Embracing Procrastination - by Holly Race

"Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!" So said Charles Dickens.

Sorry Charles, but I’m going to disagree with you.

Procrastination is one of my core skills. The kind of skill you put at the top of your C.V.: Holly is a passionate and dedicated worker, with great attention to detail and a particular affinity for procrastination.

But we're told that procrastination is something to be ashamed of. We guiltily joke about it with our friends and use it as a stick to beat ourselves with. Personally, I used to spiral - I'd feel so bad about the amount of time I was spending procrastinating that I'd end up writing off the whole day. A proper throwing my toys out of the tub moment: 'If I haven't done anything useful by 1pm, I'm not going to, am I?'

But what if we could start to see procrastination as a Good Thing?

Over the last few months I've come to realise that there are types of procrastination that have allowed me the headspace to work up an appetite for writing when I was in a slump, or have given me the distance I needed from a plot problem in order to solve it. So I've rated my procrastination methods here, on a scale of 1 to 5, on how useful they were in helping my writing. That's right, I've done the procrastination deep dive so you don't have to (unless you want to, or unless you're already too far down to see the surface, in which case - keep going and you'll eventually come out the other side).

Browsing social media (1/5)

We all know this already, but scrolling endlessly through Twitter is not conducive to either low blood pressure or inspiration. If you want a good kick to get off social media, watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix. I guarantee you'll be horrified at exactly how these platforms manipulate our thought patterns. Some of us need to have social media accounts in order to promote our work and, at a time when we're all socialising online more, to keep in touch with friends. But this is definitely one to limit to times where you don't need to be working.

Cooking (2/5) 

Sourdough focaccia- yum!

Here's the thing. I love cooking. Love. It. My husband used to feel guilty about how much time I spent in the kitchen, until he realised that I cook as a way to escape real life. But I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that it is not good for sparking the writing bug. I become so engrossed in measuring, stirring or worrying about whether there's too much or too little cumin in a dish, that I end up replacing stress over whether my writing is any good with stress over whether my cooking is any good.

Getting outside (3/5)

If lockdown has shown us anything, it's the value of being able to get some fresh air. Whether you prefer to jog, cycle, walk or garden, getting outside is so important to mental health. I don't think I need to say much more about the health benefits of some daily outside exercise. For writing, I find it less useful. A long, lonely walk is the only type of exercise that tends to give me plotty brainwaves, but most of us can't spare several hours a day. I've taken to puffing away with Couch to 5k or taking a scenic detour on my bike on the way back from dropping off my daughter at nursery - they don't tend to give me the headspace to work out writing problems, but they do give a much needed energy boost.

I embroider more slowly than a sloth

Doing something creative, badly (4/5)

We spend so much of our time as authors trying to perfect our craft. We spend months, sometimes years, tweaking our writing until we don't think we can make it any better. And then we send our words out into the world to be loved and rejected, and the rejections always hit harder than the compliments. So it can be liberating to do something creative that isn't going to be judged. I've recently taken up embroidery and writing poetry (I heartily recommend How To Grow Your Own Poem by Kate Clanchy). Am I good at either of them? Absolutely not. But I try to do one of them every day, just to remind myself of the simple joy and sense of achievement of making something for myself. Lifting that pressure of trying to do something perfectly has meant that I'm more willing to get stuck in to my 'proper' writing - because I'm less afraid to fail.

Journalling (4/5)

Bullet journalling has become a real trend of late. When Buzzfeed starts making videos about something, you know you're in the zeitgeist. A friend tempted me over to the dark side a few months ago, and I now have drawerfuls of washi tape. I've leaned in hard. If you're a to do list kind of person, you might find that journalling helps your sense of organisation and control. It's been a game changer for me: I was getting daily headaches and couldn't work out why... until I started to track my water intake in my journal and realised I'd been drinking two glasses of water a day on average. My brain was, as a friend so kindly put it, a desiccated husk. Now that I'm ticking off my water intake as I go, thereby making sure I'm drinking enough, the headaches have cleared up, I'm not as tired and my head is clearer than it's been in years. Instead of browsing the Internet before bed, I write out my plan for the next day, decorate it in ridiculous numbers of stickers with cliche motivational quotes. And instead of feeling as though I've eaten the equivalent of an entire tub of mini-rolls, which is what I used to feel like after an adventure through Reddit, I feel as though I've drunk a cleansing green tea.

