Creative empathy in a dangerous world – by Rowena House

What have witch trials and Donald Trump got in common?

Horrifically, I think it’s perfectly possible we’ll learn about a direct link via his so-called Christian supporters before his presidency is over. But short of that ghastly prospect, there have this past month been deeply uncomfortable parallels between fervent belief expressed in ‘alternative facts’ – e.g. whether the USA or Europe has given more to Ukraine – and seventeenth century English witch beliefs, which are the subject of my novel-in-progress.

Outside politics, which I don’t want to talk about here, there are also extraordinary parallels in terms of the psychology of belief, or more accurately disbelief, and how people – some people, anyway; let’s call them us – deal with unbelievable change, denial being one of our first ports of call.

As in, I can’t believe this is happening.

One of the best expressions I've read about how this manifests was in The Guardian last Monday, February 17th 2025. (Yup, that’s the kind of us I mean. Sorry if that offends).

In it, Zoe Williams discusses the paralysing shock that for her accompanied evidence of fascism within Trump’s Administration and her deep unwillingness to name it.

‘You’re dumbstruck for ages, not wanting to call the thing what it is. It starts off feeling like embarrassment or coyness – what kind of hysteric runs around shouting “fascist”? A very silly one, surely.’

For her, this feeling morphed ‘into something more superstitious – don’t call the thing what it is because that will only embolden the thing.’

I haven’t felt that superstition personally, but I do understand her sense of mental paralysis.

As she says, ‘If you can’t respond to the news, you can’t look at the news ... When you’re averting your eyes, you can’t even think your way into next month’ because that ‘feels like asking for trouble. Frozen feels preferable to adapting to a new reality.’

So, what has all this to do with writing fiction?

The connection is creative empathy and the use of extreme experiences as research into character – characters like us.

Firstly, with such horror in the world, a caveat.

I would say that the loss of post-WW2 certainties that the USA and Europe share fundamental values does count as an extreme event, one that causes deep psychological disturbance. It is nothing, nothing, nothing like the suffering in Gaza, the West Bank, Sudan, DRC and Ukraine etc. But even listing those war-torn places illustrates how much suffering we are exposed to these days - all of which will be impacted by the altered reality of the world order implied by Trump.

For those of us off the front line, it is valid, I believe, to monitor how I, we, you (as in Zoe Williams) react to this change. Do we freeze. Deny. Look away. Have nightmares. Lose hope. Most of all, do we disbelieve?

For several years now, I have attempted to empathize creatively with a real person from seventeenth century London who believed in witchcraft in an effort to understand and recreate the (fictional) conditions in which he (actually) wrote about a series of witch trials as necessary and just.

It’s very hard at times to think positive thoughts about him. Instinctively I ask, how could he have been so irrational and cruel? How could he have been so gullible? 

Currently, I’m giving him a horrible shock to his profound Protestant faith when King James I/VI had his Catholic mother re-interred in Westminster Abbey, with an elegy claiming she and not Elizabeth I was the rightful heiress to the English throne. His reaction? Paralysis and disbelief.

But analysing ‘our’ reactions to comments by Trump and his Administration which totally contradict everything we ‘know for a fact’ – AKA our most profound beliefs – I am trying to find ways into my protagonist’s mindset that I couldn’t have explored without the existential threats from Trump.

Such creative empathy can also be turned on its head: Witch trials happened. James I/VI did that weird stuff. Trump and Vance are going to act on what they believe. The world just changed. Reality flipped. It ain’t about to flip back any time soon...

Cumulatively, I think this sort of thinking can help lessen the power of I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening and open us up to the reality of change.

As I’ve waffled about on ABBA before, neuroscience and behavioural psychology tells us that human minds aren’t very good at objectivity. We perceive what we expect to see. We map new information onto existing knowledge. We rely on experience. Hence, we feel lost when experience fails us as a guide.

Thus, if all fiction is at some level about human experience, reading it and writing it with imaginative empathy might/will/should help us adapt to altered realities.

Yay. Now back to hating on ‘them’. [Only kidding.]

Still on Twitter @HouseRowena

Still on Facebook Rowena House Author

NOVEMBER - and time with TOSH'S ISLAND by Linda Sargent. Review by Penny Dolan

November greetings! I hope last night’s spookiness didn’t get to you, that only celebration fireworks light up your skies, and that the many festivals of light bring you joy.

However, between 11- 15th November, comes a less cosy event - Anti-Bullying Week - so this post focuses on a recently published graphic novel whose imaginative storytelling can remind the young reader about subtler,quieter forms of bullying and the problem of being socially excluded or victimized through disability.

TOSH’S ISLAND, created by Linda Sargent and Joe Brady, has been described by Jacqueline Wilson as ‘a book to remember for years . . . truthful and moving.” Originally a serial in David Fickling’s The Phoenix comic, this unusual story is about hope and daydreams, disability and determination, and based on real life experience.

                                        

On the cover, the artist Leo Marcell shows Tosh as a young girl, happily daydreaming on a grassy hill, her mind on a magical island, a beautiful mermaid, and on a mysterious boy’s face. Marcell also shows that, despite her smile, Tosh needs the support of a stick, a wooden crutch. Like the author Linda Sargent, the main character Tosh suffers from painful childhood arthritis, known as Still’s disease.

