How I Fell in Love With Twitter - Liz Kessler

It wasn’t love at first sight. Noooo. Not by a long way.

My first experience of Twitter was actually on Facebook. I noticed that various friends had started writing very strange status updates. They would say, for example, something about how well Chapter Six was going that day, or how they were struggling with a character or a scene. And then for some inexplicable reason, the status update would have #amwriting at the end of it. I would wonder a) why they kept on telling us they were writing; b) why they needed to do so anyway, when it was obvious from the previous sentence; and c) why these people – and I’m talking about folk of the likes of Mary Hoffman in terms of their spelling calibre – kept on writing ‘am’ and ‘writing’ as one word. 

Time passed, and about a year ago, my publicist at Orion suggested I go on Twitter. I had massive resistance to this – not just because of the hashtags and the joined up words thing, although that was part of it. With everything I was already doing online, it just felt like a step too far for me at that time. Eventually, she wore me down and I agreed to give it a go.

At first, the whole thing was utterly bewildering. How on earth was I expected to get people to follow me? And what did it mean if I followed them? How was I meant to keep track of anything when it all moved so fast? How did I get to be part of anyone’s conversations? And most of all, what on earth were they all talking about anyway?

I spent a few weeks gradually going through the lists of people who followed writer friends and choosing the ones who I thought sounded interesting. I’d follow twenty at a time, and, bit by bit, some of them followed me back. Slowly slowly, I built up a list of followers and followees. Even more slowly, I began to understand (a bit of) what was going on. I learned what those hashtags were all about. I understood how they bring people together; I even learned how to use them to tell a joke.

But it was still, for the most part, a bewildering place to spend time, and I still hadn’t fully forgiven my publicist for making me be there. How was this place ever going to do anything useful for me if the only people who ever saw anything I wrote were those who happened to look at their twitter feed within five minutes of me posting anything? How could I ever promote any of my books when I knew that I cringed inside every time I read other people’s tweets that were clearly trying to market their books? And how was I ever to feel good about my own books ever again when I was bombarded on an hourly (at least) basis with tweets from others announcing their latest five-star review, their latest book award nomination and their latest twelve-city book tour?

I began to think about how to tell Twitter (and my publicist) that I wanted us to break up. It wasn’t Twitter; it was me. It just wasn’t right for me.

And then something wondrous happened. I read an article that was doing the rounds. The article, on the aptly named ‘Red Pen of Doom’ blog, stated that Twitter did not help to sell books.

You can read the article here, if you want to…

The Twitter, it is NOT for selling books

I certainly didn’t agree with every word of it, but when I read it, something amazing happened. I felt liberated; I felt freed of this need to try to attract thousands of followers and direct them all to Amazon (or, even better, to their local bookshop) to buy my books. BECAUSE THEY WERE NEVER GOING TO, ANYWAY!

Yes, of course, you could see this as depressing, and many did. But for some reason, I really didn’t. If Twitter was never going to be all that much use as a vehicle to sell my books, the pressure to feel I had to try evaporated.

I put off the break-up conversation.

But over the next few months, the mini reprise began to lose its effect. If Twitter was never going to sell books, then what was I doing there? Did I really need to tell the world I had drunk another cup of tea/written another thousand words/stubbed my toe? And hadn’t those people STILL filling up my twitter feed with news of their latest five-star review/book award/film deal not read that article?

I began to think it was over, after all.

And then, gradually, I made myself somehow stop noticing all the tweets from people aggressively telling the world how wonderful they and their books were. I even ‘unfollowed’ a few of the main offenders. And boy, that’s a liberating thing to do, too. Instead, I focussed on the ones that made me laugh, or who interacted with others by and large in a lighthearted way. I stopped thinking I had to amaze people with erudite facts and startling revelations. Instead, I began to act as if I was at a party. One of those publishing parties in London where, after a couple of hours of having someone regularly filling up your glass with something bubbly, you no longer have that much awareness of how (un)interesting you’re being, because you’re too busy just having a laugh with people.

This was the best revelation of all. Twitter was a publishing party! It was a writers’ retreat. It was all of those happy get-together-with-others-in-the-writing-world events – and I was automatically invited, without even having to leave my house or get out of my pyjamas!!!!

Sure, I have occasionally got into conversation with someone at one of those events who has a niece of the right age for my mermaid books and has bought a copy after meeting me; yes I’ve chatted to bloggers who have asked me to do a guest post on their blog over a glass of wine at someone else’s book launch. And absolutely, I’ve met bookshop owners who have invited me to do an event as we’ve stood next to each other listening to a speech about the world of publishing today. But that’s not why I go to these things. I go for the laughs, for the chat, for the sharing of common ground. OK, yes, and for the champagne. If anything 'sales' related comes out of it, that’s a bonus.

Once I’d made this link, something really changed for me. I began to see Twitter as a kind of staffroom where I could pop in to chat with colleagues in between writing. Sharing the agonies as well as the ecstasies of my working day with others who were doing the same. Having a laugh with people on the same wavelength. Finally coming to love the hashtag and its many uses. 

