Y.A. at Hay - Celia Rees

I was recently at the Hay Festival, in conversation with Melvin Burgess and Daniel Hahn, talking about Young Adult fiction and our novels, This is Not Forgiveness and Kill All Enemies.

Daniel Hahn, Melvin Burgess, Celia Rees 

The discussion was interesting (I hope for the audience, too) and wide ranging. At one point, Daniel asked us if there was anything that we thought we could not write about, any taboo subjects, any darkness too impenetrable? I found myself giving the stock Y.A. writer's answer about leaving the reader with hope, etc., etc.. Melvin disagreed. This livened the discussion considerably, and his response gave me cause to pause and food for thought. He outlined a thesis which took me right back to where I began as a YA writer and also made me think about how far we have travelled since then but how little ground we had gained. 

It is an accepted shibboleth ( like the one about 'hope') that ‘at one time’ there ‘wasn’t much written for teenagers’, ‘nothing available for them’.Of course, this is not true. Teenagers have always found things to read, books and authors they felt comfortable with, even if those books were not written specifically with them in mind. Books like George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery. And then there are the sic-fi/dystopian fiction writers: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, John Wyndam’s The Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids, J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World and Empire of the Sun, John Christopher’s The Trouble with Grass.

Quite a considerable canon. I read a lot of these books when I was a teenager, back in a time when novels for teens were not supposed to exist. I don’t remember feeling deprived, or thinking I’d have to stop reading because there was ‘nothing for me’. I thoroughly enjoyed the books I discovered on the adult shelves of the library, finding them myself, or being directed to them by friends who liked the same books I did. Reading these books was a rite of passage. I found my mind stretched, my understanding deepened, my assumptions questioned and challenged, my imagination

 fired. They weren’t writing for me particularly, but that didn’t matter, they were connecting with me on all sorts of different levels.

Melvin’s argument was that because these writers recognised no limits, there are no limits. I found myself agreeing with him and thinking that these books and these writers should be our benchmark. Perhaps we have compromised too far. In creating a specific Teen/Y.A. Lit. (although I still think that is important) we’ve wandered away from these writers who had the power to appeal to adults and teenagers alike. We have compromised, we’ve bowdlerised. We’ve listened to outside voices: gatekeepers telling us what is acceptable and unacceptable; Focus Groups and Target Readers; Publishers who tell us what the market wants, what it will tolerate.

Compare some of the books and authors I’ve cited, especially in Gothic, Dystopian and Science Fiction, with what is on offer at the moment in these genre, and you will see exactly what I mean. Where is the depth and breadth of the vision, the resonance and relevance, the imaginative reach, the complexity of the realised worlds, the quality and power of the writing? It is a salutary lesson. Of course, teen readers can go and read these books, and they should, but that is not the point. It is not good enough to mine them, to take from them, we should be producing books that bear comparison.

Creativity is a strange thing. Those books that I read when I was a teenager challenged me to think, fired my imagination, introduced me to ideas, and opened me up to possibilities. Maybe that experience is what led me to want to write for teenagers. True, or not, I’m thinking about going back. At least I’ll be guaranteed a damn good read!

I’m taking a break from blogging for ABBA but I’ve been proud to be part of the blog and to have seen it go from strength to strength. I’ll certainly be visiting regularly in the future to read and to comment.

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Sheds - Celia Rees

I recently visited the Boathouse in Laugharne. I'd been there before, and peered into Dylan Thomas' Writing Shed, but this time I was with my friend, the artist Julia Griffiths Jones http://www.juliagriffithsjones.co.uk, and she'd been inside! She had been allowed to go into the shed to draw. When she showed me the drawings that she had made there, and the photographs that she had taken, I must admit to being gripped by a strange excitement and considerable envy. There is something about the place where a writer works that exerts a peculiar fascination. Just to see what he or she had on the desk by way of distraction or because a particular object was special in some way; to see the pictures pinned up on the wall; the view, or lack of it from the window. These things serve to bring alive some of the process of mind that produced the work that one admires.

In Dylan Thomas' writing shed - Julia Griffiths-Jones

What I found especially wonderful here was the sheet of paper, stained and wrinkled, crisped by time, that was covered in lists and lists of words. Dylan Thomas is famous for the lyrical precision of his poetry,  the startling originality of his images, the sheer exuberance of the words he chooses. He once said that his first introduction to poetry was through nursery rhymes:

I had come to love the words of them. The words alone. What the words stood for was of a very secondary importance.

But this list showed that his poems were hard won. He had to prepare, work at them, think about what appeared on the page. What seems natural, effortless is supremely crafted and writing is a hard and lonely process, as he describes it in My Craft or Sullen Art.

word splashed hut - Julia Griffiths- Jones

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labor by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Here, on his table, was a little bit of that crafting.  I don't know where he wrote the poem but from his shed window he would certainly have had an unimpeded view of the moon over the Taf estuary and the wide sweep of Carmarthen Bay. Just seeing these things brought the poet nearer, as though time and space were collapsing and death, indeed, had no dominion.  

I can't claim a shed myself, my garden just isn't big enough, but I will admit to shed envy. There are quite a few writers who work in a shed, or have worked in a shed. Philip Pullman famously wrote his Northern Lights Trilogy in a shed at the bottom of his garden in Oxford. 

Philip Pullman's Shed

Roald Dahl's Shed

Roald Dahl was another famous shed man. Again, I can feel the pull, the fascination of the table carpeted in objects, collected bits and pieces: fossils, model aeoroplanes, and the tools of a writer's trade: pens, pencils, scissors. The walls are covered in pictures, photographs, postcards pinned up, curling and interleaved - put up as aide memoire or inspiration. The touch telephone, so modern once, so dated now, gives a feeling of time stopped at the moment when Dahl left, never to return, the point when the building ceased to be a vibrant creative space and returned to being just a shed. A trace of him remains, though, caught and contained in the things he gathered about him. 

Writers are often elusive creatures, rarely showing their true nature, wanting their writing to speak for them, but these glimpses into their private place allow us a rare insight into who they were. There is an eloquence to the space, it speaks to us of the writers' true nature. 

Sheds are not just a male preserve. There are shed women, too. Virginia Woolf is perhaps the most notable example, although hers is, perhaps, more of a summer house.

Virginia's Shed

And there is, of course, our own Linda Newbery who used to work in this elegant little number, complete with a Virginia style verandah, although she tells me that she is shed-less at the moment. 

Linda's Shed

Linda also warned that having a shed comes with certain risks. The writer and journalist, Francis Wheen, recently lost his archive, his book collection and the novel he was working on in a disastrous shed fire. Even with that warning, I still feel the pangs of Shed Envy. Maybe, one day, until then I'll have to make do with a study. The important thing is to have, as Virginia Woolf says, a room of one's own. 

My non-shed

Shed or shed-less? Where do you write? What do you have around you? I'd love to know....

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Does it matter where you live? Celia Rees

I'm suffering from location envy, I don't mind admitting to it. Yesterday, Liz Kessler wrote fulsomely about the delights of living in Cornwall, in the beautiful town of St Ives, home to generations of artists and writers, and the inspiration she gains from that living in such a place and living by the sea. Her lovely blog was littered with wonderful photographs of the sea, beaches and harbours, finishing with one of Liz surfing. Go, Liz!

Now, I live in Leamington Spa, in Warwickshire. An attractive town, but about as far away from the sea as you can get. I was about to say, not particularly inspiring, but then I realised that I have used bits of the town, the cafes, shops, the streets, the parks, river, houses, etc. etc. in my books. My latest, This Is Not Forgiveness, is set in a town very like it, not exactly the same, of course, I would find that too restricting, but not dissimilar. It's an unexceptional town, where ordinary people live, so if you are writing a book about ordinary people, I guess it helps to live and write about somewhere that is easily recognisable, ubiquitous even. That's what I tell myself, anyway.

The other reason that I'm suffering from location envy is that I've just had an e mail from a friend who has upped sticks to go and live in Italy. Yesterday, while I was shivering in spitting rain and record lows for Easter, he was wandering round Assisi.

Going to see the Giottos, sitting outside cafes drinking expresso, lunching for €15 and he could do this any time he liked. And if not Assisi, then there are plenty of other wonderful hill towns full of fabulous art. Now, I'm thinking, if I lived there, in that climate, what could I not achieve? Or would spend so much time just looking, just being, that I wouldn't have time to do any writing? I don't know, but sometimes I think it would be fun to find out.

Book Tours - Celia Rees

I've just finished a Book Tour for my new book, This Is Not Forgiveness. A week of journeying up and down the country, visiting different regions with a couple of overnight stays. Back in the day, you would go to a bookshop, do a bit of a talk to a class or two who had been invited in to meet you, do some signing, then off to the next. These days, because of the difficulty of getting pupils out of school, finding bookshops that can accommodate large numbers, etc. etc., the author generally goes into schools.

Book tours are organised by the publisher and they differ from a normal school visit. You are only there for an hour or so, not all day. You are usually required to speak to large audiences, anything from 150 - 200 students, sometimes from different schools. You don't get paid. The payment, pay back, pay off, is seen in terms of publicity and book sales. Sometimes schools don't get this, so if letters haven't gone out, no-one has any money, the whole thing, as far as the book seller and publisher are concerned, is a bit of a waste of time. Me? I just go along and do what I'm asked to do. I don't really think in terms of book sales on the day. It took me a while, in fact, to work out that this was what it's about but I can be slow like that.

Sometimes, the visit is a great experience. The bookseller is on the ball, the school is primed and eager, the staff have done some prelim. work, the kids know who you are, maybe they've looked at a couple of your books, read extracts, been to your web site. This always helps. You kind of know when it will be good like that. You are expected. There are posters up in the foyer, the receptionist knows who you are. The Librarian or the member of the English staff is on hand to welcome you. There's coffee, biscuits, maybe even pastries or muffins, and water on the table, with a glass. They have been talking the event up, pre-selling books. The hall (or wherever it is) is ready. Chairs set out. The techie stuff works (I use a Powerpoint) and if it doesn't there's someone from IT to sort it out. Grand. The students file in, fill up from the front, there are plenty of staff with them. They listen more or less attentively (staff, too), ask questions and then, at the end, they come up and buy shed loads of books, you sign them, have your photo taken, answer more questions and everyone is happy - even the bookseller and the publicist.