During the early chapters, set in a recent past, Tosh and her parents lead a fairly happy life on a Kentish hop-farm, close to the sea. That countryside gives Tosh plenty of space to run, climb, and play, usually with her best friend Millie. However, one day, Tosh meets an artistic French boy on the beach at Oyster Flats. The two sit by the sea, and after making up adventures about a treasure island, mermaids and an underwater kingdom, they promise to write to each other.

But real life interrupts Tosh’s fantasy world. Having started secondary school, her constant tiredness and so-called ‘imaginary’ pains get much worse. She cannot keep up with her favourite school activities, or join in socially with a more ‘sophisticated’ friendship group. Nastily teased, isolated and in pain, Tosh turns away from everyone, even from sympathetic medical staff, knowing difficulties lie ahead. Can Tosh’s fantasies even help her now she is alone? How can she believe Millie, or trust in promises and friendship? What still matters to her now? Gradually, all the pieces come together for Tosh, and a mystery is resolved, though there is no complete answer.

Tosh’s Island would be an interesting addition to any school library, as well as being a strong addition to empathy reading bookshelves. While the speech-bubble script carries one layer of the story, Leo Marcell’s artwork tellingly shows the nuances within the scenes. We can ‘read’ the body language he gives to the various characters: the shrug, the glance, the reluctance or reaction, and feel both the words said and not said. Readers of any age are granted a chance to think not just Tosh’s life, but about other children with medical conditions who might feel excluded by the patterns and pressures of their own school’s life.

Though the story within Tosh’s Island is lightened and complicated by the heroine’s fantasy, the content feels very realistic when contrasted with older, famous novels about children and disability. Books like What Katie Did, Pollyanna and The Secret Garden seem to suggest that physical problems might be ‘corrected’ by the passing of time and even by better behaviour.

Impulsive Katy becomes thoughtful, Pollyanna tests the ‘Glad Game’ herself, and even rude, reclusive invalid Colin has to respond to the world outside. Though these titles were much loved, they now seem like rather cruel fairy stories for any young person coping with long-term illness or disability. Thank goodness there are better books, like Tosh’s Island, available now.

Linda Sargent, the author and originator of Tosh’s Island, is still someone who enjoys escaping into books and story. She studied economic history at the University of Sussex, worked in education, art and reminiscence, and gained a Masters in Creative Writing and Personal Development. She is also a publisher’s reader, disability adviser and a writer herself. 

 Linda has found inspiration in the work and attitude of another author, Rosemary Sutcliffe, who had Still’s disease, but whose strongly active historical novels for young adults, such as ‘The Eagle of The Ninth’, ‘Sword at Sunset’, ‘The Lantern Bearers’ and others were widely read in secondary schools.

One well-known children’s story, however, does echo through Tosh’s Island. The story is Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale, The Little Mermaid, which is used to emphasise the changes in Tosh’s condition and its treatment, and show how the heroine’s playful weightlessness in water becomes pain and disability  when on dry land. 

And while, in the original, the poor mermaid sadly surrenders her voice, in this unique graphic novel, aided by Josh Brady and artist Leo Marcell, the voice, story and imagination of Linda Sargent rings out very clearly indeed. 

                                                    

 

By Penny Dolan

@pennydolan1

Too Nice, by Sally Nicholls, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

                  This is a clever, accessible, little chapter book story about feelings and relationships. 

                  Teenager Abby has a problem, and it isn’t the kind of problem that gets much sympathy at first, especially from herself. 

It’s been just her and Dad for as long as Abby can remember, but now Jen has moved in, in step-mother role, and Jen is just too nice! Too full of compliments that Abby doesn’t believe, too much there all the time, giving Abby no space. Abby reacts to this by becoming rude, a liar, a ‘brat’ of a kind she doesn’t enjoy being. It needs a slight crisis to bring things to a head, and an imaginative surprise gift to Jen from Abby breaks through to real love. 

                  Beautifully handled, this is a story that evokes empathy for all three characters, Abby, Dad and Jen. Each of them is struggling, loving, trying to get it right … and finally succeeding.  Who knew that ‘adults are human being too’?! A revelation for some children, perhaps! 

The practical craft of empathy - by Rowena House

What is empathy: a skill, a quality, a virtue – or something else?

This question, asked by academic Sarah Fox in her fascinating paper on historians and empathy which I wrote about here last month, has been haunting me ever since I read it (link below if you missed it).

I’d intended to give the question some serious thought in time to jot down my initial responses for today’s post, but as usual, time ran out as I scabbled to finish a key scene in my seventeenth century witch trial work-in-progress.

Sitting down to write this blog, I discovered something different had happened instead.

By not thinking about empathy, the experience of its absence threw up a practical lesson about what happens when one fails to internalise the fact that a character who is ‘other’ really is ‘other’: the scene goes horribly wrong.