In the last few weeks, I’ve done all these things on Twitter:

• Get into conversation with a new writer and help her to make contact with an agent for her first novel.
• Wriggle my way into a conversation with some YA writer friends and get invited to a wonderful book launch for an incredible new debut. 
• Arrange a cuppa with a writer buddy who introduced me to a local writer I’d never met, whose first book comes out next year, on a similar subject to my latest book. 
• Send and receive weather reports via Youtube song clips with a writer friend. 
• Share enthusiasm over Homeland and despair over The Voice. 
• Be invited to a beach picnic with friends. 
• Receive about thirty replies in the space of ten minutes to a question I posed when I was having a tricky problem over a character’s name. (And which they solved, by the way.) 

Every single one of these things involved making at least one person smile. Many of them did much more. And yes, somewhere along the way, perhaps a few of them will have played a part in leading to a book sale, either of mine or someone else’s books. The great thing is – that kind of isn’t the point.

The point is, I can sit in my study in my pyjamas, working on my latest book, and go to a party at the same time!!!!!

And really, people, could anyone ask for a better job than that?

Join the party! Follow Liz on Twitter

Hang out with Liz on Facebook

Check out Liz's Website

What Do You Call A Group of Writers? - Lynne Garner

I used to be a lone writer, tapping away on my computer knowing there were others out there like me but was unsure how to make contact. That all changed a few years ago when I attended a course taught by Julie Sykes, who introduced my to The Scattered Authors Society. Joining has been one of the best moves I've made in my writing career. Since then I have also become a member of The Picture Book Den and Authors Electric.

A few of the members of the SAS enjoying afternoon tea on our Winter Retreat 2011

  

Recently I was talking to a non-writing friend who asked me "So what do you call a group of writers?" I was stumped, so did a little research and found some great names for groups of people including:

•  A 'drunkship' of cobblers
• A 'hastiness' of cooks
• And a 'stalk' of foresters

(Apparently these appeared in a list of 'proper terms' in the Book of St Albans attributed to Dame Juliana Barnes - 1486)

I also discovered a few (I assume) tongue in cheek modern group names including:

•  A 'doddering' of senior citizens
• A 'nattering' of elderly ladies
• And a 'trust fund' of peace marchers

Yet I was unable to find a definitive name for a group of writers. I did find suggestions including a scribble, a sentence, a pen, a composition and a story. Yet for me a group of writers is a support system, an inspiration, a springboard, a font of knowledge and a joy to be a member of - none of these as catchy as the previous I know. From each of the groups I gain more than I could have hoped for. 

For example The Picture Book Den is a group of ten picture book writers which was set up in December 2011. We often ask each other questions and put out requests for advice. We also swap manuscripts once a month and critique each others work. This not only allows us to improve our writing but also learn from one another.

Another example is the group of 28 authors who make up Authors Electric. Last month a member suggested we celebrate World Book Night and William Shakespeare's birthday by hosting our own give-away of eBooks. Between us we managed to spread the word far and wide. We more than doubled the hit rate to our blog in one day and introduced our books to a huge worldwide audience. As a group we support each other by using social media to spread the word about our books, classes we run as individuals etc. and also share our experiences. 

So for me a group of authors is more than a term. However it's driving me crazy not knowing the 'correct' term. So if anyone knows what you call a group of writers please put this writer out of her misery. 

Lynne Garner

Now a blatant plug for my latest collection of African stories retold available as an eBook - Anansi Trickier Than Ever

If you have children please feel free to download my free activity sheets that go with this book and my other: Anansi - The Trickster Spider

Download by clicking on these links: set one and set two.

Control freaky - Nicola Morgan

I have issues with control, I know. Sometimes, I dare say my need to be in control is out of control. And how's that for a paradox?

I'm also fascinated by control, whether we actually have it and what we should do with it. I'm fascinated by free will, specifically. We need to believe we have it, otherwise there's kind of no point, is there? No point in trying hard if free will is an illusion, if we're really just puppets on the end of a few axons and synapses.

This becomes extra interesting when you start to think about artistic inspiration. We like to think, as writers, that we are in control of our words. They don't come from anyone else's head, so they must come from ours. And, of course, they do. Sort of. Somehow.

But the evidence is that we are not really in control of our words very much at all, or at least at the stage when they come from our head to the page as a first draft. If we were, once we'd learnt all the skills, we would be able to write anything we wanted. I could write in the style of Ali Smith or Charles Dickens, picking the precise words. I could write satire, sci-fi, literary or commercial, given that I know the vocabulary, know the rules and conventions, can use any literary device I wish.

But of course, I can't do any of those things. I don't really have nearly enough control over the first draft, and never would be able to in a million years. No writer does, even the best in the world. I may wish to write something commercial or romantic or poetic or whatever, I may have in my mind an image of the story I want to create, but each time I sit down to do it, what comes out is pretty much what comes out. It spews or trickles out and all I can do is try to control it once it has.

This thing that inspires the words. The process between "This is what I'm going to write about" and the actual writing. What is it and where in the brain does it hide? How does it work? How is it possible? In a way, the question is, "How is art possible?"

Doubtless, the answer lies largely in the subconscious, heavily dependent on the emotional limbic system. There's fascinating stuff about free will and the subconscious here, though a better article in Sciam Mind isn't available without subscription. That article discusses research that shows that "The brain acts before the mind decides. Electrical signals in the brain precede the conscious decision to move by at least half a second and often much longer."

Freaky!

Well, we may not be fully in control, but we are responsible, for both our actions and our words. And I think that's as much as I can hope for. To be held responsible for what my subconscious does. And then  to do the best I can with what comes out.

I like to think, however, that I can manipulate my subconscious somewhat. I can feed it dreams and thinking time, energy and emotions, light and space. I am also completely convinced that it responds extremely well to chocolate...

