BBC Maestro - Sue Purkiss

 

Ken Follett

A few weeks ago, I noticed an ad with a special offer for the BBC Maestro courses. Now, I like a good course. It's always interesting to hear other writers talking about their craft, and I find there's always something to learn.

So I investigated. The courses aren't just about writing - they cover all sorts of other topics too, such as painting, well-being, music, script-writing - but these were the ones I was interested in. I decided to look at Ken Follett. If you haven't come across him, Ken (I feel we are good friends now, so I'm sure he won't mind if I call him Ken) is a writer of hugely popular historical fiction and thrillers. You can click on any of the couses and see a trailer, and I liked the sound of Ken's course, so I decided to buy it. The offer price was £47.40 for 22 lessons/six hours, which seemed to me extremely reasonable compared to what you would pay for any real-life course. 

And I have found it absolutely brilliant. I think one of the main standouts is that, despite the fact that Ken has clearly made enough from his writing to retire several times over, he's still absolutely passionate  about it. He loves writing, and he works really hard at it. Of course, now, he can afford to pay researchers, and also has a vast network of very useful contacts and a very supportive publisher - but he still puts in the hours and the work, typically taking about three years to write one of his epics. The research takes a long time: he doesn't specialise in one period, so often, he's starting from scratch - he ranges from the Vikings to nuclear war. 

I had read a few of his books a while ago, but I've read a lot more since watching the course. Even if these are not the type of fiction you normally read (he is entirely upfront about the fact that he is not writing literary fiction: he wants to write books that lots of people will want to read - and that will, incidentally, become bestsellers and make him lots of money), you will, if you're anything like me, find yourself unable to stop turning the pages. And he tells you just how he does this - he is very generous in the way he shares what he has learnt over many years. Of course, it's a very different thing writing a vast historical epic with a large cast of characters and many interweaving stories, as opposed to a very much shorter book for children, but still, there's a lot of carryover.

Having thoroughly enjoyed listening to Ken, I discovered that for another £36 I could have access to all of the courses for a year. So I followed up Ken with Jojo Moyes - also a delight, and so generous in sharing her expertise - and then with Lee Child. (I'm taking longer over Lee Child. To be honest, I find him slightly scary. Especially after reading some of the books.) Malorie Blackman awaits, also Harlan Coban and many others - I have my eye on a storytelling course, and also one on public speaking.

What emerges from all the ones I've listened to so far is a) how hard they all work, and b) how different their processes are. Lee Child, for instance, works in an utterly different way from Ken: Ken is a planner, Lee Child is - not. For one the story is paramount, for another it's the characters. Lee Child is particularly interesting on language: he considers every word: the weight of it, the sound of it, the meaning of it. 

I may not be about to write a multi-million selling adult novel of my own (though you never know, you never know...), but I have found these courses invigorating and, yes - inspiring. But for now, as they all point out, you don't get anywhere unless you get on with it. So - er - off I go to do just that. Although I might just listen to one or two more lessons first. And there is the washing to get out of the tumble dryer - and maybe it's time for another coffee...

He Says ... She Says ..., written by Anne Fine, Illustrated by Gareth Conway, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

This easy to read Barrington Stoke story in short chapters and with fun illustration delivers a very good joke. That joke is pitched at just the right level for middle of primary school age children for whom nothing is funnier than adults being proven to be fallible. 

Siblings Harry and Skye dread spending time with Gran because they’ve been brought-up on Dad’s stories of how strict she’s always been. No treats to eat, no being lazy, lots of chores set, and more. But, actually, Gran proves to have similar tastes to themselves, wanting time on her computer, enjoying pizza and ice-cream. When they get home again, they play the same game as Dad, telling their parents of out the chores done for Gran etc, so their parents give them pizza and ice cream for supper as well! ‘Don’t spoil it,’ Harry tells Skye. ‘This way, they feel so sorry for us that we always get our favourite supper when we get home.’ A win for the kids! 

