On the Writing of Lists... by Cecilia Busby

One of the things about being a writer, and working from home, is that there is no one managing your time or telling you what to do when. This can be a delight, but it can also lead to feeling just a bit overburdened with the need to manage yourself. There are times when there just seem to be too many things requiring your attention. Times when it's hard to keep track of all the fronts on which you are attempting to advance (or, more realistically, just keep from getting impossibly behind). Times when it's easy to get so overwhelmed that all you really want to do is go back to bed...

These are the times when I tend to find myself reaching for a pen and paper and announcing:

I need a list!

Writing things down seems to calm my frenzied brain slightly. Firstly, it is just inherently soothing writing thing down. Secondly, it makes me feel as if I've actually begun on each of the tasks - just writing them has made them a little bit more concrete. Thirdly, it calms the bit of my brain that's trying to make sure I remember them all and don't miss important deadlines - if they're written down, they can't be forgotten.

All well and good - and generally very useful.

BUT....

There is a downside to lists, and it's that I tend to ADD TOO MANY THINGS.

A list generally starts quite modest and useful. For example:

1. Put bins out

2. Buy milk

3. Phone school re bus timetable

4. Email agent about rewrite

But it has a tendency to rapidly get out of hand, as more and more Useful and Important Things occur to me. Thus:

5. Write 'Comment is Free' article on author event fees and send to Guardian

6. Think about new website design ideas

7. Read teetering pile of books by bed 

And then it just gets worse:

8. Put contents of wardrobe on ebay and buy proper clothes

9. Draft new book

10. Paint and decorate entire house

Not Achieving The Things On My List can rapidly become another source of stress, entirely negating the good stuff about having organised a list.

When this happens, I have found a good strategy is not to eschew lists altogether, but to change the kind of list I write. A very good antidote to the failure to keep up with the 'To Do' list is to have a 'Done' list.

Done lists are brilliant. By definition, everything on them has been achieved already. You can in fact award yourself an instant Well Done Rosette the minute you finish writing them.

The best thing about 'Done' lists though, is that they are the very opposite of 'To Do' lists. The more you sit there, the more you think of things you have achieved, and the more concrete and bounded those things become. At the tail end of a 'Done' list I mght find myself writing things like:

22. Brushed my hair this morning

23. Had a really nice piece of toast for breakfast

24. Rescued a spider from the bath

Equally, I can sometimes find some quite big and important things ending up on my 'Done' list, things I'd never dream of putting on a 'To Do' list but which perhaps explain why I don't always get the 'To Do' list, well, Done. Things like:

25. Talked to (daughter) about her worries re school 

26. Made her some hot chocolate and watched Poldark together

Sometimes a 'Done' list can overlap slightly with another useful exercise that helps when I am feeling overwhelmed, which is a kind of version of 'count your blessings' and involves patting myself gently on the back for the many things I have actually achieved over the last few years. It's easy to forget them, and only look forward to the things I haven't managed to do!

So, having knocked off 'Write ABBA blog', I am now moving on to the next item on today's deliberately modest list, which is 'Have a nice cup of tea'...

Happy list-making!

Cecilia Busby writes humorous fantasy adventures for ages 7-12 as C.J. Busby. Her latest book, The Amber Crown, was published last year by Templar.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

@ceciliabusby

"Great fun - made me chortle!" (Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell)

"A rift-hoping romp with great wit, charm and pace" (Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber)

Holiday time! By Cecilia Busby

As you read this, I will be (hopefully) sunning myself on a beach in Brittany. (Or possibly, hiding in a tent while the rain pours down!) Whichever it is, I am sure to be happy. I will be surrounded by my family (grumpy or otherwise), I will have no computer, I will have no obligations, I won't have to tidy the house or put some washing on - all I will have to worry about its whether to wander down the road and buy some croissants nor alternatively put the kettle on for some tea and carry on reading my book....

I am planning to take my latest Work in Progress and a small notebook. My latest Work in Progress was actually, not so long ago, a Finished Draft. But, in that way that can happen, the Finished Draft was obviously not quite finished - it received a sadly lukewarm response from publishers and now requires a little bit of reviving. I'm not planning to do any serious writing, but I am planning to let the story roll around in my head a bit, and keep a notebook handy, for any inspiration that comes. Who knows whether I can give the story enough of a kiss of life to make it fly, but I'll see. And where better to do a little creative day-dreaming?

Holidays are time out from the everyday. They take you sideways, off the path of 'onward progress' and into the wilderness of 'shilly-shallying around'. They force you to live in the moment, because there's no point thinking about 'getting on' with anything, you are away - your email has an auto-reply - you are ELSEWHERE.

Which reminds me of Diana Wynne Jones's brilliant Fire and Hemlock and the vases which are carved with the words NOWHERE - or is it NOW HERE?

On holiday you are both 'nowhere' and 'now here' - right here, right now, on the beach, or in the tent, or eating that croissant, breathing in the air, watching the birds wheel above, feasting your eyes (and it's a good phrase for it, because it feels exactly like taking in glorious quantities of food) on new sights, new colours, new places. It's exactly the sort of time and place for a little gentle playing with ideas.