The scene in question was the break into Act 2. It’s a reaction beat to the collapse of three witch trials due to false evidence being given by a young woman, apparently schooled by a Jesuit priest. My mistake was to imagine how a rational person would react to this news, and then how this reaction could plausibly impact on my protagonist and move the plot along.

But…

Witch prosecutions are not rational. So why would the response to news of a Jesuit plot to frame three ex-Catholics as witches be rational, either? If my scene-driving character believed deeply in God, in the devil, and in witchcraft, then his reaction would necessarily be coloured by these beliefs, not matter how deluded we might find them.

My job as a writer isn’t to expose his delusion and pat myself and my potential reader on the back for our enlightenment. Good storytelling requires me to present to the reader the most convincing argument possible about his beliefs, and then demonstrate how his authority and credibility proved to my protagonist that this Jesuit truly did work for the devil.

If I can’t write that convincingly, if I can’t enter into the life and times of a Jacobean justice of the peace whose experiences were vastly different to mine, whose beliefs are alien, and whose motivation is incomprehensible in my rationalist world, then why am I writing about him at all?

Because isn’t that pretty much the point of fiction: to imagine the other? Every secondary character, however fleeting their appearance in one’s tale, is context for the protagonist and their evolving worldview.

In this practical iteration, therefore, empathy is a skill, part of our craft, a tool of the writer’s trade to be studied, learnt, and honed scene by scene.

Which certainly wasn’t an answer I expected when I read Dr Fox’s question first time around.

Meanwhile, how about this for a situation to try and get one’s empathetic head round?

Over on Twitter (X if you Musk), The Cromwell Museum tweeted about the battle of Philiphaugh, near Selkirk in Scotland, fought on 13 September 1645, when forces under Lt. General David Leslie defeated the Marquis of Montrose’s royalist troops.

Historical novelist Eleanor Swift-Hook added that Leslie granted quarter to some surrendering royalists, but was persuaded by his Presbyterian ministers, ‘men of God’, that mercy was a mistake, so he slaughtered not only the troops but their camp followers, too, mainly women and children.

She tweeted in reply to my horror at such inhumanity: ‘It’s hard to grasp the mindset of such men, but they saw ‘false’ beliefs as being more than a matter of personal choice. If you tolerated them, let them live, then you were allowing them to spread, and that meant you were allowing new souls to be corrupted into eternal damnation.’

As she said, it’s hard to empathize with such murderous certainty, then or now, but I guess that’s another reason for fiction: to acknowledge the worst in us without having to smell the gore.

On which happy note, it’s beer o’clock in the lovely September sunshine.

@HouseRowena on X (Twitter)

Rowena House Author on Facebook for my occasional diary about the C17th work-in-progress.

Link to Sarah Fox's article:


https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/transactions-of-the-royal-historical-society/article/archival-intimacies-empathy-and-historical-practice-in-2023/F2A7CD1F8C351B487586D9497471A6A8

A question of empathy - by Rowena House

A recent academic paper about empathy and the historian has set me thinking about empathy and the fiction writer, a complex topic embedded in our craft.

As writers, our capacity for empathy begs huge psychological questions about how we understand the feelings of others whose life experiences might well be profoundly different to our own.

Empathy also raises (perhaps more familiar) ethical questions about whose stories we get to write. and whether we have a duty to uncover subconscious biases which influence our creative processes. 

Basically, just because we care about someone else's story, and think we can write it well, doesn't mean we should.

Looking at these issues from a historian's perspective was instructive. So, for you reading pleasure, here is the link to the article by Dr Sarah Fox, a research associate at the University of Birmingham’s department of history. Do, please, take a look. It's the very definition of thought-provoking!

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/transactions-of-the-royal-historical-society/article/archival-intimacies-empathy-and-historical-practice-in-2023/F2A7CD1F8C351B487586D9497471A6A8

I'd love to have time to explore her findings for this post. Sadly, real life can't be put off. So intead (and based on her work being open source when properly credited) I've edited her research questionnaire down for space and replaced her key words ‘historian’ and ‘historical work’ with novelist and creative work.

I’ll leave these questions here for now, and return to them when I have some honest answers in relation to my seventeenth century witch trial work-in-progress, in which I'm trying to empathise with witch hunters as well as the persecuted. Exactly why I'm doing this gets to the nub of the story (I think).

Meanwhile, if anyone else fancied having a crack at answering one or more of these questions, I’m sure we could have a fascinating conversation about our replies. 

 

Questions derived from Dr Sarah Fox's paper Archival Intimacies: Empathy and Historical Practice in 2023, published by Cambridge University Presson behalf of the Royal Historical Society, 7 Aug 2023:

What is empathy in your opinion, within the context of your work as a novelist?

Is empathy a skill, a quality, or a virtue? Can you learn it?

How does empathy shape your research and the sources you work with?

What role do you think empathy plays in your writing processes?

What happens to creative work when empathy is absent? Does it matter?



Thank you very much for these questions, Dr Fox. You've got the neurons firing!

 

Have a happy (dry) rest of the summer if you can.