Writers, artists, how do you tame your subconscious?

TIME FOR A KINDLE by Penny Dolan

I love books more than almost anything. I’m the very opposite of those people who find going into a bookshop to be a dull or anxious experience. Anxious is what I feel when I go into clothes-shops, shoe-shops or other shops.

Bookshops, especially good well-stocked bookshops, offer me a sense of relaxation and peace. I know where I am. I see lots of things I’d like. I don’t have to worry about size or fashion. My only fear is that I’ll spend, or spend too much. (True, there is the fear of not seeing one’s own books but today I am ignoring that angst.) 

I am not particular. I also buy from charity shops and bookstalls in hospital foyers and booksales at libraries too.

The upside is that I now have a house full of books. 

But the downside is that I now have a house full of books.

Many of the shelves are double-parked. I have thought about getting rid of a few. The problem is that, apart from the matter of each named genre, I have an almost subconscious book classification system that makes clearing any out that bit more difficult.

 For example, there are:

Books I’ve read and want to read again. (Or even again, again.)

Books, started, but not at the right moment for either of us.

Books, interesting: on subjects that might be useful or important to me one day.

Books, worthwhile but slightly dull: begun but now resting, for finishing one day.

Books, classics: that everyone has read. For reading – honestly - very soon.

Books, relics of ancient relatives: layers of guilt & sentiment attached.

Books, research: might still may be useful if ever I . . .(fill in blank).

Books, topic education: apparently superseded by tick sheets and laptops. Sigh.

Books, unread by favourite authors: suddenly spotted on shelves. (2^nd copies poss.)

Books, holidays for the use of: not right o location and somehow not right since.

Books, unsought unsuitable review copies: lurid but attractive to woodlice and spiders.

Books, comforting, invalids for the use of: in case of long severe sniffles.

Books, hints, tips and analysis for writers: for reading when should be writing.

Books, diet: weighing as much or more as needs to be lost.

So many categories - and that’s only the beginning!

Then when I look round the shelves and floors and other flat surfaces considering just a little careful thinning out, there’s another problem. His books. My books. Our books. Books of contested ownership. Literally, a nightmare!

Now, suddenly, it’s simpler. There are e-books and kindles the size of a pocket. I see a new enticing title and the compact device whispers suggestive words. “It won’t take up any more space . . "

 

However, I’ve noticed newish kindle owners saying things like “Oh, the first thing I did was to download the whole of Dickens / the whole of Shakespeare / the whole of Tolstoy / the whole of  anything" before gleefully adding “For free!”

I always want to ask, “Yes, but why did you do that? Do you normally read those books? Are those titles what you usually reach for when you want to read?”  Or even “Great. How many of them have you read now?”

But then I noticed that all the Andrew Lang Fairy books ready for downloading to kindle. Yes, for free! Hmmm. Suddenly that pocket-sized kindle idea feels mightily dangerous. 

I might end up with a home just as full of the books - problem still unsolved! – along with enormous quantities of virtual bookshelves. And I won’t even be able to see when they are double-parked.

Penny Dolan

Penny’s latest book is “A Boy Called M.O.U.S.E” (Bloomsbury)

www.pennydolan.com

What's Wrong With Ed Vaizey? - John Dougherty

Much has been written about the singular uselessness of Ed Vaizey.

For those of you who don't know, he's the UK Minister for Culture, Communications & Creative Industries, and as such is responsible for supervising library services in England; you can read more about how badly he's failed to do this at the excellent Public Libraries News.

For those of you who do know - and that's all of you now, if you've read the preceding paragraph - I hope you enjoy this little home movie.




Please feel free to share it around. You'll find the embed code here if you'd like to screen it on your own blog or website.


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

Through another's eyes

How do you know when something is real, or if it is the result of an overactive imagination?

As authors we are used to letting our minds run free, living through other eyes as best we can to come up with the most believable characters. Don't we all imagine what it might be like to be A, B or X? And when we succeed, don't readers love the characters we create, the ones that seem to almost step off the page? I don't actually spend ages trying to walk like an Egyptian, or sit in trees trying to feel like a bird; that would be silly. No, somehow it's all there when I write. The rub of rough fabric on skin, the feeling that I am alone in the world although I never have been. I have never thought that my imagination was getting the better of me, so I offer this experience without comment except to say that I think of myself as pretty sensible and grounded, non religious, though admitting to something spiritual about our lives. I am one who is sceptical about such things as ghosts, rebirth and out of body experiences.

One day, a couple of years ago I was sitting in my garden, looking out over the scrubby woodland on the other side of the fence. It was a warm, summer's evening and I was feeling very mellow, contented, and happy to be in my new home. All of a sudden, without any sort of warning, I realised I was looking out through someone else's eyes. Weird or what? The someone else seemed to be a middle aged man, and he had his hands on his bare knees. He too was looking contentedly out over the woodland, although the fence had gone, and the trees had been rearranged. I remember being enormously excited about it, even while it was happening. "This is brilliant!" I was thinking to myself. "He's an ancestor of mine, a very ancient one." I couldn't make him look anywhere else, but could see his hands and knees at the edge of my vision, and the edge of some coarse, brown fabric which could have been some sort of tunic.