Sometimes it doesn't go like that. You get a feeling this time, too. Of doom. There are no posters. No sign of any publicity. The receptionist is hostile, like every visitor is a potential paedophile, there are mutterings about CRB checks, photo I.D.. You don't have either, so you submit to a mug shot and take the pamphlet about the school's policy on Child Safety. No sign of any staff to greet you, so you sit and wait until a flustered librarian comes running round the corner, telling you that they are under Special Measures/have SATs tests/the hall is no longer available. You are in the Drama Studio which has no windows so ends up being a cross between a sauna and the Black Hole of Calcutta. Everyone has to sit on the floor, so you do a quick mental check to make sure that your Public Liability Insurance is up to date, just in case you trip over and crush the front row. The IT doesn't work - no one told us/no laptops available/we thought you were bringing yours with you. The students amble in unsupervised, sit where they like (i.e. as far you from as possible). They regard you with an indifference bordering on hostility; large swathes make an ostentatious point of paying you no attention and get on with texting/chatting/fidgeting/giggling/chewing and generally behaving as if you weren't there. The few staff who are present sit well away from their charges and get on with their marking. There are almost no questions and the ones that are asked are personal/facetious, or both. Almost nobody wants to buy books and everyone is glad to get out of there (most of all you).

Now, before I'm deluged with sympathy or messages of the 'Poor you! It never happens to me...' variety, I have to say that this does not happen very often. If it does, what to do?

1. Don't try to win them. If they have made their minds up not to 'appreciate', they won't. Finish as quickly as you can. Don't be afraid to knock it on the head. You are not contractually obliged. You aren't being paid.

2. Don't blame yourself (even if every one around you is doing so) because if a talk works in one place in front of one audience and not in another, than how are you the problem?

3. This from Bernard Ashley (let's face it, if he's had problems, anyone can): focus on the ones who are listening, not on the ones who aren't. Don't be distracted by those not paying attention; seek out those who are and speak to them. They wanted to come and they wanted to hear you. They want to ask questions and to buy books, so screen out the rest of them. If need be, make some time after the others have gone to talk to them individually or as a small group.

These negatives are minor compared with meeting enthusiastic readers, die hard fans who lug along bags of your old titles for you to sign or produce books that belong to their friend/sister/mum. Readers who like the look of whatever book you are promoting and want to try it and, these days, those who've started reading your book on Kindle but want a signed paper copy. Keen readers who have banded together to form their own book club/blog/writers group to shine like a beacon in the philistine darkness. You don't have to shift masses of books. If one person appreciates you being there, if signing one book makes that reader feel special, then the whole thing is worthwhile.

And I've met some wonderful booksellers who have organised excellent visits because they know their patch, they know their books and they know their schools. Booksellers like Elaine and Sue at SilverDell Books in Kirkham, who gave me a Rolls Royce (or Range Rover) of a day in and around Lancaster and even found time to show me their wonderful bookshop and let me sample their homemade ice-cream. Me, books and ice cream? It could get messy...

Then and Now - Celia Rees

At the risk of 'bugging the life out of people' (see Nicola Morgan's recent ABBA Post of the 24th below), I've got a new book coming out next week. February 2nd, in fact, and I'm going to mention it because having a book published is one of those things that doesn't happen all that often to me, although with so many books published it is obviously happening all the time to other people, who then bleet and tweet about it, to Nicola's annoyance. I suppose that's part of the problem. In her perceptive way has put her finger one of the profound contradictions of social networking, and publishing for that matter. To an individual author, a book being published is A Very Big Thing; to everyone else, it's another 'so what?'. Cursory glance only before we go on to our own tweet, Facebook page entry, blog or planning our Virtual Launch.

At the risk of bugging, I anticipate publication of This Is Not Forgiveness with the usual mix of feelings: pride and a sense of wonder that my name is on the cover, but also complex feelings of nostalgia and loss. When I turn the pages, it is like looking through a strange kind of diary. I remember where I was when I thought that, wrote that, added that detail. It happens over a summer and I wrote it over a summer, so the weather, the descriptions, are like snapshots of particular places at a particular time. And there is something perfect about a book that is about to be published, before it goes out into the world to be the object of scrutiny and criticism, before it has a chance to fail.

I have another reason for nostalgia. This Is Not Forgiveness is a topical thriller set in the present and this is seen as a bit of a departure for me. I'm now known mostly for writing historical fiction. If not those books, then the old Point Horror Unleashed titles - Blood Sinister and The Vanished. But my first book was a contemporary thriller for teenagers. Every Step You Take. It was published in 1993. So long ago, that when I went to get the rights back from the publisher, they claimed never to have heard of it. That, too, was a contemporary thriller, so in a way, I've come full circle, returning to my roots.

That book was published into a different world. I'm typing this blog on a laptop, it is going straight by WiFi onto the 'net. I'm uploading pictures to go with it. I typed Every Step on an electric typewriter. Laptop, WiFi, 'net, upload? Terms not coined yet. I sent it off as a paper manuscript by Special Delivery, posted at the local Post Office (now a cake shop) not by attachment as I would do now.

The Internet was in its infancy, so no e mails. Publishers sent you letters. All you had to do was open the envelope, read and file. Everyone sent you letters, so it was easy to keep track of things. No matter how hard I try to be organised, finding things in e mails is like sifting though spaghetti. As for publicity, it didn't take up any time at all because there wasn't any. My first school visit came randomly from a librarian who had somehow stumbled upon the book by accident. When I phoned the publisher to ask how much I should ask for a fee, I was told by a posh sounding girl in Marketing that 'We simply have no ideah'. The book was ignored. Not quite the 'right thing' for the reviewers. Dismissed, I suspect, as a mere genre novel, although it was full of (I thought) relevant issues - a continuum of male violence from date abuse and rape to murder. It had strong male and female characters, friendship and betrayal, bullying and social exclusion, but because the characters were ordinary comprehensive school kids and it was written like a thriller, issues not to the fore, these aspects of the book weren't even noticed. So, no publicity, nothing to do but go and admire the single spine out copy in the odd bookshop that stocked it and get on with the next one.

I agree with Nicola (do read her excellent post if you haven't already) all this publicity work we have to do can be a time sucking nuisance and it is hard to keep a balance. We need to get on with our real work, which is writing books, but there is always the fear that if we don't do anything, then our new book will sink like the proverbial stone and when we next go to our publisher they will say what they have always said, backed up now with stats from EPoS, the last one didn't sell, so low advance or no contract. Yes, doing our own publicity is a time consuming bind and we risk bugging the life out of people, but if we don't do it, who will? The Internet has given us the chance we never had before, the chance of doing it for ourselves.

To work out if it is worth our while, there's always Liz Kessler's brilliant Formula (see yesterday's post). What was it again, Liz?

S to the power of something + P? I better go back to tyour posat and check it out...

This Is Not Forgiveness is featured in New Books above.
For Linda Newbery's excellent Review of This Is Not Forgiveness, go to ABBA Reviews.

The Year's Midnight - Celia Rees

' 'TIS the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ; The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world's whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk, Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph. '

A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day, Being The Shortest Day - John Donne

For John Donne, the shortest day was St Lucy's Day, the 12th December. For us it is the 21st. We are a day away, but as I write this and a dismal afternoon turns more drear and the light fades, it feels as if it is already here. The Winter Solstice has always been seen as significant, recognised all over the world and celebrated as a time of re-birth, a time of hope and re-affirmation as the year turns back towards the light.

Short days and long nights have always made this a good time to read. What else is there to do, once Christmas is over? It's a chance to withdraw from the world for a little while, curl up with a good book and maybe a glass of something, and read in front of the fire. I guess everyone has their favourite seasonal reading, their favourite Christmas stories and poems and there have been some memorable children's books set at this time of the year. When I was a child, I didn't particularly enjoy the stories of Beatrix Potter and I didn't like Alison Uttley's Little Grey Rabbit. I preferred the rougher charm of her Sam Pig and Brock the Badger. My favourite story from the Tales of Sam Pig was The Christmas Box, and my favourite part of that story was when Brock the Badger goes to the Christmas Fair. The light is going and no-one notices a 'little brown man' going from stall to stall with his silver penny, buying things for his wards, Sam, Tom, Bill and Ann. I used to look out for him in country markets, late on a December afternoon. I still do.

'Miracles happen on Christmas Eve', Brock says, and maybe it is true. it is a magical time of the year when it is possible to believe strange things could happen, like badgers going to market, so it is little wonder that two of the best children's fantasies ever written are set at this time of the year. John Masefield's hugely influential Box of Delights is exactly what it says on the cover. First published in 1935, every subsequent British fantasy writer owes an immense debt to Masefield's imagination and his inventiveness. The book is set in deep mid-winter with the hero, Kay, returning from boarding school. He meets a mysterious Punch and Judy man, the owner of the box, who then entrusts it to Kay to avoid it falling in to the hands of the evil Abner Brown. The gripping, powerful story unfolds over the few days Christmas. The weather and the feeling of dislocation, of being out of normal time, that is often present during this period, add significantly to the power of the fantasy and the sense of danger and isolation.








The other book on my Solstice reading list is Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising. Another brilliantly inventive, original and influential fantasy, like the Box of Delights, it takes place over Christmas and New Year and deals with the battle between the forces of darkness and the forces of the light. Perhaps both books are so powerful and convincing because they tap into the atavistic fear that fuels our midwinter festivals, rituals and celebrations, a fear that goes back thousands of years, the terror that the warmth and light may never return and we will be kept in a state of freezing darkness. M. R. James used to tell his ghost stories at Christmas and that seems entirely right and fitting. The impulse to read and tell stories of this kind, involving supernatural and magic, may be very ancient, a way of warding off forces that might engulf us, forces that grow in the darkness and shrink in the light.


What's your favourite Solstice reading?

Significant Dates - Celia Rees

I mean calendar, not the other kind.

11/11/11

A date of particular significance. I thought I ought to mark it in some way. Write it down somewhere. So at 11 o'clock, I opened a brand new notebook, filled my fountain pen (I rarely write in long hand, let alone fountain pen), wrote the date, and officially started a new project.

I don't usually attend the Armistice Day Service in the town where I live, Leamington Spa, and did not consciously intend to do so when I set out for a walk this Sunday morning, but I found myself on the edge of the knot of people gathered around the War Memorial. My Uncle Bob's name is on it. That's him. The boy in uniform, standing next to his father in the photograph that was taken before he went off to France and didn't come back. As I stood in the crowd I thought about my family, my grandfather and grandmother, standing here when the memorial was erected, their remembrance new and raw. The family stories: that my uncle had been killed on the last day of the First World War (he hadn't, of course, he'd been killed some months before); that when my grandmother heard the news her hair went white over night. Then I thought about another war, my father here with Bob's brothers, all in their uniforms, standing to attention, honouring the memory of another generation of young men who did not return.