 

Twitter: @HouseRowena

Facebook: Rowena House Author

When idols topple - by Lu Hersey

It's been a month of toppling idols. Some, most of us were delighted to see go - like Edward Colston, slave trader, whose statue in Bristol Centre was brought down in a peaceful demonstration and dumped in the very harbour his slaver boats sailed from. There's justice in that (though actually he's since been pulled out again to go in the museum, complete with his new graffiti). It was a symbolic moment, part of a far greater movement following the murder of George Floyd in America, to get white people to fully understand what lay behind the whole Black Lives Matter campaign. Teaching all white people (even those who don't consider themselves racist) to shut up and listen to people of colour who've been treated as second class citizens for generations. To understand what treating one group of people as though they're inferior simply because of their skin colour feels like to those who've had to endure it.

An historic moment. Photo by Dr Shawn Sobers (@shawnsobers)

It's led to a rise in sales of own voice books as people realise things need to change, that everyone needs to have a voice and be represented fairly in literature and publishing. It's also led to a kind of battle over statues, coming to a head when rival groups of demonstrators clash. Both Gandhi and Winston Churchill were given police protection in recent London demonstrations - and strangely, a far right group felt the statue of George Eliot needed guarding at an event in Nuneaton. You'd think George Eliot an unlikely target for anyone...

(Stolen from a tweet by Helen Macdonald)

...but maybe not. Idols come in many forms, and these days most aren't made of bronze. Who could have predicted there would be a day when JK Rowling fell out of favour? Her views on trans women caused anger and grief far beyond the vulnerable trans community, upsetting much of her fanbase too. For my youngest daughter, to have her childhood idol coming out with what she considers TERF thinking, really broke her heart. All her life, at times of stress, her go-to safe place has been re-reading Harry Potter. For her, and many of the Hogwarts generation, JK's stance has effectively destroyed that safety net.

Probably the most important lesson to take from this is to be very careful what you say on social media, especially if you're famous (unless you're like Trump or Katie Hopkins and enjoy that kind of attention). Fame brings power, and shouldn't be abused.

Despite all the conflict, hopefully some positive things will come out of this time. We're all talking a lot more about very important issues, and thinking about the way we perceive others. Many of us are reading more widely to understand different viewpoints because we want to hear from those that haven't been given a proper voice. In an ideal world, after all the ranting and mud slinging is done, it might lead us to find more empathy, kindness and compassion as fellow human beings.

Meanwhile, hopefully I'm not famous enough to be trolled for writing this...

by Lu Hersey
Twitter: @LuWrites
Web: Lu Hersey

Reading, reading, reading by Vanessa Harbour

This post was inspired by reading Anne Rooney’s recent blog about her journeys on the bus and how she is using the time to read all sorts of books that she WANTS to read. It made me think – a lot.

It is said you can’t be a writer unless you are a reader. This is something I tell my students frequently, particularly if they comment on how long the reading list might be. I have had some very serious discussions about whether they should be reading a hardcopy (you can make notes in the margin!), an ebook – again you can sort of make comments, or as so many of them do now, listen to the audiobook. I confess I am not convinced about this when trying to analyse a text and trying to explore it critically. But there again, maybe I am a dinosaur.

I spend a huge amount of my time reading and I am not necessarily talking books here. The very nature of the jobs outside my writing means that I need to read reams and reams of pages created by

A selection of work books

my students or the writers I work with. All of which require consideration and feedback, so they are not read to relax. Some can be thoroughly enjoyable, so it is not an issue to read them, others… well... It is not just manuscripts that I need to give feedback on that I read. I also read a lot of books that relate to my work. Not all of which I would choose to read given a choice.

I am also in the lucky position to be sent quite a few books by publishers to read just pre-publication. This is a wonderful opportunity and I love reading them. However, I am aware that I am reading them for a reason. I need to shout about them, to give the writer’s a well-earned nudge in the publicity stakes. We all know how hard it is to publicise your work when you’re an author.  All help is welcome.

What this does mean is that I rarely read just for me. Over Christmas I was thinking about this as I deliberately made the effort to read a couple of books that interested me: Damian Barr’s You Will Be Safe Here and Alice Hoffman’s The World That We Knew. Both books that I had heard a lot of good feedback on, plus I am a great fan of Damian’s Literary Salon podcast, so wanted to read some of his writings. These books relate to nothing I am working on currently. At first, it was hard because I felt guilty. Mad, I know. But I thought I ought to be reading things connected with work. I realised I needed to stop thinking like this, as Anne did for her bus journey, reading books I want to read plus maybe revisiting some old friends could be part of my own self-care.

Reading is so important. We know in children that reading can encourage empathy. Empathy is a key element of emotional intelligence, and part of helping children to appreciate others. I think this can apply to adults too. Reading a book is a chance to walk in someone else’s shoes. To view the world through their eyes. It makes you stop and think. As a writer, it is a wonderful habit to get into as it helps you realise what works for you and what doesn’t. You can then endeavour to apply that to your own writing. Books can be inspirational; they allow you to escape into another world while your brain continues with its latent processing. I often find that the solution to a plot problem will come to me while I am reading. I am sure it is because I am not thinking about it. I acknowledge that the same can happen when ironing or while in the shower or driving.