That was all. In less than a minute he'd gone, and I was left wondering what on earth had happened. Was it a brief brain dislocation, over active imagination, or something else? I really don't know. Why I thought he was an ancestor I don't know either. I have no clue to base that on. My family has lived at various spots around twenty miles or so away from this place from at least the 1700's, and five generations of my family have sat on that refurbished bench, but should that make any difference? I don't see why it should.

Besides, this man seemed to be living in a much, much more ancient time than five generations back. If he was wearing some sort of tunic, that could put him at any time from pre Roman to maybe as late as the 1600's.

Was I looking through another's eyes? Who was he? When was he? Was he nothing more than a reflected image from my store of imagined characters, or a real person in the past, sliding somehow into my present? I would love some answers. The experience was so sharp, and so exciting that it would be nice to think that he was somehow real, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that he's there now, in my mind, waiting for his story to be told. And that will definitely have to come from my imagination.

ONE AUTHOR'S WEEK: Pauline Fisk on Survival Training, Ballroom Dancing and Free Downloads

What a week.  First the promotional giveaway, then the research into ballroom dancing, then the survival training course in the deep green forests of Northampton.  It’s amazing what we authors get up to.

The giveaway first.  I’d never done anything like it before but Authors Electric were planning a collaborative giveaway of e-books in celebration of World Book Night and as a member of the group I thought why not? My novel, Midnight Blue, was available for promotions on Kindle Select and after years of selling all round the world, maybe this was my chance to share a little and extend my readership to a new generation of readers. 

Well, to be honest I thought I’d get a couple of hundred hits.  Nothing prepared me for the figures to keep rising until over a thousand copies had been downloaded in just a few short hours.  And, since the promotion ended, the sales continued to roll in, putting ‘Midnight Blue’ back in the Top 50 Amazon fantasy and children’s charts for the first time in nearly twenty years.

As an author, it’s fantastic to find your books read and enjoyed by successive generations of readers, young and old.  Since my big career decision at the age of nine, I’ve been a writer all my life.  For the last twenty years I’ve been a full-time writer, and the e-book market is the latest of my ventures.  I don’t know how successful it will ultimately prove to be, but knowing that my books are out there in perpetuity is a form of success in its own right.  Over the next year I intend to bring out much of my back list as e-books too.

But I haven’t forgotten the publishing world, and that’s why this week saw me not only on the internet giving away books but a] hitting the dance-floor, learning [from the sidelines] how to cha, cha, cha, and b] out in the jungles of Northamptonshire, learning first-hand how to light fire, collect water and bed down in torrential rain without getting wet.

For the first time in my writing life, I’m ghost-writing a book. I met the subject of that book out in Belize whilst researching my novel, ‘In the Trees’.  A six-foot-God-alone-knows-how-many-inches ex-Marine, care worker, boxer, expedition fixer for media companies, expedition leader, adventurer who’s lived with cannibals and learned his survival training skills from the Penan tribes of Borneo – even an avid ballroom dancer, John Sullivan’s a gift of a subject  to write a book with.  Not only are his stories extraordinary, but his photographs and films are stunning.  John’s a man who has done it all.  My week was finished off by going into school with him and seeing the effect of his talk on a theatre packed with sixth formers, who couldn’t have been more impressed if they’d met David Attenborough himself. 

I’ll be posting more on this subject, so watch this space.  In the meantime, I can tell you that if you want to learn to dance and live near Northampton, Andre’s your man.  His dancing school is heaving and, even for a clod-footed, rhythmless observer like me, what he’s teaching looks almost do-able.

Not only that, but if you want to cook your supermarket chicken [or freshly-caught road-kill] to perfection without pots or utensils in the Great Outdoors, an underground oven is the way to go [and would be great for a Christmas Dinner with a difference, to impress your friends].  Oh, and sleeping in a hammock strung up between trees can be as good a night as in the best hotel.  I do not kid.  Even if it rains – and it rained for me – you can still be comfortable. 

After all those hours before the computer watching figures rising on my free downloads, it was great awakening in woodlands to the smell of firewood and the gentle hiss of rain. The author’s life - who could want for anything else?

Pauline Fisk blogs on the author's life on:  www.paulinefisk.co.uk

 

   

When in School...Top Tips for REAL AUTHORS - Emma Barnes

“Drat,” I say – or something less suitable for a blog about children’s books – as the dog trips me up, and I go sprawling across the kitchen floor in the dark.

One of the great advantages of being a writer is there no need to get up early. Or to look smart. This is lucky for me, because I am much better at lounging around in my saggy tracksuit, tapping at my computer, and not needing to impress anyone except the dog (who is easily impressed).

Watch out for the dog!

But today is different.

Today is a School Visit day. The downside to that warm glow I always feel when a school gets in contact, and tells me that I am the right person to inspire their pupils with the love of literature (“Well, I’ll do my best,” I say modestly), is this scrambling about before dawn, so that I can set off and arrive bright and early before the school bell. And amazingly, I am never, ever late.

(All right, once I was caught in a hideous traffic jam. Once my train was delayed. And once – very embarrassing this – I got lost. In the city where I live. It wasn’t entirely my fault. They had built a new ASDA and changed the roads.)

I like to think that I have turned school visits into a streamlined military operation. Who am I kidding? As I stumble about with boxes of books, clutching my bag of sandwiches, fretting about my Sat Nav, and wondering uneasily if I remembered to fill up with petrol, the last thing on my mind is the joy of the imagination and the wonders of reading and all those other things I like to bang on about on my web-site.

