An Awfully Big Blog Adventure

Vocare & Pascho - Malaika Rose Stanley

2012-02-01T00:01:00.000Z

A couple of months into myRLF Fellowship at the London College of Fashion, I mentioned to a friend howmuch I was enjoying it. It reminded me of how much I love teaching – the chanceto make a difference in a pupil or student’s life, to share in their learningand help them reach their full potential. Teaching, I declared, was myvocation. She was surprised. To be honest, I surprised myself. Where does mywriting fit into this? Is it just a job; another career I’ve moved into or isit something else entirely? I’ve been thinking about the answer to thisquestion – a lot.

As a bossy little girl,press-ganging my friends into an audience to listen to the poems and stories I’dwritten, I was often told by adults that I would probably grow up to be ateacher. There was certainly never any mention that I might grow up to be awriter. I don’t think that early ‘encouragement’ pushed me towards a teachingcareer, but I did train and work as a teacher for many years. The genuine encouragementcame from a careers advice teacher at the FE college where I was hurtlingtowards a job as a shorthand-typist or, at best, a private secretary. She stoodover me while I filled in the university clearing house forms and – by happy accident– found my vocation as well as a fulfilling and relatively well-paid careerwith great holidays. She was everything a good teacher should be – inspiring,challenging, supportive – and she made a huge impact on my life. I owe her ahuge debt of gratitude, although to my sadness and shame, I no longer rememberher name.

At the risk of soundingconceited, I believe I was a good teacher too. I honed my bossiness into theability to encourage – OK, push – my students to be the best they could be andI hope some of them remember me positively. I remained in education until I was eventuallypromoted to a job for which I was not suited and which I loathed. Budgetmanagement just wasn’t my thing – and I bolted.

Although I had always written in my sparetime, I came to writing for children as the result of another great teacher andanother happy accident. I was enrolling for an adult education class in Frenchwhen I saw a noticeboard covered with the cover proofs of the books publishedby authors and illustrators who had attended Elizabeth Hawkins’ Writing forChildren course. I enrolled for both classes, but ditched French by half-term. Overthe next two years, first in the class and then in the follow-up workshop, Iwrote my first published children’s book, ManHunt. I love writing – I love inventing and spending time with my imaginaryfriends, the heart-pounding unpredictability and sense of surprise, theindependence and freedom to do anything and go anywhere, all while I’m still in my pyjamas.

Gradually though, despite all theseattractions, I found myself drawn back to the ‘classroom’ – tutoring, training,special needs support – until serious problems with my health eventually forcedme out again. Since then, I believe I have established the ideal balance forme. I write full-time but I still teach when I can – through school visits, workshops, etc – and yes, most recently, that RLF gig...

So – back to my original question – if teachingis my vocation, where does that leave writing?

The words vocation and passion both havereligious connotations. Vocationcomes from the Latin word vocare,meaning ‘to call’ and refers to an occupation to which a person is drawn or forwhich they are particularly suited, trained or qualified. Passion comes from the Ancient Greek verb πάσχω (pascho/pas'-kho) meaning ‘to suffer’ and is theterm for a very strong feeling or affinity towards someone or something – anintense emotion of enthusiasm and desire.

I certainly have huge enthusiasm and a strongdesire and I feel incredibly fortunate to have found such a rewarding secondcareer – but I still wonder if it’s that element of ‘suffering’ that clarifies whatwriting means for me. I barely scrape a living, so it’s definitely all aboutthe love rather than the money and the writing I’m most proud of has often beenfuelled by past wounds and tragedies and emotional pain. Even on a practical,day-to-day level, I am sometimes so fearful and obsessed with whether I’m doingit right or doing it well enough or with just getting something down on thepage that I forget to eat or take a walk and I neglect my relationships. It’s aglorious cliché, but I suffer for my art like every other writer, perhaps –maybe like you – and l still feel compelled to keep on doing it.

Dance Dreams and Spike and Ali in Space will both bepublished in September 2012 by Tamarind

www.malaikarosestanley.com

www.malaikarosestanley.blogspot.com

Live and In Person - Elen Caldecott

2012-01-30T06:30:00.000Z

I thought I would chime in in what appears to have become an unofficial and impromptu publicity week on the blog.

We've had great posts already from Liz, Nicola and Celia on the subject. I commented on one of those posts that my favourite part of book publicity was the live events. I would much rather talk to a room of 200 school children than try to follow a conversation on Twitter. So, events are always a big part of my promo efforts.
But what are events for? What can they achieve? And are they a good use of my time?

I am a secret exhibitionist. If there is such a thing, of course. I did Theatre Studies at A-level and was part of my local Youth Theatre. Whenever there was any getting up on stage and showing off to be done, I was your girl. But I came to dislike the close physicality of the business of show - everyone wanted to plait each other's hair all the time. Ewww.

Doing events pleases my inner thesp. I tell stories, I do the voices, I make 'em laugh, make 'em cry (I do a good 'angry security guard', and that usually terrifies someone...). So, I have a great time, but what else is gained?

In my opinion, there are three main audiences for events. First, there's the actual children sitting in front of you; they need to have a good time. Second, the person who booked you, so that might be a teacher, librarian or festival organiser; they're hoping that you'll bring some added value to their organisation. Finally, there's your publisher and perhaps a bookseller; they hope that you'll actually shift some copies.
And who does the author try to please? All of them, of course!

I try to make sure that every child feels involved and inspired. I show them how stories work and regularly have zombie invasions, pirates, aliens rampaging over magical landscapes. Last week I started a Jelly Babies versus Gummy Bears war, it can get very raucous. For the teachers, I smuggle in some genuine useful information in with the messing around. And I'll plug the books too.

It's that last part that I have the most trouble with - to my publicist's occasional chagrin. I'm more of a children's tv presenter than salesperson. Still, two happy audiences out of three ain't bad.

If you do events, who are you hoping to please? If you attend events, what do you hope to get from them?

If you'd like to see me at my capering best, you can catch me at the Imagine Festival in London on 16th February.

www.elencaldecott.com
Elen's Facebook Page

What do children own? – Michelle Lovric

2012-01-29T00:50:00.000Z

Children have little claim on the material world. They own neither property nor cars. They do not hold mortgages. They can’t vote and they must live pretty much as their elders and would-be betters dictate.

Yet where’s the child who fails to make great claims on the universe? You see their imprint everywhere and most of all in the way in which they customize everything they touch.

I first started thinking about this idea a few years ago when our own lovely Catherine Johnson responded to my plea to be allowed to accompany an experienced writer on something that was new and terrifying to me – a school visit. At Bishop’s Hatfield Girls School, I watched thirty-odd girls at a time enter the library, take possession of the tables and begin to engage with ideas of writing. Catherine had them spellbound. I started to notice the girls’ pencil cases. Every child had a different one. Some were fluffy Hello Kitty, some were sleek Ted Baker; others had foxy tails or soft toys attached.

These girls were bound to wear the same uniforms but, where they could, they expressed their personalities abundantly and vibrantly.

I began to imagine what they did to their own bedrooms at home. In their own rooms, children express themselves, their tastes, their creativity, in every imaginable way. Even the music that fills the space; even the underwear scattered on the floor; even the Jurassic-period sandwich mouldering on a bookshelf; even the dried-out bottles of lurid nail varnish; even the desire to obliterate the light and paint the walls black.

And this gave me an idea for my new book, Talina in the Tower, in which a girl has everything taken away from her – her parents, her home, her neighbourhood, her freedom. Talina is an aspiring writer, and this is what she decides to do with her room in the lonely tower where she and her cat Drusilla are forced to live with a cold-hearted Guardian who writes morbid cautionary tales for children:
Talina’s huge bed was nothing more than a straw pallet supported on four piles of encyclopaedias. The counterpane was covered with books three layers deep. This left just a narrow channel in the middle, into which Talina inserted herself and Drusilla, like two letters in an envelope …
Much as she despised her Guardian’s books, Talina was determined to be a writer too. She’d been writing stories since she was five … Some of her most vivid ideas came from her dreams, especially since her parents had disappeared. She was so afraid to lose a brilliant thought in the night that she’d hung hundreds of pencils and pieces of paper from the roof’s beams on lengths of string. So, without even lighting a candle, she could always find a pencil with her fingers and make notes on the nearest scrap of paper. Some mornings, she woke up to find all the pieces of paper covered with scribbles. Sometimes she’d written ten different things one over the other on the same piece of paper, which was very irritating.

Later in the book, Talina escapes from her tower. At first she is relieved. But our fearless heroine is almost undone when she returns after many adventures to find that her cold-hearted Guardian has purged her room of every trace of her. Later, she tells him of the effect of this act on her feelings and her morale:
‘Great-Uncle Uberto, do you know what one of your worst deeds was? It was the way you emptied my room in your tower … Of course, I did not own that room – a child owns no place in the whole world, really. I knew it was yours, your tower, your walls, your everything – but I had made it mine, my refuge, the only way I could, with my little things, my pencils, my hanging books, my pictures. I’d hardly been gone a few days and you – you – you – expunged me, as if I were dead. As if I had never existed … What had I ever done to deserve that?’

Those pencil cases at Bishop’s Hatfield Girls School have a lot to answer for, as they also led me to look into other aspects of ownership in Talina in the Tower.

Can a human, for example, own an animal? I looked at our relationships with so-called domesticated creatures and those we deem wild. Who owns a city – the person who owns the land, those with a vision to build its wonders, or those who inhabit it with love?

As ever, Venice provided me with a perfect world in miniature on which to test my ideas. I watched the grannies of Quintavalle – a part of Venice where tourists are rarely seen – possessing their grandchildren in great waves of nagging and kissing. I saw monstrous cruise-liners subordinating Venice’s skyline. I saw arrogant tourists acting as if they owned the city by virtue of the money they had to spend. I saw the sponsors brutalizing the city by plastering cinema-screen-sized and tasteless photographs of their products over architecture whose remembered beauty burned their images right through the billboards. I saw children taking possession of Campo Santa Margherita and Campo Santo Stefano for their games. I watched my nephew climb a lamp-post and lord it over everyone.

I saw the other side of owning: being owned, and realized that, perversely, it is something most of us seek. We want to ‘belong’. But the bonds of good ownership are made not of money, power, or size. They are made of affection.

And this is something to which children may lay claim, and in extravagant portions.

Michelle Lovric’s website - see the new Talina web pages up now.
Talina in the Tower is published on February 2nd, 2012, by Orion Children’s Books
Michelle Lovric also blogs on the History Girls website

Then and Now - Celia Rees

2012-01-28T06:01:00.001Z

At the risk of 'bugging the life out of people' (see Nicola Morgan's recent ABBA Post of the 24th below), I've got a new book coming out next week. February 2nd, in fact, and I'm going to mention it because having a book published is one of those things that doesn't happen all that often to me, although with so many books published it is obviously happening all the time to other people, who then bleet and tweet about it, to Nicola's annoyance. I suppose that's part of the problem. In her perceptive way has put her finger one of the profound contradictions of social networking, and publishing for that matter. To an individual author, a book being published is A Very Big Thing; to everyone else, it's another 'so what?'. Cursory glance only before we go on to our own tweet, Facebook page entry, blog or planning our Virtual Launch.

At the risk of bugging, I anticipate publication of This Is Not Forgiveness with the usual mix of feelings: pride and a sense of wonder that my name is on the cover, but also complex feelings of nostalgia and loss. When I turn the pages, it is like looking through a strange kind of diary. I remember where I was when I thought that, wrote that, added that detail. It happens over a summer and I wrote it over a summer, so the weather, the descriptions, are like snapshots of particular places at a particular time. And there is something perfect about a book that is about to be published, before it goes out into the world to be the object of scrutiny and criticism, before it has a chance to fail.

I have another reason for nostalgia. This Is Not Forgiveness is a topical thriller set in the present and this is seen as a bit of a departure for me. I'm now known mostly for writing historical fiction. If not those books, then the old Point Horror Unleashed titles - Blood Sinister and The Vanished. But my first book was a contemporary thriller for teenagers. Every Step You Take. It was published in 1993. So long ago, that when I went to get the rights back from the publisher, they claimed never to have heard of it. That, too, was a contemporary thriller, so in a way, I've come full circle, returning to my roots.

That book was published into a different world. I'm typing this blog on a laptop, it is going straight by WiFi onto the 'net. I'm uploading pictures to go with it. I typed Every Step on an electric typewriter. Laptop, WiFi, 'net, upload? Terms not coined yet. I sent it off as a paper manuscript by Special Delivery, posted at the local Post Office (now a cake shop) not by attachment as I would do now.

The Internet was in its infancy, so no e mails. Publishers sent you letters. All you had to do was open the envelope, read and file. Everyone sent you letters, so it was easy to keep track of things. No matter how hard I try to be organised, finding things in e mails is like sifting though spaghetti. As for publicity, it didn't take up any time at all because there wasn't any. My first school visit came randomly from a librarian who had somehow stumbled upon the book by accident. When I phoned the publisher to ask how much I should ask for a fee, I was told by a posh sounding girl in Marketing that 'We simply have no ideah'. The book was ignored. Not quite the 'right thing' for the reviewers. Dismissed, I suspect, as a mere genre novel, although it was full of (I thought) relevant issues - a continuum of male violence from date abuse and rape to murder. It had strong male and female characters, friendship and betrayal, bullying and social exclusion, but because the characters were ordinary comprehensive school kids and it was written like a thriller, issues not to the fore, these aspects of the book weren't even noticed. So, no publicity, nothing to do but go and admire the single spine out copy in the odd bookshop that stocked it and get on with the next one.

I agree with Nicola (do read her excellent post if you haven't already) all this publicity work we have to do can be a time sucking nuisance and it is hard to keep a balance. We need to get on with our real work, which is writing books, but there is always the fear that if we don't do anything, then our new book will sink like the proverbial stone and when we next go to our publisher they will say what they have always said, backed up now with stats from EPoS, the last one didn't sell, so low advance or no contract. Yes, doing our own publicity is a time consuming bind and we risk bugging the life out of people, but if we don't do it, who will? The Internet has given us the chance we never had before, the chance of doing it for ourselves.

To work out if it is worth our while, there's always Liz Kessler's brilliant Formula (see yesterday's post). What was it again, Liz?

S to the power of something + P? I better go back to tyour posat and check it out...

This Is Not Forgiveness is featured in New Books above.
For Linda Newbery's excellent Review of This Is Not Forgiveness, go to ABBA Reviews.

The ‘Is It Worth It?’ Formula - Liz Kessler

2012-01-27T07:00:00.000Z

There’s been quite a lot of talk about promotion lately. Nicola Morgan’s excellent blog on Tuesday looked at the issues of how to promoteourselves without bugging the pants off people. In this age of socialnetworking frenzies, that is extremely important. But anotherequally important consideration is how to promote ourselveswithout running ourselves ragged. Ithink we’re all aware that nowadays, it’s important for us to be willing to putin some work to promote our own books. But how do we make sure we protectourselves - and our writing time - in the process? And how do we make sure that what we’re doing is worth it?

In an attempt to answer these questions, I’d like to share somethingthat I devised for a workshop with the Scattered Authors’ Society a littlewhile ago. I call it the ‘Is it worth it?’ formula. (Warning: if you believe that weird mathematical equations do not have any place on a writers' blog, look away now!)

(S¹º + P⁵ + W³) ≥ T ¹º + C³ – E³ - G³

Benefit...................must be greater than or equal to......................Effort

Where:

S = Sales; P= Payment; W= Word of Mouth; T = Time; C= Cost; E= Enjoyment & G= Good causes

OK, before you run screaming for the hills behind which you left yourmaths ‘O’ level many moons ago, let me explain.

Theidea is that the potential benefit to you of any promotional activity you take on has to outweigh (or equal) the amount of effortyou put in. I’ve categorised benefit in three ways: Sales, Pay and Word of Mouth. Effort is categorised as the Time and Cost minus a couple of mitigating factors.

One of the mitigating factors is whether the activity is something we enjoy. Weare likely to feel a lot more comfortable about putting time into something ifwe’re not hating every minute of it and resenting everyone in the world for thefact that we are doing it. And I've called the other one Good Causes.Is the activity something that’s going to help the local community in some way?Is it for a charity? If so, again, you might be more willing to put yourself out to doit. So these last two are offset against the time and cost.

Now then - putting it into action! The idea is that you give each element ofthe formula a rating, up to the number shown for each one. Bearin mind that as much of this is about trying to assess things that in realitywe haven’t got all that much chance of knowing, the formula is really just afun guide rather than something toseriously sit down and do before every bit of promotional activity. But it does have a tendency to work.

So let's put it to the test. As blogging and social networking in general constitute a big part of our promotional pie, let's start with that.

As an ABBA contributor, I write a blog per month. Is it Worth It? Let's see...

Sales – This is always going to be virtually impossible to assess, butwe can make a guess. I don’t think that ABBA will put on that many sales, butyou never know, it could alert a few new people to my books. So let’s give thata 3 (out of a possible 10)

Payment – Well, I don’t get paid anything, so that’s a zero.

Word of Mouth – I think this is the main strength of ABBA, so I’mgoing to give this top marks. So that’s a 3. My total 'Benefits' score, then, is 6.

On the Effort side of the equation…

Time – it does actually take me quite a while to think up,write, post and illustrate each blog - but there again, it’s only once a month. So I’ll give this a 6 (out of 10).

Cost – it doesn’t cost me anything, so that’s zero.

I enjoy doing it quite a lot. I’ll give this 2 (out of a possible 3).

It doesn’t contribute to any good causes in particular, although Ihave used it to mention a charity that I’m involved with, so I’ll give this a1.

So the effort side of the equation is 6 (from T & C) minus 3 (from E & G) which equals 3.

My end result is that ‘Benefits’ equals 6, and ‘Effort’ equals 3.Which means that the benefits of being an ABBA contributor exceed the effort.Which is quite a relief. Yay! I'll keep on doing it then!

It doesn’t always work out like that though, and there are times whenall of us find ourselves putting in many hours, shelling out our own cash and notgetting much back in terms of sales, pay or ‘buzz’ about our books. Those arethe times when we have to practise doing something that all self employedpeople find hard to do.

SAY NO!

The world won’t end. Your book sales won’t sink into oblivion. Your publisher won’t turn their back and refuse ever to do anything foryou again. Honest! It’s worth bearing in mind that a lot of the time, our reason forsaying no is that we need more time to actually write our books. And at theend of the day, that’s something that publishers and readers alike will alwaysbe pleased to hear!

Why not try putting the ‘Is It Worth It?’ formula to the test withyour own promotional activities? It might help you to feel more positive aboutsomething you have to do, or might help you have the confidence to say no tosomething you've been dreading. At the very least, it’ll give you an excuse to mess aboutplaying with a silly idea and put off doing any work for another half an hour!

If you do give it a go, let me know how you get on – I’d love to knowif the formula works for you!

Follow Liz on Twitter
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Check out Liz's Website

Libraries are much more than books - Abi Burlingham

2012-01-25T20:44:00.009Z

There’s a lot of strong feeling regarding our libraries and obvious disappointment, and anger, at the closures of some. Much has been said on this already, so I’m not going to repeat it here. But I would like to tell you a story, a story that spans five libraries and three generations.

There was… my first library. I guess I’d have been four or five. It was known as The Pork Pie library and stood on an island – was it actually on a roundabout? In my head it was, though hard to believe now. It was made up of two layers and was very round – hence its nick-name by the locals. My mum would take me and my brother every week. This library, its unusual curviness and its position in the middle of the road, made a lasting impression on me, so much so that it now features in Buttercup Magic: A Mystery for Megan (due out this April) as ‘The Victoria Sponge’. I remember sitting inside and finding my first ever Miffy book. I remember the blue cover and turning the pages. I don’t even have to close my eyes to visualise where I sat to read the book, and the excitement I felt when I saw those wonderful pictures.