Revisiting some favourite
books

My plan this year, which was further inspired by Anne’s post, is to read more that is for me and not connected to work. I plan to try and read a couple of books a month that are my choice. Reading for pleasure. I need to remember this is allowed. These will be both adult and children’s books as I believe in the importance of reading broadly. It is vital not to read only one genre. Push the boundaries, read something outside your comfort zone, it can inform your writing. I will add a caveat, if a book does not hold my attention after a few chapters, I will not fight to the end.  Life is definitely too short to read books you don’t enjoy – I have to do enough of that already!

How about, like Anne, we all challenge ourselves to read more books for ourselves. Happy Reading!

Dr Vanessa Harbour

@VanessaHarbour

www.vanessaharbour.co.uk

http://chaosmos-outofchaoscomesorder.blogspot.com

Stories can change our brains - Hilary Hawkes

Last week, March 20^th, was World Storytelling Day. That's my kind of day!

I can't imagine a world without stories, can you?

Stories and storytelling have been around since the  beginning of human time. Think of our early ancestors huddled together in caves or shelters listening to the  wise and entertaining stories handed down from one generation to the next.  They were our way of conveying important  information and messages, entertaining, educating, and helped us create bonds with each other too.

We might not very often sit together with storytellers anymore, but a good story remains at the heart of some of the best forms of entertainment to this day – even though the means through which we access the story may have changed.

As a bookaholic and author it all makes perfect sense to me that there is something about stories that attracts us and draws us in.  Stories help us connect with something deep within ourselves and others. They tap into the core of our being. In stories we find meanings, purposes, identities, connections with strangers,  insights and understanding about life, ourselves and the lives and motivation of other people.

Sometimes we absorb all that whilst being entertained.  Other times we might come away from a book or story feeling a kind of warm, connected understanding with the characters and with what the author was telling us. This is the power and importance of stories – they are part of what makes us civilized, aware and caring.

Real life stories told in emotive ways cause (perhaps obviously) strong reactions in us too. When stories are more emotive our brains release more oxytocin and this makes us more compassionate.

Expert Paul Zak's research uncovered how stories shape our brains, tie strangers together, and move us to be more empathetic and generous. 

His team used brain scans to show how the story of a child’s life with cancer changed patterns in subjects' brains in what he calls an empathy, neurochemistry and dramatic arc. Participants watched two videos about the child and his father. In the first the child’s struggle with his illness and his and his family’s courage were highlighted. In the second, the illness was not the main focus. Zak’s conclusion, when those who watched the first version gave generously to a cancer charity, and those who watched the second did not, was that the greater the release of ocytocin (or, as he called it, the 'moral molecule') the greater the empathy and ensuing generosity.

You can read more about Paul Zak’s work here 

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_stories_change_brain

When it comes to sharing stories with children there is another part to their power. Sitting quietly and cosily with your child or a group of children creates an important bond between parent/adult and child. Research shows children benefit in so many ways when they read or are read to – from developing language, communication and social skills to aiding the growth of knowledge and expanding ideas.  Stories can be a fun and natural way to teach quiet nurturing messages that we want all our children to absorb, and which will help them develop strong emotional health, thoughts and habits for life. The right story at the right time can be remembered for life!

Is there a book or story, fiction or non-fiction, that had an influential or powerful effect on you or your life?

The Empathy Map (Part 2) by Tess Berry-Hart

"Is a refugee someone who's had to leave their home?" asked Anna.
"Someone who seeks refuge in another country," said Papa.
"I don't think I'm quite used to being one yet," said Anna.

Extract from When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, by Judith Kerr

When I wrote the first part of The Empathy Map last month about how big business has turned empathy into a tool for selling, I'd planned a very different type of post for my Part 2.

Back then it was the middle of August, and all over Europe the biggest exodus of people from their native lands since World War II was under way. Pictures of desperate and frightened people, travelling for months and months overland in terrible conditions, were filtering through Facebook feeds. Boatloads of starving and fleeing people arrived in the beautiful Greek islands, narrowly avoiding being drowned on the way whilst Western holidaymakers reclined on the beach or complained about the view. MIGRANTS STORM CALAIS! shouted the tabloids. David Cameron talked about building a wall. Macedonia was actually building a wall. The word "refugee" was barely mentioned. Empathy was in short supply.

Along with many people, I felt so upset about the coverage and the political inertia that I got in touch with Libby Freeman, a grass-roots activist who had loaded up a van with much-needed supplies and driven over to Calais with a few friends the week before. "How can I help?" I texted her. "I'm planning to get a load of people and supplies together and go over again next month," she texted back. "Great! I'm in," I replied, before I had time to think. Libby and her friends had received so many offers of help that they were setting up a Facebook group called Calais Action and were putting out calls to collect clothes and shoes for people in the camps. I became the West London collector for Calais Action, and posted on local community Facebook groups asking for donations. I received some grateful replies and promises. Going to be a busy week, I thought.