I'm hoping that in that dreaminess that holidays bring, I will find exactly the right way to tell my story anew, and make it fresh and exciting. But if I don't, that's fine too. Because I will have had a chance to just stop for a while and drift; to let the moments run through my fingers like sand and not worry that they are disappearing, but instead just enjoy each one. I will have had a chance to practise my rusty French and laugh about how terrible it is; to climb rocks and paddle in pools as if I were ten all over again; to poke around among the shells and stones and pick out the most beautiful ones, and then forget them on the sand.

And all this will gradually re-inflate me, in the magical way a cup of water does when you have a slightly droopy pot plant. And in the end, I am sure it will find its way out into some kind of creativity, if not for this story, then for another one.


Cecilia Busby writes humorous fantasy adventures for ages 7-12 as C.J. Busby. Her latest book, The Amber Crown, was published last year by Templar.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

@ceciliabusby

"Great fun - made me chortle!" (Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell)

"A rift-hoping romp with great wit, charm and pace" (Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber)

"The Other Referendum" by Cecilia Busby

While the news for the week has been full of analysis and speculation on the results of the EU referendum, very little has been heard about how the vote went among the magical community. We are proud to be able to bring you a report from our roving reporter, who has been listening to the conversations in the Leaky Cauldron over a butterbeer or two...

It's been a fortnight since the wizarding community voted 52 to 48 to leave the European Union of Wizards. As I enter the dark bar just off the Charing Cross Road it's clear there's still an atmosphere of tension over the result. Several groups of witches and wizards are huddling in different corners of the room, most of them gloomily shaking their heads. But one group is triumphant.

"The word is," cackles a rather warty old witch who goes by the name of Emilia Urgus, "they're going to send all the foreigners back to wherever they come from. Good riddance, too! Never did like all their new-fangled ways. All those regulations about cauldrons!"

"Arr," nods her companion, a barrel-chested wizard wearing a pair of striped pantaloons. "Not but what it weren't useful, having cistificates of safety an' all... I remember Uncle Ernie back in the day - 'e got boiling bubotuber puss all over 'is feet from one cauldron what hadn't been reinforced with any of them safety spells."

"That's true, Bert," agrees a rather grumpy-looking wizard nursing a large glass of fire-whiskey. "Cauldron safety, and broomstick efficiency grades. And the EUW stopped Gringott's from dumping dragon effluent into the River Fleet. I can remember when that river was spitting fumes as high as St Paul's on a bad night!"

A contemplative silence falls for a moment as they consider some of the good the EUW was responsible for. But then Bert cheers up. "Still, at least it was OUR dragon effluent, eh? Never say we let that EUW tell us what to do wiv our own bleedin' dragon affluent. Am I right?"

A young and rather good-looking witch leans across the table with a frown. "I'm sorry, " she says. "This vote had nothing to do with dragon effluent. It was about fighting against the forces of global wizardism. They buy up all the spells, and organise magical commerce exactly how they want it, and they stop us fighting for fair wages for all! We can't do anything about creating a fairer wizarding community while we're part of EUW."

This speech causes a bit of a stir from another corner of the room, where the well-known Ministry witch, Hermione Grainger, is enjoying a glass of gillywater with a few friends.

"How on earth can you say being out of the EUW helps us build a fairer community?" she says, standing up in outrage. "What about the High Wizengamot in Strasbourg, or the Declaration of Elvish rights? Where will we be without those?!"

One of her companions pulls her down, nodding his head at the rest of the bar. "Come on, Hermione," he mutters. "No use making a spectacle of yourself. You know there's right and wrong on both sides."

"Well, yes, Ron," she says, sitting down crossly. "But we didn't tell all those porkies about how there'd be ten thousand galleons for St Mungo's if we came out of the EUW! Or how Hogwarts was about to be forced to give half its places to students from Durmstrang!"

Her companion - we can safely reveal that it is, indeed, Ronald Weasley, currently standing for leadership of the Socialist Wizarding Party and hoping to be the 'unity' candidate - shrugs. "Yeah, that was pretty out of order. We tried to get them to retract it but bloody Malfoy kept insisting it was true. Even Hagrid fell for it. Told me he voted out, to stop Durmstrang taking over!"

Hermione sighs. "Well, at least it looks like Malfoy's not going to be Minister for Magic. I heard no one voted for him after he denounced Goyle for being to stupid to lead the Pure-Blood Party."

There's a sudden scuffle by the door, and a pile of witches and wizard hurtle into the bar shouting. Everything is chaos for a moment, and then we realise they are wearing Auror uniforms. At their head is the instantly recognisable Harry Potter. They nod to Hermione and Ron, and then hold up their wands. "Obliviate!" they chorus.

We all blink, and then look at each other, a little dazed.

"Where was I?" says Emilia.

"Well..." says Bert. "Umm. Wasn't we just discussing the Quidditch...? It's the EUW finals next week, innit? I got a little flutter on the Harpies, m'self..."

In the corner of the room, Hermione winks, and shakes Harry's hand.