They are all gone now. The town has changed, the bronze figure verdigrised and weathered, but the crowd still gathers, sheltered by the tall lime trees, much as they would have been fifty, sixty, eighty years ago.

People disperse. The assembled groups from the different services line up and march off, standards held high. I go on my way.

Not much to do with writing, you might say, but then, isn't everything?

Notebooks - Celia Rees

Like many writers, I'm a sucker for notebooks and I have many. Big ones, small ones, handbag sized ones, leather bound, spiral bound, cheap ones and expensive ones with beautiful marbled covers and heavy, creamy paper that I can't bring myself to write on. Friends give me notebooks because they make the perfect gift for a writer, but most of them I've bought myself. I find them hard to resist. it is not just the pristine perfection of the pages. Starting a new notebook makes one feel one is doing something positive, making a fresh start.

I always advise anyone who wants to write to keep a notebook and I always have one with me. The notebook is the place where we capture fleeting ideas, impressions, note bits of description, write down 'the words in the air' that Abi Burlingham blogged about on Thursday (see below). It also acts like a sporadic diary, a place where what just might be that really great idea is recorded along with 'to do' lists, shopping lists, holiday lists, so I have a reminder of my ordinary life, as well as my writing life. I also like to collect aide memoire - cards, coasters, tickets, newspaper snippings - sometimes I stick them into the notebook, or if it is a moleskine I tuck them into the handy little pocket in the back. There is nothing like having a physical reminder to take you back to a time and place, either because you need to describe it or to conjure what was in your mind. My only regret is that I cannot draw. I have to confess to a certain amount of notebook envy when it comes to those who can fill the pages with little sketches and arty, italic writing.


One of my favourite novels is Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook - I fell in love with the idea of different coloured notebooks laid out on a table in which one would write different things - so exciting! I haven't quite figured out how to do it, but I'd love to try a similar thing myself.

Stop Press! Dianne Hofmeyr is reviewing my book, The Wish House in ABBA's Review Section today!

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The Empty Chair - Celia Rees

Every day, authors appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival give their time to stand in solidarity with persecuted writers by reading aloud from their work. The readings are organised by Scottish PEN, in conjunction with Amnesty International. Pride of place at these events is given to an empty chair. The chair represents those writers who cannot be there, who have to have their words read by others because they live in repressive regimes that seek to silence them by censoring their work; subjecting them to imprisonment, torture, or worse, for daring to express their views and for demanding that their voices be heard.

All the writers taking part in this event must feel, as I did, honoured and humbled to be reading from the work of fellow writers who have suffered, and are suffering, for the right to do something which we take so very much for granted. We are free to write what we like, read what we like, say what we like.

I sat in the tent, listening to my fellow writers reading the words of our brother and sister authors, famous and anonymous, imprisoned or in hiding, in China, in Cuba, in Burma and in Bagdad. All around us events were going on, audiences queuing up, readings being given, while back in the yurt, a fair few egos were on display. I thought about how lightly we hold our freedom to take part in this sharing of words and writing and I found myself looking at that empty chair and wondering: would I be prepared to take the risk? Would any of us? As I did so, words came into my head. Words from the hymn, As I Survey The Wondrous Cross:

my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.

If you are attending trhe Book Festival, go along to show your support and solidarity. These events are free and happen at 5:30 every day.

If I could find the camera... Celia Rees

I'd take a photo of the chaotic mess that is my study. I know it's in here somewhere, I just can't remember which pile it is under. As a writer, I'm as prone to rituals as the Lords of Groan and one of patterns that has emerged over the years is the Big Clear Out after a book is finished, a physical and mental de-clutter before the next project gets truly underway. That is one way of spinning it, the other is I just can't find anything: letters, tax forms, notes and print-outs, books, cameras, staplers, rulers, anything I actually need has disappeared.

The problem is twofold. I am naturally messy and find it difficult to throw things away. I have, for example, a great many books - not just on the two walls of shelves, but in piles on the floor, table, futon, chair, any flat surface, and I find it hard to part with them. This is not just sentimental. I never know when I might want them and I can guarantee the next time I think, 'I know I've got a book about that somewhere', that will be the book that's gone to Oxfam. I need more space (move house? Rent storage?) to put them and I need some kind of coherent cataloguing system (alphabetical? By subject? Dewey Decimal?) but I can never quite decide how to organise them (too many decisions) so that does not get done.

Then there are the foreign editions of my own books that publishers have kindly sent to me. It is wonderful to have foreign editions, but they do mount up. If I could find a good home for them, then I could use the storage space for other stuff. If anyone has any ideas for safe disposal, please let me know.

And then there are the notebooks. Like many writers, I love stationery and find it hard to resist the lure of The New Notebook. Consequently, I have many: big ones, small ones, hard back, soft back, posh, expensive, cheap spiral pads. Most of them have something written in them, so should they be retained, part of my 'archive'? Should I even have an archive, or is that just another excuse not to throw things away? More dilemmas...

Quite apart from all that, there are the box files of documents, notes, correspondence (archive again) - should I just throw the lot out, would I even notice? Going through everything is a big job, one I keep putting off because I've got better things to do (like writing books) but I can hardly move at the moment and I actually don't have a book to write, so I guess I've run out of excuses, except I've got a blog to write - now, where is that camera?

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The SAS - Celia Rees (inc competition)

No. Not these guys…The other SAS, The Scattered Authors Society, came into being in 1997 when three Scholastic authors: Peter Beere, Malcolm Rose and Anne Cassidy got together over a weekend in Birmingham and decided that there should be some kind of way for authors like them to connect each other and stay in touch.

Rituals and e-visiting old friends - Celia Rees

The other day, a student asked me if I had any particular rituals associated with my writing. I was about to answer, 'No, not really,' in a lame kind of way, when I realised that I do, I just never thought of them that way, that's all. I collect things. Some objects are almost talismans, others are just fun - like the models that make up the interesting Pirates! tableau. I have witches in all sizes from big, to very small with flashing eyes, that belong to Witch Child; models of pirates, ships, flags, eye patches, pencil case, t shirts (Pirates! - what else?); a tricolour rosette I bought in Paris (Sovay) and various jesters for The Fool's Girl. I don't stop when the book is finished - the Lego pirate ship was free with last week's News of The World and I always give money to street performers because of Feste.

Perhaps the reason I go on collecting is because books are never really finished. The characters stay with you long after the book has been published. You've lived with them for a long time, they are part of you, like memories and people from your real life. I realised this when I re-visited Pirates! recently. This was a stand alone book, published in 2003, no sequel planned, so none written, but that didn't stop me wondering, speculating about what happened next, so when I was invited by a blogger, who was having a pirate month in May, to write a piece for her website, I thought, why not?



She wanted it to be called a The Brawl in Triton's Tavern. I've had stranger requests. I decided to write an episode from Pirates! 2, the phantom sequel. As soon as I began to write, the characters and their voices were back again. It was like visiting old friends. The result can be seen http://vvb32reads.blogspot.com/2011/05/tritons-tavern-brawl.html

It was fun. I might go back there again for a longer visit. Who knows? In these days of e books and kindle, we can write what we like, what we want to write, not what is asked of us by publishers.

What is on your playlist? Celia Rees

I was listening to Radio 4 the other day when I heard the author, David Nicholls, talking about his novel, One Day. Now, I haven't read the book, although my daughter has and recommends it highly, but I'm always interested in writers talking about their writing, especially ones who are selling shed loads. For those, like me, who have not read the book, it follows the lives of two people from their student days in 1988 to near present day. As I understand it, the device that Nicholls uses is to have them meet every year on St Swithin's Day. In this way we can follow their lives and changes, kind of When Harry Met Sally, but more organised and British. Do Americans know about St Swithin's Day? Anyway, what interested me was the way he described going back to these past years. He used the music, what he and everyone else was listening to in 1988, say, 0r 1992. He found this one of the best ways of getting into the feel of the time. Songs are like scents, they bring back detail, the kind of detail a writer needs to make a time come alive.

I have always used songs and music in my writing, not just to evoke different times, but also moods and states of mind. My first novel took its title from a song: Every Step You Take. I was listening to it in the car one day and remember thinking how creepy it was, the perfect way to get into the head of an obsessive stalker. Another early novel, Midnight Hour, also owes its title to song lyrics, Wilson Pickett singing, I'm going to take you girl and hold you, do everything I told you, in the midnight hour. 'Do everything I told you...' that was the line that chilled me. And it doesn't even matter if it is not the right words, that's what I heard, so it is what my killer heard, too.

I first heard the Ballad of Sovay, sung by Pentangle, more years ago than I care to remember. I had no idea then that I would ever become a writer, much less that this song would provide me with the title and main character for a novel. But the haunting melody stayed with me, as did the story of the daring young woman who dressed as a highwayman to test the fidelity of her lover. Many years after that first hearing, I was having a conversation with fellow novelist, Susan Price, about folk ballads and Sovay came up. We both said how much we loved the song, and the girl. By the end of the conversation it was more or less decided that I would make Sovay the heroine of my next novel.

Songs do not just provide titles, characters, basic plots and starting points. When I'm writing historical fiction, they give me a powerful way into the world that I am trying to create. When I was writing Sovay I listened to John Gay's The Beggar's Opera over and over again, not just for the beauty of the lyrics and the music, but for the moods and emotions that they evoked and the deeply subversive, satirical view of a corrupt society where the heroes and heroines are thieves, murderers and prostitutes. John Gay gives us a view into an 18th Century underworld that he knew well. At the same time, he is letting us know that respectable society was also under scrutiny by those who would seek to change it.

You cannot beat contemporary sources for insight into any past time. Popular songs and street ballads are often the only way we have to see into the lives and minds of ordinary men and women, allow us to hear the words that they used, the cadences of everyday speech. For me, they help to 'raise the spirits of the age', to evoke a sense of love, loss, danger and excitement. When I was writing Pirates! , I listened to songs of the sea, of dark eyed sailors and female sailors bold. When I was writing The Fool's Girl, I listened to Elizabethan street songs, jigs and bawdy ballads, as well as Shakespeare's own songs and court music. Each of my books has its own soundtrack,. Sometimes the music gets mentioned in the text, sometimes it doesn't. That is not important. Neither is exact authenticity. What is important is how this music, these songs have sustained and fed my imagination and freed my creativity.

Anyone else care to share their playlist?

We Will Not See Their Like... Celia Rees

I was shocked, as I expect many who read this blog will have been, by the death of Diana Wynne Jones. I'm not a devoted fan, I will confess that now, so anyone who was planning to write their own obit. can feel free, but nevertheless, I mourn her loss. She was one of those writers that one simply thought would always be there, somewhere, a necessary presence, there to remind us of what fantasy should be like, can be like if you know enough, think enough, write hard enough, a reminder to fantasy writers of what they should be trying to attain. She was a writer of endless inventiveness, originality and imagination, an inspiration, acknowledged or not, to later generations of writers. She knew fantasy inside out and the mythos on which it is largely based, because of that, she knew how hard it is to be original. For me, originality is the hallmark of really great fantasy and Diana Wynne Jones had it in spades.

Taking a leaf from the Bookwitch's blog and adopting a bit of serendipity, going off at a bit of a tangent, I'll admit to another shock this week, with the death of Elizabeth Taylor. Again, I've never been a great fan of hers, but like Diana, I just always thought that she would be there, somewhere, being impossibly beautiful and sultry, a last reminder of a lost world of Hollywood glamour when stars were stars. I read Camille Paglia's article in yesterday's Sunday Times, mourning the loss of 'Hollywood's last great goddess of erotic power' and found myself wondering with her at the contrast between Elizabeth Taylor, the 'pre-feminist woman', and the 'skeletal, pilates-honed, anorexic silhouettes' of modern female stars, like Gwyneth Paltrow, Keira Knightley and most others that you could name. As though, somehow, Hollywood has rejected the depiction of real women in favour of androids.

I don't suppose that Elizabeth Taylor and Diana Wynne Jones will appear together anywhere else, but isn't that what ABBA is for? Nostalgia is probably just another word for getting old, but for me the world will be much the poorer for the loss of these two very different women.

It's That Man Again... Celia Rees

Lucy Coats has already blogged (Wednesday, 9th Feb) about the remarks that Martin Amis made when he was interviewed by Sebastian Faulks for the BBC 2 programme, Faulks on Fiction. Her blog has attracted 60 comments and the outrage felt has resonated as far as the national press and the Huffington Post. Martin Amis, as the Guardian on Saturday pointed out, is no stranger to controversy.

I, too, saw the programme and after the first dropping of the jaw, I thought that he actually had a point. Just in case anybody doesn't know, or does not want to scroll down the page and see his words in purple 18 point type, he said:

'People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book. I say: "If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book."'

So far, so insulting. He then went on to say:

'The idea of being conscious of who you are directing the story to is anathema to me because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable. I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write.'

Once I heard that, I could see where he was coming from. I did not think he was saying 'all children's writers have half a brain', that would be false logic. He was just explaining his own writing stance and he is entitled to do that. He writes literary fiction for adults, as such he sees it as his task to write to the top of his register and would not, could not accept any restraints on that.

The disregard for the reader that Amis expresses is just not possible when one is writing for children. Children's writers, and I include writers of Young Adult fiction, are ALWAYS aware of what their readers will and will not tolerate, or will or will not understand. Anyone who denies this is being disingenuous. Quite apart from the target readers themselves, there are other agencies involved. We have to worry about things that would not trouble writers of adult fiction in the least - see Leslie Wilson's blog below. How many writers for adults would feel the need to explain and justify their use of swear words or the incidence of sex in a novel? How much we take these factors into consideration, how much we allow them to limit our fiction, is up to us, but those limitations are there. We do not use our full palate, as Patrick Ness would say. How can we? We have to write at a lower register because we are adults and our readers are children.

There are other pressures on us, too. Pressures that have nothing to do with our writing but everything to do with the market place. In a squeezed market, there is more and more demand from publishers for novels that will sell. Books that fit into an obvious, popular genre - action, dark romance, whatever. A book that is perceived as 'too literary' is seen as problematic. The equivalent of the literary novel is a rare beast, and becoming more endangered by the minute. If one or two do sneak through, they usually turn out to have been written for adults in the first place and tweaked a bit in a bid to capture that holy grail, the crossover market.

In an interview in the Observer Review (13th February, 2011)) Nicole Krauss attests that the comment she heard most frequently on a U.S. book tour for her novel, The History of Love, was: 'this book is difficult'. Krauss worries that 'we are moving towards the end of effort'. Readers don't want to have to think too hard, it appears, whatever their age. That is the spectre that frightens me. In the hope of keeping that at bay, I actually want Martin Amis to write to the limit.

A Sort of Life - Celia Rees

At the end of his autobiographical memoir, Graham Greene says:

'For a writer, I argued, success is always temporary, success is only a delayed failure. A writer's ambition is not satisfied like the business man's by a comfortable income, although he sometimes boasts of it like a nouveau riche.
...
The writer has the braggart's excuse. Knowing the unreality of his success he shouts to keep his courage up. There are faults in his work which he alone detects...'

The real satisfaction lies in putting those things right, in other words in the writing itself.

Graham Greene was a great writer, one who understood not only how prose works, but the inner workings of those who produce it.

As I read this, I was struck by the truth of it. I'm sure there will be many who will deny it, but they know in their hearts that this is true. We ARE never satisfied. Once we are over the first great hurdle, that of getting our work published at all, then there are other goals to achieve: prizes, sales, money, fame, recognition. We need other people to recognise the worth of our work, and through that, ourselves. Even if we gain everything, prizes, fame, money, the whole works, then we still know that our star will inevitably fade. Success is fleeting, at best.

We now have more ways to shout, to keep our courage up. We can blog, tweet and twitter, post videos on YouTube. We can be out there, like barkers at some virtual literary fair, shouting out out wares, bidding readers to come see, come buy, know about us. I wonder what GG would think about all that?

Yesterday, I came across the wise words of another great writer: Margaret Atwood.

I was directed by Adele Geras to fictionbitch.blogspot.com where I found this quote from an interview in the Literary Review:

'...people are trying to pile stuff onto authors, like you have to blog, you have to have this, you have to have that. Various party tricks. You actually don't ... an author's job is to concentrate on the writing, and once the writing is finished what you essentially do is throw it into a bottle and heave it into the sea... There is still a voyage between the text and the unknown reader; the book will still arrive at the door of some readers who don't understand it - who don't like it. It will still find some readers who hopefully do...'

I guess people will say, she would say that, wouldn't she? Just as it is easy to dismiss Graham Greene's words - how much more successful can a writer be? But I don't think these observations come from self satisfaction and complacency. They come from the very things that make these two such successful writers: their powers of observation, depth of insight, honesty and courage to express thoughts that might be unpalatable, but are nonetheless true. The only real satisfation has to come from the words we put down on the page and the connection we make with readers, no matter how many, or how few.

Fiction but not as we know it... Celia Rees

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked by Armadillo, the Online Independent Children's Book Magazine, to review a book for teenagers. I don't know if the review is up yet, but home is http://www.armadillomagazine.com/ - for reviews, author interviews, and much, much more. If you don't already go there, you really should check it out. Anyway, the book arrived and I began to read. SF/fantasy is not my favourite genre - so easy to do badly - and this seemed to be a kind of Twilight with Aliens. It was sloppily written with every fantasy cliche jammed in there from Tolkien to, oh, anyone you like to think of, by way of Marvel Comics, Star Trek and Avatar. Suffice it to say, I didn't like it much. More than that, I thought there was something wrong with it. It was as if I wasn't reading a novel, as much as a novelisation - a print version of a film, or a comic, or a video game. It was written under a pseudonym, purportedly that of an alien. It certainly read that way. It seemed destined for great things, however, soon to be a major motion picture, a sticker said on the cover, the focus of an aggressive publicity campaign. Recently, I saw it has been picked out as a 'teen book of the year' in a major newspaper. So who am I to say? All I know was that it was not a book for me, and it didn't read quite right.

Some weeks later, I saw an article in the Guardian about bad boy American author, James Frey (the one who upset Oprah when she found out that his autobiography was, at least in part, fictional). He is in trouble again, it seems, for setting up a Fiction Factory, employing unknowns to churn out books to order - one of which is the one I read for Armadillo. I felt vindicated. I knew there was something wrong about it! He defends himself by citing artists like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons who come up with a concept and leave it to others to do the hard work. There seems to be a difference. Like these artists or not, the concept is often startling and original. The same cannot be said of the Fiction Factory, if the product that I sampled is anything to go by. And yet, and yet... major motion picture, ad campaign, reviews, Waterstone's placement, how many real writers of genuinely original fantasy fiction get that kind of treatment? Even more disconcerting is the idea of relays of energetic wannerbes churning out books one after another. How many writers of series fiction could keep up with that? And if writing style, storytelling ability and originality no longer matter, how long before we have e writers as well as e readers, cyberbots producing books at the click of a mouse?

It will be fiction, Jim, but not as we know it...

The Subtle Censor - Celia Rees

A quick look through recent blogs will tell you that writers for Young Adults spend a lot of time worrying about their readers and what is deemed to be appropriate or inappropriate in their fiction. More so than other writers, as Nicky Morgan pointed out last week. Other people also get exercised about this, hence the calls for book banning and burning that have been discussed here, too. The difficulties are almost always to do with sexual content. Violence not so much. Language a bit more concerning. But sex. That's the difficult one. This puts the writer for Young Adults in a bit of a dilemma. Do you, or don't you? If you do, how are you going to do it? I'm not talking about putting yourself forward for the Bad Sex Prize here, more how you are going to mention it at all.

Here are some rules: Sex is OK if...*

You are a male writer of some stature or a male writer who is Well Known For It (preferably both).

You are the above and writing about boys from a boy's point of view (but NOT homosexuality).

You make sex into a metaphor, so you are not writing about sex per se but something else, something Other, something to be put off for a long time (preferably altogether) or something Bad will happen and your heroine will never be the Same Again. It is better to burn than turn.

The outcome is Bad. See under abuse, rape, unwanted pregnancy, abortion, because then it is a) A Serious Issue, b) not the heroine's fault and c) even though it is not her fault, she's getting punished for it anyway.

NOT OK

Sex for sex's sake. Sex where people enjoy it. Sex that is part of everyday life, even if it is safe, legal and not frightening the horses.

So there is a kind of censorship, nothing official, nothing as dramatic as banning and burning, but it is there, nonetheless. Most damagingly, it can get into the writer's own head after years of being told to take it out or tone it down because if you don't then the libraries won't take it, the schools won't like it, the booksellers won't know where to put it and, oh, you can forget the Carnegie. No mention, of course, of teenagers, the actual readers, who might like to see their lives reflected with veracity and applaud the book's honesty.

* ellipses are useful in this area of writing.