Then I went away for the Bank Holiday in Somerset. Phone coverage was patchy, so I switched my phone off and went Facebook-free for a couple of days. When I eventually logged back on, I had nearly 100 new private messages. People were frantically messaging me from all over London - "I'm so glad to see your group! I have clothes! What do you need?" My phone was full of texts, my email rammed. There was even wild talk of rallies in London and Calais to show solidarity with migrants, an initiative unthinkable only a week ago. When I got back home, there was a huge pile of plastic bags on my doorstep, overspilling with clothes and shoes.

What? How!

Then I saw the headlines - and it clicked. In the awful photos of drowned children on a Turkish beach, Britain had found its empathy.

Migrant:A person who moves from one place to another in order to find work or better living conditions.(ODD)

Refugee: A person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster

The words we use to describe something are important as they can skew our perception and understanding of a situation. Take the word "migrant" - in the hands of the right-wing press it became loaded and symbolic of a particular menace; a hooded, dark skinned man, probably a member of Isis or some such, camping in Calais and breaking into lorries to come into Britain and steal our jobs and benefits. Words make us see "a migrant" as “the other” – someone who threatens us, threatens our secure livelihoods, because of ... what? The realisation that the world is not as safe as we would like it to be? That if the genetic chips had been spilled any other way then our lives would not be composed of lattes and Netflix and clean roads - and that we might be in their shoes?

When Al Jazeera refused to use the word "migrant" and instead reported on "refugees" it changed the narrative. Everybody knows what refugees are - the word was picked up immediately by much of the media and it triggered reserves of empathy towards people seeking refuge in another country.

But how are we to instil empathy in our children? The second way of building empathy, as I talked about in Part 1 of the Empathy Map, is reading stories. Studies show that children who read novels are more empathetic, quicker to visualise themselves in the shoes of a storybook character. When I was younger, some of my favourite books were about refugees and immigrants. For me the ultimate refugee/ roadtrip novel has to be Watership Down by Richard Adams, one of my favourite stories for children and adults of all time. It's the story of a group of rabbits in Sandleford whose warren is destroyed to build houses. Together they journey over the South Downs to find a new home, encountering on the way many different types of warrens and the fearsome rabbits who populate them. I defy anyone to read it and not feel empathy towards people who have been expelled from their homelands. When they finally find a warren high on the downs that they can call their own, it is a dream of every refugee who has ever travelled. “It’s not really about rabbits!” shout its supporters, and they are absolutely right. You can find similar parallels of refuge and exile in The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien.

My other childhood favourites were When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, by Judith Kerr, about her own childhood as a refugee travelling across Europe from the Nazis. Goodnight Mister Tom, about the "vacuees" - evacuated children from London during the Second World War making a new life for themselves in the countryside. The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier is another, about a group of children travelling from bombed-out Warsaw to Berlin to find their parents in the aftermath of Word War II. Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah is a more modern novel about a young boy who is brought to claim asylum in the UK during the 2000/2001 civil war in Eritrea. All of these stories are vastly different - some deal with events long ago, some are about events that have never happened or could happen - but they all contain within them the seeds of empathy that we so badly need.

Indeed, I was so influenced as a child by the ideas of flight and refuge, that the first young-adult novel I ever wrote, Escape From Genopolis, followed the fortunes of a group of refugees in the futuristic world of Genopolis where pain had ceased to exist. Those who still experienced pain were called Naturals and banished to a wilderness because in knowing pain, by extension they still had empathy. In the world of Genopolis, empathy was held as a dangerous gift, because to control people you have to dehumanise them - you must not "understand" them. Words that dehumanise people prevent us from empathising with and helping them; words which foster empathy can change the world.

And the world does appear to be changing from a month ago. Empathy is now front-page news. Libby and her friends have been interviewed by TV and newspapers about the new "grass-roots giving" which refuses to sit back and wait for politicians to take action. And what a powerful force grass-roots movements are. Just two weeks after I set up the West London branch of Calais Action, over four hundred and fifty generous and hard-working people from my local area have either contacted me with donations or volunteered to help collect, sort and pack the giant pile of supplies that I've received - crates upon crates of food, 200 large boxes of clothes and shoes, sleeping bags and tents - which now fill an entire house in a neighbouring square (the house has been also temporarily donated for a week!). This weekend the supplies will be shipped out, to be sent on to refugee camps in Hungary and northern France. A huge rally - "Refugees Welcome" - happened on the weekend in London; another one will happen in the Jungle camp in Calais itself this next Saturday 19th September. A co-ordinated volunteer programme is being set up in Calais by Calais Action and other NGOs and grass-roots groups to repair water pipes, build proper shelter and distribute the vast amount of supplies to the vast amount of people who need them.

Empathy is part of us and what makes us human; we just need to let it flourish.

Patrick, Paddington and the rest of us.

I've felt very proud to be a writer this week, and especially part of the children’s literature community.  Patrick Ness’s bold and generous gesture - to match £10,000 of donations to Save the Children to help Syrian refugees - has struck an entire orchestra's worth of chords. As I write this, on Monday night, the total is rushing towards £600,000.              

