HARING THROUGH MARCH with a new publishing experience. By Penny Dolan.

Hello!  It's the first of April and. listening to the news, I have no heart for jokes  However, I do have a story to tell.

Thoughout March, I have been working on a children's story called THE GINGER TOM CAFE.  I have been creating one chapter a week. (So little? Read on please.) It has been an amazing experience.

The story was written through Fiction Express, an online educational publisher, who offer an interesting literacy model, who contacted me late last year. My 'Ginger Tom Cafe' scenario and characters offered the most relevant mix of themes for their students at the first Level and so it went ahead. The cover was designed, the initial chapter written and edited, a short author video was required, all at a gentle pace, at least from here at my desk.

Chapter One was published online on the first Friday of March 2022, and from then on, life became a little concentrated, because all four of the five chapters had a strong 'cliffhanger ending'.  After reading the chapter, the students voted for one of three options. The winning choice fed into the next chapter, and so on. The week took on a busy rhythm. 

As soon as the vote was confirmed on Tuesday afternoon, I outlined the next chapter, conferred with my lovely and helpful editor, adapted the storyline if needed, wrote and submitted the text and approved the edit. By late Thursday, that chapter was sent off to a different time zone for formatting as book pages.

Early on Friday, a copy of that new chapter was with me for what became my favourite task. I printed the pages out, read them through and marked them up. 

Then, with silence imposed in the house, I clamped my phone in its special holder, positioned the pages across my desk, checked I wasn't sitting on the creaky bench and recorded the chapter on my mobile.

By 10am, my short audio recoding had been emailed to my editor. 

By 10.30am, both audio and pages were available for schools.

By 11am, I had posted an open question on the Fiction Express Forum. This special feature allows students, wherever they are, to contribute their thoughts and reflections about aspects of the story. Others followed during the week.

Above each student's "name", was a small coloured circle. I soon realised that I was writing this story in the virtual company of children and young people from Spain, Italy, Greece, Mexico, India as well as the UK. It made me feel quite giddy. After two years and more without meeting many real-life children, the interaction felt an utter delight. There's a small invitation only Zoom session in May which will be - I hope - even more fun.

There have been odd moments, of course. As the rain poured down in Yorkshire, students from sunnier countries were suggesting a whole range of outdoor "street" events to bring more customers to the fictional Cafe. Subtleties of genre were not always understood: angry monsters, gangsters and a giant cake fight were not really going to fit with what is quite a gentle domestic story. Nor was the suggestion to get Brad Pitt and Will Smith to visit the cafe.

I enjoyed working on the story very much, partly because it includes cats, cakes, a charming cafe, a touch of peril and confusion plus several characters. It was a nice place to be when so much awful stuff is raging around. 

I was also very impressed by all the background material created for the students by the Fiction Express team, and by the two higher level books being created at the same time by authors Jo Franklin and David McPhail. (How as the weeks whirl by, the FE team cope, I do not know. Respect!)

  

 

How, as the weeks whirl by, 

the FE team cope with all the juggling,

 I cannot imagine. 

Respect!

 

Personally, I learned quite a lot:

How to make make short videos and audio recordings on my mobile after being a fan of author invisibility.

How to be as much a planner as a pantser, though my pantsing did help when the votes suddenly swerved.

How working at a set speed can be fun, especially after the torpid effect of the lockdowns.

How working closely with an known editor, responding in real time was such a positive experience, compared to sending scripts off into the void or waiting months for any reply or activity. It truly felt like collaborative working.

How, even though I'd written myself a timetable, the days didn't always go to plan - but sometimes that flexibility brought me space for seeing friends and so on.

How people at home respected the structure of the week = at least for one month - even as the pattern limited what we were free to to do.

How I still find it satisfying to create a story, especially one that readers are interested in. 

And how, all in all, it was fun, and for the students and schools too, I hope. 

Many thanks to all the Fiction Express team.

Onwards, now, into a slightly quieter time.

Penny Dolan

@pennydolan1

 

ps. THE GINGER TOM CAFE will be available as a POD title.  

https://en.fictionexpress.com/

 

A bloomin' good adventure by Ann Evans

Well first of all, I just wanted to add my belated Happy Birthday wishes to ABBA. Five fantastic years of children's authors writing about writing.

Talking about writing and writing about writing are the two things that we seem to do best, so long may it continue!

Of course we have to get down to actually DOING some writing every now and then!

It's just too easy to procrastinate especially when the sun is shining and the garden beckons. However, and you may not know this, but it is actually vital to be out in the sunshine mowing the grass and pruning the roses and planting up a few more flowers, rather than sitting in front of a hot PC on nice days. I believe it is the law!