Then… my second library. I was in my teens by now and would visit the library in the local town. It was about twenty minutes walk from my house and was a big, modern, part grey part glass building. Sometimes my mum would come too, or I’d go with a friend, but mostly I’d go alone… there’s something special about being alone, and yet not alone, in a library. It was vast compared to The Pork Pie library, but I loved the space and the silence. There was a record shop five minutes from it too, so I would combine a library trip, for peace and solitude, with a trip to buy some music – even then, my life seemed to be comprised of contrasts - moments of solitude and moments bursting with activity and sound.

My third library. As an adult, living closer to the city, I began to visit the main library. It was a wonderful, huge Victorian building with massive, heavy wooden doors. This was where my reading really began to take off. I would become so lost in the huge bookcases bursting with books, the wrapped up sounds, and people-watching – I used to do a lot of that. I’d often sit with a book and never get past the first page, just sit and watch the people around me, completely swept away to some other world. One of my discoveries, in this library, was a wonderful book called ‘The Winter Tree’, by Georgina Lewis – a very magical and atmospheric book. It is still one of my favourites.

Then… there was library number four. When I began working in a University, I’d visit the library there. This was a much more vibrant place, full of students from all over the world, stifled, and not so stifled, laughter, students - heads down, studying… what are they studying? I’d wonder, listening out for bits of conversation, peering at the cover of a book in someone else’s hand. But despite the more bustly nature of this library, I still always found myself taken over by some other-worldly presence, transported to the place of ‘Library’.

And… library number five. As a mum now, and living in quite a small village without its own library, we have a mobile library that visits every Wednesday and parks itself outside the local Co-op. When the children were toddling, and for a few years after, I’d take them every week, and they’d sit on the brightly coloured poufs at the end while I tried not to feel sick at the rocking lorry motion. They know me there now – not just as a mum but as an author. They have one of my books… how crazy is that? All the years I visited libraries and found other people’s books, fell in love with them, and now mine are in libraries for other people’s pleasure. I still have to pinch myself.

You see, libraries aren’t just about reading are they? They’re about being transported to another world, they’re about contemplation and memories. No amount of money can buy those.

'On Why I’m not a Pilot'

2012-01-25T07:00:00.001Z

by Wendy Meddour

Yesterday, a local reporter interviewing me at toddlers asked me the question everybody thinks:

“But you have 4 young children. When on earth do you find time to write?”

I wanted to say something profound or glamorous, like: "I have a wonderful nanny called Beatrice Lightheart who does most of the menial tasks." Or, "I share a delightful singing governess with a family called the Von Trapps."

But instead, I told the truth.

“Sleep deprivation,” I said.

Now, I'm not as impressive as Cindy's son (see the post 3 below). But I have exchanged sleep for writing. And it shows. (Well, my Mum says it does – but I have a sneaking suspicion that this is just age and I’m about as good as I’ll get). But it also shows in my work: my first ever book is full of broken nights: sleep walking, night-feeds, yawns, siestas and general, unadulterated exhaustion . . .

(Disclaimer: Any apparent publicity about Wendy's

debut novel - due out on Feb 2nd - is solely the result

of her severely disrupted sleep pattern.)

I smiled at the reporter and rubbed my eyes. “Lack of sleep helps the creative flow,” I said.

The reporter looked rather unconvinced as a small person threw a dinosaur in my coffee. (The small person was of course mine).

Now, I know that sleep deprivation isn’t completely advised. In fact, it’s decidedly not. (I believe it accounts for quite a lot of health-related conditions – depression, anxiety, stinted tissue repair, that sort of thing). And I wouldn’t exactly recommend it. But if you’re doing it anyway, (with 4 young children, it’s kind of a ‘life-style’ choice), then isn’t it best to put it to good use?

My best-friend (or am I too old for those?) is married to a pilot, and she tells me that I’m writing "in the Window of my Circadian Low." Isn't that wonderful? It makes my nocturnal scribbling sound so grand. And wait, it gets better!

If a pilot has to report to their place of work before 6am (disturbing the rhythm of their natural body clock), then they have been scheduled in a W.O.C.L .

And if they are scheduled in a W.O.C.L twice in a row, then they are not fit for duty (F.F.D). A double W.O.C.L , which I will refer to as a ‘wockle’ from here on – (poetic licence and all that), results in 36 hours off! Yes! 36 HOURS OFF!

That is why I’m a writer, and not a pilot. (Well, that and the whole ‘flying license’ and ‘skill’ thing). I would NEVER be fit for duty because I am constantly writing in my ‘wockle'. Or should that be 'wockling'. Not once. Not twice. But pretty much every night.

There’s only thing that really scares me. What if wockling is what makes me a writer? A good night’s sleep could mean the end of my budding writing career!

That’s why I need to ask you all one question. Please be honest. I really need to know....

Can a writer write well if they’re completely FIT FOR DUTY?

www.wendymeddour.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/wendymeddour

Do you do too much promotion? - by Nicola Morgan

2012-01-24T06:12:00.018Z

Recently, on my own blog, I was talking about "how much promotion is too much?" (There's no need to go and read that post, and it's not about the same thing as this one, but I'll put the link at the end in case you want to see the guidelines I was suggesting, as well as the useful comments.)

The question had arisen because, on Twitter, some writers have been bugging the pants off people by over-promoting. In fact, I've decided that the next in my series of writers' guides from Crabbit Publishing is going to be How to Promote Your Book Without Bugging the Pants Off People.

I think there are three main reasons why writers sometimes do too much jumping up and down about their books - bearing in mind that "too much" is going to be different depending on each beholder.

Our publishers don't really do it for us. Most of us are expected to do vastly more than we used to have to; publishers' budgets have been slashed; and the window during which our publisher may do some activity has shrunk. Many of us (myself included) don't actually mind, and many of our publishers are delighted to let us do it.
We can. Suddenly (and it really has been quite sudden) we have all the possible platforms of Facebook, Twitter, our own blogs, other people's blogs, etc, and they are free and easy. So it's easy to be a bit too free and easy with the opportunities. It's also easy for us to make connections with journalists and therefore easier for us to generate publicity opportunities in traditional media.
Sheer blind panic at the thought that our much-loved, long slaved-over book might sink without trace, and a burning passion that people should get to read it.

In the blog post I referred to, I was answering the "how much is too much?" question from the viewpoint of "how much will bug the pants off people?" But there's another way to look at the question: how much is more than is good for us? How much will actually be self-defeating because we won't have time to write?

I've read numerous pieces by highly successful self-publishers (including this piece by Joe Konrath and also a recent interview in the Guardian with Amanda Hocking) in which the value of tweeting etc in actually selling copies is regarded as over-rated. Joe Konrath has analysed sales movements in his ebooks (yes, we all get RSI from checking our figures!) and believes that it's not the tweeting or FBing or blogging or being interviewed anywhere that boosts his sales. He's not saying don't use Twitter or even that it's not useful - he's saying, and I agree, that it doesn't directly hugely affect sales, or not as much as we might think it would. What both writers do is write, and write lots. Amanda Hocking's sales rocketed because she put lots of books out there in quick succession, not because she found thousands of followers on Twitter.

So, is one conclusion that a better way of promoting ourselves is to promote ourselves less and write more?

I rather think it may be. I think that spending two hours a day on promotion (in whatever form) will not be four times as effective as spending half an hour a day on that, and an extra hour and a half writing something. In fact, I'm rather sure that spending more time writing and less time promoting would be a very good idea for many of us - myself definitely included - for lots of reasons.

What do you think? Do we all do too much promotion, even those of us trying to keep it at the non-bugging end of the scale? Do we do too much for our own good? How do you know when you've done enough? What do you dislike about it? Or possibly like about it? Do you like the idea of doing less and writing more?

I'd love to know!

(Here is the link to the post I mentioned.)

Ahem. If by any chance you'd like help with how to use Twitter like a sensible and unbugging person, you might be interested in Tweet Right - the Sensible Person's Guide to Twitter, currently at a crazy cheap price on Amazon. I'm cringing at that blatant plug and the irony of its appearance in this post. But what the hell: in for a cringe, in for a crossing the line - my newest ebook for writers is Write a Great Synopsis - An Expert Guide.

*slinks off to do some writing*

Hearing Things by Penny Dolan

2012-01-23T09:29:00.000Z

Last Friday I met a lovely friend who is a writer and illustrator. We spent hours in a café, talking over a coffee. Now that festivities and tax are both neatly out of the way, it was a real delight to indulge in writing chat about each others possible new ideas and work, as well as the usual moans.

At one point, she mentioned listening to music while she worked. Interestingly, she could only do this while working on some piece of art, not while she was writing.

Now I know that some people write with music constantly in their ears. Some say they select soundtracks to serve their work-in-progress, which makes me wonder.

Do gritty teen/YA novelists work with hard metal and anarchism pounding through their head-phones? Or people writing for pre-teens opt for sugar-pop and Justin Beiber? Or do the big brave souls – Mr.Pullman, I may be looking at you - tackle such large grand themes with Beethoven blasting out from their stacks? I don’t know, but it makes interesting thinking

Somewhat sadly, I can’t listen to music while I’m writing. The stuff worms into my head and ears, messing up the flow, the rhythm, the music of the words. How on earth can I hear how this or that phrase sounds if there’s an alternative sound obliterating it? How can I fix the emotion in this part of my story securely into words when there’s a different emotion hammering loudly at the door? I’m glad some people can work happily that way but – rather annoyingly – it’s not a thing that works for me.

Even writers of fiction need to be able to hear the music in their work. One thing that does restore my ears – again, though not while writing – is poetry, which I’ve recently re-discovered as an activity.

I re-shelved my random collection of old poetry books in beside an odd armchair, far more conscious of making space for a large seasonal green tree than insightful workspace planning.

Yet, ever since, I’ve found myself snatching odd moments among the anthologies, greedily grabbing several writing voices at a time. It’s an amusingly mixed experience. Some poems are boring, some dreadful, some so embarrassingly of their time the should be wearing duffle-coats and some are still as breath-taking as ever. I’d recommend it as a way of waking up your writing head or even, as I did, finding a new idea.

So, are you a muso or a muser? What’s your sound of choice while you’re working? Or are you another one who needs word-whispering silence to get the work done?

And if anyone knows the name/location of the brilliant Arts-Council-funded poetry site that I glimpsed recently on Facebook but now cannot find, please, please add it to the comment box. Thanks.

The section I saw showed a soulful John Hegley speaking "Without You."
Unfortunately, I am "Without You-Tube".

www.pennydolan.com

A BOY CALLED M.O.U.S.E, published by Bloomsbury.

Party Time!

2012-01-21T05:00:00.001Z

Party Time!

Ruth Symes / Megan Rix

With the weather outside cold and grey Ithought I'd write about parties and in particular book launch parties - ofwhich I’ve had precisely one. Before I was published I used to imagine what alaunch party would be like - champagne, canapes, elegant people swanning about.But 20 books later and time for my own launch party the type of event I used toimagine wouldn't do at all, thank you very much.

Afterwriting children's books for 10 years I wrote my first adult memoir ‘The Puppythat Came for Christmas and stayed Forever.’ It was about one amazing year whenwe were puppy parents for a charity called Helper Dogs that trains assistance dogsfor disabled people. That year we had 3 different puppies, one after the otherfrom only 8 weeks old - not bad for dog novices!

Assoon as they heard the book was going to be published my friends from HelperDogs said I had to have a party to launch the book - and they'd organise it.We'd have it at the Helper Dogs centre so the venue would be free and thepublishers, Penguin, gave us £100 towards the food to drink. I provided the dogtreats and found some amazing ones that looked like designer chocolates in elegantboxes. Dogs, of course, were more than welcome and the guests of honour - asthe book's stars.

At theparty I signed endless copies of the book and stamped them with my pink pawstamp. Our local bookshop came along with boxes and boxes of them which was justas well as they almost all went and those that were left went at a book signingthe following Saturday.

I readfrom the section where I was learning how to be a puppy parent - trained by ahighly experienced older dog called Rusty, who was at the party too, along withTraffy who was the puppy we eventually got to keep and the star of the book.

ThenHelper Dogs did a demonstration and were given a cheque for £100 towards theirwork. Helper Dogs’ friends made some of the food and we bought more with themoney from Penguin along with wine and soft drinks.

Iasked just about everyone I knew locally and was amazed at how many people cameas it was on a week day and in the afternoon.

Icouldn't have asked for a better party and it was well worth waiting for. I’mnot sure if I’ll have another launch party - the next book that's coming out isset in World War 2 - I suppose I could have a 1940's party but then my Bella Donnabooks really deserve to have a party for them too and I suppose we could alldress up as witches... but where would we get the unicorns and dragons from?

What was/would your launch party be like?

Not enough hours in the day.

2012-01-20T07:00:00.000Z

I'm certain that when I was a small child there were far more than sixty seconds in every minute. Or, if you like, that every second lasted much longer than they do nowadays.

Of course, the world doesn't speed up as we get older, but we have more responsibilities, sometimes more than we can humanly fit into the working day. Clock time, being a human invention can mean different things to us, depending on what we're doing. A week is a long time in politics. My whole life flashed by in an instant. Every minute felt like an hour. A watched pot never boils.

Over the Christmas holiday, time seemed to slow down because there wasn't so much we had to do. Now it's speeding up again. There's the school run, going to work and visiting the gym to fit in. How are we to make time for the other, enjoyable things we got used to doing during the holiday? I was grumbling about this when my son said "Ever heard of the uberman sleep schedule?"

Well, no, actually I hadn't. Seemingly it goes something like this. REM sleep, the sleep our brains need, takes only a fraction of the time we spend asleep. It's possible to train ourselves to get by on REM sleep alone, and still to function adequately. There are various ways to limit your sleep, uberman being probably the most extreme. You can read more about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep

My son decided to give it a go, purely out of interest. It wouldn't be easy to fit into a normal working day, as uberman demands that you sleep for twenty minutes every four hours. He needed to try it before he went back to work. There is a lot of information on the internet about the possible health risks, so it's not something to undertake lightly, or for too long, but he felt that a short experiment wouldn't do too much lasting damage.

I was cast in the role of interested observer, although in the first stages (from midnight until 8am) I left him to it while I maintained my own usual sleep pattern. By morning he'd had three twenty minute naps, and had been awake for the rest of the night. How did he feel? Okay. Surprisingly un-sleepy. And what had he achieved during those extra waking hours? Well, actually not a lot, but if he kept it up he'd have about eleven extra years to do it in!

It was weird, seeing him doze off for twenty minutes every four hours. To my surprise he awoke each time looking quite refreshed, although he'd needed the alarm to wake him. And he was alert enough to do his tax return towards the end of the twenty-four hour experiment!

Of course twenty-four hours isn't anything like long enough to establish a pattern, or prove anything. And it's doubtful if he actually did achieve much REM sleep because he didn't report any dreams, which I would have expected. However, he decided that although not something he'd want to make a habit of, in special circumstances uberman could be very useful. And he didn't need vast quantities of 'catch-up' sleep. At the end of the experiment he woke naturally after nine hours. Not enough hours in the day? How about twenty-two usable hours out of twenty-four?

Seb Goffe's latest book, Zero to Hero is out in February with A & C Black. Although possibly ubercool it was not written while he was being an uberman.

Cindy Jefferies

PAULINE FISK - A NEW VENTURE AND A VERY OLD ONE

2012-01-19T08:00:00.002Z

In 2008, I went out on a fact-finding trip to Belize. It was a massive fifty years since as a child I'd made my big career decision to become a writer when I grew up, and twenty years since I'd started writing fiction for children and young adults, and it felt like time for a shake-up.

In particular I was fascinated by the idea of gap year volunteering as a modern rite of passage. My younger son had returned from Belize changed to the point of being virtually unrecognizable after five months in the jungle, and I'd sensed a story. Who was writing gap year novels, I asked myself, targeting young teenagers who might one day want to head off round the world? Nobody, as far as I could tell, so funded by the Arts Council and backed by Fabers, I headed out to Belize to write one myself.

I like adventures. Mostly they’ve happened on screen but over the years research has taken me up the occasional Welsh mountain and Shropshire hill, down a few rivers from source to sea, underground into defunct mines and up into the sky in a hot air balloon.

Nothing I’ve done, however, matches Belize. I spent six weeks touring the country from Caribbean coast to jungle interior, enjoying its extraordinary cultural mix, staying as the guest of the Kekchi-Mayan people and seeing the rainforest with my own eyes - not only its destruction but its incredible beauty. I also saw the very real difference that young volunteers, fresh from school and with no particular skills [apart from a will to learn, work and endure discomfort] had been able to make in helping stem that destruction. And there was the story I'd gone out there to find.

‘In the Trees’ is the result of that trip. Fabers brought it out in 2010 and I’ve been visiting schools, libraries and festivals ever since, telling what I saw and encouraging young people to think about the wider world and understand that it’s not just governments and multi-national organisations that can make a difference, but people like them, with a will to get out there and give it a go.

I have such a story to tell, and this novel feels so important, that I haven't been able to start anything since. But there's another reason too, why I haven't started the next novel.

For the last twenty years I've been writing them back to back. There's been precious little time for seeing the world around me as anything but material for the next book. Those of you who are writers too will know what it’s like. The screen becomes your world, the world becomes your book and the years go by. Now, post-Belize, I've awoken like Sleeping Beauty to find life moved on, my hair turned white, my children grown up and the babies theirs, not mine.

How can this be? How come my husband and I are rattling round an empty house on our own? When did the kids leave? When did that little girl who dreamt of being a writer one day turn into me? And, if I do start writing again - if I dare - will I wake up after another twenty years knowing that the party was over and I might have been there but I'd missed the action?

One of the joys of this last year's sabbatical has been catching up with friends, taking time out for family, becoming a Chancellor in the wonderful Children’s University and making friends online. Which, of course, is what this post is all about.

ABBA is a new venture for me. It's my way of saying I'm here. If authors are online talking to each other, I want to talk too. If they’re sharing experiences I want to share. If they’re giving advice, I want to hear it - and maybe I'll have advice to give as well. And if they’re talking to readers, then I want to be a part of that conversation.

So a new venture this year – and, at the same time, an old one too. Twenty-one years ago my first novel, ‘Midnight Blue’, won the Smarties Grand Prix award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread. As one reviewer commented at the time, 1990 was my annus mirabilis. Well, in celebration of that win, an anniversary e-edition of ‘Midnight Blue’, newly jacketed and re-edited for twenty-first century readers has just been published - by me.

‘In the Trees’ is an e-book too, but 'Midnight Blue's different. This time, as well as being writer, I’m also publisher, marketing director, art director, publicist and editor. Suddenly this feels like being in the jungle again, stepping out into the unknown. The howler monkeys are screaming in the darkness, and I don’t know what tomorrow will bring - but better to make this trek in company than on my own.

So thank you Scattered Authors everywhere for the chance to join you on your Awfully Big Blog Adventure. And forgive me for this first post being so single-mindedly about myself. I do have other things to write about, I promise you. But this is the best way I know of saying hello.

Buy MIDNIGHT BLUE

Buy IN THE TREES

Visit www.paulinefisk.co.uk

Covering Up: Same Characters, New Pictures

2012-01-18T00:05:00.003Z

Don’t judge a book by its cover.

Writers know this only too well – after all, we have little say on what goes on the covers of our books. Publishers know that covers are far too important to take much heed of writers. (Rightly so, in my case. I have little visual sense at all.) Publishers take covers seriously, because readers do. This is clear from the children I meet in schools. They are absolutely up front that they will read a book – or not – based on what they see on the cover.