Cecilia Busby writes humorous fantasy adventures for ages 7-12 as C.J. Busby. Her latest book, The Amber Crown, was published last year by Templar.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

@ceciliabusby

"Great fun - made me chortle!" (Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell)

"A rift-hoping romp with great wit, charm and pace" (Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber)

Words, ideas and the EU referendum... by Cecilia Busby

It's a mere two weeks to the EU referendum, and although you have probably had enough of discussing it, and might wonder what it has to do with a blog on writing anyway, I'm uncomfortably aware that by the time I write my next blog, we may already be committed to leaving the EU. Which, for myself, I would be very sad about, but which I am increasingly beginning to think might be the outcome of the vote.  And my reasons for thinking that are reasons that relate to being a writer. They are about words. Specifically, the words available to each side of this increasingly toxic debate. Consider the following two sets of words and phrases:

Set One: independent, great, standing on our own two feet, making our own decisions, standing alone, standing tall, forging our own way, getting rid of bureaucracy, taking control, not being bossed about by others, not having to do what other people say, freedom, self-respect, adventure

Set Two: caution, fear, economic crash, need for alliances in a larger world, being able to argue our points from within, protecting ourselves, keeping jobs, not losing trade, listening to people who know better, being sensible, having more of a voice as part of a bigger group

If these two sets of words were associated with characters in a children's book, the first set would be the hero. The second set would be the parent trying to hold the hero back from his foolhardy assault on the dystopian system - or the Mayor of the village, trying to persuade him not to disturb the dragon up in its mountain lair.

Set Two haven't really managed to rewrite the story; all they are doing is wringing their hands and saying, No - don't go and fight that dragon! For the sake of the village! And that means Set One have all the good lines.

This matters, because in this referendum, facts have lost all traction, and narrative is going to be paramount. The reason for this is that both sides bandy about 'facts' which almost always turn out not to be facts, or to be distorted facts - and while Set One's 'facts' are considerably more distorted and untrue than Set Two's 'facts', this generally gets lost in the shouting match. Set Two, the establishment side, as a result of selective fiddling of facts and progressively greater amounts of spin over the last ten to twenty years has only themselves to blame for the way the public now wearily discounts anything they say. They decided that facts didn't matter, that words could be twisted to their purposes, and ended up with a kind of Orwellian doublespeak which, far from fooling everyone, means people mostly consider the word of the Bank of England Governor as worth no more respect than the latest Facebook meme doing the rounds.

They should have got an author to run the campaign. Then maybe we'd have seen a different set of words. Maybe Set Two would have read something like;

solidarity, cooperation, kindness, openness, loyalty, leadership, hospitality, friendship, diversity, working together, aspiration, being part of something bigger, freedom to travel, freedom to engage, hope, aspiration, idealism, looking forward, togetherness

Now that sounds more like a complex, interesting character, and one I'd figure as a more likeable hero than the independent go-it-alone Boy's Own adventure hero of Set One. It's a shame we haven't heard more of those words in the campaign.



Cecilia Busby writes humorous fantasy adventures for ages 7-12 as C.J. Busby. Her latest book, The Amber Crown, was published last year by Templar.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

@ceciliabusby

"Great fun - made me chortle!" (Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell)

"A rift-hoping romp with great wit, charm and pace" (Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber)

Publishing as a Business Part II: A Call to Arms! by C.J. Busby

Last month on ABBA, I wrote a post on the publishing business and authors' earnings (Publishing as  Business - is it time to revolt?). It took off from the campaign arguing that festivals don't pay authors a fair fee, and asked if actually it's time to start looking at publishers' payments to authors. I suggested that maybe high profile authors like Philip Pullman, who were making waves about festivals, might start turning their ire on publishers.

Well - lo and behold!

Philip Pullman turned some of his ire on publishers in an open letter to the Society of Authors (reported on here, in the Bookseller). He likened the publisher-author relationship to that between a "steamroller and an ant" and urged publishers to "treat authors more equitably" or risk them becoming "an endangered species".

Sadly, I can't polish my magic wand just yet - Pullman's letter came out before my blogpost. I just hadn't noticed it.

But perhaps it shows that the issue of publishers' profits and writers' incomes is beginning to have traction. Beginning to be something we can't just keep wringing our hands about.

Publishers, as I pointed out in my last post, are making profits, despite the loss of the net book agreement, despite Amazon, despite video games and the easy availability of entertaining apps on phones. Nowhere is this more true than in the area of children's books, generating something like 30% of the books market according to the Cover Kids Book campaign (here).

The problem is, very little of that money is getting through to the people who actually write the books. As we know, the average income for professional writers is £11,000, and while some earn astronomically more, many earn less. This means that if you aren't one of the lucky few, you can only really afford to be a professional full-time writer if you have: a) very little need for income, b) a salaried partner, c) other better-paid part-time work (perhaps doing school visits, or something quite unrelated to writing) which is subsidising your writing career, or d) you work like stink on non-fiction or writing for a packager. Only a) and b) are going to help your own fiction-writing career flourish.

But how can we change things? Given there is a huge pool of non-professional writers out there, desperate to get a contract and live the dream, publishers have us over a barrel. Don't like your advance? Fine, we'll give the contract to someone else. It's the law of the market.

Except - things don't always have to operate according to neoliberal fantasies of markets red in tooth and claw. There is such a thing as ethics in public life, and companies can be taken to task on ethical principles. There are strong arguments and campaigns for a "living wage", for example, or for the benefits of fair trade, which have been able to force changes in companies like supermarkets, chain stores and restaurants.

Even with the campaign for fair fees at festivals, we have seen that an outcry by major authors can force an acknowledgement of basic unfairness and the beginnings of better practice. How much more effective could a campaign aimed at major publishers be? After all, festivals aren't making profits - publishers are. And if their response was to say that if they had to pay higher advances, they'd have to publish fewer books, well, so be it. Maybe that would be a good thing. Fewer books might mean more discrimination about giving out contracts, more emphasis on publicising those books rather than letting them sink or swim alone, more emphasis on nurturing and developing writers, who would represent a more substantial investment to the company. All these things would be good. And if they meant I never got another contract again, that would be fine by me - so long as some people were, and they were being treated well, and our writing industry was in robust health, rather than limping along exploiting people's dreams of being J.K. Rowling.