Thinking about it, gardening is a bit like writing. We have the seeds of a story germinating in our heads, we use our skilled fingers to plant those first tentative words out and see them blossom and grow. And then we prune, chop and weed out the unnecessary bits and perhaps recycle some snippets to use elsewhere.

Sticking with the gardening analogy, my writing has been a real hothouse of activity these last five weeks and I've been digging deep into the old brain cells for some fresh adventures for my characters in The Mysterious Indian Vanishing Trick.

In my blog last month I mentioned that I was writing the story in five 2,000 word chapters for Fiction Express which goes out to schools every Friday afternoon. I was just starting the project then and was understandably nervous knowing I had to write a fresh chapter in just two and a half days, after the kids had voted on which way the story should go.

And today, (Thursday as I write this) I've just finished chapter 5 – my final chapter and thought I'd let you know how it all went. First off, I was nervous when the first vote came in and I had to start writing while the clock was ticking.

I actually had butterflies in my stomach as I was writing chapter 2, but I got it done well before the deadline, and found that with Fiction Express's Paul and Laura really knowing their stuff and being fantastic editors, the chapter was edited so smoothly that it was literally painless.

I found that keeping one step ahead worked, and while the readers would have three options to vote on, over the weekend I would draft out three opening paragraphs, so I had one ready for whichever way the vote went. So then when the official vote came in on a Tuesday afternoon, I was already up and running, so to speak. So much easier than staring at a blank screen even though those opening paragraphs eventually got altered and re-worded.

Another really nice bit about being involved in this, is the blog, where the author gets to hear the readers thoughts almost instantly, and can reply back and produce a regular blog to keep the interest going. All good fun!

As for The Mysterious Indian Vanishing Trick itself. I first wrote the original story quite some time ago, but it never found a publisher. This new version still features my main characters, Jamie, Valinda and Rahul – and Jamie's daft mum and dad, and the mysterious magical book. But the plot has gone off in different directions and turned into a book that I'm more than happy with. The readers all seem to have enjoyed it too. So, all in all it's been quite an adventure.

So now that the words 'the end' have been written at the end of chapter five, rather than 'vote now' I can relax a while - and I know just the place to do it, providing the sun keeps shining, So, I'm off to sit in the garden for half an hour or so with a glass of wine and wait for another idea to germinate and grow.

How about you - is this fine weather helping you write or is it a distraction?

Cheers!

Please visit my website:  www.annevansbooks.co.uk

And find out more about Fiction Express here: www.fictionexpress.co.uk

On Your Marks, Get Set... Write! By Ann Evans

I've always thought that the good thing about writing fiction is that you can do it at your leisure. Well I know you have to 'up' the pace when deadlines are looming. But in general you can let the ideas mull around in your head, then play about with them on the page, plan your story, write it, rearrange it, write some more, edit and polish, put it aside, go back to it. Then eventually, when you realise it's the best it's going to get, you can think about doing something with it, like sending it off to the publisher or your agent.

That's my normal way of writing fiction anyway, but I'm just about to embark on something new which calls for instant writing of a 2,000 word chapter, from idea to going live in a matter of two and a half days; and then repeating the process over the following four weeks!

Fun? Or nightmare? I'm hoping it's going to be fun and a great experience.  

Last year I teamed up with Fiction Express, who have taken on my story The Mysterious Indian Vanishing Trick - or rather they've taken on the first chapter and the concept.  The rest still has to be written in real time.

Chapter one goes out on 14th June – this Friday. If you pop along to their site, there's even a countdown clock, ticking away the seconds!

Screenshot of the front page of Fiction Express website

Possibly some of you Sassies have already worked for Fiction Express, but if you haven't heard of them, they work alongside primary schools, providing online fiction every Friday afternoon where the children say what will happen in the next chapter via three voting options; the author then writes the next chapter in real time, and it goes live the following Friday.

For the schools who enrol there's other activities going on for the children to get involved with, while the author can keep the excitement going through the Fiction Express blog.

So, all in all, I'm looking forward to next Friday – or rather what will be heading my way once the children have voted. The three choices are now written along with the first chapter, but then I've only got the vaguest outline as to where the next chapter will go, as it depends on which option gets the most votes.

I'm praying that when I get told the result of the votes next Tuesday afternoon, I don't get an attack of writer's block! Now what are those tried and tested methods of avoiding such a thing? Walking the dog, doing the ironing...

Or the best one – a deadline looming!

How about you, do you work best under pressure, or prefer a little breathing space?

Here's the link to Fiction Express if you want to find out more: 

http://schools.fictionexpress.co.uk/en

Please visit my website:  www.annevansbooks.co.uk