Sometimes I show them a series of different covers and ask which they would read. The responses are unambiguously for or against. I then reveal that the covers all belong to different editions of my book Jessica Haggerthwaite: Witch Dispatcher. Huge surprise! How can the same story be presented in such different ways?

It’s fascinating to me, too. As I have admitted, I am not visual. New paint, new clothes or new garden plants are all a challenge to me (and probably to those viewing the results). When I first wrote Jessica Haggerthwaite, it was my editor who suggested I might like to mention what Jessica looked like. I had to stop and think. What did she look like? I knew lots of things about her, but not that.

So seeing my characters brought to life by an artist has been endlessly fascinating. While a more strongly visual writer might feel a clash with their own imaginings, I’m always intrigued to see how each artist brings out a slightly different aspect of the book.

The first cover artist, for the original Bloomsbury hardback and paperback, was Tim Archbold. As numerous children I have met since have pointed out, there is undoubtedly a touch of Quentin Blake in the squiggly, eccentric style of drawing that Archbold favours. It suits the eccentric nature of Jessica and her family extremely well. And a lot of the foreign editions went for slightly different versions of the Archbold cover.

In the German translation, what I love most is how determined Jessica appears. I also like the prominence given to the tomatoes – a key element of the plot. I won’t tell you why.

The Dutch version is probably my least-favourite: however, as the book has done extremely well in the Netherlands, I shouldn’t really complain!

Last September Jessica Haggerthwaite: Witch Dispatcher was re-issued in the UK by a new publisher, Strident, with a completely new cover by Emma Chichester Clark, the well-known creator of classic Blue Kangaroo. I love the results. The way the foliage arch frames the cover. Jessica is sweeter-looking, somehow, than the other versions, and more thoughtful – but still exasperated with her mother, as you can tell by her expression. Mrs Haggerthwaite looks suitably dippy. And there is a likeness between mother and daughter – which is completely true of their personalities, even if they have completely opposite views. It’s also beautiful without being “girly” – and this is definitely not a “girly” book.

To me, this is a slightly “retro” looking cover – bringing out the more old-fashioned elements of what is essentially a family story. Yet other readers have told me that Jessica reminds them of a “manga” character – an association I would never had picked out myself.

Manga character?

Which book covers do you love? And which books do you feel have suffered from the “wrong” cover?

Emma's Barnes's web-site
Emma's latest books are How (Not) To Make Bad Children Good and Jessica Haggerthwaite: Witch Dispatcher

The Science of Ideas - Lucy Coats

2012-01-17T08:00:00.030Z

I am an ignoramus as far as science is concerned. I freely confess it. My education consisted of Biology (to O-Level only), and given the fact that we had a maiden lady as teacher who had to call in another member of staff to teach us basic human reproduction, it is surprising that I know anything about biology at all. My all-girls school didn't teach physics or chemistry. In that particular place, it wasn't seen as necessary to educate females in those sorts of things. I've felt cross about it ever since - and rather ashamed at the scientific lacunae in my brain.

Why should I care? My particular sort of work as a writer means I don't really need physics or chemistry - they don't often crop up in mythology or fantasy novels. I guess it's because lately I've begun to find the whole physics thing fascinating, and I know I'm missing stuff. I also (strangely enough) find it incredibly stimulating to my imagination. Take the recent BBC2 Horizon special: The Hunt for Higgs. Among other things, there was a lot of talk about matter and anti-matter, and how they shouldn't exist in the same space. Right away, my 'writing' brain clicked into life. Perhaps they don't, I thought. Perhaps they exist in the same space, but a different timeframe, a nanosecond apart. (Scientists, please note, the Nobel Prize is mine - unless someone's already come up with that one! *joke*) I've found lots of other examples too, where my brain goes off exploring possibilities.

What I particularly like about the more arcane sort of physics and science I heard discussed both on that programme, and on Stephen Hawking's Brave New World (C4) is that it is partly about imagining the unimaginable. There's a lot of 'what if' about it all - and surely, as writers, that's what we do too? I wouldn't dream of imposing my own 'what if' ideas on a scientist, but maybe there is a case for someone like me, with no pre-conceived notions, having a place in a lab experiment. I'd love to get a small group of open-minded writers and physics scientists together for a discussion and see what happened!

For me, it's nice to embark on a new intellectual challenge midway through my life, and I'm thankful to have a fellow ABBA author (Anne Rooney, who is MUCH cleverer than me) to guide my first faltering footsteps along the path with her wonderful Story of Physics. I'll leave you with the following serendipitous link between science and literature. Quarks, particles discovered in the last half of the twentieth century, are named after a passage in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. I find that very encouraging. Perhaps we're not so far apart after all!

Children Don't Change - John Dougherty

2012-01-16T08:00:00.001Z

Individual children change, of course. They grow up, and much too quickly for my liking. And childhood changes, because it’s a cultural construct and our culture is ever-changing; and also because some childhoods are filled with more horrid plastic toys than others.

But what a child actually is - that doesn’t change. A twenty-first century baby is no different from a Tudor baby, or a Viking baby, or a stone-age baby; and a modern child has the same needs for love and nurture as any of its historical counterparts. I’m therefore deeply suspicious when anyone working in the field of children’s books talks about ‘the modern child’ or ‘our readers’ as if they’re substantially different from the children the industry was serving ten, or twenty, or a hundred years ago.

My daughter has recently become something of a Beano addict, so for Christmas - among other things - we gave her a big pile of Beano back-issues. She loved them. It became at times impossible to have a conversation with her that wasn’t preceded by “Put that Beano down!”

The interesting thing about this is that they weren’t new Beanos. They were 35 years old or so - copies I’d saved from my own childhood, and which had recently emerged from the back of a dark cupboard. And while she loves the old Dennis the Menace and Minnie the Minx strips just as much as the current ones, her all-time favourite Beano feature is Tom, Dick and Sally.

For those of you unfamiliar with the strip, Sally is the youngest of the three siblings, forever put down and put upon by her big brothers. They play tricks on her, offload their chores onto her, and generally do her down… but of course it’s Sally who wins out in the end, and often because the boys are hoist with their own petard. Hmmm… I shall have to ask my son if he has any idea why his younger sister relates so strongly to this.

Anyway, the point is that this is a story that was phased out of The Beano some time in the 1980s. But it’s just as relevant to today’s children because it deals with something that’s a childhood constant, regardless of cultural shifts.

And don’t the best stories?

John's website is at www.visitingauthor.com.
He's on twitter as @JohnDougherty8.

His latest books include:

Finn MacCool and the Giant's Causeway - a retelling for the Oxford Reading Tree
Bansi O'Hara and the Edges of Hallowe'en
Zeus Sorts It Out - "A sizzling comedy... a blast for 7+" , and one of The Times' Children's Books of 2011, as chosen by Amanda Craig

The Politics of The Secret Garden......by Miriam Halahmy

2012-01-14T09:10:00.001Z

Did you ever imagine someone would put Politics and The Secret Garden (TSG) in the same sentence? But that is exactly what happened when I went to a study day on this wonderful book a couple of months ago. 2011 was the centenary year of the publication of TSG and there have been events all over the world. Only this week I was asked by two different groups of schoolchildren about my favourite book and when I said, TSG, a cheer went up. Amazing - 100 years later.

Every author’s dream.

So why Politics and TSG? Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in Manchester in the mid-19^th century into a highly charged political background. She used to play with the poor children in nearby streets and became aware of the divisions in society from a tender age. As she was growing up Engels was publishing his work, Conditions of the Working Class in England, based on his observations of the abysmal poverty in Manchester. The perfect background for an author with a social conscious.

According to our speaker on the study day, Dr Dennus Butts. TSG highlights the divisions in society and the way in which the different groups simply fail to connect. Mary, the little orphan girl in the book, is brought to live in a great house with 100 rooms, long dark corridors and many mysteries. People in the house just don’t talk to her. Outside isn’t much better. There are long paths, high walls and a door with no key. Barriers everywhere, obstacles which prevent movement forward, just like society at the time.

The book highlights divisions in society in three ways :-

Firstly TSG opens in India where there is a clear division between the British who are in control and the Indians. Mary has a truly shocking attitude to her ayah,or local nanny. Her father is a member of the ruling class. Until of course Mary is orphaned.

Secondly Frances Hodgson Burnett ( FHB) was always very interested in the social divisions of great houses - the Upstairs/Downstairs. This is a recurring theme in her books – 53 novels in all. It is worth noting that she was one of the highest paid authors of her day and ranked as one of the top 5 novelists, together with Henry James.

Thirdly, the unequal and unfair treatment of women in the nineteenth century.

FBH wanted to portray the harmony that can exist despite these divisions and she is on a mission. At the centre of her argument is the character of Mrs Sowerby. She is the mother of Dickon the country boy who tames animals and lives in a cottage on the moor with his large and happy family.

According to FBH, Mrs Sowerby, “is the most important character in the book. You only see her for a moment at the end of the book but she is the chief figure in it.”

Mrs Sowerby represents goodness, healing and an affirmative life force.

“I found out,” says Susan Sowerby, “that the world was shaped like an orange and I found out before I was ten that the whole orange doesn’t belong to nobody.” So there’s no sense in grabbing at the whole orange which is what many of the characters in TSG try to do. They have to be prepared to cross barriers, and bridge the divisions between themselves and others in the novel. Colin, Mary, rheumaticky gardener Ben, the maid Martha, Mr Craven, all make this journey.

Once Mary begins to see her maid Martha as a human being she starts to respect and then admire her. FBH demonstrates throughout her wonderful novel that the way to overcome the divisions in society between classes and socio-economic groups is simply to get them talking to each other. Simple! And very current!

It is Mrs Sowerby who points the way. Just like the robin!

Cyclical Failures: N M Browne

2012-01-12T08:00:00.001Z

I’ve just flicked back to read my earlier posts on this blog and have discovered just how cyclical my life is. It may not be governed by the moon, by seasons or by school terms, at least not entirely, but my emotions are as predictable as all three.
The New Year always brings determination to work harder, smarter and more lucratively with grand schemes for impossible daily word counts, Carthusian discipline and focused commercialism. This lasts until my first encounter with a new idea...

The first encounter with a new idea. Well this is obviously the One I’ve been waiting for, the one to put my name on the map, on shortlists and best seller lists and in the review section of all significant magazines, newspapers and blogs. It doesn’t matter that it looks on the surface like an uncommercial idea because no one knows what sells and publishers are always chasing the last big thing: they don’t really know anything. We writers are the innovators and we have to follow our guts.This lasts until chapter seven...

Chapter seven is like wading through a blocked sewer, the rats are gnawing at my confidence and I am beginning to believe my whole story stinks. The concept is rubbish, the writing uninvolving, the end too far away to contemplate. I start looking for jobs in the paper and online. I’m sure I’d be a really good communication director of a FTSE one hundred company, brain surgery can’t be that hard can it? Or, failing that, Waitrose pays double on Sundays. This gloom lasts pretty well until the end of the book...

The end of the book. Well, it needs a bit of fixing but it isn’t all bad. I mean it probably won’t win any prizes, but my kids like it and I almost enjoyed reading it through apart from the typos obviously and the slightly dodgy bit in the middle I’ll fix in edit. Actually I’m not bad at this. No, not half bad.This confidence lasts until publication....

At publication. Um has it actually been published? Ah yes. Well at least one reviewer likes it. I knew it was never going to be a huge commercial success didn’t I? It’s a pity because it is much better than X which just topped the best seller charts and Y which won everything this year or is it? Maybe I should have rewritten it? Maybe I should have picked a better subject/written a different book/ turned it into a script/ a picture book/ a cookery compendium? I’m in the wrong job. Why do I bother? This gloom lasts until the New Year when...

The really sad part is that I can’t help it. I don’t think I can get off this particular not-always- so-merry-go- round. I’m like some creature in a fairy tale doomed to endlessly repeat the same mistakes, but then aren’t we all?

PEOPLE WATCHING by Karen King

2012-01-12T06:00:00.000Z

I started my writing career writing for children’s magazines,often based around licensed characters such as Barbie, Thomas the Tank Engineand Winnie the Pooh. Which meant that I had to write stories around charactersthat had already been created by someone else. So I guess that’s why I like to know what my character is like before I write a story. For me, the character comes first. I get a picture of a character in my head andstart thinking about them, what their name is, how old they are, who theirfriends are. Then gradually that character starts to tell me their story and I'm ready to write.

Andsometimes it’s real characters I’ve seen that have started the germ of the ideain me. Because whenever I’m out and about, in a cafe, travelling bybus or train, I love to indulge in my favourite hobby of people watching. Ithink people are fascinating. They do the funniest, strangest – and kindest – thingsand are a constant source of inspiration for stories. For example, If I saw this man running along the street I'd be asking myself all sorts of questions such as who is he? Why is he running? Where is he going?

Iespecially love people that stand out from the crowd,the girl with the purple spiky hair and orange fur jacket, who is she? What doesshe do? The man in the cowboy hat with the green feather sticking out, where did heget the hat from and why does he wear it? The beautiful woman in the longpink dress and matching turban, where is she going? To a wedding? A party? Is she meeting someone? Asking myself questionsabout people I see and imagining their lives often gives me ideas for stories. Even people doing everyday things like lying on the beachor gardening fascinate me.

So if you ever see me sitting on a park bench watching theworld go remember that I might look like I'm just relaxing but I’m probably working on a story – and if you're not careful you might be in it!

Eco-friendly discoveries, secrets and... an admission - Linda Strachan

2012-01-11T07:00:00.023Z

I have to admit that I am not always the best recycler.
I do try... most of the time... honestly.    But to my shame, I have to admit that the odd poly-bag or tin, which I could recycle and normally do, will sometimes end up chucked in the bin. When my children come to visit I have found myself waiting until they are out of the room before I dispose of ..whatever it is - so that they don't see and reproach me for it! They are so good at recycling - I must have brought them up well, I suppose.

The one thing I am great at recycling is paper.

I like to write on my computer but I find I also have to print out chapters, and sometimes entire books, to read away from the computer screen. I'm not quite sure why, but I can see the entire book clearer in my head when I read it on paper and I often spot mistakes in the text more easily when it is printed out, rather than reading it on screen.

I also like to make notes on the text - not just when working on a picture book, as in the picture opposite - and I often draw lines to indicate where text should move to or what I want to cross out (and sometimes write back in again). I couldn't easily do all that on a computer and it feels right working like that.
I wonder if it is part of the creative process, similar to the way that I prefer to write on the computer than by hand. It's just the way it works for me.

So I use a lot of paper.

I have just realised that it is 16 years since 1996 when my first series of books were published. In that time I have written more than the 60 books that have been published, because there are all those finished and half written short stories and novels, which linger in the cupboard never likely to see the light of day. In most cases they never should! I have mentioned these before in a post I wrote a while back http://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2009/04/living-in-cupboard-linda-strachan.html

Now I have to admit to being a bit of a hoarder, and even discounting the final versions of the published books, which I keep for sentimental reasons, there are many boxes of discarded versions and unfinished work that remain. I know it is ridiculous and I should throw them away, especially as most of them are also saved in electronic form but...

So every now and then I do a cull and weed out some of the manuscripts and various versions of unpublished stories putting them all to one side, but I don't throw them away because paper that is printed on only one side is perfectly reusable,

as long as it is not crumpled, like this, and likely to stick in my printer!

I put all this used paper in the empty box my printer paper originally came in, and it is ready to use again.   Also, when I am sent papers in the post, or any sheets of paper that are not confidential, I place in this box so that I can use it to print out what I am writing, or recipes I want to use, or any other of a hundred things that don't need to be printed on a fresh piece of paper.

Now I know this is not unusual, I am sure many of you may do this - but recently I was about to throw away one of these sheets which I had reused when I turned it over and started reading the story printed on the other side. This has now happened several times and I have enjoyed dipping in, a bit of a lucky dip, not quite knowing what I would read next. The paper had been mixed up when I cleared it out, so it is in no particular order.

One word of warning to all happy paper recyclers. Do make sure that you check before you pass on to other people anything printed on recycled papers. Make sure there is nothing confidential or worse, embarrassing, written on the other side!

I recall sending a manuscript to an agent once, many years ago, and when I got it back I came across a piece of paper with a scribbled note on it. I discovered it was a message his assistant had left for him, about a dental appointment, which I imagine may have been put down on his desk and picked up with the manuscript.

Now this seemed innocuous enough at first except that the scribbled note was on the back of a letter which had quite a lot of fascinating and financial information about a deal he was negotiating on behalf of one of his clients.

Don't ask me more, my lips are sealed - but recyclers BEWARE!

...........................

Linda Strachan is the award winning author of the Hamish McHaggis series, YA novels Spider and Dead Boy Talking and writing handbook Writing for Children
Website www.lindastrachan.co.uk
Blog Bookwords

DEVELOPING IDEAS by Ann Evans

2012-01-10T04:00:00.000Z

Like most authors I'moften asked when doing a school visit, where the ideas for my books,The Beast, The Reawakeningand Rampage came from.

'Inspiration' if you can call itthat came from a holiday in Scotland, and I've developed a bit of astory which I tell the children about, starting with the initial'spark' of an idea of how the sunlight sparkling off the mountainsideled me to wonder if some creature was lurking there among therocks, and then when visiting a little highland museum I spotted theskull of a sabre-toothed tiger - and so the story began.

I reveal all this to the kids andtalk about how it developed into a book and then a trilogy. And justto set the scene for this blog, the books are set in the present day,in a remote Scottish valley and feature the ghost of a sabre-toothedtiger named Karbel.

Since the books havebeen out and I've gone into schools to talk about the trilogy, a'back' story has slowly been developing in my head. While in thefirst book we meet Karbel who has already been a spirit for 10,000years, I like to tell the children in my own words of how he came to lose his life and become a ghost. Similarly in thethird book, Rampage, where the ghost of a rogue mammoth playsa major part, I like to tell them how the mammoth was linked toKarbel during his mortal life.

In the back of my mindI've thought about writing this 'back' story, but hadn't got muchmore than the two incidents which I've just mentioned – certainlynot enough for another book. Then just a couple of weeks ago theentire story sort of snuck up behind me (a bit like Karbel really –slowly and stealthily), manifesting itself into something solid andexciting.

With the idea naggingaway in my head I thought I'd better sit down at my computer and jotdown a few brief notes. I really don't understand how the brain and our imaginations work –but thank the Good Lord that they do, as from nowhere, characters,incidents and conversations all started to materialise in my head and I found my few brief notes turning into pages.

Within just threehours I'd got a 13 chapter outline all sorted! Start to Finish, myback story plot which I'd only vaguely been thinking about for years, wasthere in black and white! And as I sat there reading it back I honestlywondered where it had all come from.

I don't know if the originalpublisher will want this book – but I'm hoping it will getpublished in one form or another eventually. However, I'm not sure what I'll betelling children on future school visits if they ask where the idea for this story came from – "Err, well I just sat down in front of mycomputer and wrote it." It's a bit lame, so perhaps I'll develop a'back' story as to how this book came about. Hmm! Let me think... "Well children, one dark and stormy night...."

It's been a few yearssince I last wrote about my character, Karbel – and I remember sheddinga tear or two when I tapped out the final few sentences in the thirdbook, Rampage and realised our adventure was over. Butsuddenly I'm writing about him again – he's alive and not just inspirit form this time – but a flesh and blood sabre-toothed tiger;playing with his siblings as a cub, prancing in the streams, trying –and failing (at first) to catch fish. Coming into contact with humansand a rogue mammoth. I know in this book – because of what happensto Karbel and his family, that the story will tug on the old heartstrings, and of course, this time when I write the final sentence, it reallywill be the end of my adventure with Karbel. Sniff sniff!