Near Settle

When I am finally off, however, a kind of calm descends. One of the joys about school visits is that they take you places you would not usually go. As I drive through open moorland, or down twisting, fogbound country lanes, or through the immense snowy flatness of East Yorkshire, I am fascinated to discover new places, and landscapes that will stay with me after the day is finished.


Approaching my destination, uneasiness descends again. When it says “turn left” does my Sat Nav really mean into that industrial estate? And when I find the school – what do I do if the staff car park is locked? Is it OK to park on the street? What happens if a local resident comes out and shouts at me (as happened once. And there wasn’t even a yellow line!)

Arrived!

And then, suddenly, I am standing in front of a vast hall of bobbing faces, as the kind teacher says, “We are very lucky today, because here is Emma Barnes, a REAL AUTHOR, who has come to speak to us about her books!” And I wonder uneasily if I am what a REAL AUTHOR looks like, and if any of the children are disappointed, and whether actually I should have turned up in the muddy tracky bottoms after all, because that is what this REAL AUTHOR looks like when she is actually doing her writing.

 (And what would an UNREAL author look like and would that be more interesting?)

“Now tell me,” I begin, “who here loves reading?” And a forest of hands shoot up, and we’re talking favourite books, and favourite authors, and suddenly all is well. I read from my own book, and although I will never win any Oscars for my acting, I am not going to let that hold me back (I AM Fred the Grumpy Angel, I AM Martha the naughty child). The children laugh. The teachers too. (Maybe it’s at my hammy acting, but who cares?) And in the workshops, the kids make me laugh, with wonderful ideas and turns of phrase that I am tempted to steal for my next book.

I AM Martha!

I AM Jessica!

I fall back into my car at the end of the day exhausted, amused, intrigued and inspired. Schools are such fascinating places: each of them a world of their own. Even if everything does not go to plan, it’s always interesting. Even those Year 6 boys who insisted on turning what was supposed to be a funny, family story into a piece about an axe-murderer: well , it certainly livened up the session. And their teacher said they had never shown such enthusiasm for writing!

I turn the music up loud and set off back across the moors.

Top Tips for School Visitors:

Don’t rely on your SatNav. It may decide the A1 does not exist. Or (as mine once did) refuse to speak anything but Afrikaans. 

Never eat school dinners. Despite Jamie Oliver, it's not worth the risk.


Don’t leave your memory stick with powerpoint presentation at home. 

Hands off!

Don’t leave your memory stick with powerpoint presentation in the school computer.



Staff rooms can be funny places. Ask before you help yourself to a mug of tea (that might be the Headteacher's personal snoopy mug).  


Takes lots of sugar in your tea. You'll need it.


Above all, be ready for the unexpected. I was once the subject of  Prayers in assembly. “Oh Lord, make us more like this author! Let us write wonderfully like her!” I nearly collapsed from shock.

Emma Barnes's latest book is How (Not) To Make Bad Children Good
Visit Emma's web-site - with details about how to contact her for school visits!

The Dangers of Mythic Ignorance - Lucy Coats

Leda and the Swan (after Michelangelo): National Gallery, London

This is a true story.  Last week, a policeman was passing a gallery in central London, when he saw a photographic depiction (by Derrick Santini) of the Greek myth 'Leda and the Swan' in the window.  He phoned for support, whereupon two uniformed officers entered the gallery and demanded that the picture be taken down immediately.  The owner of the gallery said that the policeman told her that: “the photograph suggested we condoned bestiality, which was an arrestable offence. They stood there and didn't leave until we took the picture down.”  When the officers were informed that the picture was of a well-known Greek myth, the gallery owner went on: "they said they didn't know anything about the myth.  It's crazy...the cultural references were lost on them." And that's what makes me most sad, really, that last phrase.

The cultural references were lost on them.

Much of our greatest art and literature is based on Greek myths.  Once, every schoolchild would have known how to interpret those 'cultural references'.  This is no longer the case.  Greek myths are taught in schools for a term at most, as part of a wider 'myth module'.  I've talked to many thousands of kids about them, doing school visits and festivals on a regular basis. I use art to illustrate those talks - Botticelli's Primavera, Piero di Cosimo's Perseus and Andromeda, JW Waterhouse's Odysseus and the Sirens among many others. I also include sculpture, pottery and friezes. A good proportion of the kids are fascinated, inspired, and want to know more.  But it's not enough to give them more than a flavour, and I can only get round so many schools in a year. Without being able to access those stories as part of their basic cultural knowledge, that photograph of Leda and her god-like lover in swan form was just an obscene picture to those policemen, seen as likely to corrupt and endanger public morals. The same could be implied, say, of this bronze of Europa and the Bull by American sculptor Paul Manship, or of the painting at the top of this piece. I think that's a dangerous road to go down - but it's what ignorance can lead to.

Europa and the Bull (Paul Manship, 1924)

Greek myths are full of taboo things which would rightly be seen to be distasteful/forbidden in everyday life, not only to the modern mind, but to the ancients too.  There's incest (on a regular basis), there's bestiality, there's cannibalism, there's murder.... Having read and studied them for more than 40 years, I am intimately familiar with most of their darker sides.  I've had to find ways round those same darker sides while retelling the myths for children (my Atticus the Storyteller's 100 Greek Myths is still the biggest published collection for children to date), and that's the question I get asked most by adults. "But how did you get round all that stuff - and how do you deal with the questions from children about it?" Adults, you note, not kids, because the short answer is that children never ask.  Not once in all the years I've been talking to kids have I ever had a question like "But surely Zeus is sleeping with his daughter/cousin/sister - how come that's happening?"

Gods behave differently, and by their very nature myths are allowed a certain latitude in these things. They are, in their way, archetypal lessons in living, in coping with the human condition.  They show us examples of the (almost always dreadful in the end) consequences of certain actions, both taboo and what might be termed hubristic.  All life is here if you care to look.  But for me, in the end, the myths are above all else great stories, stories that everyone should know, because even in the 21st century, references to them are everywhere in our everyday lives. Pulled an Achilles tendon running the Marathon? Bought a pair of Nike trainers to run it in? Poured Ambrosia custard on your well-deserved apple crumble afterwards? Opened an atlas? Watched the new 3D version of Titanic? If you don't know the stories behind those words, you can't access the full reference or meaning, and as we've seen above, at its worst, ignorance of our shared mythic heritage can lead to censorship and the threat of arrest. That's just plain dangerous, in my opinion.

Preparing to Launch - Megan Rix

Some books appear with a whisper and others arrive with a fanfare - and it's not always easy to tell why. 'The Great Escape' has had much more pre-launching than I'm accustomed to. I've worked with an enthusiastic marketing and publicity team - and it's been fun and exciting.  

So far I've done features for National Newspapers including: My Top 10 Recommendations for Animal Books set during War Time with two books by members of the Scattered Authors Society on the list - plus heartfelt thanks to the members of Balaclava for their own recommendations of possibilities for me to read, as well as my local library's suggestions. I've also done  interviews on why I wrote the book with questions that have no easy answers - like why I thought the terrible pet massacre at the start of WW2 happened. (My animal heroes escape from this fate.)

I've been booked to chat on the Radio on May 17th: It's for the 'Barking at the Moon' with the lovely Jo Good and Anna Webb and their dogs, Matilda and Molly who I met when I was interviewed for my memoir 'The Puppy that Came for Christmas.  

National Competitions: Not one but TWO great competitions. Did you know that from 7th April - 7th May it's National Pet Month? 'The Great Escape' has been selected to be in the line up of  competitions to celebrate it:     
                 http://www.nationalpetmonth.org.uk/competition/greatescape

And the Young Times' is running a competition to win a prize that money can't buy called `My Pet My Hero': http://www.puffin.co.uk/thegreatescape

Libraries: It's been selected as part of 2012's Library summer Reading challenge.

Blogs: Lots of blogs! Not just this one, Girls Heart Books, the Puffin Blog – oh and something   for the Puffin Post and Writer's Digest in the USA. 

Invitations:  Book shops inviting me to sign and schools inviting me to talk have been coming in thick and fast over the past month. The first one's on May 12th at Bedford Waterstones from l0-4 pm with future ones at Kettering on June 30th and Bury St Edmunds at the beginning of July. When I asked if my four year old golden retriever, Traffy, could attend as she came along to my previous book signings for The Puppy that Came for Christmas and loves meeting and greeting Bedford Waterstones remembered her (she's also a PAT dog) and said of course! They gave us this amazing write up:

  
             Waterstones invites the dynamic duo... Megan Rix and “Traffy Rix” 
 Bedford happily invites the fabulous Megan Rix and her loyal companion Traffy for a signing of Megan's new book 'The Great Escape.' It is a story of friendship, adventure and a bit of history thrown into the mix. Set in the Second world war an animal trio are trying to escape their fate. Will they succeed? Come and meet Megan & Traffy and find out.

It was all VERY EXCITING - until real life happened and we stopped being the dynamic duo: An ultrasound scan showed all was not right inside Traffy and on the 19th April the animal hospital found, during a four hour operation, that she had a cyst literally as big as a baby inside her that was attached to her womb and intestines and blocked her ureter to the single kidney she has (the other failed two years ago.) We were so happy when she was allowed home on the 24th April and started learning how to manage life with an initially doubly incontinent dog. But when I took her back for an ultrasound on the 27th there was more bad news - although she was incontinent her bladder wasn't emptying sufficiently and there was no way of clearing the urine infection she had with antibiotics so she'd need to have a cystostomy tube fitted. As I drove home, having left her to be operated on again, all I wanted was to be able stay at the hospital with her rather than remembering her, shaking and frightened, as they took her away. Life at our house felt all wrong without her there. Even her sister, golden retriever, Bella, went to bed and cried. 

Launching once started doesn't just stop - whatever's happening in real life:

Our weekly local paper arranged to visit us on Monday but then the hospital phoned to say Traffy could come home, so I phoned the paper only to find the reporter had broken her leg and wanted to do the interview over the phone - perfect! But they still wanted to take a photograph of me and Traffy and Bella the next day. Poor Traffy looked like she'd been in a war when I brought her home. Her fur was all chopped about and she had stitches along the length of her abdomen, tubes that needed to be syringed, and a Buster collar so she didn't scratch or dislodge the tube. Still, I thought we could manage a photo. I knew the photographer from previous shoots and trusted her. So, in between syringing off Traffy's urine from the cystostomy tube to make sure she was producing enough - needs to be done every 4-6 hours, I was sticking heated rollers in my hair and slapping on some make-up for the photo shoot. One hour to go and we all looked as ready as we were going to when there was a phone call to say the photographer was running late so they were going to use one of the photos they'd taken previously. I threw off my smart clothes and crawled into bed with the dogs (Traffy hadn't been able to sleep in the hard plastic buster collar she needs to wear during the night so I'd sat up with her so she could sleep while wearing a soft one) Bella snuggled up next to Traffy - she's hardly left her side since she came home. For not the first time I was very grateful to be a writer with my hours as flexible as they needed to be and able to work wherever I happened to be; the animal hospital saw a good few thousand words written on a visit whilst Traffy was being taken off for tests and my office became the laptop on our bed while she rested there. Thank goodness for phones and emails rather than proper human contact! And thank goodness for the animal hospital - Traffy's not out of the woods yet but Tuesday was better than Monday for her and yesterday she was demanding small walks with long sleeps afterwards. Next Monday we go back to the animal hospital and start working hopefully towards her not needing the tube long term. As pre-launch ends with the launch of The Great Escape today it seems like it'll be the beginning of fun times and walks down the river and a million treats to look forward to for Traffy and Bella. And hopefully Traffy'll make it to the book signing. I think she probably will but if I feel it'll be too much for her Bella could stand in for her for part or all of the time - although meeting and greeting isn't really quite her thing - she'd much rather be splashing in the river.

Ruth's website is www.ruthsymes.com. Megan Rix's website is www.meganrix.com.

My suitcase is packed...... by Miriam Halahmy

How do you write what is in your heart if you are fifteen years old, your mother tongue is Arabic or Somali or Amharic and you have only been in the UK for six months? This year I had the opportunity to work on a project organised by English PEN and the Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn, North London, for newly arrived young people. Last week we launched the anthology of their work, 'My Suitcase is Packed' at the theatre, with many of the young people reading on stage.

After working with people from many different countries with minimal English for some years I have come to realise that in fact 'less is more' and perhaps it is even possible to get closer to your feelings if your vocabulary is very limited.
Asked to write on the subject of 'Power Over My Life', in the form of an acrostic, one boy from Somali wrote :
My life is like a movie
Yesterday is gone and it will never come back.

Watching these young people come on stage and read in English in front of an audience of their peers, their teachers, the guest authors which included the well know poet and performer, John Hegley, I was amazed at their poise and confidence. They read beautifully, they were clear and concise and they gave us a very strong impression of their feelings about their home countries and their lives in the UK.

One of the poems I used in my session was 'Go and Open the Door' by Miroslav Holub. Some amazing and deeply moving poetry emerged.
Hamed from Somalia who has not seen his mother's face for five years wrote :
Go and open the door
maybe outside there is a river of blood
Go and open the door
maybe outside there is my old home.


Being given the opportunity to bear witness has a huge effect on asylum seekers in a writing workshop. Ahmed commented to us after we listened to his poem, "This has been the best day of my life." I interpreted this as meaning, at last I have been heard. This is what he wrote in class :
Iraq is the country
maybe I will see dead and war
maybe I will see guns bombs and bullets
but no matter what
I will see happy, helpful and nice people.

One of the high points of the performance at the Tricycle was the reading of a poem by John and a simultaneous translation into Somali by Abukhar which he did very fluently.

...your journey is your own
my heart is like a stone
and I know how it must be
I know you must be free
and I knew you wouldn't 
get very far without me.

Philip Cowell, Director of the Readers and Writers programme at English PEN commented on stage, "Writing is a brave thing to do. It is a true expression of free speech and it is a very brave thing to come up on stage and to read your work." English PEN campaigns for freedom of speech for all writers wherever they are in the world and fundraises for projects in prisons and with refugees and asylum seekers to ensure they also have access to opportunities to write and be heard.

All the participants received this lovely certificate and will have the opportunity to use the work in these sessions towards receiving an Arts Award. For some of these young people who will miss out on GCSEs this is a chance to gain a first qualification and they were all very proud of their certificates, as you can imagine.

Go and open the door

Maybe outside there's

A celebration of your mother's birthday and lovely faces

smiling with you.

Go and open the door

Maybe there's a Lion fighting with the people or your country is burning.

Go and open the door

You'll see your mother smiling at you

Or your boyfriend

Just

Go and open the door

Maybe there's 

Your boyfriend kissing your lips

Or your dreams coming true.

by Fadumo Mohamed ( who enjoys reading history books, playing basketball and watching TV.)

You can find out more about English PEN at this link : http://www.englishpen.org/