Yoga (5/5)

I've suffered from chronic back pain since the start of the year, as though it was an omen of the awful things to come. At the beginning of lockdown I decided to sign up to a friend's online yoga course (www.nomoreshoulds.com in case you're interested!) - I'm not the biggest fan of having to travel to such classes but love the community feeling of taking classes with other people instead of via a pre-recorded, impersonal YouTube video. I've slowly built up to taking at least a short class every day, and the difference to my back pain has been remarkable. For a lot of writers, pain associated with a sedentary lifestyle is a real problem. I can't recommend stepping away once or twice a day to do some gentle twists and stretches enough. Beyond the physical benefits, the meditative quality of my yoga classes (these are gentle classes; I'm not trying to become a contortionist) has seen me come up with the solution to many a writing problem in the middle of a downward dog.

So this is my resolution for the dregs of 2020: to embrace procrastination. Guilt and shame are such useless emotions and anathema to creativity. As of now, I'm banishing them and spending more time practising my stem stitch and mountain pose. Perhaps you'll join me?

Holly Race worked for many years as a script editor in film and television, before becoming a writer.

Her debut novel, Midnight's Twins, is published by Hot Key Books. She also selectively undertakes freelance script editing and story consultant work.

www.hollyrace.com

Big Words or Little Words? Vocabulary in Children's Books by Emma Barnes

I was at the Headingley LitFest during a question-time on children's books. A children's writer in the audience asked the Sunday Times book critic Nicolette Jones whether it was OK to have long words in a children's book – or should he keep it simple?

I can't remember exactly what Nicolette said to this but it was something along the lines of “it depends”. Which is the only sensible answer to give, really. It depends on the book. It depends on what the writer is trying to do.

It's not actually something I've heard children's writers discuss much: vocabulary. Unless you are writing for a reading scheme, say, we write what we write, as the muse directs (or so we like to think)! But shortly afterwards I came across two different perspectives on the subject, from two of my favourite children's writers.

The first was Judith Kerr. In her memoir, Judith's Kerr's Creatures, she explained that, inspired by Dr Seuss of Green Eggs and Ham fame, she deliberately limited the words used in Mog the Forgetful Cat.

“I determined that, like Dr Seuss, I would use a vocabulary of no more than 250 words in the book about Mog, and I have done this with all my picture books since, with the exception of Mog in the Dark, which...has a vocabulary of only just over fifty. I also determined never, ever to put something in the text that the child could already tell from the pictures. Why should they struggle to read something they already knew?”

(Judith Kerr's Creatures, p86)

If Judith Kerr says it's so, it must be so – because Mog is one of the most brilliant picture books of our times. And the interesting thing about Mog is that it is not a book children typically use to learn to read. It is a picture book their parents read with them (my guess is that for many Mog fans, by the time they are learning to read themselves they will know Mog's story by heart.) So it's not just that Judith Kerr created a good “easy to read” book for beginner readers – it's rather that she created one of the most loved of all picture books, regardless of word count. She was able to create a great story which happened to use very simple language.

Another of my favourite writers took a different approach.  Eric Thompson created the Magic Roundabout (both books and TV scripts). His family recalled:

“Once a lady wrote to him complaining that he used too many long words in The Magic Roundabout and how were children meant to understand them? He got out the Oxford English Dictionary and wrote back using all the longest and most difficult words he could find, like 'palimpsest' and 'oxymoron' (which sounds rude but isn't). He also wrote a strongly worded letter to a mother who had smacked her little boy for calling his sister a 'mollusc'."

(Phyllida, Emma and Sophie Thompson, introduction to The Adventures of Dougal)

And he was right.  There is a huge joy for kids in the use of language, even if you don't actually understand the words. The elaborate names and spells that you get, say, in Harry Potter (the tradition of bizarre character names once seen in authors like Dickens now lives on mainly in children's books). Or in Helen Cresswell's Bagthorpe Saga, where the characters not only have daft names, but spout Shakespeare and came out with gloriously incomprehensible remarks like: “It is a sign of genius to reconcile the seemingly disparate”. (I used this remark as a child on my own parents, undeterred by the fact that 1) I didn't know what it meant and 2) I couldn't pronounce “disparate”.)

Intriguingly, both Judith Kerr and Eric Thompson seem to have been reacting against rather joyless adult views about what's suitable for children. In Kerr's case this was the "long and not particularly interesting stories with a lot of complicated words 'to enrich your child's vocabulary''' that she found at the local library (Judith Kerr's Creatures p68). In Thompson's case, it was the claim children could not enjoy anything they could not understand. Their responses, though in different directions, led to stories that have been loved by adults and children alike.

As a writer, I used to love big words. Maybe this is why Sam and the Griswalds – a madcap story of the adventures of five crazy kids, aimed at 8-12s – has a similar difficulty score on the Accelerated Reader scheme to The Lord of the Rings. (Making it the perfect book for the highly literate eleven year old who still wants to read about football or kids falling in rivers.)

More recently, though, I've changed tack, and my writing style has become simpler and more straightforward. It's true I have dropped the age range, but I think it's more to do with the fact that I've become interested in the story, first and foremost, and I haven't wanted big words and funny names to get in the way. I suspect I'm part of a wider trend – I think language in children's books, especially in the Young Adult section, is generally simpler in part because so many books are now written in the first person by a child/teenage protagonist.

I've sometimes found it awkward in schools, where children are encouraged to believe Big Words Are Better. “Why do you use “said” so much?” a group of primary school pupils asked me. “We're always told to find a more interesting word instead.”

I explained my choice of "said" was not because I didn't know any alternatives. And I read them a passage from my book, substituting different words – remarked, whispered, groaned etc. It soon started to sound daft. Furthermore (I said) a lot of the times people simply are “saying” and so it's by far the most accurate word to use. In addition, if I want people to focus on what's said, rather than being reminded that they are reading a book, then “said” is the nearest thing to invisible on the page.

They got it. But their teachers looked mournful. It wasn't that they disagreed (they said) but if they taught that way their pupils wouldn't pass their tests.  The official view was that long words were good, the more fancy adjectives the better, and always find something else to use instead of that  humble “said”.

Never mind. There are fashions in everything.

Besides there really is no right or wrong on this one.  (Or is there?  Do comment.)

It just depends....

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Emma's Wild Thing series for 8+ about the naughtiest little sister ever is published by Scholastic.
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman

 Wolfie is published by Strident.  It is a story of wolves, magic and snowy woods...
"A real cracker of a book" Armadillo 
"Funny, clever and satisfying...thoroughly recommended" Books for Keeps

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

Unlocking Your Inner Potential - Rebecca Lisle

Well, is there inner potential, that's the question.  I'm certainly not sure there's any in me. I suspect that my innards are devoid of anything. Everything. I'm trying to write and I can't. My inner muse or well of inspiration or whatever, is now nothing but a clogged up puddle of mud.

I wondered if a self-help guide might help. Although I don't want my own self-help, I want someone else to help. Actually I guess I want someone else to write my 'book words' for me.

The trouble with this book is I am already full of fear and personally I think it's plain dangerous to do something you know for sure is scary. That's why it's scary. To stop you from doing it. Sensible really. Protective.

So this book is no help at all.

Apparently I do have an inner genius, really I do. There's lots about it on the internet. I have to find it, that's all. Unlock it. So I turn to my store of images which I gather as I go about the world, hoping one day they will become something. Anything. Since I always find doors inspiring and interesting here are a few of my favourites. They might give you inspiration. But these doors are . . .

              

          

Locked. Maybe for ever.

OK.  

I've got more photos. I've got these fascinating boxes, surely full of wonderful ideas and exciting plots:

How about this ancient box. What was it used for? Why the huge lock? Surely I can be inspired by its mysterious paintings of birds and spiky plants?  

What are those two chaps hiding in there? Are they smiling? I'm sure they look smug. I have the feeling they know the secret of how to write a good book and they've got it locked up in there and won't tell.

And what's inside this 15th century iron cask? The secret to the Universe? The best plot in the world?

And although I have some extraordinary keys - 

guess what - they don't unlock anything.

So back to the self-help books.  "How to be Happy" Impossible. It'll never happen. "How to write your novel in one year!" That's far too long. I want it done by the end of the week.  "The Easy Way to Write." That's just lies - there isn't one. "Everything I know about Writing." Fine, but you know it, you're successful, stop showing off. I know nothing. I can't write a thing.

Finally I take the plunge and write my very own self-help guide. A must for all would be novelists. It's called "The Only Way To Write"by Rebecca Lisle. Because there is only one me and only one way to write. And the best thing about it is it won't take long to read and it really does work!

There is one page of credits and acknowledgments: 

Firstly, I thank myself for all the hard work I've put into this book, myself for being my constant support and critic, myself for never giving up hope and belief in me and myself for feeding me constant cups of coffee and buns. I will never forget you. 

On the following page the advice begins. And ends. 

Stop faffing around and get on with it. 

Rebecca Lisle  www.rebeccalisle.com

Rebecca's most recent book THE SPIN, published by Hot Key Books has been nominated for the West Sussex Children's Book Award