-eaten jellyfish?

 

It’s fine! You WILL get that second book out if it kills you. Which it might well do.

Enjoy this bit!
 

 

And on it goes.

And then suddenly you will wake one morning and realise you are a boring author. Or at least this is what happened to me.

I don’t mean my work is boring. I mean I am boring.

My husband comes home at night to find me bleating about the fact I haven’t won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature.

I mean, I’ve got a book out for 7-9’s for goodness sake. It’s beautiful (it really is) and the Queen hasn’t even had the manners to give me a call to commemorate my services to fiction?

Gah.
 
Ryan Gosling moment...

 

Ah, that’s better.

And so I am taking a step back in a saintly type manner.
 
 
I do have a looming deadline for my second book (thank you Earth, planets, stars, gods, Firefly Press, special agent Ben Illis, everyone) and I do have to write words.

BUT I made myself stop this morning and really have a think.

Why am I writing?

What is it I love about it? Is it the pay cheque? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

 
Or is it the storytelling? The love of words? The way I feel when I lose myself in something? The feeling of communicating with other humans? Of sharing the human experience?

What am I trying to say?

About life? About people and cultures? Friendships? Strength in the face of adversity? Connections? Being human?

What am I trying to say with ‘Gaslight’ my forthcoming MG novel - to be launched at the Cardiff Kid’s Lit Fest next April, please come, there’ll be cake - and why did I start writing it? What do I love about it? Why is it important?
 


Take yourself off on a walk with your dog – you can borrow mine if you don’t have one, he’s a lovely little fella – and remind yourself that what you are doing is important.

VERY important. You are telling stories and what could be more glorious than that?


You don’t have to become embroiled in the angst of it all – at least not all the time. And neither does your husband - sorry Guy.
I'm also sorry for making you dress up like this for Halloween.... but less so...

And when you see those people who became a success overnight just remind yourself that they didn’t. They’ve been through all of the stages you are going through and might still be going through them now.

Just like those people who can eat whatever they like and never put any weight on, who you see leaving for their morning jog at 6ish every day.

Most importantly comparison is the enemy of achievement (or some quote like that) and this is about you and your creative journey, isn’t it? Isn't it?
 

So remember to enjoy it. Enjoy all of it. Every last second. We are the privileged creative people and that is worth the ride.
And apologies for the manic / happy elf pic but I am the 26th blogger so Boxing Day will be too late!

Happy writing!

Friday 25 November 2016

Folly Farm Eve by Tamsyn Murray

For the past few years, I've had the last weekend in November highlighted in my calendar with the words 'Folly Farm'.

Three days on the cusp of winter when I've crept away to a gorgeous retreat in rolling, often mist-covered countryside, with my laptop and a lovely group of children's writers for company. It's an escape unlike any other: a magical, nourishing time that I look forward to all year long. Lots of inspiration, laughter and good food among kindred spirits, with plenty of time alone to gather my thoughts and write. Is it any wonder I'm first in the queue to book a place?

This time last year, I was struggling with an edit of Instructions for a Second-hand Heart and spent most of the weekend locked away in my room, working. So this November, I was determined not to have as much to do; one of the best things about Folly Farm is the company and I wanted to enjoy as much of that as I could. But anyone who knows me well won't be surprised to hear that I have failed to escape my deadlines, so I'll be doing my usual trick of arriving late and trying to balance being sociable with getting as much work done as possible. I need to write the best part of 25,000 words this weekend and I really cannot fail.

In spite of this, I know I'll get a lot more than just words on the page out of Folly Farm. For me, it's an oasis; the chance to step outside the demands of my every day life and enjoy the tranquility of the beautiful setting. I'm looking forward to seeing my favourite tree - I am determined to write about that tree one day - and watching the robin flit across the stable-yard. One year, I found him in my bathroom and had to lay a trail of bacon to encourage him to leave. I'm even looking forward to walking through the archway between the farmhouse and the rooms late at night in the dark, being scared by the barn door that rattles furiously in the wind. Maybe it's not the wind, I'll think with a nervous glance into the blackness. Maybe there's something there...