Happy International Hawaiian Pizza Day - Joan Lennon

Hawaiian Pizza (Wiki commons)

Twenty-year-old Sam Panopoulos came to Canada from Greece and in 1962 opened a restaurant with his brothers. Canada is described as a mosaic of nations (as opposed to the US which is described as a melting pot - make of that what you will). And the menu at their restaurant included all sorts of things, such as Chinese food, burgers and fries ... and pizza. Inspired by the sweet and sour flavours of some of their Chinese dishes, Sam opened a tin of pineapple chunks* and flung them on a ham pizza, just to see what happened.

Culinary history was made, and today, the 20th of July, we celebrate International Hawaiian Pizza Day.

Since Sam's experiment, plenty of people have publicly and vociferously objected. You may be one of them. (Disclaimer: I like ham and pineapple on a pizza. And I'm from Canada.) But what does pizza of any sort and Hawaiian pizza in particular have to do with writing?  

This may feel like a stretch, but maybe it's a metaphor for not being afraid - for being open to all sorts of things - to go for the joy of crazy rather than the safe of sane. Fusion? Why not? Sweet AND savoury? Why not? There are many things we stop ourselves doing, as writers, for fear of how others will react. 'You can't do that,' says the persistent little voice in our heads, 'somebody will object.' But maybe we should all try to be, now and then, a bit more pineapple.

* The pizza is named after the label on the tin - Hawaii Pineapple.

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram 

The Haunted Doll's House - by Lu Hersey

 Some things represent big stuff from your past that you haven't managed to deal with yet. Lurking in dark corners, they lie in wait, filling you with guilt every time you see them. For me, one of these is the haunted doll's house in the garage.

My mother bought it in the late 80s for my eldest daughter, who was just a toddler at the time. 'It's an heirloom,' she said, so I knew it had cost her way too much. 'It's nearly as good as my old doll's house,' she added. 'The one my father made me.'  

Unfortunately the doll's house my grandfather had made her met with a terrible, splintering demise when my father backed a car into it by mistake. All that had survived was the doll's house furniture, and the weird pipe cleaner dolls that lived inside (she'd named them Lucinda and Jane, after the dolls in Beatrix Potter's A Tale of Two Bad Mice. I was also named Lucinda thanks to that blooming book, and always hated it) Anyway, all these years later, my mother had carefully put the surviving furniture into the new 'heirloom', along with Lucinda and Jane.  

My daughter was far too young for a fancy doll's house, but my mother already knew she was dying - and she wanted this to be something my daughter could treasure after she'd gone, just as she had treasured the doll's house her father had made, long after he had passed. The layers of hereditary guilt were building.

It turned out my daughter was more of a train girl than a doll's house girl. Thomas the Tank Engine was her best thing from a very early age (much later she became a train blogger, travelling the world on trains). 

My son, who was born the week after my mother died, told me recently that he'd always wanted the doll's house for his dinosaurs to live in, but didn't like to ask. Which is a shame as I'd have been overjoyed that at least SOMEONE wanted to play with the damn thing. His dinosaurs would have had a great time living there, and even better, they had sensible names like Joe, Harry and Dan. Absolutely no Lucindas or Janes. 

Instead, after a few more years gathering dust, the doll's house ended up in the loft. And there it might have stayed, out of sight, out of mind, until one Boxing Day the house caught fire, and everything in the house, including in the loft, ended up badly smoke damaged. Hurrah you might think. Finally I could dump the thing and claim for it on the insurance. Lose the guilt.

For some inexplicable reason, I didn't. Instead, despite the damage, I kept it. I have no idea why. Maybe because it was something tangible that my mother had attached so much importance to, and I felt bad about letting it go. 

Silly me. I moved house soon afterwards, and the now blackened, haunted doll's house came with me, ending up where it is now. In my garage. Every time I go in there, I see it squatting in the corner, decaying slowly, filled with spiders and my guilt. 

But time passes and things are changing again. My partner wants to convert the garage to a workshop, and the doll's house finally has to go, once and for all. I'm facing up to the fact it's not my thing and it never was. Maybe someone I know wants a Gothic doll's house that looks like a miniature Miss Haversham's place. If not I'm going to ritually burn it, along with Lucinda and Jane and all the guilt. 

I can always write it into something later...

Lu Hersey.

Find me on Patreon at Writing the Magic 

On X as LuWrites

Threads as luwrites

Notes from an unpaid hobbyist, unless getting paid once counts - Rowena House

 

According to The Guardian’s report on last week’s welcome by the Royal Society of Literature of its 2024 cohort of fellows, RSL president Bernadine Evaristo said she was inspired to talk about readers, “for whom most authors, one assumes, are writing – and the importance of nurturing and engaging with them in the literature ecosystem.”

So far, so good. Then...

“Without readers, writing would be an unpaid hobby...”

Seeing red yet?

“They [readers] are our supporters, interpreters, the customers without whom there would, in fact, be no publishing industry.”

So writing, according to her argument, is a hobby unless the product of that process is bought by customers of the publishing industry.

Way to go, Ms Evaristo.

I haven’t time to analyse this properly, nor can I find her full speech which might put these comments into context. Perhaps The Guardian was being mischievous.

If not, it is shocking to me that the RSL president should sound exactly like an inner critic who belittles our creative selves and disparages our work unless and until we get paid for it.

I mean, how much money makes us professional writers rather than hobbyists? Three figures, four, five, six? Must our books pay for our mortgages as well as our groceries? Is art for art’s sake a thing of the past, and the publishing industry the very habitat within which the “literature ecosystem” exists?

This month, again – you’ll never guess – I’m grumpy about writing. My rhino hide is thin, time is scarce, and the fulfilment of turning thoughts into words elusive. Hopefully, next month things will be mending.

Meanwhile, well done all the 2024 RSL fellows. May you inspire both readers and writers.

 

 

 

The Great Abba Summer Quiz by Lynne Benton

 Since we’re now half-way through July, I realise that most schoolchildren in England will break up in a couple of weeks, so there may be some occasion, especially if it should be raining, when a Quiz about children’s books could come in handy!

Here it is:

All you have to do is find the name of the main character, the letters of which have been reshuffled into alphabetical order (though I give their initials to help) and connect it with the writer of the book in which they appear.  As an example I give you this:

1)      Aehoprrrtty  (HP)    A) J K Rowling

I suspect most people will find this one quite easy: it is, of course, Harry Potter, by J K Rowling. 

Others may be rather more challenging!  And don’t forget, the name of the writer won’t be directly opposite the name of the character, so you’ll have to do a bit of searching.  (Mostly I’ve chosen the main character in their most popular book, but not always – however, the names are likely to be familiar to you, even if you haven’t read the book in which they appear.)

Sounds complicated?  It isn’t really.  Just a bit of a challenge!  May I suggest that you check out the authors first, then think of their most famous characters and see if you can find them by their initials, and then check if all the letters in the alphabetised version of their name match.

 (And of course there’s no law against looking up the writers online to find out about their books…)

Anyway, here is the list

1    Aeehilnnrsy                          (AS)               A) Philippa Pearce

2  Acdddeeijklmmpuu            (JP)                   B) Frances Hodgson Burnett

3  Glmnoot                                (TL)               C) CS Lewis

4  Ceeelnpsuvy                          (LP)               D) Noel Streatfeild

      5  Aefilooprsstv                        (PF)                 E) JM Barrie

      6 Achjmor                                (JM)                F) Susan Coolidge

      7  Abiillmnorww                      (WB)              G) AA Milne  

      8  Abbbggliinos                        (BB)                H) LM Montgomery

      9  Aackrrty                                (KC)               I) Roald Dahl

     10  Aabceekrrty                         (TB)                J) Richmal Crompton

     11  Aelmnnorxy                         (ML)              K) Beatrix Potter

     12  Aefilmorstw                          (AF)              L) Jacqueline Wilson

     13  Accejknoprsy                        (PJ)               M) Dodie Smith

     14  Abcceehilkrtu                       (CB)              N) JRR Tolkein

     15  Aimnoppprsy                        (MP)              O) Rick Riordan

     16  Admort                                  (MT)             P) Louisa May Alcott

     17 Acdeeeillllruv                       (CdV)            Q) Eoin Colfer

     18  Addegilnnrwy                       (WD)            R) Lewis Carroll

     19 Acddeeiillll                            (AL)              S) Kenneth Grahame

     20  Bcehhiinooprrrst                 (CR)                T) PL Travers

 

Good luck!  Answers next month, and have a good holiday, everyone!