http://www.miriamhalahmy.com/

Mangling the Language: N M Browne

Today I’ve been thinking about sentences and how to mangle them.
In my experience the majority of sentence mangling occurs when writers aren’t sure about what they are doing. I teach from time to time and come across quite a lot of mangling one way or another. Sometimes a student might write a fight scene but hasn’t visualised it properly so tries to describe several actions in the one sentence or a writer might want to explain some element of a character’s personality but aren’t entirely sure of what they want to say. Sometimes mangling occurs when someone wants to appear more erudite than their knowledge actually justifies, or when they have been told that they shouldn’t repeat the same word too often and raid the thesaurus for synonyms... always risky. Mangled sentences tend to accompany mangled thinking or maybe, for those of us who only think when we’re writing, mangled writing produces mangled thinking.
I’ve been speculating about the issue because I had to write an English essay for the first time in well over thirty years and my God, were my sentences mangled. Everything I’ve learned through writing fiction was forgotten in an instant and I was once more an intense, swotty teenager, constructing sentences of labyrinthine complexity, laying sub-clause on sub-clause, periphrasis on qualification, until the whole inelegant edifice collapsed under its own weight.
In the intervening years I have written business reports, reviews, young children’s stories and novels. I’ve written simple stories with limited vocabulary. I love short punchy sentences. I can’t explain why when faced with the prospect of writing an essay I panicked. I would like to say I reverted to type- only back in the day I did everything long hand and I think I actually thought in those dense, complex sentences because it was always easier to add a rider or another clause rather than start again, rethink and redraft. It is so easy to edit these days - so why did I forget how? It was as if like some character in one of my own novels I was actually magically transported back to 1979 and my days of wild hair, ink pens and overweening intellectual pretension. I swear I could hear the juke box strains of Santana’s ‘Samba pa ti’ weave their way through the sixth form common room of my memory. No wonder the essay was rubbish.
Still one should always learn from one’s mistakes and I suppose I learned several things from this humiliating endeavour: transferable skills aren’t always transferred, the past exerts a powerful pull on the present, I need to be more tolerant of students prolixity and I need to practise essay writing...

The answer to your question... depends on who you are (Anne Rooney)

Google tailors the results of your searches to suit what it thinks you want to find. That sounds quite benign and helpful, doesn't it? Sometimes, it is helpful. But I don't want Google - a mindless machine - to filter information. I know better than Google what I'm interested in. And sometimes, I might be looking not for what I want to find but for what someone else would find.

The Google bias came into sharp focus the other day when I was doing some research for a new novel. On my laptop, a Google images search for 'Borromeo' came up with just the right thing - lots of images of a sixteenth-century cardinal. I wanted to print one to stick in my workbook for the novel, but the colour printer isn't wifi'd to the Mac, so I did the same search on the PC, logged in as Small Bint.

This time, Google images showed lots of pictures of an Italian model called Beatrice Borromeo.

So Google knows I like dead cardinals and Small Bint likes fashion. This seems harmless, if irritating. But now I'm worried. What if there is a porn star or a serial killer called Borromeo? I won't see his image when searching for Borromeo. Small Bint won't - she'll see fashion models. Now posit a reader of this novel-in-progress. And let's suppose the reader shares a computer with a family member who likes looking at porn sites or real crime sites. When they search for more info about the character, they see the porn star or the vicious killer.

Google's tailored search results make it hard to check that things are safe. I've always Googled the names of principal characters, just in case. But now Google is so careful not to show me what it thinks I don't want to see, who knows what other people will find?

Of course, it's possible to search not logged in as anyone, or go to the library and search on a different computer. But I don't like the idea that the information has been filtered like this. And I don't like having to remember that Google's top results might not overlap with what someone completely different would see.

If I were to come over all philosophical, I'd say it was quite profound - do I see blue like you see blue? Do things I don't know about exist? Nice as the philosophical pondering is, when you just want to know if a character is a cardinal, a model or a porn star, it's not much use.

Now there's a thought... by Sue Purkiss

I read Ann Evans' post yesterday with great interest, and - all right, I admit it, just a tiny little bit of envy. She seems to have so many ideas that she turns into stories. At the end, she asked what was the oddest object/place/thing to have inspired her readers so far. Hm, I thought, trying to remember even one. Could be struggling here.

It was at this point that I glanced up at the calendar that hangs above my desk - and saw that the next Abba post was to be by, er, me. Curses! Not an idea in sight for that either. I reached for my notebook, desperately seeking inspiration.

And I got a bit of a surprise. First I came across the preliminary notes for a Christmas story about a small witch who lived in a large cave at Wookey Hole, which is not far from here. That was printed in the local paper last Christmas. Had forgotten about that. The seed for it was planted a very long time ago, when I made up a story for my little niece (who, incidentally, has just got married) about the Witch of Wookey, after we'd been to visit Wookey Hole. Apparently she was terrified by it for ages afterwards. If ONLY I could remember it.... the recent one was a very much milder version.

Then I came across the beginnings of a story inspired by my grandson, who is undeniably gorgeous but also on occasion Rather Naughty. Hm, I thought, reading about the mother who was a Very Fast Knitter. Intriguing. Must come back to that when I've finished climbing the mountain-so-much-higher-than-Everest that is my current work in progress.

Next up: the beginnings of a story about an old man who has to give up his allotment. Not very thrilling, you may mistakenly think - believe me, that story will plumb the darkest depths of the human heart: full of drama, tragedy and pathos, it will leave you feeling wrung out, such will be its power. (If I ever finish it.)

Turn over a few pages, and onto the stage comes the Willow Man. I've already written a book about him, so he really can't complain, but he's currently being threatened by a gigantic Morrison's warehouse apparently made out of green Lego - so perhaps he's due for another story.

And finally, one that's been niggling away since I went to Brittany two years ago and visited the inn where Gauguin and  some of his friends stayed for a few months: the Buvette de la Plage. But that one's still on the boil: no, no,  it doesn't matter how much you plead, I won't tell you another word. (The picture was taken nearby.)

So what have I learnt from this exercise?

1. You should from time to time actually look through all those notes you've made in that oh-so-pretty notebook.
2. It's not just about having ideas - it's about actually doing something with them.
3. Hurrah! I have more ideas than I thought I did.

Now - I suppose I'd really better get on with the mountain-in-progress - and then I can take some of those fine ideas out, dust 'em off, shake 'em out, and show them the light of day...