Patrick Ness

Among those pledging £10,000 were John Green, Philip Pullman, Francesca Simon, Suzanne Collins and Cressida Cowell.  Publishers have got involved too, and adult writers such as Jojo Moyes and David Nicholls. A group of YA writers in the US including Rainbow Rowell and Margaret Stohl banded together to put in their £10,000. Here, attendees at the Society of Authors’ Children’s Writers and Illustrators Group’s conference pledged £3,000, even though some had contributed already.

Most of us can’t afford anything like £10,000, of course. It’s more than the average writer’s annual earnings. But there's no need to feel embarrassed. Viewed as a percentage of income, some of us may have outdone the big-hitters in generosity. Each contribution counts - if everyone who reads this blog donates the cost of a cup of coffee, it'll be matched penny for penny, which could make a good few hundred pounds.
And if you can't spare any more cash, just share the all-important link -  which is HERE  -  again and again.

Having been involved in the Authors for the Philippines and Authors for Japan auctions (under the incredibly hard-working leadership of Keris Stainton), I've seen how keen writers, editors and agents are to donate, be involved, help in any way they can.  Some cynics jeered  saying it was  all about publicity. So what if it were?  The cash was raised for the people who needed it. 

But it’s not about publicity. It's about having the imagination to see what a charity like Save the Children or the Red Cross can do to help, and the suffering that will continue if they don't have the funds to do their work.
The best writers sow empathy in their pages, seeds that can grow and flourish in readers’ hearts and minds.  So that one day those readers  will read a news story about marauding migrants, and reach with their imaginations beyond the headlines, the politicians’ weasel words. They'll see scared teenagers, crying children, desperate parents, fleeing a dangerous home for an uncertain future. And they'll write letters, speak out, donate and even open their homes to people in need. 

One of the icons of British children's literature is Paddington Bear. I wasn't sure about seeing last year's film, worried that a favourite character would be rendered sentimental or just wrong. Instead it was a wonderful experience, funny and charming, gently passing on a message of British tolerance and caring, an openness to strangers in need.
In the books and the film, Paddington comes to Britain in need, and finds kindness and a new home. However the truth would be very different. This blog  post by an immigration lawyer spells out all the cruelties a real life Paddington would meet, seeking asylum in Britain.  Lord Ashdown said yesterday that Syrian children grudgingly allowed into Britain now, could face deportation at 18. The campaign to help child refugees won't end with the appeal reaching £1 or 2 million pounds. If we truly care there is a lot to be done to change attitudes towards refugees, to stop the distrust and antipathy that has been allowed to grow. Children's authors can and do play a part in an education process about the difference between legal and illegal economic migration, legal asylum-seeking and those who pretend to be genuine refugees but are not. 

But for now, thank you once again Patrick Ness, for channelling the spirit of Paddington, for doing this brilliant thing and taking us all along with you. And congratulations on your new book, The Rest of Us Just Live Here, as well.  

To Drive The Cold Winter Away by Tess Berry-Hart

It's still winter! The bone-shaking chill of a new January with its winds, ice storms, broken healthy resolutions and humourless deadlines (tax payments, school applications, etc) can make even the bravest of us want to curl up in a cave next to a blazing fire and hibernate until spring arrives.

And to some of us who suffer from depression (episodes of persistent sadness or low mood, marked loss of interest and pleasure) either constant or intermittent, winter can be one of the hardest times. Depression being a multi-headed hydra ranging from many states of unipolar to bipolar, I'm not suggesting that there is one single type of depression; for instance not all of us are affected by the winter or weather, while some people who don't even have depression in the clinical sense might be experiencing a mild case of the winter blues, or Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

Creativity is like a fire that we can stoke to drive away the cold winter (whether physical or psychological, internal or external). So I'm deep in my cave trying to work out ways that I can stoke my creativity without resorting to biscuits!

Bibliotherapy's been around for a while now, and is the literary prescription of books and poems against a range of "modern ailments" - including depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. A form of guided self-help, it's not exactly a new idea - the ancient Greeks spoke of "catharsis" - the process of purification or cleansing, in which the observer of a work of theatre could purge themselves of emotions such as pity and fear through watching and identifying with the characters in a play. All of us in the modern world can attest to the feeling of connection and joy when an author so precisely describes a state that we are ourselves experiencing, and the nail-biting, cliff-hanging state of knowing exactly what our heroine or hero is going through. We root for him or her because s/he represents ourselves battling our own demons in an idealised meta-state.

But how does bibliotherapy work? According to the various proponents, it helps perpetuate a shift in thinking, so that things are not so inflexible (black and white thinking, for all you cognitive-behavioural depressives out there!) which is crucial to tackling depression. Being able to gain distance and perspective by viewing problems through the lens of fictional characters means that in real life our fixed thought-patterns which contribute to our problems can start to become unpicked.

And of course, identification isn't the only joy to be found in books; good old-fashioned escapism is surely the reason why many of us read so avidly. A new world, a new family, a new life, perhaps even new biology or physics, takes us away momentarily from the mundane world so we can return refreshed, hopefully to see our lives with new eyes.