So here's a challenge. The Society of Authors could investigate what it considered to be a minimum fair advance for novels of different lengths, acknowledging that writing 30,000 words of well-crafted prose takes less time than 100,000 words (but not a third of the time, since plotting and coming up with ideas and doing research can be equally time-consuming for both). They could then act like a proper union (like Equity does, for actors, another profession subject to the vagaries of a market where so many people want to act that if Equity didn't exist, the minimum wage for a jobbing actor would most likely be 50p per day). They should set that advance as a benchmark for fair trade, and publicise the fact. And if they do, I'll join them. (At the moment, I can't justify the expense.)

Obviously publishers would be free to offer more for books they think are particularly skilful or marvellous - but no one is ever offered a contract unless they are considered to be a good writer, and as such they surely merit at least minimum wage. Thus a minimum advance seems entirely reasonable. Based on my own output, I should say £10,000 per MG novel is the very bottom end of what should be considered a living wage for writers (that's three times what I was offered, in fact, for my first book).

Once this is in the public domain, we can campaign on it. Publishers could be encouraged to sign up to it as a common standard for the industry - to pledge they would offer at least the minimum living wage to all their writers. Their established writers could request that they do so, and perhaps think about leaving for a more fair-minded publisher if they didn't. New writers would be encouraged to insist on the minimum wage, in the same way that actors generally ask for Equity rates, in the same way that we are now all beginning to feel the pressure to ask for proper fees for festival visits. It's right, proper and fair - and it's time we pulled together to make it happen. Otherwise we risk seeing writing disappear as anything other than a hobby for the already rich and famous, or the incredibly lucky. This would narrow the breadth of writer's experiences, narrow the social groupings they came from, and narrow the kinds of writing our children had access to. It would be a tragedy.

So - who's with me?


CJ. Busby writes humorous fantasy adventures for ages 7-12. Her latest book, The Amber Crown, was published last year by Templar.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

@ceciliabusby

"Great fun - made me chortle!" (Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell)

"A rift-hoping romp with great wit, charm and pace" (Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber)

Publishing as a business - is it time to revolt?

At the beginning of this year, there was a flurry of letters, blogs and publicity about authors' fees at festivals. Philip Pullman's decision to pull out of being a Patron of Oxford Literary Festival was prompted by, and itself prompted, a widespread debate about the ways in which literary festivals reward the authors that are the primary reason for their existence, with well-known authors such as Joanne Harris and Francesca Simon joining in to condemn the fees policy and even pulling out of appearances as a result.

It is striking that, while the administrators, the catering staff, the ticket collectors, the marquee companies, the stewards, the plumbers, the booksellers and the technical support, who all contribute to making the festival run, are paid wages, the authors (and, at children's festivals, the illustrators), those who are at the very heart of what the festival is about, are often paid with a free lunch or a few bottles of wine - and even when they are actually paid money, it's generally a nominal sum. Unless they happen to also be a Big Draw or a Celebrity Author. It has been argued (for example, by Claire Armistead, here) that those authors who aren't a Big Draw or a Celebrity should simply be grateful for the exposure - they aren't who the audience have come to see. They gain publicity and profile from their association with the festival and that's their reward. But I think this misses the point. Audiences come to festivals not just for the Celebrity Author but to discover new writers, new voices, to hear something inspiring that they weren't expecting - to browse among a curated set of the latest talent. The new authors  are worth every bit as much to the life of a festival as the older, established ones - and I'd like to bet that the people that come back again and again do so because of the new writing they've been exposed to more than the familiar stuff that they always knew about.


But I don't want to rehash the arguments over festival fees. What seems to me more interesting is the question of who really benefits from festivals? And the answer is, by some considerable margin, not individual authors but the publishing industry. Which begs the question, why are publishers not paying for their authors/illustrators to attend festivals? Are we aiming our ire at the wrong target?

It's clear that many small and even large festivals wouldn't survive if they had to pay all their authors fair fees. But it could be argued that the industry they are really benefiting is getting a pretty cushy deal: free (or at the least very very cheap) promotion for hundreds of their books and authors, as well as a massive coming together of industry insiders in a congenial location where deals can be done and networks strengthened with booksellers, journalists, bloggers, authors - the kind of event that if it was an industry conference (which it almost is) would cost them thousands of pounds per delegate.

And the publishing industry is not short of a bob or two (profits of the biggest companies are in the millions, and margins are as high as 10%, compared with the general retail trade at 3-4% and bookshops at around 1% or lower (see here for figures).

So really, what the debate over author fees raised for me was not how mean the festivals are, but the wider question of how a whole industry can justify running a profit on the basis that every single contributor to the basic commodity it sells - the editors, the publicists, the computer support, the receptionists, the printers, the CEOs, the cleaners, the van drivers - is paid an appropriate wage, but the writers and illustrators are paid amounts that mean that, on average, they are working for less than the minimum wage.

When I go to schools, I am sometimes asked how much money I make as an author. I generally reply with another question - how much money do they think I get for each of my books that sells? Guesses generally range from about £5 per book to £1 or £2 per book. They are all utterly flabbergasted when I tell them that it's often less than 10 pence.