My favourite tree
Apart from the thought of spending three days with fabulous friends, I think it's the oasis that draws me back to Folly Farm every year; the reminder that it's worth spending time refreshing your batteries and refilling the well. Writing isn't all about the words we write, after all. It's about the memories we make so that we can plunder them at a later date. I'm planning to make some great memories this weekend.

Thursday 24 November 2016

Writing for 'reluctant' readers - Sue Purkiss

Some years ago, I had a lovely job working as a teacher with a Youth Offending Team. Very few of the young people we worked with were securely and successfully in full-time education; most had problems with reading. My job was very varied. A lot of it was about advocating for them, trying to make sure they had access to whatever was the most appropriate education for them. It was difficult, and it typically took a long time, so in between, I would do some work with them. If they were excluded from school, they would usually have a tutor, and the school would set work for them.

But a surprising number slipped through the cracks and had nothing, and with these, in the short time we had available, I would do whatever seemed most likely to engage them. With one sixteen year-old boy, we wrote a letter to his soon-to-be-born child, writing about his life and expressing his hopes for the future. With several, I got them to write poetry - they needed a framework and help with the actual writing, but the words and thoughts were their own, and their shy pleasure at having created something complete was a joy to see. With another, we created fliers for a small business he hoped one day to set up. With that same boy, I read a story about bullying and we talked about it.

The cover of my new book, which is for 'reluctant' readers.
We managed to access a small funding pot, and with this I bought a collection of books - mostly Quick Reads and books from Barrington Stoke. It wasn't easy to make best use of them; the young people's lives were pretty disorganised, and it was a major feat getting them to remember to turn up for sessions. But there were some who borrowed one book, and realised that these were stories they could manage and enjoy - and then they'd borrow another, and another, and another.

Since becoming a writer, I've always hoped to have the opportunity to write for readers like this. I think 'reluctant' is actually a bit of a misnomer; they're only reluctant because they find reading so hard - and so then they pretend to scorn it, because that's what you do, isn't it? If there's a club you can't join, you shrug your shoulders and say that you never wanted to belong to it anyway. I wrote about a boy like this - Ash - in The Willow Man: I think he's still one of my favourite characters. But although the book was in part about a boy who found reading difficult, it wasn't for a boy such as him: you would need to be a confident reader to access it.

This year, I finally got my chance. A Time To Live, which has just come out, is published by Ransom. It's set in France during the war, and it's about a girl who shelters a British airman who has been shot down and injured. At first, she has to do it in secret, because her father feels the best way to keep his family safe under German occupation is to lie low and do nothing to antagonise the invaders; he's not a coward, but his overriding priority is to keep his family safe.

So there's a lot of conflict, a lot of tension. When I put in the proposal, the editor wondered if this was going to be too much to get into 5000 words. Well - it was certainly a challenge. It meant getting rid of any excess baggage: paring the story and the characters down to their essence. I loved it. And if just a few - even one - teenager reads it and enjoys it and then thinks: Well, that was fun - maybe I'll try another! - then I'll really feel as if I've achieved something.


Liz Kessler, who usually posts on the 24th, will be back in 2017.


Wednesday 23 November 2016

If we could talk to the animals again! by Steve Gladwin

Just recently I have been spending a great deal of time with animals. It would be nice to say that that involves any kind of close contact, but sadly apart from the usual visiting birds in our garden, the odd squirrel making a leap for a tree in our local churchyard and a variety of dogs with their walkers, it’s not quite as full in your face as this.
What I have been doing is spending much enjoyable and valuable time with animals in their symbolic, creative and inspirational forms through the composition of tales for a series of books. Because my animal encounters have been limited to just a few mammals, birds and insects, (eight in all), I have grown to know them in depth in a way I could never match if I were either visiting them in captivity, or preferably in the wild.
And yet there is something special about meeting the likes of raven and swan, hare and wren, wolf and butterfly and seal and swallow through the medium of story, myth and folktale and especially maybe about concentrating on a few certain attributes – say raven as a symbol of death and wolf as a representative of the pack animal, swallow representing both journeying and memory and wren the importance of being cocky when you need to be.



