Hello! It's the first of April and. listening to the news, I have no heart for jokes However, I do have a story to tell.
Thoughout March, I have been working on a children's story called THE GINGER TOM CAFE. I have been creating one chapter a week. (So little? Read on please.) It has been an amazing experience.
The story was written through Fiction Express, an online educational publisher, who offer an interesting literacy model, who contacted me late last year. My 'Ginger Tom Cafe' scenario and characters offered the most relevant mix of themes for their students at the first Level and so it went ahead. The cover was designed, the initial chapter written and edited, a short author video was required, all at a gentle pace, at least from here at my desk.
Chapter One was published online on the first Friday of March 2022, and from then on, life became a little concentrated, because all four of the five chapters had a strong 'cliffhanger ending'. After reading the chapter, the students voted for one of three options. The winning choice fed into the next chapter, and so on. The week took on a busy rhythm.
As soon as the vote was confirmed on Tuesday afternoon, I outlined the next chapter, conferred with my lovely and helpful editor, adapted the storyline if needed, wrote and submitted the text and approved the edit. By late Thursday, that chapter was sent off to a different time zone for formatting as book pages.
Early on Friday, a copy of that new chapter was with me for what became my favourite task. I printed the pages out, read them through and marked them up.
Then, with silence imposed in the house, I clamped my phone in its special holder, positioned the pages across my desk, checked I wasn't sitting on the creaky bench and recorded the chapter on my mobile.
By 10am, my short audio recoding had been emailed to my editor.
By 10.30am, both audio and pages were available for schools.
By 11am, I had posted an open question on the Fiction Express Forum. This special feature allows students, wherever they are, to contribute their thoughts and reflections about aspects of the story. Others followed during the week.
Above each student's "name", was a small coloured circle. I soon realised that I was writing this story in the virtual company of
children and young people from Spain, Italy, Greece, Mexico, India as well as the UK. It made me feel quite giddy. After two years and more without meeting many real-life children, the interaction felt an utter delight. There's a small invitation only Zoom session in May which will be - I hope - even more fun.
There have been odd moments, of course. As the rain poured down in Yorkshire, students from sunnier countries were suggesting a whole range of outdoor "street" events to bring more customers to the fictional Cafe. Subtleties of genre were not always understood: angry monsters, gangsters and a giant cake fight were not really going to fit with what is quite a gentle domestic story. Nor was the suggestion to get Brad Pitt and Will Smith to visit the cafe.
I enjoyed working on the story very much, partly because it includes cats, cakes, a charming cafe, a touch of peril and confusion plus several characters. It was a nice place to be when so much awful stuff is raging around.
I was also very impressed by all the background material created for the students by the Fiction Express team, and by the two higher level books being created at the same time by authors Jo Franklin and David McPhail. (How as the weeks whirl by, the FE team cope, I do not know. Respect!)
How, as the weeks whirl by,
the FE team cope with all the juggling,
I cannot imagine.
Respect!
Personally, I learned quite a lot:
How to make make short videos and audio recordings on my mobile after being a fan of author invisibility.
How to be as much a planner as a pantser, though my pantsing did help when the votes suddenly swerved.
How working at a set speed can be fun, especially after the torpid effect of the lockdowns.
How working closely with an known editor, responding in real time was such a positive experience, compared to sending scripts off into the void or waiting months for any reply or activity. It truly felt like collaborative working.
How, even though I'd written myself a timetable, the days didn't always go to plan - but sometimes that flexibility brought me space for seeing friends and so on.
How people at home respected the structure of the week = at least for one month - even as the pattern limited what we were free to to do.
How I still find it satisfying to create a story, especially one that readers are interested in.
And how, all in all, it was fun, and for the students and schools too, I hope.
Many thanks to all the Fiction Express team.
Onwards, now, into a slightly quieter time.
Penny Dolan
@pennydolan1
ps. THE GINGER TOM CAFE will be available as a POD title.
https://en.fictionexpress.com/
5 comments:
Sounds amazing, and was obviously a lot of fun!
Thanks, Sue. The sense of connecting with the global range of readers and the editor was a really nice experience, though the five-weeks did feel quite all-encompaasing.
Sounds like very hard work but exhilarating!
Thanks for sharing this. Really interesting read.
Well done, Penny! And now you can relax...!
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