I can't think of another mass commodity industry that works like this, apart from the music industry. In all other areas, the core people involved in producing the commodity at the heart of any industry, whether it's a newspaper or a dishwasher,  are always waged. And music is slightly different, because its arguably performance that is at the heart of most music rather than recordings - and when a musician is performing, they are generally paid an appropriate wage.

I don't know what the answer is - but I do wonder if we need to get more angry about this. I wonder if we need to be agitating more forcefully. I wonder if the Society of Authors ought to be lobbying publishers and saying, look, you may think there is an inexhaustible supply of would-be writers who want to be published so much that they will accept any kind of deal, but unless you start offering proper returns for the business of writing, returns that however they are organised (royalties or retainers) deliver proper decent hourly rates of pay, we, your published authors, mid-list and celebrity alike, are going to start refusing to write for you.

So, Philip Pullman and Joanne Harris, and all the other well-known authors who have been putting pressure on festivals. How about it?



Cecilia Busby writes humorous fantasy adventures for ages 7-12 as C.J. Busby. Her latest book, The Amber Crown, was published last year by Templar.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

@ceciliabusby

"Great fun - made me chortle!" (Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell)

"A rift-hoping romp with great wit, charm and pace" (Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber)

A new literacy curriculum by C.J. Busby

As a writer, I visit a lot of schools, and inevitably I see the hard work teachers do to balance helping, supporting and inspiring their children with the demands of the national curriculum, Oftsed and SATs. That, and my own interest as a parent, means I keep a keen eye on what's going on with primary schools, and children's writing and reading.

It seems that almost every time I go on Facebook or Twitter or read the paper, I come across yet another utterly depressing story about the way in which government demands for the teaching of literacy, grammar and spelling is making our children miserable. Recently I've been trying to think not only about why that is but what could be done about it.

When the National Curriculum was brought in to standardise teaching across our schools, experts were given the task of determining what should be known/taught at every stage in every subject. In maths, from what I can gather, the careful development of a curriculum with sensible, logical stages of progress through the subject has not significantly changed what children learn at each age - my children did much the same kind of maths in Year 6 that I did: fractions, decimals, percentages, times tables, word problems. No one tried to cram differentiation or algebra into the year 5 syllabus, with a side-swipe at trigonometry in year 6.

Yet in English (or 'literacy' as it became known) the experts seemed incapable of holding back anything. Let's have six year-olds discussing 'genre'. Let's talk about settings, character, motivation. Let's discuss persuasive language, context, audiences - non-fiction as a genre versus the kind of writing we see in advertising or newspapers.  Never mind that these used to be secondary English, even GCSE or A level concepts. There's no reason why seven-year-olds shouldn't come to terms with a version of these ideas, too.

And then along came Michael Gove. As well as all this English literature stuff, he wanted to make sure children understood grammar and could spell. Not instead, because we can't ever throw out anything once it's been included in the curriculum - that would be dumbing down. So as well as genre and character, eleven-year-olds now have to be able to identify and use the subjunctive, subordinating conjunctions, adverbial phrases, modal verbs and determiners, the passive voice... Again, this is something that even my parents, educated in the era of formal English grammar, learnt at secondary school, not primary.

Well, I'm fed up of the cramming, and so, I believe, are a lot of teachers, parents, children, and interested observers. What those who cram more in don't seem to realise is that adding more and more also means losing more and more: losing things that are not counted, that don't seem to hold any weight because they can't be equated with a number.

Pouring advanced literature analysis and advanced grammar into the pot of primary English DISPLACES important things that those later developments rest on. Just like teaching algebra at age nine would displace actually learning how tens and units operate in our number system, hence making algebra meaningless and almost impossible to understand.

So here is my suggestion for what the literacy curriculum should look like for primary children. It is deliberately light on content - because teachers should be free to add whatever they want to, to inspire and encourage their children's reading and creativity. And it seems to me that the current National Curriculum guidelines for years 1/2/3/4/5/6 can be almost entirely shifted to year 7, 8 and 9 - where children will race through the concepts because they are more mature, better able to access the ideas, and will have a much better grounding in real literacy.


Year 1: At least one hour a day should be spent reading to children from a wide range of picture books, fairy tales, poems and simple non-fiction books. By the end of the year, all children should be  able to pick out a favourite book from a set of available picture books, make a good attempt to tell the story, and explain why they have chosen it and what they like about it.

Year 2: The same; but children should be beginning to read books to themselves in quiet reading times, as well as being read to regularly. By the end of the year, they should be able to pick several favourite books, and write or give verbally short recommendations of these for other children. They should know a number of fairy tales and be able to choose one to re-tell. There is no requirement for grammar or spelling.

Year 3: the same, with further time spent in quiet reading. Groups of children of similar reading ability should come together to share the reading of am appropriate book (including fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry) once per half-term, and choose a way to present or retell that book or some part of it to the rest of the class through drama, writing, art or music, either live or filmed/recorded. Children should read, copy and illustrate at least one short poem of their choice each half term. They should be given a full afternoon to write a story on a subject of their choice every fortnight. Teachers should be encouraging children to use full sentences and punctuate with capital letters, commas and full stops.