The one thing that hasn't jumped into my head yet is a title. I'm trying to think of something short and snappy which will sit nicely alongside the other three titles. Inspiration for that has yet to strike! All suggestions gratefully received and I promise to tell youngsters where the title came from on future school visits!

2012-01-07T08:00:00.000Z

How much of me do you want? Yvonne Coppard

I am a big fan of Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. So in 2010 I was delighted to read that the ‘famously reclusive’ author had agreed to give an interview to the Mail on Sunday in celebration of the book’s 50^th, with the interesting condition that Mockingbird would not be mentioned. I gather a two-page spread was planned, and much hype ensued. The interviewer, Sharon Churcher, approached the famous lady with caution, and handed over a box of Hersheys chocolates. And here is what she got from Harper Lee in return:

"'Thank you so much,' she told me. 'You are most kind. We're just going to feed the ducks but call me the next time you are here. We have a lot of history here. You will enjoy it.'"

That was it. I have no idea how the Mail on Sunday filled their two pages. But thank you, thank you, Harper Lee for refusing to play ball in a world where writers – along with actors, singers, artists and a whole load of et cetera – can no longer afford to have a private life if they want their work to be successful. (No, this isn’t a piece about ‘phone hacking, but bear it in mind).

By the way, the ‘famously reclusive’ Harper Lee was for years (and may still be, for all I know) a regular contributor to the University of Alabama event in Tuscaloosa, where a prize is offered for the best high-school essay on some aspect of Mockingbird. She shows up, presents prizes, chats to students and staff, poses for local press photographs, signs autographs, and lunches with the winners. I’ve been told by a friend from Alabama that she’s not at all reluctant to do this, and has a wonderful time.

The point is, not that Harper Lee refuses to show her face in the outside world, but that she refuses to show it on demand, wherever and whenever the Media Machine requires. She is not a ‘recluse’; she is ‘a bit private’. And good for her. It is becoming increasingly difficult for writers to make a claim for the right to privacy. Audiences of all things creative are trained to expect that the purchase of something artists have produced gives the consumer the right to have something of what they are. Our works no longer speak for themselves – and maybe they never did, except for the very fortunate few.

I’ve been thinking a lot about privacy and promotion as I’ve been deciding what I do – and don’t – want to include on my new web site. Fifty, even thirty years ago, it was not something a writer had to think about much. You wrote your book, your publisher launched it, the press would hopefully review it, and if you were very lucky there would be the occasional interview for newspaper or radio. TV interviews with writers were rare, and you could live your daily life as privately as you wished. I am not a Luddite, and I don’t mourn for the pre-computer days of my first book, laboriously written with a biro in a hardcover paper notebook. I like blogs, websites, interviews and features about authors. But I must confess that sometimes I find myself wondering about the value of keeping to the boundaries that other professionals rely on - between work and home, between the public person and the private life.
So I thought I’d ask you, if you’re reading this blog and you’ve got this far, because I’m genuinely interested to know what readers and writers think about the problem...
How far does a writer have to go in sharing his/her private self as part of the publishing package?
If you’re a writer, how far are you prepared to go? And if a reader, do you feel cheated, or intrigued, when anonymous or reclusive writers give you the book but nothing else?
Yvonne Coppard
To see Yvonne’s new web site, visit www.yvonnecoppard.co.uk
Yvonne is currently working on ‘The Arvon Book of Children’s Fiction’, with co-writer Linda Newbery, scheduled for publication in the USA and UK by Bloomsbury later this year.

Once upon a time...by Keren David

2012-01-04T23:54:00.001Z

New year, new book. But where to start?

Do you look for a strong premise - that magical 'what if?' which sparks a dozen new questions?
Or do you create strong characters, then build a plot around them?
Some writers plan a series arc, then work on individual books like episodes in a television series. Others are inspired by a picture, a chance conversation or a particular place.
So far I've always started with newspaper stories - a child in witness protection, a teenage girl winning the lottery. I like stories which link to big themes, and I try and ease them in so the readers hardly notice.

My first book, When I Was Joe started with this story, about a small child who was the victim of a crime, the hero of the story, but ended up having to leave his home,. change his name and go into lifelong hiding. It was informed by many more, including the ordeal of teenage witness Danielle Cable who saw her fiance stabbed to death by gangster Kenneth Noye, and the inspiring story of Shelly Woods, paralympic athlete. The villain owed a lot to David Norris, son of a notorious South London gangster, and jailed - finally - this week for the murder of Stephen Lawrence.
Sometimes I write things and then - eerily - find that real life comes very near to my imagination. This terrible story of an accidental death, for example, comes very near to aone of my storylines, but I heard about it after I wrote the book.
For me, the writing process is bolstered by real life - not just news stories, but also conversations with friends, children, things I overhear on buses. How does it work for you?

Me and my Kindle: Sue Purkiss

2012-01-04T10:48:00.002Z

In October I was lucky enough to be given a Kindle for my birthday. Now, I have to admit that where new technology - or even old technology, actually - is concerned, I am not at the cutting edge. (I was going to say I'm somewhere back in the Stone Age, but that would really be unfair to Stone Age techies: I couldn't even make a new-fangled thing like a flint arrowhead. But I digress.)

I admired it, a little nervously, ordered a nice bright blue cover for it, charged it up, and then put it away so we could both have a rest. But before Christmas, I was off to Brussels for a week or so to meet my new grandson. Aha, I thought - the ideal opportunity. I was taking a bag full of presents plus the normal luggage; there wouldn't be enough room for a decent supply of books. The Kindle was about to come into its own.

So I sat down with it, I downloaded the instructions, we had a friendly chat, I ordered a few books - two Dickens, since you ask, an Alan Gibbons, a Penelope Lively (by mistake, this one, I was actually just looking), and we were all set. I was about to get to know my Kindle.

Of course, many of you will have been using an e-book reader of some kind since the year dot plus one or two. I'm hoping you will be able to explain some of the things I still haven't mastered. But mostly, this post is for those who still haven't dipped their toes in. I'm going to tell you how it's been for me. (Please note: this is about the Kindle from the point of view of a reader, not a writer. For the writer's point of view, best go to Authors Electric.)

Pros

The most obvious pro is that it's small and light, so it's perfect for journeys. It was at its heroic best when the train I caught from Paddington to Bristol was full, so that I had to stand as far as Reading. (No, not an impenetrable pun - I mean the town.) With the Kindle, I could hold on to a seat with one hand and my Kindle with the other. It was easy to see the screen, and, back in ancient Rome with the charismatic Didius Falco (no, not to be found in Dickens or Alan Gibbons - will explain later), I was able to laugh in the face of adversity and Great Western.
The screen is very comfortable to read. In a dark corner, it's easier to see than a paper page. You can adjust the print size, too, if you want to. And you don't need two hands to keep the pages flat.
It's fantastically easy to order new books. You can access the Kindle Store on the device itself, choose your book, and within minutes it's downloaded and ready to read. This is great if you're on the move. For instance, some time ago I read the first Lindsey Davis book about an informer in ancient Rome, the aforementioned Didius Falco. My son had the second in the sequence, so while in Brussels, I read it. I was hooked. He didn't have the third, so I downloaded it onto my Kindle. When I reached the end, there was the first chapter of the next one. After a very brief struggle on the grounds of cost and self-discipline - Dickens was still there, ready and waiting - I gave in, and ordered the next one. Okay, yes, and the next - for the train, you see...

Cons

It's fantastically easy to order new books. What you should do is order old, free books, or seek out ones that are cheaper than the paperback version would be. I'm sure I'll get the hang of this in time, (particularly with the help of Authors Electric) - it's just that Didius Falco has very cleverly got in the way.
Ordering books is very quick, but everything else is very slow. I don't have a smart phone, and had thought the Kindle would be handy while I was abroad for checking emails, blogs etc. I found each action - connecting, loading up a new page etc - agonisingly slow; and when the page had loaded up, it was much too tiny to read. I know there's a way of getting round this and making the page bigger, but I lost patience and used my son's laptop instead. I was going to have another go at it before doing this post, but the Kindle seemed to have got confused, what with having been away and all (not to Brussels, just to Essex even) and plaintively said it couldn't connect. It managed it after about half an hour, but this post is already late. (Sorry, sorry...)
The device is visually very dull. I'm sure the technology will catch up, but at the moment it doesn't do colour. But in the meantime - how hard could it be to make the device itself some colour(s) other than grey? It's positively leaden, which seems a contradiction when one of its usps is that it's very light in weight. I'd be much fonder of it if it was bright blue. And the screen savers which it uses - they are images of classic writers from the past, which is fair enough, but these versions are strangely dull too: Emily Dickinson is on there at the moment, with dull charcoal eyes and dull charcoal hair. Black and white most certainly doesn't have to be leaden, but these images are.

To sum up, I like my Kindle. In some circumstances, I like it a lot. I wouldn't consider it for any books which are illustrated, and by preference I would still go for a conventionally produced book - particularly one which is beautifully produced, an object of loveliness in itself as well as in what it contains. For the future, I'd like something which was similar to the Kindle in terms of size and portability, but was also easy to use as a means of accessing the internet and using the keyboard.

It probably already exists - I know that as far as technology goes, I always arrive ten days after the battle. If so, go on, tell me about it!

Books and Roses Savita Kalhan

2012-01-02T00:11:00.001Z

This summer I went to Barcelona for the first time. It’s an incredibly vibrant city, full of cafes, museums, stunning architecture and art, and the food is pretty good too. There is so much to see and do, not least is a stroll up and down the buzzing La Rambla.

La Rambla is characterised by its wide central walkway teeming with touristic stalls, painters and sketchers, dancers and diners. But every year on the 23rd of April there is a completely different type of buzz – a celebration of roses and books which stems from a tradition steeped in history, originating from the myths and lores of bygone centuries, of Sant Jordi, or St. George, the dragon-slayer and patron saint of love and culture. April 23rd was also the day two of the world’s most renowned writers, Cervantes and Shakespeare died. These, combined with the historic symbolism of the rose, representing love and respect, transforms La Rambla into a rose-and-book-lined promenade, with many bookshops and cafes across the city hosting readings by authors. There is even a 24 hour marathon reading of Cervantes’ Don Quixote! It has become a popular date to launch a book as well as to swap a book for a rose. But what a way of encouraging people to read!

Some four million roses have been sold by the end of the day, and eight hundred thousand books have been sold too. That’s a lot of roses, and quite a lot of books too.

In 1995 the UNESCO general convention adopted April 23rd as World Book and Copyright Day.

In the UK, so that schools can be involved, World Book Day will be celebrated on the 1st March 2012 this year. Thousands of events are being planned in schools, bookshops, libraries and other venues across the country. The Quick Reads are being written, and World Book Day £1 Book Tokens will be given out to every schoolchild. World Book Night, however, is on 23rd April 2012 this year. The first World Book Night was held last year in the UK, when a million books were given away all over the UK. This year a planned half a million books will be given away. They are both great events for writers and readers.

But while books are being given away in the UK, at the Books and Roses Festival the focus is on selling books. I wonder how much work it would take for something like the La Rambla festival to happen here and to take off in the way that it has in Barcelona? Covent Garden would be a great venue... Hundreds of writers and books and readers converging in one place for the day – who wouldn’t want to go to an annual event like that?

Perhaps I need to make another trip to Barcelona around the 23rd April, and make notes on how the experts do it...

Six things that must happen to reverse this headlong rush to an illiterate British generation

2011-12-30T07:00:00.000Z

Halfway through 2011 came a horrifying National Literacy Trust survey of more than 18,000 children.

It listed the following staggering statistics:

one in four children is unable to read or write properly when they leave London's primary schools
three in ten live in households that do not contain a single book
one in six people in the UK have the literacy level expected of an eleven year old
in 2005, 1 in 10 of the children and young people surveyed said they did not have a book of their own at home; but by 2011 this figure had increased to an incredible 1 child in 3.

Why is this not seen as a national scandal?

I believe it's because we have two cultures in this country. Those of us who are educated and read all know other people like ourselves who encourage their own children to read.

For these statistics to be true, we must be outnumbered by those for whom reading books is virtually an unknown pasttime.

All my life, newspapers have been wringing their hands about the levels of childhood and adult literacy.

Successive education ministers of every political hue have experimented with different teaching methods.

And all this time the problem has been getting worse and worse.

I believe that it's a root problem of our British culture; a culture that is leading to the closing of so many libraries.

Library closures

I learned my love of books from my local library.

But the latest figures on closures are that 415 libraries (323 buildings and 92 mobiles) are currently under threat or closed/have left council control since the beginning of this financial year out of around 4612 in the whole country.

Librarian professional body CILIP forecasts are even worse: it says that 600 libraries are under threat (inc. 20% of English libraries).

This does not include school libraries. Here, as this article from the Guardian reveals:

school libraries are facing drastic funding reductions
many school librarians are being downgraded or even made redundant
School Library Services are closing
some children’s book awards have folded
book gifting schemes have had their funding reduced
some schools have postponed author visits.

Every month brings bad news: in December we learnt that Hertfordshire Schools Library Services, one of England’s largest and most respected Schools Library Services, is set to close in the New Year.

The latest library visitor figures, covering the year to March 2011, showed overall library visitor numbers down 2.3% to 314.5 million and book issues down 2.9% to 300.2 million.

Although this is a reduction, it is less than what you might expect given these closures.

In November, Alan Gibbons called for a moratorium on the closure of libraries.

Tackling illiteracy and library closures was also the subject of Patrick Ness's Carnegie Medal acceptance speech, which he won with Monsters of Men, the third of his Chaos Walking series.

Too often, writers are told by publishers (I was told myself this year) that teenage boys don't read books and so we can't publish your book.

What can we do?

As writers, we must join with Ness and Gibbons. We can no longer be complacent. Our livelihood is at stake.

Yes, we have to keep writing compelling books. But we also have to act.

Here are six things that need to happen:

We must be prepared to occupy libraries faced with closure, just like the occupy movement.
The government must stop closing libraries and encourage more children to read in every way possible; even if it comes to giving away books. This happens in developing countries where the level of literacy is higher than ours, for God's sake!
Publishers must reconsider the pricing of books. Books are expensive compared to other media which children enjoy, much of which is free, like television, the Internet, radio, music and video games. There needs to be a range of cheap books aimed at less literate children to get them reading so they can later migrate to more difficult books for their age group.
The pricing of e-books needs to be much, much cheaper (for the iPad etc.), with all kinds of promotional tools like the vouchers used by iTunes, which would be the modern equivalent of book vouchers.
Reading books must be made more cool. Celebrities rated by children need to come out and encourage children to read.
You should get involved in CILIP's advocacy work on school libraries and schools' library services, if you aren't already.

It's going to take a lot of effort to turn this devastating trend around. But for the sake of the next generation, we have to do it.

The Paradox of Reading - Joan Lennon

2011-12-29T07:00:00.002Z

Isn't it amazing that anything so outwardly solitary can be so densely populated, anything that we do so quietly can resound with so many voices, anything that we do in such stillness can fling us quite so far?

Here's to reading, then, as the year turns towards spring and blessings get counted. First page of the list, for sure, and not far from the top.

Visit Joan's website.

Visit Joan's blog.

FRESH STARTS and SECOND DRAFTS - DIANNE HOFMEYR

2011-12-28T06:31:00.006Z

The period between Christmas and New Year is probably a time when most writers take a break. Right now I’m sitting on my deck with my feet up on this African Senufo bed with a view over the sea and a cup of coffee in hand contemplating 2012. Like Rosalie in her Taking Stock blog yesterday, I’m taking stock.

Last year in the run-up to Christmas when everything ground to a halt in snow-bound Britain and Heathrow had more iced-up aeroplanes on its runways than a flock of flamingos on a salt pan, I spent hours forced to slow down. My suitcase was packed, the desk cleared (as far as I’m able to clear it) and I waited. In one of those incredible long periods of more than 12 hours at a time over three days in the halls of Heathrow, I started a new novel. It was set on the coast of the place I was about to fly to, and started with a shipwreck. Perhaps I was metaphorically shipwrecked.

Now a year later I’m physically back on that coast having just flown out yesterday but this time with a completed first draft in my suitcase. It’s taken a year. (Am I the only writer who needs a year for a story to formulate?) Now begins the task of strengthening that tentative and fragile text. Time to assess.

In no particular order, I’ve come up with the following actions we can take to turn first drafts into second drafts.

Cutting out the Flack

Measuring Inner Change

Strengthening Point of View

Bridging Conflict

Freezing Moments in Time

Raising the Stakes

Developing the Protagonist

Developing the Antagonist

Discovering the True Theme

Writing the story to its Fullest Potential.

Making the story more Robust.

Deepen the Dilemma

I’m sure you can all add to this list. But with my coffee hitting the adrenalin spot, it's suddenly struck me how many of the things we do with a first draft, are things we can apply to our lives… especially when a New Year is fast approaching. This could get very psycho-analytical. I might start feeling very flawed!

And first drafts often feel flawed… particularly if you write intuitively rather than with blow by blow planning. The bundle of newly printed-out pages waiting in my unpacked suitcase, is fragile. Over-exposure to too many friends or family or even an agent, while a story has just moved from something inchoate to a more fully fledged shape with a beginning, a middle and an end, can leave any writer feeling undermined.

At the start of the New Year, I’m not going to put myself through the rigours of analytical appraisal (even though my family might think it a good idea) nor am I going to be too harsh on my first draft. I’m going to take it for what it is… a first draft… slightly flawed but with great potential!!! That list can be put on hold for a while. I'm drinking my coffee and enjoying the view hoping for a few dolphins in the Bay.

PS. Have just thought of another one for the list... Cutting a lot out!

www.diannehofmeyr.com

Taking Stock... by Rosalie Warren

2011-12-27T07:00:00.020Z

Sorry about the visual pun, but it's Christmas after all and I had a lovely picture of some leftover gravy just begging to be posted...

It's now a little over five years since I gave up my university post as a result of ill-health and decided to take the opportunity to focus on my writing. This was something I'd always wanted to do but had never found much time for, in among the demands of bringing up a family, studying for a PhD and then being a researcher and lecturer.

So maybe it's time to take stock and ask myself what I've learned, where I've failed and what I've managed to achieve, as well as trying to decide my aims for the next five 5 years or so.

The failures speak for themselves. I'm not a household name, my books are not bestsellers and I'm not a millionaire... though I'm not sure whether I was aiming at those things, and I certainly wasn't expecting them. What I have achieved is three published books, several more completed ones which have not yet found homes, and an exciting new project for younger readers recently commissioned (and still under wraps). But, much more importantly, I've learned quite a bit, made some wonderful new friends and had a lot of fun.

I spent the first two years of my 'freedom' writing short stories and submitting them to competitions, as well as joining several online writers' groups and learning how to give and receive feedback. I took a creative writing class and began work on two novels, one of which I'd had in mind for several years. It turned into Charity's Child, and an independent publisher, Circaidy Gregory, with whom I'd had a short story placed in a competition, expressed interest. It was published in 2008 and I experienced all the joys (and disappointments) of being a first-time published author. The trouble was, I knew very little about how to publicise a book and my publishers, though enthusiastic, had limited resources. I had some encouraging reviews, did a couple of signings and was invited along to some bookgroups to discuss my novel. An agent read it and invited me to London to meet her. It was all very exciting, but she didn't sign me up (a story that would soon become familiar).

My second novel, Low Tide, Lunan Bay, was less serious - a sort of comedy-suspense-romance. I sent it to an appraisal agency, who recommended that my protagonist, who found new love on the internet at 46, had her age reduced by ten years. I did just that (gosh, I was compliant in those days...) A publisher, Robert Hale, liked it but said it was too long - could I cut it by 25%? I did - by removing the sub-plot and sewing up the seams. Hale accepted it and I was, of course, delighted, though I still think it would have been a better book with the heroine ten years older and the sub-plot still in place.