I've obviously been self-medicating for a long time, but I always called it comfort-reading. By comfort-reading I mean a well-known book that you can plunge into at will like a warm bath or a pair of slippers. At school when I was anxious about exams or bullies I would find solace in re-reading the heroic adventures of Biggles or the magical quest of Lord of the Rings; at university it was in the dreamy memories of Brideshead and the vicissitudes of Billy Liar or Lucky Jim. When I started my first office jobs I would read 1984 or Brave New World (odd choices for comfort-reads but I think it was to remind myself that things could actually be worse!) but when I started writing my own books, I ...er ... stopped reading for some years. I think my tiny little brain could only take so much exercise!

I started comfort-reading again when we first had our children; during long and frequently painful breast-feeding sessions my husband would read my childhood favourites Charlotte's Web and Danny the Champion Of The World to me as distraction and encouragement. And these days my prospective comfort list numbers hundreds of books; for me, reading is re-reading.

So what could I take to bolster myself against the winter chill? I've written myself a prescription but I'd be interested in hearing yours!

1) A dose of James Herriot's short animal stories, to be administered when needed (they are nice and short so you're not left hanging after a few pages) or chapters from Jerome K Jerome's Three Men In A Boat, or virtually anything by PG Wodehouse;

2) A daily dose of half an hour "joy-writing" - half an hour in the morning when I can sit down and let ideas spill out onto the page. (If it ends up with me writing about what happened last night then so be it. It can often lead to something more ...)

3) A small creative project on the horizon, easily identifiable and manageable, that I can look forward to; in this case getting a small group of actors together to read through a new draft of a play that I've written (there'll be a blog post on this soon so stay tuned!)

4) Connection with others - I'm a member of a local book group, which not only makes me keep on top of what new books are coming out, but also participating in the joy of discussion; there's nothing more frustrating than reading a good book only to realise that nobody you know has read it!)

So I think that's enough to start barricading myself up against the January snows!

But what about you? What kind of comfort-reads do you enjoy to drive the cold winter away?

All the World's A Stage - Anna Wilson

I have been thinking a lot recently about the importance of drama in English teaching. It was reading Polly Toynbee in the Guardian a few weeks back which sparked off this particular train of thought. The thrust of her article was about what the delightful Mr Gove plans for the future of our children's education, but about halfway in she makes specific points about the value of drama in schools.

'Gove pretends it's for schools to choose – but drama, dance, art and now literature will slip away. Confident top schools may keep these subjects, but average schools, under intense pressure to perform in core EBacc exams, will let the rest slide.'

It is easy to see how, facing such pressures, schools may be forced to relegate drama to 'club' status rather than keeping it in with the main-stream timetable. But what a shortsighted view. Drama is invaluable to a child's development - indeed, I would go so far as to say it is a natural part of a child's development and surely a step on the way to producing a confident reader.

Sit and watch a young child at play, and what is he or she doing if not acting out stories? Play is drama for the young child. It is how he or she explores the world around, tries out different scenarios, puts him or herself in another's shoes. And it is intrinsically bound up with storytelling.

When I go into schools to talk about writing, I do a lot of 'acting out' of the various scenes in my life which have wound their way into stories. I could simply stand in front of a school assembly and tell them 'this happened, and then this and then this', but in acting out how my tortoise must have felt when my dad glued a length of fishing line to its shell to 'stop it escaping', I think the story has more impact than my simply telling it. It allows the audience to put themselves in the place of the poor tortoise who had no say in my dad's crazy plan. And it makes the kids laugh. And remember my talk. One teacher emailed me after an event to tell me that the children were acting out my stories in the playground later that day.

Toynbee again:

'What is "low value" about drama? […] Ability to speak out, perform and pretend is essential for most jobs, from estate agent upwards. Employers complain that young people mumble, slouch and don't look them in the eye, prizing the "soft skills" that elite schools teach through drama and debating. Emotionally, drama teaches children lacking in empathy to put themselves into others' shoes, to express fears. But ever fewer schools employ specialist drama teachers: English teachers may or may not have an aptitude. Shakespeare is on the curriculum, no longer to be examined, but dead on the page without performance to breathe life and sense into it.'

'Dead on the page'. Is this how we want future generations to think of writing? Boring, dull, immovable, immutable shapes on the page? That was my own experience as a pupil in an old-fashioned grammar school, whose teaching methods had not changed since the 1950s; a decade Gove so keenly looks back to as a model for future generations' education.

We studied Macbeth for two years in the run-up to O-level English and he and the rest of the cast remained mummified on the page for me to the point where I gave up reading and dropped English like a hot potato as soon as I could. How differently I would have felt had I had the teacher my son had four years ago - a woman who is as passionate about drama as she is about reading and writing, and who had my son dress up as one of the witches and learn the cauldron scene in Act 4, scene 1 with his friends. He was only eight years old at the time, but he understood Macbeth's motivations and emotions so much better than I did at twice his age.

So drama is a 'soft skill' is it? I would argue that Gove might do a lot better in his own line of work if he went along to a couple of plays or even took part in one. He might at least learn a bit of empathy, if nothing else. Or is that wishful thinking?

Anna Wilson
www.annawilson.co.uk