Year 4: the same, with the continuation of 'sharing' books and writing stories. Children should learn by heart one short poem of their choice each half term, and write and illustrate one of their own. At the end of the year, children should choose one favourite author, research the books they have written, and write a short report on them. They should be familiar with simple punctuation (commas, full stops, capitals) and the spelling of standard short words.

Year 5: a continuation of the class teacher reading for an hour and of periods of quiet self-directed reading. The afternoon a fortnight to write their own stories should be expanded to two consecutive afternoons to produce a more substantial piece of writing, which can be non-fiction or drama as well as fiction. They should continue to learn a poem per half term and write one of their own. Shared reading groups will still be encouraged to present the books they have read to the class through some form of talk, drama or written review. Classes should watch appropriate films together at least once a half-term, discuss them as stories, and write short reviews. They should be taught how to write formal letters, how to punctuate speech, questions, exclamations, and understand the purpose of paragraphs.

Year 6: should still be read to for an hour a day. Should still write stories of their choice, learn poetry, write poetry, share books though drama, music, film, writing, art and verbal presentations. They should alternate writing stories with writing short non-fiction illustrated texts on a subject of their choice, and should begin to use sub-headings and paragraphs to organise their work. They should look at appropriate examples of non-fiction texts and be encouraged to experiment with boxes, different font sizes, typefaces and layouts. They should be encouraged to vary sentence structures and be able to punctuate more complex sentences but will not be expected to understand the use of semi-colons or colons.

So there you are. All I need now is to get myself elected as Dictator with Special Responsibility for School Literacy. That shouldn't be too hard, should it?



Cecilia Busby writes humorous fantasy adventures for ages 7-12 as C.J. Busby. Her latest book, The Amber Crown, was published in March by Templar.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

@ceciliabusby

"Great fun - made me chortle!" (Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell)

"A rift-hoping romp with great wit, charm and pace" (Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber)

My literary hero - by Cecilia Busby

Every week in the Saturday Review, the Guardian runs a feature called 'My Hero', where they invite a literary figure to write about someone who inspired them or whom they particularly admire. Recently, Lady Antonia Fraser chose George Wiedenfeld, who gave her her first job after chatting to her mother at a posh dinner party - such were (are?) the routes to employment of the well-connected...

I have occasionally wondered what figure I would choose, in the way you sometimes mull over what music you'd choose for Desert Island Discs (or is that just me?). Anyway, thinking about it recently, I decided that one very strong contender for my hero would have to be Christopher Marlowe.

I have loved Marlowe since I was about fourteen and discovered my dad's battered copy of Marlowe's Complete Works, which included as an Appendix the Baines Note, the document that, lodged with the authorities a few weeks before Marlowe's death, roundly condemns him for various heresies and treasons and may have been the reason he was killed at Deptford in 1593. Historians have cast some doubt on the veracity of Baines' testimony, but as far as I was concerned at fourteen, this was from the mouth of the man himself, and I found the Marlowe portrayed in Baine's report of his wild and no doubt drunken ravings irresistibly cool. Like a good Marxist 300 years before his time, he claimed 'that the first beginnings of religion was only to keep men in awe', as well as various other blasphemies, and amusingly claimed 'that if he were put to write a new religion, he would undertake both a more excellent and admirable method and that all the new testament is filthily written'.

As well as the denigration of religion, he denied the power of the crown, arguing that 'he had as good a right to coin as the Queen of England, and that he was acquainted with one Poole, a prisoner in Newgate, who hath great skill in mixture of metals, and having learned some things of him he meant through the help of a cunning stamp-maker to coin French crowns, pistolets and English shillings.'

This made me laugh. It was so obviously the kind of thing you say when rather inebriated, making grand and ridiculous plans with your mates to make your fortune without (crucial, this) having to actually do any real work. Add the atheism, the hints of homosexuality, the low-life brawls that saw him arrested and chucked in Newgate, and his shady role as a spy for Francis Walsingham, and you have the perfect reprobate, guaranteed to appeal to a teenager. And just look at that bad-ass, truculent stare in the portrait he had painted when he graduated from Cambridge at the age of 21. When I heard that he was the son of a Canterbury shoemaker, and that he'd got to Cambridge on a scholarship on the condition he joined the church, but had proceeded to become a spy and a drunken playwright instead, my admiration was complete. And then there was the tragedy of his death. So young! Such a waste! Stabbed to death in Deptford, supposedly in an argument over the bill, and buried before he was thirty.

But it wasn't just his character I fell in love with, and he'd be a pretty poor literary hero if it was. My love for Marlowe was first and foremost for his words, and I was reminded of this when I randomly picked up my daughter's 'Oxford Book of English Verse' and came across excerpts from his Hero and Leander. I was instantly transported to my teenage years, rolling the wonderful sounds of Marlowe's verse around my mind. There is such resonance in his verse, such fantastic rhythms. There is nobody like him. Listen to this, from Tamberlaine, the first of his plays I read, and one that absolutely floored me:

If all the pens that ever poets held,
Had fed the feelings of their master's thoughts,
And every sweetnes that suspir'd their hearts,
Their minds, and muses on admired themes:
If all the heavenly Quintessence they still
From their immortall flowers of Poesy,
Wherein, as in a mirror we perceive
The highest reaches of a human wit,
If these had made one Poems' period
And all combin'd in Beauty's worthiness,
Yet should there hover in their restless heads,
One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least,
Which into words no virtue can digest.