My next novel, Alexa's Song, failed to tick a number of boxes. Male protagonist for a female readership - black mark. Too 'dark' for a love story. Mental health issues - woopsadaisy. Several agents said it would be 'difficult to place'. It still hasn't found a home, but I may well revise it and publish it myself as an eBook one of these days. I think there's a need for more books about depression, bipolar illness and so on, and I'll be only to pleased to add to the list.

I attended the Winchester Writers' Conference in 2008 and entered one of their competitions - to write the first 500 words and synopsis of a novel for age 12+. My entry made the shortlist and became, eventually, Coping with Chloe, the story of a teenager whose life is being taken over by her twin. Several agents expressed interest, but no bites. I sent it to Cornerstones for an appraisal, then rewrote and resubmitted it. One agent, who shall be nameless, got very excited and promised (I thought) to sign me up when I'd made a few changes. I made a few changes, while she made just the one - her mind.

I was distraught, to the point where I didn't submit anything or even do much writing for several weeks. Then I picked myself up and sent Chloe to a new children's publisher, Phoenix Yard, who liked it... and signed me up. My editor there was brilliant - and thanks to her help it came out in March 2011 and has had some great feedback and lovely reviews. Though not, sadly, huge sales - or not yet, anyway...

In March 2012, Charity's Child is going to be reissued as an eBook and as a new edition in paperback, by the original publisher, Circaidy Gregory. Other possible eBooks for the future include my 42000 word novella about a woman with Alzheimer's, which is probably too short to be considered by a publisher. There's also an SF book for 12+ which hasn't yet found a home. And my current project is an SF novel for adults, which draws on my research interests - cognitive science, linguistics and AI. If it doesn't find a publisher, I'll definitely publish it myself.

One thing I've learned is that it doesn't get any easier - you just set the bar higher as you go. And there are always going to be people who are more successful than you, so why worry about it? I've also discovered that authors, and children's authors in particular, are some of the maddest, funniest and kindest people in the world.

I've learned that you have to stay true to yourself. There are always compromises to be made in terms of what agents and publishers are looking for - but if you lose your vision of what you want to write, you might as well give up.

I'm very happy still to be writing, after five crazy years. I wouldn't want to do anything else... though to earn a bit of money from time to time might be nice.

And finally finally... I've discovered that hearing a child or young person say they liked your book and found it interesting, exciting, helpful or whatever, is one of the best feelings in the world and no writer could wish for anything more.

Wishing all of you - readers, writers, whatever you may be - a very happy, healthy, prosperous and successful New Year.

Season's Greetings - Malaika Rose Stanley

2011-12-23T00:01:00.000Z

Season's greetings from Highbury...

Many thanks for the warm welcome into the Sassie / ABBA fold...

and all best wishes for a very...

and a wild...

With only two days till Christmas, I've opted for the minimalist approach to blogging, laid aside the revisions for one book and the edits for another - and put myself in a festive mood with carol singing and a visit to the German market in my home-town of... Birmingham!

Na ja, Frohe Weihnachten und ein friedliches Neues Jahr!

What - if anything - do you do to embrace the spirit of the season?

Spike in Space - my second Spike and Ali Enson book - and Dance Dreams - my second Sugar and Spice novel - will both be published in September 2012.

www.malaikarosestanley.com

www.malaikarosestanley.blogspot.com

A Twong in My Heart - Andrew Strong

2011-12-22T02:00:00.003Z

Have many of you have read Roberto Bolano’s ‘2666’? I can’t remember why I bothered to start reading it. Perhaps it was the title, it had an enigmatic lure of some sort. I'm not going to even try to describe the book here, but I will list some adjectives that occur to me when I think of it: long, infuriating; irritating; convoluted; plotless.

But I couldn’t put it down. After I’d finished it, I wondered what it was all about. What was it about that book that held me in its power? The hold a book can have, without obvious attractive characters, or clever plot, I felt it with Murakami’s ‘The Wind Up Bird Chronicle’. A sense that I was being carried along by a current of words, rather than what they meant.

For the last few weeks I’ve been recuperating from Bell’s Palsy. This is not unrealted to Bolano’s book. You’ll see, in a minute I’ll tie it up. Be patient. The palsy started with a numbness around my lips. I couldn’t blow a raspberry. If I was a professional brass musician, I’d have been in serious trouble. Before the diagnosis, I quietly considered whether I could be having a stroke. I went to my day job (I’m a primary school headteacher) and felt my eye beginning to do strange things, and at this point, other people were beginning to notice.

I was driven to my GP who conducted some tests. I was not having a stroke. (He asked me to wrinkle my brow. A stroke victim can still wrinkle his brow on the side of the paralysis; I couldn’t.) Slowly, creepingly, my face was losing more feeling. My lips, eye, tongue all began to lose sensation.

My GP scrolled through my medical records. “You’re stressed,” he said. “You’re lucky you didn’t have a stroke. You can’t work like this. One month off, at least.”

I ignored him and went back into work the next day. Soon enough I realised I could hardly speak, I couldn’t eat, and I certainly couldn’t drink. I kept spilling coffee down my shirt, on to my trousers. I couldn't smile. And then my right eye refused to close, and the left wouldn’t open. I gave up and went home.

My colleagues were very supportive. They insisted I take time off. For the first few days I woke thinking about work; about emails that needed an answer, cheques that had to be signed, a child whose story I had promised to discuss and had not been able to. If this continued, I wouldn’t get better. I had to find a distraction.

I wasn’t able to write: my eyes opened and closed at random intervals. I had to tape one down, and intermittently feed the other eye drops. I had to find something else.

With no one else in the house all day, I began playing music at window rattling volumes. It was bliss. I cranked up a recording studio that’s been in various stages of evolution over the years, and began composing music again. Very pleasant, it was, to be hunched over the keyboard, my eyes closed in reverie.

At the same time I was trying to make up jokes to donate to the Twitter community. I like making up jokes, it’s the closest I’ll ever get to algebra without doing maths. Here are a couple of seasonal efforts. (Yes, I know, they wouldn’t make it into a damp cracker.)

The salt just bid me 'good morning' and then the pepper said 'how are you?' I suppose those are seasonings greetings.

My daughter wants some felt pens for Christmas. I said I could afford to get her some that no one had even touched!

And so it goes on. There are millions of people out there, furiously tweeting jokes, and some of them are really quite good. Twitter is a madhouse . Twitter is a force for political change. Twitter is dull. But, don’t think you can do what you like on Twitter, you can’t. Here, for example, are Roger Quimbly’s Rules of Twitter. Please take note:

http://rogerquimbly.blogspot.com/2011/10/roger-quimblys-rules-of-twitter.html

So, having decided I wanted to start composing music again, but needing inspiration, I looked to Twitter. I wondered if I could compose the musical form of the tweet. A ten second opera, or musical. Something that made a point musically, in a few seconds. But what?

In a moment of sublime joy I knew what I had to do. Set other people’s tweets to music. Eureka! It became my sick bed passion.

Some tweets threw themselves at me, others crept up and whispered in my ear. But one by one, each told its own tale. Each was a little mystery to solve, a code to break.

These tiny phrases, unlocked, revealed more than their surface meaning. I began recording the best ones, and as I did, I sang them over and over to find their heart. Because of the palsy, my singing was a bit odd. I sounded like Tom Waits, but with a drink problem.

I had to find the rhythm of the tweet, extract the melody. Some revealed an emotional depth that was sometimes quite surprising. One particular tweet moved me so much I found it hard to sing. Another suddenly revealed itself as a waltz, transparently in three four time.

When my daughter was tiny, just months old, we communicated in a sort of wordless song. I would sing a meaningless phrase, she would complete it. If I hadn’t recorded our wordless conversations, I would think I had imagined it all. But I still have her pre-verbal songs, and lovely they are.

What occurs to me is the underlying music of language, below the meaning of words and sentences, may have a more profound effect on us than we acknowledge. And so, back to Bolano. I know the book I read was a translation, but nevertheless, I wonder whether if some of its hold on me was musical. That between them, Bolano and his translator had created a sort of emotional sound map. Not that I know what that means.

Writing these little songs helped me get better quickly. I was told I should expect to start feeling better in six weeks. In three, I was smiling again. Here are a few of the twongs: tweet into song.

http://soundcloud.com/yawnthepost/weather

http://soundcloud.com/yawnthepost/double-1

http://soundcloud.com/yawnthepost/argubath

The Year's Midnight - Celia Rees

2011-12-20T06:00:00.000Z

' 'TIS the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ; The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world's whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk, Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph. '

A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day, Being The Shortest Day - John Donne

For John Donne, the shortest day was St Lucy's Day, the 12th December. For us it is the 21st. We are a day away, but as I write this and a dismal afternoon turns more drear and the light fades, it feels as if it is already here. The Winter Solstice has always been seen as significant, recognised all over the world and celebrated as a time of re-birth, a time of hope and re-affirmation as the year turns back towards the light.

Short days and long nights have always made this a good time to read. What else is there to do, once Christmas is over? It's a chance to withdraw from the world for a little while, curl up with a good book and maybe a glass of something, and read in front of the fire. I guess everyone has their favourite seasonal reading, their favourite Christmas stories and poems and there have been some memorable children's books set at this time of the year. When I was a child, I didn't particularly enjoy the stories of Beatrix Potter and I didn't like Alison Uttley's Little Grey Rabbit. I preferred the rougher charm of her Sam Pig and Brock the Badger. My favourite story from the Tales of Sam Pig was The Christmas Box, and my favourite part of that story was when Brock the Badger goes to the Christmas Fair. The light is going and no-one notices a 'little brown man' going from stall to stall with his silver penny, buying things for his wards, Sam, Tom, Bill and Ann. I used to look out for him in country markets, late on a December afternoon. I still do.

'Miracles happen on Christmas Eve', Brock says, and maybe it is true. it is a magical time of the year when it is possible to believe strange things could happen, like badgers going to market, so it is little wonder that two of the best children's fantasies ever written are set at this time of the year. John Masefield's hugely influential Box of Delights is exactly what it says on the cover. First published in 1935, every subsequent British fantasy writer owes an immense debt to Masefield's imagination and his inventiveness. The book is set in deep mid-winter with the hero, Kay, returning from boarding school. He meets a mysterious Punch and Judy man, the owner of the box, who then entrusts it to Kay to avoid it falling in to the hands of the evil Abner Brown. The gripping, powerful story unfolds over the few days Christmas. The weather and the feeling of dislocation, of being out of normal time, that is often present during this period, add significantly to the power of the fantasy and the sense of danger and isolation.

The other book on my Solstice reading list is Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising. Another brilliantly inventive, original and influential fantasy, like the Box of Delights, it takes place over Christmas and New Year and deals with the battle between the forces of darkness and the forces of the light. Perhaps both books are so powerful and convincing because they tap into the atavistic fear that fuels our midwinter festivals, rituals and celebrations, a fear that goes back thousands of years, the terror that the warmth and light may never return and we will be kept in a state of freezing darkness. M. R. James used to tell his ghost stories at Christmas and that seems entirely right and fitting. The impulse to read and tell stories of this kind, involving supernatural and magic, may be very ancient, a way of warding off forces that might engulf us, forces that grow in the darkness and shrink in the light.

What's your favourite Solstice reading?

This Is Why We Do It - Liz Kessler

2011-12-19T07:00:00.000Z

What is it that defines us?

Have you noticed how often it’s about our jobs? But how does it really work? As writers, is it about the number of books we've written, the number of people who've read them, the amount of money we've made from them? What exactly is the thing that means we can confidently claim the title of 'writer' as part of what gives us our place in the world?

Before I was published, my day job was as a teacher, although writing was my passion and the thing I spent most of my hours doing. But I found it hard to say to people that I was a writer, because it wasn't what I did as an actual, paid job.

My best friend recently passed a test which means she is now trained to work with the local Coast Watch station – an organisation which exists to keep an eye on people out at sea, and which in all of its years of existence has saved many lives. Loads of people congratulated her when she passed this test, but she was embarrassed by the congratulations – because this is ‘only’ a voluntary role and not a 'proper' job.

But why do we find ourselves defining our role in the world and our status by how we earn our money? This can't be right. So I've decided that we should start doing it differently. I believe a better way to think about our role is in terms of the difference we make to other people.

So…if you work in a shop and you recently helped a customer buy a lovely Christmas present for someone they love – just think, when that present is opened, you contributed to the smile it will bring! If you’re a teacher and you gave a pupil some praise for their work this week – believe me, that praise could stay with them for years. (I know it did for me!) And my friend at the Coast Watch station, think of the difference she could make to the world with just one phone call if a fisherman were to get into trouble along the local coastline.

These are the ways we should judge our place in the world – not by money or cars or houses.

So what about us writers? Where do we fit in with this idea? How do we know when we've made a difference to someone's life? Well, how about this as a start? A picture that one of my readers sent me this week. (It's my character Emily Windsnap, in both her human and mermaid forms!)

To think that a child has been so involved in one of my books that they have taken the time to make such a sweet picture, and then wanted to send it to me, is absolutely heart-warming.

Or this, from a recent message on my facebook page…

“I lent one of my best friends your book, "The Tail Of Emily Windsnap", for her book report. She hardly ever reads and didn't like to read, and now she's reading your books like crazy! Thanks for helping my friend to like to read!”

I helped a child to learn to love reading! Wow!

If you'll forgive me a tiny moment of trumpet-blowing, my latest book, A Year Without Autumn, has just been shortlisted for an award. (The first award I’ve ever, ever EVER been shortlisted for, which is why I can't resist sharing the news!)

The best part of it is that this is the Blue Peter Book Award, which is judged by children, not adults. Whether I win or not, if only a few of those children enjoy my book the most, I will know that I've had the opportunity to contribute to a few enjoyable hours of their childhood – and what could be better than that?

Well, actually, I'll tell you what could be better.

This.

What’s this? I hear you ask. A pile of books?

This is, in fact, an example of the generosity and all-round wonderfulness of my fellow writers.

I’ve recently become involved with a charity that has been building a children’s hospice here in Cornwall. The hospice, Little Harbour, has just opened and has, this month, started taking in its first families. When I visited, I noticed some empty bookshelves. A few messages and a few calls later, and within a week, I had over 200 books - mostly signed specially for the hospice from fellow writers, and a couple of boxes from my publisher and agent, too.

I took the books to the hospice this week, and saw the bedrooms where they’ll be placed, the family room where they’ll adorn the bookshelves, the cute little nooks and crannies all around this amazing place, where children in the most difficult circumstances that any of us could imagine will be able to sit quietly and get wrapped up in the wonderful world of a book. I have to say, my heart melted on the spot.

So, yes – of course we want the pay cheques, the advances, the royalties – and yes, we dream about the film deals and the sales and even the book awards. But really, these are only the things that make us feel good on the outside. What matters most is what makes us feel good on the inside.

And if I can play a part in the short life of a child who comes to stay at this beautiful children’s hospice – if a child spends a few happy hours curled up with one of the huge Little Harbour teddy bears, reading one of my books and losing themselves in its world – well, THAT is why I am proud, honoured and grateful to call myself a writer.

Find out more about Liz here

Find out more about Little Harbour Children's Hospice (including how to make donations) here

The ones that didn't make it - Abi Burlingham

2011-12-17T09:17:00.004Z

What do you do with the ones that don’t make it, with the stories that you really enjoyed writing but that never became a book? With the poems that you put your heart and soul into but whose audience was only ever the one person who put it to one side and gave it a ‘no’. What happens to them? What happens to the ones you loved and nurtured, re-wrote again and again, full of hope that someone would want them? What happens to those?

When I first thought about writing children’s picture books, I really had no idea what was out there and what was selling. So, before putting pen to paper, I researched it for a year. I looked at publishers' websites, ordered their catalogues, found out their submission details. I read a wonderful book, by Eric Suben and Berthe Amos, ‘Writing and Illustrating Children’s Books for Publication’ – the only book I have ever read on how to write! I also read a huge array of picture books, noting which ones I liked and why, and tried to ensure that my stories would have the same elements. I thought about the stories I’d loved as a child and what it was that had grabbed me and pulled me in.

When it came to the actual writing, I thought about characters, setting, action, crisis point, recovery from crisis, triumphing. I thought about the way the words sounded, the rhythm, the layout, how my text would be represented by an illustrator. I did sketches and paintings of my characters - this one here is of Bengo, my old bear-dog who I lost many moons ago. I even made dummy books. I was convinced that it was because of all this preparation that one of my first attempts at a children’s picture book story, ‘All Grown Up’, became my first published book, and became part of a series of picture books on growing up, along with another book I wrote, ‘Best Friends’.

So why couldn’t I sustain this? Hadn’t I found the magic recipe for story telling? No, I hadn’t. I wrote story after story that dwindled and died, convincing me that I had clearly struck lucky first the two picture books. There is an element of luck, quite a lot of it actually, in getting published – being read by the right person, sending off to the right person at the right time, unknowingly competing with someone else who has sent something off to the same person at the same time as you, a thing we really have no control over.

I continued to write, but I lost all sense of whether what I was writing was good or not. Sometimes, I thought I’d really hit on something. I’d draw from a childhood memory, convinced that a particular teddy or bike I'd had for Christmas would form the kernel of such a good story. But they came to nothing. The initial ideas in my head that I felt would make good picture books seemed to lack something when I wrote them. I instinctively knew, even as I went through the same process of sending them off to publishers, that they weren’t quite right. I began to live in hope, not that one of them would get published, but that publishers would see enough potential to give me feedback and point me in the right direction.

This was rather cheeky on my part, but publishers are very nice people, I have found, and, although I had a lot of rejections, some publishers did write back saying that they liked my writing and giving me enough constructive feedback to make me feel that I could produce something better, and more than anything, that they considered me worth encouraging.

Most of these picture book stories are now in pretty lever arch folders up in the attic – where they belong to be truthful. There’s more to writing a children’s picture book than a sweet idea, and even if you know all the ingredients, it doesn’t necessarily make your story publishable.

There are one or two stories from this period that I have hung on to… erm, well, actually, five or six. Well, I’m attached to them! But more than this, I think they are my best, unpublished, work and there is the germ of something there. That germ is in the characters. In fact, I have recently re-worked an old favourite, initially written around five years ago, reducing the main characters from four to one – as an experiment initially - to see how this change affected the other elements of the story. It did, in very surprising ways. I don’t know yet whether someone will deem it publishable, but I feel it’s worth a go.

As for the Bengo stories, The Shiny Purple Bike, Ben’s Blankie, Annie’s cakes … and all the other that came to nought, if I hadn’t written them, I probably wouldn’t have got it right for the Ruby and Grub stories, and I wouldn’t now be looking forward to the publication of ‘Buttercup Magic: A Mystery for Megan.’ We can only learn from our mistakes, and when we do hit on the right thing, publishers recognise that too.

Just Keep Swimming! - Karen Ball

2011-12-16T07:48:00.007Z

Lego Christmas Tree at St Pancras International

As publishers wind down for Christmas (which often means pinging last, frantic emails to authors so that they can work over Christmas!) and parties abound (check out Katie Dale's recent amusing guide to surviving publisher parties here) it's a good time for the author in the street or the novice writer to take stock. How has your year been? Did you achieve all you set out to? Were you as productive as previous years? Are you happy with the publishing scene in 2011?

Actually, children's publishing has not been hit as hard as others in this staggeringly bleak recession we're currently enduring. According to The Bookseller, sales of children's books have rocketed over the past ten years. (I can't show you that article because it's subscription only. I'm sure this says something deep and meaningful about online journalism and the book industry, I just don't know what!)

Stroppy Author posted a great blog on annual self-appraisal recently. I love Stroppy Author's blog - it's jam-packed with wisdom and information gained from years of experience and staggering productivity. I like the narrative tone, too - our teacher lays all the cards on the table and then leaves us to do what we will with this information. No over-optimistic encouragement, no words of doom. Just plain, solid facts.

So what did I achieve in 2011? I wrote a novel! A novel that I absolutely loved working on and am about to start revising. I wrote several commissioned titles for a publisher. I helped organise Undiscovered Voices. I blogged up a storm in various venues! But I think my most important achievement this year was retaining my optimism and love of writing. When times are tough - and oh my, they are tough despite Bookseller articles - it's easy to close the door, change the locks and find something else to do.

Rejection is part of every author's life, in good times and bad. It's important to give yourself time to cry and wail, punch pillows, kick furniture. But then it's very, very important to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start thinking about what you'd like to do next. Do you need a new direction? Is it time to take advice from other professionals who have become friends? Do you just need a rest and to come back? The most important part is, in the words of Finding Nemo, to 'Just Keep Swimming!'

I hope you have a nice, warm pool or gentle tide to swim in. I hope you're gearing up for a back flip!

Please visit my blog at www.karen-b all.com.

An obvious (and slightly inconvenient) truth - Nicola Morgan

2011-12-15T06:24:00.086Z

You know that thing when you realise something and then you realise it was incredibly obvious and you feel embarrassed for not having realised it before? Well, that. But, just in case there's anyone else out there who hadn't thought about this, I will share it with you. Please tell me I am not alone in my foolishness.

Non-fiction is much easier to sell than fiction. And now I realise why.

First, let me tell you how I realised that this was even the case. In August I published my book on Twitter - Tweet Right - The Sensible Person's Guide to Twitter. And in November I re-published Mondays are Red, which was my debut novel back in 2002. I published both books as ebooks only.

Now, Mondays are Red should have had an advantage because it has been published before and has a raft of lovely reviews from newspapers as well as readers; also, it's been out of print for a couple of years and people are still asking for it. But it's selling about a quarter of the number that Tweet Right sells on a weekly basis. (Which is not a vast number, let me tell you, but it's very respectable.)

And this is despite the fact that I did more to push Mondays. A blog tour, for example, which I didn't do for Tweet Right. And TR is more expensive. And shorter. It is, by word count, much less good value. With Mondays are Red, I pleaded with my blog readers and employed blatant emotional blackmail. I never did that with Tweet Right.

However, none of that really worked. (I'm actually a bit relieved - I don't like pleading or blackmail! And btw, let me be clear: I do NOT expect people to buy out of duty.) So, TR continues to outsell Mondays by about four times.

And it seems to me the reason is obvious.

When you try to persuade a reader to buy your novel, you're trying to persuade them to want this one more than thousands - hundreds of thousands - of others. Even if yours is the genre they like to buy, you're still competing in a crowded, often poorly differentiated market. It's easy to be invisible. (Especially since there are some things I won't do to get myself or my book seen.)

But if they are looking for a book about something - Twitter, or my next topic, writing synopses (Write a Great Synopsis - An Expert Guide, coming in January!) - there are very few books that I'm competing against. Very few indeed. It's easier to be seen. Also, it's relatively easy to find the audience, because you know where they hang out. But readers of novels are everywhere, everywhere, I tell you. And they are slippery. God, they are.

So, it's obvious when you think about it, isn't it? It's much more a numbers game than we'd like to think.

In view of this, I will not bother to plead with you to buy Mondays are Red. Honestly. Don't. There are hundreds of thousands of other novels you might like almost as much. But, on the other hand, there's only one at the other end of this link. :)

EDITED TO ADD: I have a suggestion: if any published* UK authors with YA titles which are also in ebook format for Kindle would like to get in touch, I'll do a blog post (on my blog) after Christmas which will list them, with links. SO, if your book is YA, published and in ebook format, email me, in this order: title, author, publisher, 25 words to describe including genre, and Amazon link (UK or US, just one). By Christmas Eve. n@nicolamorgan.co.uk

(* I'm really sorry but I have to offer this only for authors who have had novels published by a trade publisher. This is purely so that I don't end up having to put eleventy million books in a blog post when I could be eating mince pies.)

On Writing Competitions and Envelope Fatigue by Penny Dolan

2011-12-14T08:27:00.001Z

I don’t go in for Writing Competitions, which is far more my laziness than an ideological position. Yet many people, including published writers, find them fun, possibly because of the attraction of a deadline. Nevertheless, I have just been the Secretary for a small, local writing competition.

The whole thing was organised by a newly formed Friends of the Library group and was publicised through the library, the local paper and other contacts. It was quite a success, especially the social evening when the Top Ten Ghost Stories were read aloud by a trio of experienced readers.

(Before you ask. While it can be important to honour writers by letting them read their own work, this library is large and has no microphone system. So it was far better to honour the works by letting the words be heard.)

Back to the Secretary role. We had fewer then a hundred entries but by the time the pile of envelopes had been emptied, I was very sure of what entrants to all postal writing competitions should know.

So. Things Not to Do when sending in to a Postal Competition.

Do make sure you put on the correct value of stamps for an A4 envelope so that it reaches the destination. (Yes, I went to the nearby Sorting Office, because I wanted this first Competition to be a success. Yes, I got the envelope. Yes, I found it was from an elderly writer I actually knew. No, it didn’t win.)

Those impressive named judges are very unlikely to receive your entry directly, so any ”wow” factor such as decorative coloured envelopes will not reach them, let alone affect the judging. Stationery, in such quantities, is not as amusing as when one is idly luxuriating in stationery shops.

Be aware that triple-sealed envelopes will truly annoy the competition secretary. She or he may have to use scissors to get the wretched envelope open and might, by then, be in a very bad mood. You think your work is so precious? Then use a better quality envelope in the first place.

Come to that, use a better size envelope anyway. Do not fold your A4 story to fit into something designed for a notelet. Haven’t you just spent time on this story? Relatively, is this envelope a fitting choice? And you did use A4 paper, didn't you?

Use a cover sheet with title name, address and so on. However, do put the title of your piece clearly at the top of the first page too. And when you do, give the poor title a bit of room. Don’t cram it right at the top of the page and start your story a single line space below. You need to show you value your work.

Do put those page numbers on the top right hand corner. Please. Your story may be photocopied among several others as part of the judging process. Copying machines are erratic creatures, liable to break down at odd moments. It is very easy to (almost!) lose an un-numbered page - especially if the story is an informal dialogue between two un-named characters. If your story becomes a chosen piece, any numbering at the foot of pages will make it harder for performing readers to lightly check through the order of your story when reading.

Yet, after all the above, do not put your name on the top right hand corner of every page as well as numbering it. You can place the title there, but do make sure the page number is to the right and clear. Redacting those documents took a long time – and this was a small competition that I wanted to succeed. .

Finally. Never, ever, ever include any photograph or illustration when entering for a writing competition. Even if you have been taught extreme cut ‘n paste techniques and hold a. M.Phil in Photoshop, my feeling is that nothing puts judges off any written entry more than an accompanying illustration. Or any “original” use of font, especially the gothic styles. Let your words speak for themselves.

Which reminds me to add my writer’s tip. Make sure that you read your work aloud before sending it off, more than once. So many stories, in this and in competitions where I've been a judge, have felt too front heavy and too light at the end, even for the Ghost Story genre. The end needs just as much careful work too, even if you feel relieved to have reached it.

If you are entering on-line? Read any entry information thoroughly and do just what they say. Tormented geniuses can apply but they should follow all entry rules. I'm sure that variations of my real world secretary niggles apply there too.

Reminder. The Ghost Story event took place in a Library and was organised through a Library as many literary and community events around the UK are. There’s an open letter to Ed Vaisey around on FB and elsewhere that needs all the signatures it can get by 19th December, so please add your name. That’s what I’m off to do now.

Penny Dolan's exciting novel for 9-12 year olds is A BOY CALLED M.O.U.S.E. Out in paperback now from Bloomsbury. (And an ideal story for Christmas, if I say so myself)

www.pennydolan.com

12 Gifts of Christmas - For Writers

2011-12-13T05:00:00.000Z

ByRuth Symes / Megan Rix

Thereare so many lovely gifts for writers out there, from extremely cheap tolavishly expensive. We must be the easiest people to buy for! Here’s my top 12 Christmaslist:

1.Journals and notebooks and paper: You can never have too many or too much, in myopinion, (recycled paper best if poss). A4 books for getting down to someserious writing. Smaller notebooks for stuffing in a handbag or pocket, alongwith a pen, for when inspiration strikes!

When walking on the beach this spring I even found a waterproof notebook that you could use in the rain or in the bath.

2.Yearly Planner Wall-chart: I love being able to put a daily sticker(occasionally two) on my yearly wall-chart to mark off each 1000 words written.The best part is coming to the end year of the year and having a wall-chartcovered in them - very satisfying.

3.Timer: If I’m needing help to get motivated I put a timer on for an hour andtell myself I can’t have another coffee or lunch etc until the hour is up. Afriend of mine used to tie herself to her chair so she couldn’t stop until herdesignated time was over. I think tying yourself up is too extreme - but atimer is good to have.

4.Books to read: Reading for pleasure and reading for research. Books you likeand ones you don’t. When I was thinking of writing my memoir ‘The Puppy thatcame for Christmas’ my non-fiction agent told me to read as many animal memoirsas I could. I must have read over 20 before I put pen to paper.

Allthat reading must have helped because it made the Sunday Times Non-Fiction Bestseller List last year.

5.Mobile phone: With email on it, so the writer never misses a precious publisheror agent’s email while out walking the dogs.

6.Incense sticks: These help me focus when I’m not in a writer-ly frame of mind.I also find them very good for getting me in a mystical, magical mood for whenI’m writing the Bella Donna books.

7.Smart Pen: I love writing by hand and although this pen is expensive, along withthe special notebooks it needs, it lets my scribbled handwriting be convertedinto print - it also lets you write anywhere as you just plug it into thecomputer once you’ve finished – and voila you have text - just remember to turnit on! (I forgot to do this when we were on holiday and came back with tons ofhandwriting that couldn’t be converted into print - v. annoying.)

8.Dragon Dictate: For when the poorwriter’s hands are too tired from typing and mouse manoeuvring. Seriouslythough, RSI should not be taken lying down - if a writer starts getting twingesof pain in their hands they should tryto vary the way they write.

9. Pensand pencils: Must haves! You can never have too many pens because you can never find one when you need one.

10.Diary: To record all those things that can be turned into a story or go in amemoir one day.

11.Subscriptionsto Writing Magazines: How To ones and Book Review ones. I loved getting this onefrom America last week: ‘So you've made yourlist. You've checked it twice, but if "The Puppy That Came forChristmas" isn't on it, you need to check again.’ Thanks Terri Schlichenmeyer.

12.Writers holidays/retreats/courses: A luxury, I know, but it’s very important for a writer to berejuvenated every now and again - to keep them going for the next year or two!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and Power to your Pen in 2012! xxx

The Power of Words

2011-12-12T07:00:00.003Z

I live in Gloucestershire, and recently the courts told my county council that they needed to rethink their library policy on equality grounds. The excellent Friends of Gloucestershire Libraries fought long and hard to get this result, which was won on the very thing that was closest to our hearts. Now, for a little longer the elderly users of the mobile library van service, and the many children in deprived areas of this diverse county will still be able to enjoy their local libraries. For how long we don't know, and recent developments aren't exactly heartening. http://foclibrary.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/unlawful-library-cuts-the-equality-and-human-rights-commission-step-in/ We don't want more precious money thrown away on court cases, but we do want the vulnerable protected.

In a city in the USA my granddaughter and her parents recently joined their local library. At the entrance were notices asking the customers if they'd like to vote for a few cents more to be allocated from the local council budget to the libraries in the area. Usage was steadily growing, and the extra money would enable the service to be improved.

I was quite taken by the idea of voters being able to make such choices. It's interesting to speculate what the outcome would have been if our local council had asked the electorate the same question. Funding comes from several sources at my grand daughter's library. State and county both contribute, and the library isn't too proud to ask for donations either. In fact, they explain on their website which of the libraries they run will accept what sorts of books, and in which languages. But it's not all good in the US. We in the UK aren't the only country with library funding problems. http://www.thenation.com/article/164881/upheaval-new-york-public-library

I don't know enough about the system in the US, but it seems to me that we in the UK need to look at more than one model of provision to give libraries the best chance. A US company ISS, which runs some privatised libraries in the States, has just announced that its stated intent of doing the same in England had been put on the back burner, because it seems we in England aren't ready for privately run libraries. Probably not, even if they would still be 'free'. But maybe we ought to consider more possibilities. I don't think volunteer run libraries are the answer either, but then maybe there simply isn't a suitable one size fits all.

The members of Friends of Gloucestershire Libraries have fought a wonderful rearguard action, to force the council to deliver on its statutory duty, and deserve high praise, but the library service has been underfunded for years. I am hoping that the committee to look into library provision, which was at last announced by the government, will consult and consider as widely as possible, but I'm not hopeful that it will come up with any exciting ways in which libraries can become the vibrant, well stocked places they ought to be, with wide appeal. The very real threat is that councils will tidy up their act, do just enough to be legal, and still find ways to close them.

Meanwhile, across the channel too, books are under threat. I recently signed a petition to the French government asking them not to raise the VAT on books from 5 to 7.50%.

The VAT levied on ebooks in Britain has me worried. How long will it be before some bright spark in government decides that if you can tax digital words without anyone objecting, why not printed ones? And as the French experience shows, once a tax is applied it becomes very tempting to raise it when times are hard. The written word is having a difficult time, and I don't think we can relax yet.

Yet it's not all bad. Libraries are being supported by a vociferous, well informed group of people, many of whom don't actually need to rely on the service, but still understand that for a nation to be fully inclusive, information must be freely and easily available to all, from the smallest child, through the homeless, and unemployed, to the elderly, and everyone else in between. And with youth clubs, pop in centres and other valued places at risk, where better than local libraries to take up some of the slack?

There have been some wonderfully imaginative celebrations of libraries, witness this in Scotland, and appreciated far beyond our shores. http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/11/29/142910393/the-library-phantom-returns?sc=emaf Sometimes it's hard to be optimistic, but people like the library phantom raise my spirits, and remind me that we can't give up now. One battle has been won, but the war is still being waged. And the weapons we have are words.

Fahrenheit 451? Zannah Kearns

2011-12-10T08:00:00.002Z

I entered an exclusive club recently... A friend, who’s a teacher, had been very excited at the prospect of my first novel coming out and immediately suggested I did an author visit at her school.

In November, I got an email from her telling me how much she’d loved reading my book... but that in fact she and the head of English didn’t feel it had ‘appropriate content to promote to our students.’

Her reasons were that the issues touched upon - single parent families in inner city London, a little on teen pregnancy, drug abuse (but these aren’t the main themes of the story, which is more about forgiveness and belonging) were beyond the realms of the experience of their students at this small independent school.

So, what to make of it?

Recently I’ve seen some slightly Shocked and Appalled responses to such instances - cries of book banning and the stifling of pupils. But I just wanted to give a shout out in defense of teachers and librarians who have to make this call.

Saying an author’s book might not be right for the demographic of students represented at a particular school is not the same as banning that book.

Teachers have a responsibility of care for all their students, and while some might be ready to discuss certain issues or explore realities beyond their own experience, maybe some are not. Isn’t this the very reason teen fiction isn’t put into age categories? So whilst I've been to some schools where the librarians have got Year 7s reading my novel, I've been to others where I've met with the Sixth Form.

Is discussing issues raised in a book the same as 'promoting' its content? Are teachers too conservative?

What do you think?

THANK YOU, FCBG - Emma Barnes

2011-12-09T00:01:00.000Z

The sun was streaming down when I arrived at Harrogate library, and I feared all my punters would have decamped to the Valley Gardens. But no: every seat was taken in the lovely events room.

I was there to talk about my latest book, and I was welcomed by a very keen group of child readers. Some of them had already researched the book; others asked penetrating questions about my own childhood reading: “Which Narnia book is your second favourite in the series?” They all did extremely well on my Rascals and Tearaways In Children’s Literature Quiz (sample question: Who was it that sailed away to where the wild things live?) We shared writing tips, the parents chuckled amiably, the powerpoint worked, my tea was hot and sweet...

This lovely event was part-hosted by the Harrogate Children’s Book Group – part of the Federation of Children’s Book Groups (FCBG). This in itself gave me a warm feeling – for when I was an unpublished writer, and knew no other writers, and very few adults interested in children’s books, the FCBG was very important to me.

The FCBG is, as its name suggests, a federation of local groups. Some run author events, others discussion groups for adults: all of them foster a love of children’s books. They come together at their Annual Conference, publish a magazine Carousel , and also run the Red House Children’s Book Award, the first Book Prize to be awarded on the basis of what children themselves actually think about the books. Its child judges early recognised the quality of authors like Anthony Horowitz and JK Rowling, who went on to become household names.

The FCBG was founded 40 years ago by Anne Wood, whose deep interest in children’s later led to ground-breaking children’s TV, like Teletubbies. (To learn more of her story, listen to her recent appearance on Desert Island Discs). At that time, her main interest was as a parent – and I suspect parents still make up the bulk of the FCBG’s members.

I initially joined FCBG as an individual member, because there were no local groups close by – which at least meant I could get Carousel magazine, read the interviews and the reviews, and feel in some small way part of the world of children’s books. Later a group started close enough for me to get involved. We hosted events with authors such as Chris de Lacey and Jonathan Stroud, and I even helped out at a Jacqueline Wilson event: she wasn’t yet Laureate but she was already Royalty in the Children’s Literature world, with a stunning frock and feather boa, oodles of charm, and a whole team of minders to manage her queues of fans.

Through the FCBG I met other aspiring writers, and I got to attend the Annual Conference: three days of talks and workshops, of sitting up too late, and eating too much, while endlessly discussing our favourite topics: books, books and more books!

Life moved on, and for a while I was no longer directly involved in the FCBG. But that is something I have now put right. I have renewed my membership, and will be going along to events as and when I can. With libraries and independent bookshops under threat (as the last two ABBA posts point out) a network of people eager to sustain and nurture a deep interest in children’s books, and to find and celebrate the very best of them, is more important than ever before.

Long live the FCBG!

- On the 2nd December the FCBG was awarded an Eleanor Farjeon Award for its “outstanding contribution to the world of children's books”. Congratulations FCBG!

- check out Emma Barnes’s web-site
-
- Emma’s latest book for children is How Not To Make Bad Children Good

The Gift of Reading - Lucy Coats

2011-12-08T08:00:00.001Z

Yesterday you had John Dougherty's sobering post on a Gloucestershire Councillor's overt 'fibs' about the High Court's judgement on libraries. Today's post will be no less politically-minded, I'm afraid, and what's more I don't have any beautiful pictures of India to console you with. Instead, I'm going to give you a headline:

Almost 4m children in Britain do not own a book

Shocking, isn't it? That's apparently 1 in 3 children. Yes, that's right. Your eyes are not deceiving you.

ONE IN THREE

It makes my heart break to read this statistic, let alone to write it down in big, bold letters, and when you add it to another recent statistic, that 24% of adults in the UK have the numeracy skills of a child of nine, or younger, then we are looking at a literacy/numeracy disaster which will affect coming generations in ways which are nearly too dreadful to contemplate. Except that we must contemplate it.

I've banged on often about the importance of saving our libraries here and elsewhere, along with many others on this blog. If all these children do not own a book, for a variety of reasons, many of which are to do with socio-economic factors, where are they most likely to be helped to appreciate that books and reading are important? School? Of course. But many school librarians have now felt the sharp sting of the axe edge. So, the local library - if there is one left. This is why I beg all of you to put a date in your diaries, Saturday 4th February, 2012, which has been designated National Libraries Day. Much will be happening, and your support will be vital. You can keep an eye on what's going on by joining the Campaign for the Book's Official Facebook page, where you will find regular updates on this and other library news from Alan Gibbons. We must all make our voices heard, and loudly, to preserve what we already have for those millions of children and adults who need access to libraries and books so badly. Damn those who say libraries are not important, and an extravagance in this time of recession and cuts. Our libraries are an essential cornerstone of literacy. They are essential, full stop.

But back to those one in three children who do not own a book. What could we do about that? Well, if you want to help right now, at Christmas, in a small way, you could do much worse than support the National Literacy Trust's GIVE THE GIFT OF READING THIS CHRISTMAS campaign, and buy some of their Christmas cards. A donation of £7 will mean a child gets a book of their own, but you'll have to hurry, because the cut-off date is December 12th. All of us who read this blog will remember the wonder of escaping into another world through the pages of a book for the very first time. What better gift to give someone than that?

Lucy's Greek Beasts and Heroes series is available here
'"Greek Beasts and Heroes" is a fabulous introduction to myths for confident readers - perfect for bedtime reading, although you'll probably have to read just one more...the quality is top notch throughout.' The Bookbag
You can follow Lucy on Twitter @lucycoats
Lucy's website is at http://lucycoats.com

Big Fat Fibs and the Big Fat Fibbers Who Tell Them* - John Dougherty

2011-12-07T08:00:00.000Z

It’s going to be an unashamedly political post today, folks; but before I begin here are a few pictures from my recent visit to Delhi for the Bookaroo festival:

Big thanks to Jo Williams and the Bookaroo team for inviting me and for organising such a great festival, and to the British School in Delhi for sponsoring my events!

But while I was having such a terrific time in India, hanging out with the 2 Steves and making some lovely new international author friends, events were moving on apace with the campaigns to save our libraries.

Campaigners on Judgement Day

As you may know, on 16th November Mr Justice McKenna ruled in the High Court that Gloucestershire and Somerset County Councils’ plans to drastically cut our library services were unlawful on equalities grounds. “Hurrah!” we all said, as the judge quashed the plans, and told the councils they had to go back to the beginning and start again.

So, what’s the problem? Well, here in Gloucestershire the council’s statements about the High Court judgement have been somewhat austeritical with the truth.

On the day of the judgement, council leader Mark Hawthorne told Channel 4 news that the judge had ruled that the council had not breached its duties under the 1964 Libraries Act - an assertion he repeated on BBC local radio the next day. He has also been widely quoted as saying that “the most important thing here is that the judge said that there is nothing wrong with our plans to transfer some libraries over to communities”.

Nice for the council if it were true. In fact, as explained here, this is based on a misreading. All the judge was saying was (a) it’s for the Secretary of State, not him, to decide whether the council’s plans comply with the act, and (b) since community libraries fall outside statutory provision, they’re not relevant to the act. You can have 100 libraries handed over to communities, or none: the question is, do the council’s own libraries meet the requirements?

Okay; but we can see how that mistake might be made, yeah? I mean, it’s not as if Gloucestershire County Council has its own expensive lawyers to advise them on what the judge meant… Oh, it does? Well… well, maybe they were busy, or at lunch, or at A&E after banging their heads against a wall following the judgement, or something. It’s still a bit harsh, even as a matter of hyperbole, to use the word ‘fibs’ - isn’t it?

No, I don’t think so. You see, in the same interviews, Councillor Hawthorne also claimed that the council had lost only because it had been tripped up on a very small technical point. I’ll repeat that, in his own words: “What we’ve been tripped up on here is a very small technical point.” You can see it around 2 minutes 10 seconds into the Channel 4 video.

Let’s compare that with the judge’s words, as quoted in The Guardian: the breach of equalities duties was "substantive, not merely a technical or procedural defect".

Hmm… Judge McKenna: “substantive, not merely a technical or procedural defect.”
Cllr Hawthorne: “a very small technical point”.

Who’s telling the truth here, reader?

Here’s a clue: the judge also described the council’s plans as both unlawful and “bad government”, said it was “important to the rule of law” that they be quashed, struck out those plans, refused the council permission to appeal, and awarded full costs against the council.

Councillor Hawthorne may not have been deliberately lying; but he certainly wasn’t telling the truth. And there’s no evidence that he’s retracted his assertions - in fact, all the public statements I've seen from the council suggest to me that they see the High Court judgement as a minor inconvenience, a “small technical point” to be worked around.

So the question I’ve been asking is: is this man really fit to be in charge of our public services?

I have no problem with someone making a mistake. I can forgive someone who makes a huge mistake and then sets about putting it right. But our public servants should respect the rule of law. And the evidence suggests to me that Councillor Hawthorne does not.

*We don’t have a legal team here on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure, but if we did I’m sure they’d want me to make clear that today’s title is (a) hyperbole for comic effect, and (b) a whimsical and extremely tenuous reference to Al Franken’s book about something completely different. For the record, I’d like to state that I have no evidence that anyone associated with Gloucestershire County Council is either big or fat. Oh, and I acknowledge that it’s quite possible that they actually believe all of their statements, even those which are demonstrably untrue.

As per our disclaimer, all opinions expressed in this post are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of any other member of the team, including the site owner.

John's website is at www.visitingauthor.com.
He's also now on twitter as @JohnDougherty8, and consequently will probably never do any work ever again.

His latest books include:

A message to the children : by Miriam Halahmy

2011-12-06T08:52:00.000Z

Janusz Korczak was born in 1878 in Warsaw into a Jewish family. A doctor and an author he had a great empathy with children and in particular orphans. His philosophy about how to treat children, which included regarding them as individuals and treating them with respect, was way ahead of its time. But Korczak became caught up in the Nazi invasion as Director of the Warsaw Ghetto Orphanage. On August 6^th 1942 Korczak, his staff and 200 children were deported from the ghetto and murdered in Treblinka.

In 2004 I visited the former orphanage of the Warsaw Ghetto ( pictured above) with a group from my synagogue.

One of our members, Jeffrey Segal, an actor, read to us in the orphanage grounds, from Korczak's final words written in his ghetto diary. He was driven almost mad by his daily search for food donations for the 200 children in his care. " Aug 2nd 1942. Our Father who art in heaven... This prayer was carved out of hunger and misery. Our daily bread. Bread."

On the bus out of Warsaw up to Treblinka where Korczak and the children were deported and killed on arrival I wrote a poem, A message to the children.

This year ( 2011) the poem was set to music by Helen Bonney, author and composer and a soundtrack recorded by her son Jack Cooke. The poem has been published in Poetry Salzburg and was set as an essay question for a student on the English degree at Salzburg University. The student called the poem, “an artefact.”

In the poem I tried to imagine what Korzcak might have said to the children the night before they are to be deported. The first two lines come from a speech he made in the 1920s to a group of children leaving the orphanage in happier times. But on that dreadful night in 1942 what could he offer the children, but to take their hand and go on the journey with them?

The next morning, Aug 6th 1942, the children were given a little bag with a piece of bread and a bottle of water. They were dressed in clean clothes and their hair was neatly combed. Then they had to march, four by four, through the streets to the siding where the cattle cars were waiting.

Armed soldiers lined their route, /even as the pavements weep beneath your feet/

Monument to Korczak and the children in the Warsaw Jewish cemetery

You can listen to the song here and read the text of the poem:

http://www.miriamhalahmy.com/for-janusz-korczak/

You can find out more about Janusz Korczak at this link

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/korczak.html

Creative Thinking : N M Browne

2011-12-05T08:00:00.003Z

I am fascinated by the creative process, particularly when I'm not engaged in it. The more I think about it and try to pin it down the weirder it seems.
Do you picture a scene before you write it and then describe what you see or do you bring the scene into being by the act of writing, the words themselves populating your brain with images? Do you hear the voices and try to cpature them or do characters only speak as the words tumble onto the page?
I think for me the words precede thought, or at least that's what it feels like. I never know what is going to happen until it emerges somehow or other from my incompetent careless fingers. But words definitely make pictures in my head so that in editing I can take a closer look, re examine a shadowy figure and discover that he has black hair, that his shirt is crimson, that he holds a damascene blade in his left hand and that his nails are painted the colour of ripe plums.
I always thought that this process of writing was the same for all writers, but of course it isn't. I am intrigued to discover that many people know what they are going to write before they start, that some people don't picture what they write at all and others are haunted by the disemboided voices of characters they have never met, though they may just be the mad ones.
It isn't much discussed, this actual business of envisaging or creating perhaps because it is so hard to describe; the moments of making things up are fleeting, the ideas, intangible. At times writing comes close to lucid dreaming at others it is more like constructing a flat pack wardrobe from IKEA - one of the ones with the key piece missing - and doing it blindfold.
And another thing... is this imagining universal or is it only writers or painters who work this way? When people ask where we get our ideas from is it because they don't have any and are baffled by the process? Doesn't everyone sit and extrude images, places and people, pulling them like rabbits from a hat of our imagining or gathering them like candy floss on a stick. Are we writers particularly strange or is it just that we, spending long hours staring into space, are more inclined to notice? Any ideas?

Use It Or Lose It Catherine Johnson

2011-12-02T16:47:00.009Z

Goodbye Awfuls! This is my last ABBA blog for a bit and I'd like to take the chance to say several huge thankyous to the blog admins and to all the other bloggers here past, present and future. ABBA is a great place for a novice to take their first steps into the blogosphere in a wonderfully cosy and supportive enviroment.
My new book Brave New Girl is out in the world, and I know my next book won't be out until the 2013, and I have SO much writing to do I thought it best to step back and let another Sassie take over.
So my last blog in the run up to Christmas is this; please please please (please) get out and use your local indie bookshop. Just go in, have a chat, buy one book (is it ever possible to buy only one book?) by one author you may never have read before. Go on, I dare you. I do know many of us don't have a local indy, but those of us that do please get out and support it. I know things are tough, but lets spread a little love and support those that support us.
I know that that-internet-behemoth-who must-not-be-named is oh so easy to use, but do we want a world with no space at all for difference?
There was a marvellous post last bookseller Sunday which really said it all, our local bookshops are an incredible resource, not only for us as browsers and readers, but to us as writers. Get in there, have a chat, make some links, and most importantly BUY A BOOK!
Happy writing Christmas and New Year to everyone,
xc

Beginnings, endings and Christmas - Linda Strachan

2011-12-02T16:26:00.000Z

Yesterday I got my first Christmas card.
Despite the fact that December has only just arrived, already we are inundated with Christmas images, (apologies for adding yet another) and Christmas sales promotions.

I know some people are organised and are already preparing for Christmas but it all seems a bit too soon for me- I am not quite ready to throw myself into festive preparations, quite yet. I am still in writing mode

I went on my last school visit of 2011 yesterday, and it was wonderful.

Hamish McHaggis and his Hoggle

The P1 and P2 classes at St Ninian's RC Primary in Livingston had done a huge amount of work based around my Hamish McHaggis books.

The Hamish McHaggis Whirry Bang

Including making their own Hoggle (Hamish's home) and versions of his Whirry Bang (car)

And on my last school visit of the year I was able to tell them about a new beginning, the latest Hamish book which is coming out next spring
Hamish McHaggis and the Great Glasgow Treasure Hunt
I also showed them one of the beautiful drawings Sally J Collins has done for the new book.

This is always an exciting time, when I see my words and her pictures coming together.

Writing a picture book involves, for me, a very visual approach. I think visually when I am writing, seeing it in my mind's eye and that is not so different whether it is picture books or novels.

But the difference with a picture book is that someone will be drawing the pictures on paper instead of the reader creating them in their mind. So I think about what the pictures might look like, and I read the story out loud so that I can remove any extra text that is unnecessary and evident from the images on the page but also so as the book reads easily for the parents or children who will be reading it aloud.

Working with Sally on the Hamish books, as I have done now for several years, it is easy to imagine what the images will look like but other times when I have worked on picture books the end result is so different to the pictures I had in my head that it has often taken a while to adjust. Thankfully almost always the result is excellent, just different!

As often happens I have also been working on something else, at the same time.
At the moment I am completing the first draft of my new YA novel and it couldn't be more different.
Spider and Dead Boy Talking are both gritty hard hitting stories, with real life themes including knife crime, car theft and bad decisions often leading to terrible consequences for my characters, so they are about as far from a cuddly haggis as you could imagine.
The new book Don't Judge Me is in a similar vein.

But perhaps that makes it easier to move from one to the other as I am writing. It certainly adds variety and means that, as happened earlier this week, I can be speaking to 14 or 15 year olds and children at a nursery - all on the same day. It certainly keeps me on my toes!

So as the frosty nights arrive and the days are ever shorter I am not quite ready to discard 2011 yet. There are in fact another 28 days to go and most of them are before Christmas!

Are you finishing, starting or preparing for Christmas?

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

Linda Strachan is the author of the Hamish McHaggis series, YA novels Spider and Dead Boy Talking and writing handbook Writing for Children
Website wwwlindastrachan.co.uk
Blog Bookwords

In Praise of Writers Groups by Ann Evans

2011-12-01T06:30:00.000Z

I wonder how many Sassies belong to writers' groups? Way back in the late 1980s before I'd ever had anything published I went looking for some sort of organisation locally for writers. I went along with my friend's mum, Brenda who also liked writing stories and I must admit we joined one or two weird and wonderful groups before finding what we were looking for.

I've always been inspired and impressed by people who have managed to get their work published, especially in those early days and I remember one woman at a writers' group meeting being held at a vicar's house who'd had a letter published in The Times. Wow! Was I awestruck? I certainly was!

Brenda and I eventually came across the Coventry Writers' Group, which was already well established and had some great characters in it. There was a lovely lady called June who wrote romance for Robert Hale; a lady in her 90s who had articles published on thimbles; there was Hilda who wrote poetry and delivered it beautifully in her rich Black Country accent; and Peter whose father had been a founder member of the CWG. Peter was suffering from a wasting disease but his brilliance shone out through his short stories that were regularly published. We also had Maurice who wrote for comedy sketch shows and various other knowledgeable characters. Brenda and I felt like we'd really landed on our feet in discovering this talented group of writers.

Some members of the Coventry Writers Group in the early 90s.
I'm seated 3rd from left. (What a hairstyle), Brenda is
standing on the right, Hilda is standing on left.

They welcomed usnovices with open arms and the monthly meetings were so inspiring. Iwould come away after each meeting with some new information orknowledge under my belt and new ideas spinning round my head. And mywriting really began to take off.

In the mid 90s when myfirst book was published by Scholastic some members of the CWG mademe a gorgeous cake in the shape of an open book and we all celebratedtogether.

Over the years membershave come and gone, sadly some of them have passed away, but four ofthe group from my early days still remain and still attend themonthly meetings as often as possible. There's a whole newline up at the Coventry Writers Group now, and I'm happy to say includes fellowSassie, Rosalie Warren.

Often, over the yearswe've run short story competitions just amongst ourselves, and thisyear was no different except that we'd set a theme of 'Coventry' forour stories and poems. We had our usualfun evening of reading them out and marking them – then onerelatively new member, Mike Boxwell who writes on solar power and electric vehicles and is a genius regarding ebooks and print on demand books,suggested that we should put them all into an anthology.

For years, our writers' group hasbeen thinking about producing an anthology of members' work, but thistime with Mike behind the project it finally happened! Coventry Taleshas now been published and it's also available as an ebook. Mike has beenthe driving force behind it, with copy editing courtesy of RosalieWarren. Waterstones were very supportive in stocking it, and we did a signing there a few weeksago. Following that we had a launch party with an audience at the centrallibrary one evening with wine and food with some of our writers dressing up as characters from their stories - it's not just kids who like dressing up!

It might have taken our writers group close on half a century to get our firstpublication out there – but we've finally succeeded and the nicething is, it's really brought us close as a group as we all strivedtowards one end and celebrated our joint success. Next Tuesday is our Christmas meeting and the wine, mince pies and cakes will be flowing and the chat will be about books and writing and new projects and ideas - and I can't wait!

These days I'm often asked for my advice at our get-togethers rather than meabsorbing knowledge from others quite so much, and it's fantastic to be able to givesomething back after all the support I've had from our writers' group. Fingers crossed future members will get as much from it as I have.

Initial Response: on gender and writing - Ellen Renner

2011-11-30T09:54:00.003Z

A few days ago, Keren David wrote an excellent ABBA post querying why women writers sometimes choose to use their initials rather than full names. She felt that women need to stand up and be counted. It's a subject I've considered for a while without coming to a conclusion. My thoughts on reading her post were too long and complicated to fit in the comments section, so I’m returning to the topic here.

I'll start with a confession: I wanted to be published as E. L. Renner, but my then agent convinced me to use my first name. I'm still uncertain that was the right decision.

Why? Partly because initials are more anonymous. My books are about my characters, not me. I want my stories and characters to stand alone, with as little 'author-as-brand' hype as possible. As a child and teen reader I didn't want to know anything about the author of books I loved except when their next book was coming out. I wanted to experience the magic of transformation into another person, another world, another experience. Author photos were a definite turn-off: I wanted magic performed by some unknown alchemist, not a real person. Terry Prachett has the wisdom to wear a magician’s hat for his publicity stills.

Then there’s the delicate question of the critical glass ceiling. It's a perennial topic in adult fiction and it would be naive to believe that children’s books are exempt. It would also take a large dollop of willful obtuseness not to notice that male authors attract more critical attention per capita than their female counterparts. It's not a conspiracy; critics don't exercise their bias consciously any more than did the editors of the publications who recently voted for Sports Personality of the Year and neglected to put a single woman on the list.

I believe that almost all of us, however pro-female we believe ourselves to be, are so conditioned by the constant bombardment of overt and subtle messages in every aspect of our society about the relative value of the male versus the female that we subconsciously take a story written by a man more seriously than we would the same story written by a woman.

I don't think J.K. Rowling's books would have been as successful had she published them as Joanne. I doubt George Eliot would have garnered such a strong place in the canon if she had written as Mary Ann Evans. If Sylvia Townsend Warner, one of the greatest stylists and most original writers of the twentieth century, had been a man, I am convinced that her books would be much better known today. Arguably, Virginia Woolf made it into the public eye not because she had a room of her own, but because she had a publishing house of her own.

Is it, therefore, a cop-out for a woman to write under her initials, in an attempt, however feeble, to combat the anti-female bias that pervades every aspect of our culture? Possibly. It’s a difficult question and one I’ll continue to ask myself. But I also know I'll use whatever tools I can fashion to give my books and my characters, both male and female, every chance I can.

Because the larger point is that, although gender shouldn't matter in life, it does. And the only way I can see to address this issue as a writer is to attempt to be as genderless as possible – a writing androgyne. I enjoy writing both male and female characters. I don't set out to write about a girl or a boy; I choose the gender which seems to fit the story best. And the reason I write at all is because I want imaginative experience. While it's true that I can’t experience what it’s like to be a boy or man in real life, I can imagine it as a writer, and I have never felt closer to any character than I did when writing Tobias Petch in City of Thieves.

‘Only connect.’ E. M. Forster knew that books teach empathy. Between the pages of a book a reader can become another person. Boys can become girls, and girls boys. Men can see the world, however briefly, through the eyes and emotions of a woman. And understanding may result. And then, perhaps, the word ‘girly’ will no longer be a term of disdain. When that happens, this entire discussion will be irrelevant.

Earlier this year I attended a conference where a speaker advised writers to ensure their main characters were boys, trotting forth that insidious mantra of marketing, ‘boys won’t read about girl characters’.

Please don’t tell that to the countless boys who read Roald Dahl’s Matilda, The BFG and The Magic Finger. Or the boys, like my son, who devour Prachett’s Tiffany Aching books (which gently poke fun at gender stereotypes through the dealings between Tiffany and the Wee Free Men). Don't tell the generations of boys who have loved Charlotte's Web and The Borrowers or those who, like my husband, read E. (!) Nesbit’s The Railway Children and fell in love with Roberta.

If boys hear the message that a book is good, they'll read it whether or not it has a girl as a main character. Who gives them that message? We do. Parents, teachers, librarians, publishers, marketing and sales departments with gender specific covers. If boys are refusing to read books where the main character is a girl, it’s because we’re telling them that they shouldn’t. We give them permission to exclude girls from their imaginative world, and that view of the female as 'other' will simply carry on into adulthood. That’s where writers need to draw the battle lines: not how gender specific an author’s name is, but the banishing of girls from the centre stage of life itself. It’s an appalling message to give to children of either sex: that girls cannot be heroes, cannot be the main characters in story or in life.

I happen to be female. That accident of genetics has shaped and coloured who I am, but it is not my primary definition as a person or as a writer. Despite my qualms that Keren may be right, and that I’m somehow betraying my ideals by using my initials, I am considering publishing my next book as E. L. Renner. It’s an older, darker book and I want to distinguish it from my younger fiction. That’s the obvious reason for switching to initials, but I know the issues I listed above will inevitably influence my decision.

In retreat

2011-11-28T08:00:00.018Z

The barn occupied by my werewolf

I've just spent two and a half days shut in a room with a werewolf.


Dinner time

Let's start this again. I've just spent a lovely, peaceful, regenerative four days at Folly Farm near Bath with a clutch of other members of the SAS, some of whom are also ABBA bloggers. It was called a 'Winter Warmer' and was planned and organised by the wonderful Liz Kessler and Elen Caldecott to break up the long, bleak interval between the established retreats (or jamborees) the SAS has in the spring and summer. So I was there with a wimpy vampire, a shoal of mermaids and a lot of stroppy teens, as well as my werewolf.

Hot chocolate in the forest

Lots of activities and workshops were planned, but I'm afraid I can't give any details of those as I was a bit of a boring recluse and locked myself away to work for the whole time. Well, I did venture out for the many and large meals, and the evenings of book-related jollity.

Lucy Coates and Miriam Moss

Why do writers need to go away? And why do writers, who work best in solitude, like to get together for a week?

Cindy Jeffries and Mary Hoffman

Well, going somewhere where someone else does all the cooking, where there are no bints to look after (or anyone else), where you don't have to do any cleaning or tidying, or answering the phone, or justifying anything you do, frees up a lot of writing time. I was doing some bits on existing projects and starting something new. I wrote 6,500 words of the new thing (the werewolf thing) in two and a half days. I wouldn't have got that much done at home.


Fungi in the forest

And that was as well as going to a fantastic workshop on plotting by Sally Nicholls and Liz Kessler, having hot chocolate in the woods, failing to see any badgers on a badger-viewing trip, eating five meals a day, stargazing with Lucy Coates and Liz Kessler, gossiping with lots of people, helping Mary Hoffman edit a video, and spending all evening drinking/talking/playing/sharing our work.

Fun guy (Tim Collins) in the forest

But it's more than a chance to do some solid writing. It's fantastic to spend time with other people who understand the groans and grumbles - and thrills - of the writer's life. People whose eyes don't glaze over at the mention of agents and contracts and royalty rates, good or bad editors, poor choices of cover, incompetent proofreaders, and so on. It's wonderful to share work and rediscover the huge range that is covered by the umbrella 'children's books', and be astonished at how we all write such very different things.

Pencils? No, there are no pictures of
us working

Perhaps best of all, at least for me, was the chance to refuel - to have the wonderful, kind, caring support of so many other writers and to feel creativity seeping back into my spirit. It was a brilliant, validating, refreshing, energizing, endorsing and inspiring few days. I just wished I could stay there forever.

A house of sticks, waiting for a big,
bad (were)wolf to come along

And as for that werewolf? I got to know him, found out what it was like to feel the frosty leaf mold under your pads as you walk through the forest in winter, and how when you are in wolf form you don't think about your wife at all. Until you have to stay a wolf, and then your man-mind invades your wolf-mind and you live in despair. And I saw that being a werewolf is the same as being a betrayed lover, or being a writer (or maybe both at the same time), and that somehow this werewolf's story needs telling in a way that makes that clear. So I just had to be in the forest...

BOOKSELLER SUNDAYS: On selling more Mary Hooper than Stephanie Meyer and more Penny Dolan than J.K. Rowling – Katie Clapham at Storytellers, Inc.

2011-11-27T07:38:00.000Z

One of a series of guest blogs by booksellers who work with children’s authors. We’re posting this one today by way of a ‘Happy Birthday!’ to Storytellers, Inc., who are just about celebrate the completion of their first incredible year, during which they have dared and done many brave things, always on a ‘handmade’ and human scale. Bookseller Katie Clapham describes some of Storytellers, Inc’s innovations, including their single copy policy, their ‘Cool Books in School’ campaign and their child-sized secret reading den.

Imagine a place where giant power authors, you know - the ones with their own signature font, are pushed aside for lesser known authors. A place where hand-written signs and friendly recommendations overshadow expensively produced online trailers and bestseller lists. It is your local independent bookshop – a magical enclosure where the bookselling playing field is somewhat smoothed (it will never be absolutely level, but that’s a good thing too).

At Storytellers, Inc. we generally stock single copies of everything. This was a decision we made during the initial stock of the shop nearly one year ago. Range was more important to me than filling shelves with multiple copies of the most popular titles - we’ve got a WHSmith in town for that. Of course this means we’re taking more responsibility for the stock but that’s a power I’m glad to wield. I delight in finding hidden gems and sharing them with customers who are excited to take the risk. Of course there is no getting away from the fact we get more requests for Julia Donaldson and Jacqueline Wilson than Kazuno Kohara and Reinhardt Jung but it’s also true that our bestsellers include Alan Garner’s Weirdstone of Brisingamen (we’ve got generations of recommendations and personal ties to the story’s location), the beautiful Madame Pamplemousse series which have dazzled lots of little girls, who’ve then come back to buy copies for friends, and Chris Ridell’s stunning Ottoline series, which a local school picked up as a class book.

We can’t afford to pay authors and illustrators to visit us in the shop yet so we’re gratefully accepting tour dates from publishers and booking school visits for the authors. They’ve paid off; we’ve sold more Mary Hooper than Stephanie Meyer and more Penny Dolan than J.K. Rowling. The children who heard Penny talk about her book were coming into the shop for weeks after, desperately asking for their MOUSE books with worn-out parents telling us how they’ve heard of nothing else since the talk. Having an author come to the school is a real treat and as the personal investment in the book and its author is sealed, the financial is guaranteed to follow.

As a business we’re trying to find ways of drawing this mass attention to new titles on a more regular basis. I’ve recently written a new scheme for schools that takes a brand new title and develops a term-length feature on it for local schools. The Cool Books in School campaign was launched in September with four local schools taking part. I have selected two new books (one for primary years 3 and 4 and another for years 5 and 6) to work with. The term started with a visit from me to introduce the book and read the beginning as a class storytime (repeated in as many classes as I could until my tongue dried out). Later this term I will return with a creative writing session loosely based on the text (theme or form etc.) and we will finish the term with a schools-wide writing competition. For the duration of the term the chosen books are offered at a promotional price to the schools and pupils taking part. I also wrote to the publishers of the chosen books demanding to know what they were going to do in return for my relentless promotion of their books.

I am planning to repeat this campaign three times a year, getting new releases into schools, raising awareness of current authors and sneaking some creative writing into classrooms. My personal goal is that with each term I will win another school over (some are proving very stubborn!) Author visits within the term’s campaign would increase the appeal even further and I’m really hoping this will form a part of the future model. Should my own children’s novel ever find a publisher, school visits would be top priority on my agenda. I truly believe they are the most useful and exciting way to get children to try new authors.

On the smaller scale we blog, we tweet, we facebook and do everything we can to get on first name bases with authors and publishers. Promotional material can really make a difference – a few extra Department 19 POS packs meant I could chop up some posters and make a window display around the new title; we sold more HB copies of Will Hill’s debut than any other teen novel.

Sometimes it can feel like a hard-sell. We email our regulars with newsletters and offers and I write to the head teachers and telephone their exasperated receptionists but it’s all worth while when a delighted parent comes to the shop telling us that this was the book that created an interest in reading that wasn’t there before, or a child who previously restricted their reading to one genre (or author!) decides to explore the literary landscape. We’ve made an effort to make our shop a place that encourages these discoveries, there is seating and storytimes, coffee and baby changing facility (no, you keep your own baby). We’ve got our child-sized secret reading den and creative writing workshops in the school holidays.

We can’t compete with the prices online and in chain shops so like everyone else we’re trying to stand out in all other areas. It’ll be our first birthday on the 1st of December and we’ll be celebrating the fact that there is a market for the independent bookshop, particularly for children who want to see and touch and smell and maybe chew the book before they buy it. They also want to hear how great it is and for you to look excited and congratulate them on the book they have chosen, they want to come back and tell you about it when they’ve read it. As adults we are so fond of our booky memories, it is such a charming privilege to be part of these new memories in the making.

Caption: photograph of Katie Clapham with her homemade dump bin.

Storytellers, Inc website

Tiffany-Mae or TM? by Keren David

2011-11-26T00:10:00.002Z

Mary Ann did it. So did Charlotte, Emily and Anne. But why do some of us?

Heathcliff, in the new film of Wuthering Heights

Mary Ann Evans wrote as George Eliot. The Bronte sisters adopted male pseudonyms too. They lived in an age where women were denied the vote, were barred from most professions, and, until 1870 if married, could not own property. So it is not surprising that they disguised their gender when presenting their work to the world, especially when the work contains darkly sexual undertones, as does Wuthering Heights.

But now, we’re past all that, aren’t we? Feminism has fought important battles. We’ve had a woman prime minister (soon to be lionised in a new film), we can do any job. We are often the highest earner in the family, we own property, we speak our minds.

Of course there is a long history of authors, both male and female, using pen names and initials, and it was particularly popular in the 1930s,40s and 50s. D H Laurence was not hiding his gender, and nor was C S Lewis. But the practice waned in the less formal Sixties, and with the rise of feminism in the 1970s, one might expect that it would die out. It did not.

JK Rowling giving evidence this week

The most famous recent example, of course, is JK Rowling. Read some accounts and her publisher ‘insisted’ that she dropped Joanne or the more neutral ‘Jo’ for JK in order to attract boy readers. Other reports suggest that she and her publisher agreed on the strategy, but again for the same reason. Watching her give evidence this week to the Leveson Inquiry, I wondered if there was another explanation. I was struck by her concern, even right at the start of her career, for her privacy and for that of her children. Maybe adopting initials felt like a good way of preserving her own identity, even before her magnificent success.

But the result, I think, has been the growth of a myth that women authors have to ‘do a JK’ to avoid being shunned by boys. I was talking to a YA writer the other day, and she told me that the first ‘boy’s’ book she wrote came with a suggestion from her publisher's marketing department that she adopt initials - even though her first books were written, very successfully, under her own name. She refused.

I think she was absolutely correct. What message do we give boy readers when they realise that ‘TM’ or whatever is hiding ‘Tiffany-Mae’. Why shouldn’t Tiffany-Mae be worth listening to? What do real girls called Tiffany-Mae (or whatever) think, when they realise their name is somehow unacceptable? And do writers called Michael, Patrick or Marcus ever feel pressure to become Michelle, Patti or Marcie?

I am aware that I am preaching from a fortunate position here, thanks to my parents' decision to pick a name for me which baffles many people into thinking I am really Keiran, Kevin or just a spelling error. The masculine surname (changed from the more exotic Buznic by my grandparents in the 1930s) nudges readers away from associating Keren with Karen. Perhaps if I were named Trixibelle Fotheringay - or even Belinda Buznic - I might not feel it was the best branding for a writer of urban thrillers.

I hope I’d have the gumption to show that there’s nothing that a Trixibelle can’t do. Trixibelle is worth listening to. Trixibelle isn't frilly, or silly, because women are just as strong and sensible as any man.

I’d love to know how others have dealt with the same issue. Have you happily adopted initials or a pen name, and felt that MM or Max had more success than Maxine would have? Or did you have to fight for the right to remain an Arabella?

'Footfalls echo in the memory...' Sue Purkiss

2011-11-25T06:00:00.001Z

I've just re-read Terry Pratchett's book, Lords and Ladies - such fun! Part of the renowned Discworld series, it stars the three witches, Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick. It also features the wizards - in particular, Archchancellor Ridcully. At one point, a bandit chieftain foolishly holds up the coach which is carrying Ridcully, the Bursar, the Librarian and Ponder Stibbins. The chieftain sees the wizard's staff poking out of the window.

'Now then,' he said pleasantly. 'I know the rules. Wizards aren't allowed to use magic against civilians except in genuine lifethreatening situa-'
There was a burst of octarine light.
'Actually, it's not a rule,' said Ridcully. 'It's more a guideline.'

How familiar was that? It's almost exactly what Captain Barbarossa declared in Pirates of the Caribbean, when Keira Knightley called on him to stick to the terms of the Pirates' Charter. I think that bit was used in a trailer; it was certainly quoted in reviews as one of the funniest lines in the film. But here it was: Lords and Ladies was published in 1992. Terry Pratchett wrote it first.

I'd be willing to bet that whoever wrote the script didn't realise the line was second-hand. For some reason, it resonated, as it did with me: it lodged in the scriptwriter's mind, and out it popped when it was needed. He probably had no idea he'd first seen the line in the book.

It made me think about why it is that some combinations of words are persistent, echoing in the memory long after what surrounded them has been forgotten. I haven't come up with any answers so far, but I have come up with some examples. Here are my first ten. They're in no particular order, and they're not necessarily accurate - they're as I remember them. Incidentally, I don't have a good memory for quotes - or for jokes - so if I remember something, it must have very considerable staying power!

'Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams...'
(W B Yeats - the whole poem is gorgeous. It's lovely as a song, too.)

'Christ if my love were in my arms'
And I in my bed again!
Anon (but very old!)

'Today was bad, but tomorrow will be beyond all imagining...'
Susan Cooper: The Dark is Rising

'Je crains notre victoire, autant que notre perte.'
This is from a French A-level text, Horace, by Corneille. It means 'I fear our victory as much as our defeat'. I think the speaker had a lover on one side of the battle and a brother on the other. Beyond that, I remember nothing about the play, and I've no idea why this phrase has stuck. Mind you, now I come to think about it, there are all sorts of situations to which it could apply.

'The drunkenness of things being various.'
(From Snow, by Louis MacNeice)

'We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.'
(The Sunlight on the Garden, also MacNeice)

'I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams...'
(Shakespeare's Hamlet)

'Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine...'
(Casablanca - like Shakespeare, the source of so many resonant quotes.)

'I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not like this. Not on the cess of war.'
(Wilfred Owen: Strange Meeting)

'Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.'

(From T S Eliot's Burnt Norton - as is the quote I used for the title of this post. And here's a picture of a rose garden, just to remind us of summer. It's at Hestercombe, in Somerset)

Do you have any similarly sticky quotes? Or, to borrow from Eliot - footfalls which echo in the memory, as these do in mine?

Heart of the Great Alone by Lynda Waterhouse

2011-11-23T22:55:00.010Z

As writers how much attention should we pay to the emotional journey we taking our readers on? Do we have a moral obligation to care about our reader's feelings? Or is the telling of the story paramount and hang the consequences.

I was brought up knowing the story of Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his ill fated journey to the South Pole. He was one of the star turns in my Grandpa’s book of heroes and heroines. On TV I watched the 1948 black and white movie ‘Scott of the Antarctic’ starring John Mills.Years later it was the adventures of another explorer, Ernest Shackleton that stirred my imagination as I watched the silent film 'South' accompanied by Neil Brand’s haunting music.

At the moment at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, there is an exhibition of Scott, Shackleton and Antarctic photography. I find this collection of black and white photographs taken in the first part of the 20^th century incredibly moving and inspiring but will 21^st century children feel the same?

Fellow author Bridget Crowley and I are currently leading creative writing sessions in the gallery for children between the ages of 7-11years. The children respond to selected photographs and we set them a series of writing tasks.

Then we move on to Captain Scott and The British Antarctic Expedition 1910 -1913. Most of the children have not heard about him and there is an awful moment as they gaze at the final photograph and they realise that this group of weary men ‘were destined never to return from the heart of the great alone’

Some children are upset.We move back into the education room and ask them to express their feelings in a letter to Captain Scott. Some children go back in time and rewrite history rescuing him. Others tell him about what is happening in the Antarctic now and thank him for the scientific samples that he sent back. Some just tell him they feel sad.

It just doesn’t feel right to end the session at this point so we tell them about the fate of one of the dogs that was washed overboard and then immediately washed back again!

( Spoiler Alert – if you a bringing a school group PLEASE don’t give any of this away)

These sessions have been a stark reminder to me to pay attention to the emotional journey in my own writing and that strong emotions need to be handled with care and discharged appropriately before the story ends.

http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/default.asp?action=article&ID=56

http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/media/pdf/hotga-schools-for-web.pdf

Beautiful Dead Girls

2011-11-23T05:31:00.001Z

Recently on her blog 'Trac Changes’, Rachel Stark highlighted a disturbing and worrying trend in teen/YA book covers in which female characters were depicted as dying, beautifully and tragically. Her post “Cover Trends in YA Fiction: Why the Obsession with an Elegant Death?” discussed why the imagery of dead girls has become so popular in teen/YA lit. She considers that these images are “less the product of an overt “male gaze”, and more the product of teenage girls’ morbidity...anyone who has worked with teenage girls will know that many have an astonishing taste for that which is melodramatic, desolate and downright morbid.” Rachel Stark explores the idea that, at least in part, this fascination is a product of the internalised misogyny of teenage girls. You can read the whole post here - .http://trac-changes.blogspot.com/2011/10/cover-trends-in-ya-fiction-why.html?spref=tw

This post comes in the same week as the trailer for the film The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins hits the airwaves. If you haven’t read the series, Katniss Everdeen is the main character and she has gripped the imagination and emotions of thousands upon thousands of people, from pre-teens, young teens, older teens, young adults and adults, and she is also one of the strongest heroines to have emerged in recent years. Yes, there is lots of violence in the books, a love triangle, a terrifying dystopian world, but at the centre of it is a captivating heroine who refuses to die.
The book covers for the Hunger Games Trilogy do not figure a beautifully elegant dead girl. Yet the books are best sellers and they have captured the imaginations of girls and boys alike.

The covers of YA books are typically designed by publishers’ in-house designers, who usually first read the book to capture the mood and the story and who will then discuss the design with authors. But editors, and importantly, the sales and marketing department, have a huge say in book cover design.

Personally I believe that the design of book covers is largely in the hands of the publishers rather than stemming from a demand from teenage girls. I do buy Rachel Stark’s line that there is a strong undercurrent and receptiveness towards images of “beautiful morbidity” amongst teenage girls. But I’m not prepared to believe that this receptiveness has grown explosively. I think it’s down, as usual, to the sales and marketing department’s tendency to hunt in packs and to copy the latest fad. Perhaps too some authors get less of a say in the look of their cover than others.

But to whoever decided that beautiful dead girls on covers sell books and to those who continue to endorse the trend, isn’t it about time for a trend change?