Website:lynnebenton.com

 

 

 

The Book That Poured Out by Sheena Wilkinson

As I revealed last month, I’m shortly to publish my tenth novel. But First Term at Fernside, published by the O’Brien Press in September, is actually my eleventh published book, and it’s taking me right back to the first one.

In 2007 Friends in the Fourth, based on my PhD about girls’ school stories, was published by Bettany Press, a small, specialist publisher.  Only a few hundred people bought that book, but it led directly to Fernside so I’ll always be glad of it, though at the time, having consigned my PhD to not-always-happy memory and being impatient to be published as a novelist, I found it a bit of a chore. 

When my last book, Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau, was published last year by HarperCollins, an interviewer in the Irish Times asked me: Your PhD was on girls’ school stories yet you’ve never written one. Why not? My response was: I’m fascinated by female spaces. My story “Let me be part of all this joy” (in Female Lines, New Island, 2017) is set in a 1920s girls’ school. There definitely is a girls’ school story in me: if any publisher reading this wants to commission one, I’m your woman!

Partly, this was a throwaway remark. But a little bit of me was sending out an idea into the universe to see what might happen… After all, I am a fiction writer: I have to believe in magic. 

And what did happen was that, maybe three weeks later, Kunak McGann, Rights Director at the O’Brien Press, a very well-established and respected Irish publisher, emailed to say: We really enjoyed your recent interview in the Irish Times and were intrigued by your mention of a girls’ school story. We ... would be very interested to explore what you might do with a novel (or series, even?) set in a girls’ school ... 

I replied 21 minutes later. By the next day I had Ideas, and a few days after that I more or less had my school, my main characters and my plot. 

Writing a novel is never exactly easy but I can honestly say that First Term at Fernside is the most fun I have ever had writing a book. In many ways, it was the book that had been inside me for most of my life, since, aged six, I read my very first school story – First Term at Malory Towers, the gateway book for so many school story fans! The story poured out. I wanted contrasting main characters whose fates were linked, so Robin and Linnet are cousins, and initially incompatible. Robin is apparently the perfect schoolgirl – a sporty, popular all-rounder, but she’s hiding quite a lot of worry under her sensible demeanour. Linnet is sensitive and eccentric, desperately at sea in this world of noisy girls. I loved exploring how they each find their own way of being in a community which is mostly benign but which has its challenges. 

 

And of course the writing had its challenges too: the story will be read by children born in the 2010s, but is set in 1925, right at the time when the girls’ school story craze was at its height. I needed to capture the attitudes and reality of that time – it’s very definitely historical fiction and is not pretending to be anything else – while allowing for the sensibilities of a different age. 

 

I was also very aware of being steeped in the traditional girls’ school story and wanting to honour that tradition, without any suggestion of pastiche – rather as my 2014 novel Too Many Ponies had done with the pony book tradition. 

What helped is that the school story has remained popular -- despite attempts by publishers and librarians throughout the twentieth century to outlaw what were often seen as elitist, trashy books, school stories just kept reinventing themselves. Fernside might well owe a lot to Malory Towers and the Chalet School, but it's by no means an outlier in 21st century children's fiction. Robin Steven's Murder Most Unladylike series; Elly Griffith's Justice books; Daisy May Johnson's How To Be books are all examples of recently-written books owing a lot to the school story tradition. Fernside isn't even O'Brien Press's only girls' school story -- earlier this year they published the wonderful TheTower Ghost by Natasha Mac a Bháird, set in a convent school in 1960s Donegal. 

So in First Term at Fernside you’ll find everything you’d expect in a traditional girls’ school story – sports teams and after-lights-out adventures (though no midnight feasts!); friendship and feuds; mean matrons and marvellous mistresses, and a big mystery which the girls have to rely on their own resources to solve. But it’s very much a 2020s book too, with an emphasis on diversity, empathy and inclusion. And like all my books, especially my 1916-1921 Irish trilogy, it’s feminist, with its unapologetic emphasis on female experience. It can’t possibly be anything else: girls receiving secondary education in the 1920s was, by definition, feminist.

So here it is -- the book that poured out of me! I can't wait for people to read it and to discover -- or rediscover -- the joy of the girls' school story. 

 

And will there be any more terms at Fernside? Reader, I do hope so!