There are so many other quotes I could fill this with - but you can find them for yourself (and probably have your own favourites). I will just finish, though, with a recommendation. Ros Barber recently wrote a marvellous book based on the idea that Marlowe didn't die in Deptford, and that he went on to write the plays and poems assumed to be by Shakespeare. You don't have to agree with her to enjoy the detective story she lays out, and even more to appreciate the wonderful sonnets she writes in the voice of Marlowe post-death. It's called The Marlowe Papers, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize as well as winning the Desmond Elliot prize.

So there you are - my literary hero. Who's yours?



Cecilia Busby writes humorous fantasy adventures for ages 7-12 as C.J. Busby. Her latest book, The Amber Crown, was published in March by Templar.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

@ceciliabusby

"Great fun - made me chortle!" (Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell)

"A rift-hoping romp with great wit, charm and pace" (Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber)

Fictional crushes... by Cecilia Busby

I have a confession to make. I bought tickets six weeks in advance for The Force Awakens (for those of you who spent 2015 under a stone, that's the new Star Wars film) - and it wasn't because my kids were begging me to. It was because I couldn't wait to see it myself.

The main reason for this is that I was exactly the right age to be bowled over by the first two Star Wars films, and I was exactly the right age to develop a huge crush on Harrison Ford. I saw The Empire Strikes Back twice at the cinema (unheard of in my bookish, not very well-off family, where cinema visits were few and far between), and then refreshed my memories for months afterwards with the book of the film. My crush on Harrison Ford is a bit of a family joke now - but my excitement at heading to the cinema for the latest instalment in the Han Solo/Leia/Luke saga reminded me of just how strong those feelings can be.

Of course, crushes on fictional characters is a big part of growing up. My youngest is just coming up to the prime age for it - early teens - and I have a sneaking suspicion that her desire to see Spectre has less to do with the high speed chases and twisting plot and more to do with Daniel Craig's cheekbones... But crushes on fictional characters is something you can experience at any age - and although the classic crush is on a film star or pop singer, I think my strongest crushes have always been on book characters, because they are entirely my own. Even though other people may read the same book, and love the same character, they won't have exactly the same person in their head, because with books, you do some of the imaginative work yourself.

I still find that the books that grab me most are those where I have fallen just a little bit in love with one of the characters. Recently, my strongest fictional crush has been Thomas Cromwell, from Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. I'm in good company on that one - Caitlin Moran asked others on twitter if they also fancied T. Cromwell, and was inundated with responses agreeing that he was, indeed, the thinking woman's crush de jour.

But the best and strongest crushes will always be those from the books I read as a teenager. So step forward, Beau Geste, who took the rap for a crime he didn't commit to save the girl he loved, and ran away to join the Foreign Legion. Take a bow, Ged, from Ursula le Guin's Earthsea series - who moved from being an impatient, proud and impetuous boy with enormous magical power to a wiser and sadder man, but still a great wizard, and took my heart with him on his journeys. Wave your sword, Faramir, from Lord of the Rings, the gentle, bookish second son who had to deal with his father's rage and anger that he was not Boromir, and who found solace eventually with the shield-maiden Eowyn (aka myself). Duck down behind the hedge, Stalky, on your way to some adventure outside the school grounds, running rings round the stuffy boarding-school masters.

(I discovered recently that another children's author had had a crush on one of the characters from Stalky and Co, but to her credit, it was with the poetry-writing, bespectacled Beetle rather than the adventurous leader of the gang - I'm afraid my crushes were much more conventional, as you can tell!)

But I didn't just fall for handsome boys - and in fact, if the main character was a classic 'handsome boy' I tended to avoid the book like the plague - I've never been a fan of romance as a genre. I liked my crushes to be witty, unusual, interesting, maybe a bit tortured but definitely with more to do in the story than just fall in love. And they didn't have to be human - one of my earliest crushes was probably Bagheera, the panther, from The Jungle Book. (I was recently rather taken with his alter-ego, Silas, in Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.)

Now that I'm a writer, even though I concentrate on middle grade rather than YA, I find I can't help falling a little bit in love with some of my characters. I have to keep the crush well under wraps, but there are a few give-aways, and I like to think that some, at least, of my readers will share my crushes.

There's the partying, carefree Sir Gawaine, in the last of my Spell Series, who is very subtly an object of interest for would-be knight Olivia (previously a little bit in love with King Arthur). There's the bard, Caradoc, who has a little bit of magic and is surprisingly skilful with a blade (and you'll have to read Cauldron Spells to find out who he turns out to be). And in my Amber series, I have to confess to just a bit of a crush on the Druid - ex-Forest Agent, witty, sarcastic, strongly magical and with a distinctly shady past, as well as the bearer of a broken heart.

In my most recent work-in-progress, I've re-activated a longstanding crush on the Norse God Loki (I think I was always attracted to his combination of mischief and humour, as well as his tragic end, but Diana Wynne Jone's Eight Days of Luke sealed the deal when I was about 11).

(And talking of Diana Wynne Jones, she is responsible for quite a few of my teen and early adult crushes, including probably the biggest crush of them all - on Mitt, from the Dalemark Quartet).

My own version of Loki is, like many others, quick-witted, sarcastic, vain and powerfully magical. He's ready to fight when necessary but aims to run away whenever possible - doesn't suffer fools gladly, but won't stand for injustice either - and ultimately he's always willing to laugh at himself. He's probably my ideal fictional crush.