Margaret's Cards - The Hare by Rose Foran



Writing my stories and working in this way with these animals has made me think a great deal about our relationship with animals, about how that has changed, and how that has been reflected - particularly in children’s literature.
Like so many people, one of my earliest literary memories was of Aslan and the rest of the talking animals in CS Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.Even as an adult, one of my favourite sections in any book is the section in Prince Caspian, where Doctor Cornelius secretly takes the young prince to the top of the tower at night time. Here he reveals that everything Caspian has been told by his Uncle Miraz about Narnia’s history is untrue. What's more animals do talk!Well of course they do! I thought everyone knew that.


I  also remember my early encounters with Animal Farm and the tragic death of Boxer, Pooh, Piglet and the magnificently gloomy Eeyore,and of course there was Ratty, Mole and Badger, (I always felt that big show-off Toad rather ruined things!) in The Wind in the Willows'. How could I forget that magnificent sequences of getting lost in the Wild Wood in winter, and the wonderfully pagan ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ encounter with Pan, (although of course as a child it was just a bit weird!) This was of course all long before Richard Adams rabbits out on silflay in Watership Down, (one of my all time favourite words!), not to mention Redwall and Deptford and Duncton and the like. 





Nowadays we must be even more richly endowed with talking animal encounters and adventures, (my fellow abba blogger Ruth Hatfield's 'Book of Storms' series, where even the grass talks, is one of the most wonderful recent examples) but surely in some ways all we’re really doing when writing such stories, is filling in the gap where we used to have proper relationships with all animals and not just the cats whose antics we post proudly on youtube and the dogs we turn into cowardly cartoon characters. Surely ancient man and woman used to actually ‘talk to the animals.’

Thankfully there are still places in the world – often where the terrain is harsh and therefore the pickings poor – where a warrior knows respect for the animal he will eventually kill, where he or she will almost persuade it into death and mourn it when it goes.  Nor is this a transient respect, but one which the whole tribe will have known since birth.Something which is as deep a part of their culture as the need to kill in order to use the fallen creature’s meat to survive, it’s skin to keep warm and a whole host of other ways in which no wastage is ensured. Contrast this with the amount of meat and fish lost to sell by dates and the discarding of nearly every part of all those animals we do kill as part of the factory farm, slaughter and profit merry go round.

It was simply never meant to be like this, but surely it has gone too far now to change! And as well as that more natural and respectful relationship between warrior and animal, there is a whole other lost relationship, when we truly were able to talk to the animals.

I remember many years ago a work colleague of my then partner coming round and talking to our cat in a completely different language. Spats immediately responded in the same sort of ‘Prip, prow’ language which we had never heard before. Here was a woman who could talk to cats as easily as horse whisperers can talk to horses and a native warrior can talk a quarry down into death. Why not the rest of us? We felt a mite miffed - here was our cat conversing quite deeply it seemed with a complete stranger!


We have clearly lost touch with talking to the animals on any number of levels. Whether you believe in spiritual animal connections, such as the idea of having a particular totem animal, or would just like to tell your problems to a sympathetic baboon next time you've got one peeling the roof of your car in your local safari park, surely we can all agree that things have gone in the wrong direction.

A few months ago I posted a two part blog about the Willard Price books of my childhood and contrasted these with Gerald Durrell's 'My Family and other Animals' and the new generation of responsible TV naturalists as personified by Steve Backshall and the first book in his Falcon Chronicles series, 'Tiger Quest.' I commented how Price's old-fashioned view of 'hunt 'em, catch 'em and presume they'l be happier in dad's zoo' sat quite awkwardly nowadays. In a rather naive moment, I also expressed relief that the problems with poaching weren't half as extreme as had been depicted in Safari Adventure. Almost straight away I discovered that not only was poaching still a horrendous problem, but that the same was in danger of being the case for whaling, and the systematic destruction of animal homelands and sanctuaries and this before Brexit and the recent US election of a 'go and find more oil and profit' president elect'

Many of the problems and confusions in animal conservation come - as they do so with so many things - from the too long dominating patriarchal attitudes of the old testament, which - while being set down as laws for a particular people, are still taken as gospel, (pun absolutely intended!) by far too many people who should know better. The 'thou shalt have dominion' school of thought truly should have no place in our modern society, but then there are still people out there who believe in creationism and I gave up on them long ago!

Writers have not only had plenty to say about animal conservation, but about re-introducing our animal companions to us in a way which doesn't always have to be cutesy or trapped in old cartoon ideas of the forties. There are many naturalists who became writers while readily admitting that they used to more or less shoot everything in sight, who later preached that others should preserve it. Peter Scott say, is a classic example. For quite often there is no more powerful advocate than the convert, rather like the ex smoker who becomes the tobacco industry's fiercest critic.


thanks to andeanshaman.com


Of course, those of us who write, can also do a great deal to promote a better understanding of a truer, more honest and above all less systematically cruel relationship to animals, but I'm about to suggest another way which you may choose to adopt if you wish, or encourage in others if you don't.

Basically it's this - find your equivalent of a totem animal! Now before you go dismissing this clearly new age madness and thumbing back through my previous blogs to find all the evidence of my evil insidious paganism, just consider this. I'm not asking you to connect with an animal, or dance yourself into a trance states to discover it. Nor am I asking you to descend to the spirit world to find a cure for your mum's eczema! That's a power animal and it's more a shaman's department!

No, a totem animal is more one which you may already feel some association with, maybe because you've already adopted one via any of those schemes where it's usually the same animal who gets adopted by everyone, and ends up with an ego so big it can't fit back in the enclosure! Or you might just always enjoy it's appearances on Planet Earth 2 and the like!

All I'm asking is this! Engage with it! Learn more about it and teach others about it! And if you can't choose between a whole sub species - say the Big Cats - well all the better. Spread the word about the whole family, create or sign petitions to save them - anything like that. It will all in the long term make a difference to the world. 

If you're a a cat and dog owner, you're already halfway there!, but there are a lot of other cats, wolves, wild dogs and jackals to help too. And if you want to be really unconventional, pick something resolutely unsexy, like say those rather scary creatures in the ocean depths that carry what looks like a light bulb on a chord in front of them. Go for the unromantic - I dare you!  

Or as a writer maybe you can pitch a great new idea about wildlife - say a private detective heroine with an off-beat animal side-kick - via an adventurous editor or publisher,(I'm assured they do exist!) and do your bit that way.

Go on, have a go! Every bit of it will make a difference?



Steve Gladwin
Writer, Performer and Teacher

Author of 'The Seven' and 'The Raven's Call'

Tuesday 22 November 2016

Going Solo - by Dan Metcalf


At some point in their career, most writers who are getting paid will have to register for self-assessment tax and go freelance. It's a scary moment, especially if, like me, you had only ever had a salaried job. Before doing I went freelance, I asked self-employed friends what the experience is like, and most had always been working for themselves, so they knew no different. There's no holidays, they'd say, and worries of future income drying up are always present, but what irked me was how little they could tell me about the practicalities of working for yourself. I wanted to hear how difficult it was to register for tax, or who I had to talk to before I jumped into freelance work. 
 

I'm here to tell you that it's not that hard. Registering for tax is pretty simple, and there is a helpline for disnumerates like me to get assistance. The government wants you to be successful – it's in their interests, as they'll be taking a slice of your money for tax anyway. And you don't need to ask anyone to start working for yourself. You just do it.

I started as a part-time freelancer and really pushed myself to go full-time freelance as soon as the work picked up, because the job market is so dicey. I had been threatened with redundancy three times in my career as a librarian in just under ten years and the final time they managed to squeeze me out. Job club beckoned. I took the plunge and leapt into working for myself. It's hard, but fun. A friend of mine runs a business/marking consultancy and is seeing more and more people setting up on their own due to the recession, and loving it.

If you want to work for yourself, take a look at the government advice here  and other than that, KEEP ALL YOUR RECEIPTS. You'll see why.

Monday 21 November 2016

Sleeping with Books, by Anne Booth

Today is the 21st - and I realise that I haven’t written my blog post. I am so sorry - I had been wondering what to write, and mulling over various themes, but now the day has come and all I can say is - I am sleeping with books.


I am staying and working for a few days in Hawarden in Flintshire, just over the English border in Wales,in  the most beautiful library I have ever been to, the library Mr Gladstone left to the nation. It houses his personal collection of books and private papers, and it was deliberately sited in Flintshire rather than London so that the relatively under privileged area would benefit.

It’s nice to read about such a principled politician. I really like his sayings - to leave the world better than when you found it is such a good aspiration - and one it would be so good for modern politicians to follow. I also throughly agree with his positive views on tea.



So there you have it. I’m sorry I haven’t written a blog post - but maybe one of you reading this is meant to read all about Gladstone’s Library instead. You can eat delicious meals here, work in the library or the lovely lounge, walk in the park and woods he also left to the people, wander about the pretty village, go the the church next door with the Burne Jones windows. Basically - this is a wonderful place and every writer should visit! And members of the Society of Authors get a discount. Read about it and go!







Sunday 20 November 2016

Turning to Emily Dickinson - Joan Lennon



“Hope” is the thing with feathers - 
That perches in the soul - 
And sings the tune without the words - 
And never stops - at all - 

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - 
And sore must be the storm - 
That could abash the little Bird 
That kept so many warm - 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land - 
And on the strangest Sea - 
Yet - never - in Extremity, 
It asked a crumb - of me.




Emily Dickinson "Hope is the thing with feathers"
(written in 1861, published posthumously in 1891)


(Apologies for re-using this from my own blog - I've been playing host to a disgusting lurgy.  And time spent with Emily is never wasted.)



Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
Silver Skin.




Saturday 19 November 2016

Writing in a Post-Truth World - Lucy Coats



The Oxford Dictionary international word of the year is 'post-truth', apparently reflecting the highly politicised events of the last 12 months. Facts are no longer a factor - in a political post-truth world it's all about tapping into emotions and beliefs, with facts being sidelined to the dustbin in favour of what people WANT to believe. The politician or party or movement who promises that will win, however outrageous their statements or personalities. We have all seen the evidence of this recently.

So where does this leave us as writers? Of course, we make things up for a living. We are, if you like, consummate liars, creating worlds and characters that we, at least, believe in. We show the world not as it actually is, but through a filtered lens, reflected in a mirror. How are our lies different from those of the politicians, then? Are we not touching people's lives? As writers for children, are we not shaping the thoughts of our readers?

Yes, we are. And I think that's something to be thankful for. Unlike most of the current crop of politicians (with a scant few honourable exceptions), we are not seeking to herd people into narrow boxes, to drive them by fear into putting up walls, into rejecting people 'other' than themselves. Writing for children is about opening doors, not closing them. It's about showing children other times, other places, other ways to be, other people. It's about helping our readers to understand that other is not bad or scary, that other is just like us, that other is human. Of course we show darkness in our work - it's the other side of light, but I think that as a general rule writers for children try to show at least a sliver of the positive, the redemptive, even in our darkest characters. If we don't, we risk them becoming cardboard cartoon cutouts, who are not at all believable.

I'm not saying children's books are all about being jolly and gung-ho. Quite the reverse. Children's books (and in that I include YA) cover some of the darkest topics and situations in life, and that's why what we do is so important. Because, in this post-truth world, we are, through fiction, through our 'lies', trying to shine a light to illuminate the truth of how things are, how they make people feel, how they can deal with them. I think it's some of the most important work there is, and right now, it's more important than ever.

Yesterday I read 'A Declaration in Support of Children' on the Brown Bookshelf blog, signed by over six hundred writers and illustrators for children. I'd like to quote from it here (you can read the whole piece via the link):

"We... do publicly affirm our commitment to using our talents and varied forms of artistic expression to help eliminate the fear that takes root in the human heart amid lack of familiarity and understanding of others; the type of fear that feeds stereotypes, bitterness, racism and hatred; the type of fear that so often leads to tragic violence and senseless death.

For our young readers, we will create stories that offer authentic and recognizable reflections of themselves, as well as relatable insight into experiences which on the surface appear markedly different. We will use our books to affect a world brimming with too many instances of hostility and injustice. We will plant seeds of empathy, fairness and empowerment through words and pictures. We will do so with candor and honesty, but also in the spirit of hope and love."

I think that's something worth signing up to. I hope you do too. Because we, as writers and illustrators need to stand up and be counted. Whoever originally said it, the following remains true. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men and women do nothing. As creators, we do have power. Let's use it.



OUT NOW: Cleo 2: Chosen and 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:  Beasts of Olympus series "rippingly funny" Publishers Weekly US starred review 
Lucy's Website - Twitter - Facebook - Instagram


Friday 18 November 2016

100 - Linda Strachan

I was surprised to find that this is my 100th post on the Awfully Big Blog Adventure.

Despite being a little nervous at first, when I wrote about writing a bio for one of my books in A Life More Interesting, I have enjoyed this monthly expression of thoughts and questions, discussions, comments and celebrations.

Working with illustrator Sally J Collins
I have written posts on diversifying and making a living as a writer , about the writers' life - what makes us write and what stops us writing.

In A special relationship  I wrote about working closely for many years with my much-missed friend and colleague Sally J. Collins, the Illustrator of my Hamish McHaggis Books.
         
 I have written about libraries, librarians and festivals, writing YA and picture books.







How Every day is different  when  travelling all over the country, seeing amazing scenery on my way to visit schools and libraries, doing workshops and all kinds of author events.

My good friend Cathy MacPhail and I made a short video about our experience of tutoring a residential writing course together.

It's been a great journey, sometimes a little playful as in The One That Got Away  where the comments continued the narrative, and in April this year I celebrated 20 years as a published author in ' Celebrating 20 years '

Who knows what will come next but I would like to thank you for accompanying me and for taking the time to read and comment. To all my fellow bloggers thank you for the incredible variety of fascinating posts that make the Awfully Big Blog Adventure such a great success.

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

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

Her latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me . 

She is Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh.

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

website:  www.lindastrachan.com
blog:  Bookwords 

Thursday 17 November 2016

My New Assistant by Susie Day

A few months ago, surrounded by piles of poorly managed notebooks, plot scribbles on the backs of envelopes, and the inevitable jungly tangle of receipts shoved into a folder optimistically marked 'tax return', I decided: now was the moment to accept it. I had to acquire an assistant.

It's a question every author faces at a certain point in their career. I write books. But I also reply to emails, create workshops for schools, organise my events calendar, send invoices, run a website - all on top of the day job. Sometimes it's a bit much.

My assistant's name is Pan. (Short for Pantalaimon.)

He's quite stern about my use of the internet during working hours.


He guards my pens.


And my notes. Sometimes in a way that means I can't read them, presumably as an exciting memory test.


He's always so appreciative when I read my drafts aloud.


Should I ever lack plot ideas, he offers me The Mystery of the Muddy Pawprints on the Bedsheets.


He's basically just very helpful.


Sooo helpful.


The very best assistant ever.



I'm not quite sure what I did without him.

(All credit for his magical ways goes to his owner Fliss, who is equally inspiring. But who doesn't sit on the desk quite so much.)

Susie Day - books for kids about families, friendship, feelings and funny stuff
https://susieday.com/
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