So there you are - my embarrassing crushes revealed. What are yours?




Cecilia Busby writes humorous fantasy adventures for ages 7-12 as C.J. Busby. Her latest book, The Amber Crown, was published in March by Templar.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

@ceciliabusby

"Great fun - made me chortle!" (Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell)

"A rift-hoping romp with great wit, charm and pace" (Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber)

When is a child a child? By Cecilia Busby

There's been some interesting discussions recently about what makes a young person a child, and at what age they cease to be a child (not least here on ABBA, in a previous post by David Thorpe, here). It was sparked off by Lynne Reid Bank's complaint that the Guardian Children's Book Prize had gone to a book aimed at 17 year olds - David Almond's book A Song for Ella Grey. (I have to confess that I have not yet got round to reading this, but it's on the shelf by my bed and I'm thoroughly looking forward to diving into it, as it sounds to be a wonderful, moving and beautifully written book.)

The original letter written by Lynne Reid banks is here, and a selection of letters in response is here. The two authors were subsequently interviewed on Radio 4's Today programme, where they amicably expressed their different points of view on what age A Song for Ella Grey is suitable for.

Responses to Banks's intervention tended to focus on her perhaps unfortunate use of the phrase 'lesbian love, swearing and drinking' as evidence that the book was not suitable for 12 yr olds - for many, it appeared that it was 'lesbian' love she objected to, and there was some concern at the notion that it should be considered any different to any other kind of 'love'. As one of the letters to the Guardian pointed out:

some people not yet 12 experience lesbian desire, and/or swear or drink; and others live with older people who drink, swear, and feel no need to hide their lesbianism

More widely, the argument was made that complex, difficult emotions, relationships, and the darker aspects of life are all inevitably part of children's lives (and arguably always have been), so that to place a 'cordon sanitaire' around books dealing with such issues as 'not for children' would be an absurdity. Thus, Piers Torday, defending the Guardian panel's choice, argued:

There is indeed “lesbian love, swearing and drinking” in the first few pages, and that’s no bad thing. Young people today have to make sense of a complex, diverse world of intersecting, layered narratives, available to them on a permanent loop in just a few clicks. Good writing for children will help them navigate adult experience with awareness and understanding.

Twelve is an age that's on the borderlines. It's the age most children go to secondary school, and start to spend significant parts of their day with older teenagers. They often travel to school on their own, and their parents are a less significant part of their lives. They are experiencing independence and worrying about adulthood and the future. As Torday says, they do have to make sense of a complex, diverse world - and one of the ways some children choose to start exploring it is via fiction. So we need those books - they are important to children of that age; they can be, as both Banks and Almond agreed on R4, life-changing; they help young people to experience other possible lives and important ideas and decide how they feel about them.

But responses also acknowledged that Banks had a point - many children's books prizes are being dominated by books for young adults. Almond's book is aimed mostly at teenagers, it is shelved in the YA section of most bookshops, and the kind of 12 year olds that choose to read it will do so because they know that their reading tastes tend towards enjoying those kind of more complex narratives about identity, relationships, the joy and the pain of love. Shelved and aimed at YA as it is, it is unlikely to be bought by any parent or chosen by any child who is 8 or 9. While Banks was universally seen as a little old-fashioned in seeing the content as unsuitable for 12 yr olds, few people would suggest it was a good or appropriate read for 8 or 9 year olds, whose concerns are still strongly focused around school, family and friendships. Which is not to say this age range doesn't need books about big issues - for many children, their fears and hopes about life, death, love are just as strong as for teenagers - but they generally see them in a different context, one dominated by family/friends/small communities rather than independence, the wider world and sexual love. Death for children is worked through in terms of death of parents, beloved pets, or even the loss of cherished toys, rather than through the death of a lover or friend.

At the other end of the age range, it's also the case that many 16, 17 or 18 year olds find themselves beyond reading children's books at all, and turn to adult reads - whether that's complex literary fiction, classics, sci fi, fantasy, historical or romance. They are past the stage of wondering how to negotiate the teenage years, and more concerned to explore what it means to be a proper adult. Or they just want a good, gritty, page-turning crime story, or a book that opens their eyes to alternative universes, and they are happy (as I was, at 16 or 17) to temporarily identify with a drink-raddled male protagonist in their forties.

So, while it can be argued that 'child' is a category that covers all children up to the age of 18, in terms of reading interests there are, it seems to me, quite distinct differences between what we could call the '8-12' bracket (which will include some 6-7 yr olds, some 15 yr olds, some adults, even!) and the 12-18 bracket, which will attract some 11 yr olds, some 25 year olds, some 50 year olds, but not by any means all readers of 16 or 17.

Because of what seem to me these quite distinct differences, I'd actually like to see a separation of these two age brackets in prizes. And it's not only because the younger age range has been recently more overlooked in the prize department - it's also because I think it would free up prize committees from the endless debate about whether or not their choice is 'suitable' for children. How lovely to have a proper, big, no-holds-barred, full-blooded YA prize with no carping whatsoever. And how great to have a focus on the no less skilled but nevertheless very different kind of writing that goes into crafting a great children's story.



Cecilia Busby writes fantasy adventures for children aged 7-12 as C.J. Busby. Her latest book, The Amber Crown, was published in March by Templar.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

@ceciliabusby

"Great fun - made me chortle!" (Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell)

"A rift-hoping romp with great wit, charm and pace" (Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber)