MY BIG BUNTING CELEBRATION by Penny Dolan

 

It is the first of June 2022, and we are in Queen Week, as Grayson Perry has named it. Tomorrow the Jubilee. proper, starts. Or even more properly, the Platinum Jubilee, although platinum has never seemed  a very romantic or heroic metal to me. 

Platinum is more aligned to pens, replacement joints and showy gents watches. Gold and silver seem like real metals to me, burnished bright by myths, legends and stories. Of course, stories - national, personal, "real" or fictional - is what this celebration is about, the queen's own complicated story included.

Unusually, I do have a string of bunting at the ready (see above) 

I found it in a very old toffee tin among a random collection of family items. The well-preserved bunting - pictured above - was last used for the Coronation of the present Queen in 1953. It might have been there for the Coronation of her father, George VI in 1936, and have fluttered between both crownings, to celebrate the end of the War in Europe (WWII) in 1946.  With three outings at most, our family bunting has not, suffered much wear and tear or frequent outdoor flutterings. 

Royal sentiment has never been a big thing in our family but this week I will hang up this ancient bunting. I will do it in memory of all those who have gone before through the years of the last century, with all their dreams of a better country and better govenment and a better life for their children - and for the Queen who has been there for much of that time too.

Yet where does the whole "King & Queen" thing comes from for children? Culturally learned from adults or is it a deeper response?

Does, for a short while, a young child's lack of power drive them to dreams of being a "world king"? 

Does being called and dressed as a "little princess" fill a child with the value of appearance?  

Does this odd regal enthusiasm happen in nations with presidential systems?

I do wonder.

 Certainly,  the myths and legends I know are full of kings, queens, princes and princesses, though rarely with bright happy endings beyond the wedding. It's clear that a true Princess has to be able to endure suffering, whether a pea beneath her mattress, footwear problems or shape-shifting curse or disguise to be worthy of true queenship.

 

 However, a Queen's beauty can bring tragedy, whether fall of a city, the temptation of the king's best knight, or even - when warned by a magic mirror -  death and a glass coffin to the rising princess.  Uneasy is - or was - the Queen who wears the crown. Punishment may follow. On the other hand, so might rescue, no matter how loathly your appearance.

Lewis Carrol's Alice finds queens in her fantasies, even becoming one for a short while. In the Adventures in Wonderland, Alice meets the Queen of Hearts. Carol described this Queen as "a sort of embodiment of of ungovernable passion, a blind aimless Fury".  

  

 She also meets the Red Queen, in reality a chess piece, during Through the Looking Glass; this queen is "another type: her passion must be cold and calm - she must be formal and strict, yet not unkindly; pedantic to the 10th degree, the concentrated essence of all governesses!" write Carrol. (Aspects of both characters were mixed together to create the Red Queen of Disney's Alice and more recent screen versions.  Now I'm feeling pedantic.)

 The elderly White Queen, who appears Through The Looking Glass, is vague, whimsical and "able to believe six impossible things before breakfast" and sometimes believes she is searching for her lost daughter.  All too like dementia now to be comfortable. 

 

I feel glad that only Queen Elizabeth's pins are wobbly - as shown by her shrug during one too fulsome public Jubilee address recently.  

Later on, in the 1920's, A.A. Milne's woodland realm of Christopher Robin acts as a contrast to the urban setting and royal focus of some of his verses, from King John's desire for an india-rubber ball, to a King's self-pitying rage about royal butter, and all the way through to real life outings to observe the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace.  Rage, temper and the control of behaviour - with kindness - seems to be the message behind some of the verses. 

 

Time and royalty very much moved on and in 1990 another, more modern book with a different royal focus  and a sound, warm heart was Morris Gleitzman's "Two Weeks With The Queen," one of the early gay novels for young people. 

 

Meanwhile, right now, my local library is busy focusing on the craft opportunities offered by the re-issue of "The Queen's Knickers"(1993)  by Nicholas Allen. 

There's plenty more, even adult fantasies, from Alan Bennet's "The Uncommon Reader", rich with praise for what was then, in 2007, a library service available to all low or high, through to 2022 and the second book in S.J Bennet's crime series "Her Majesty Investigates," which might well appeal to some young adults.

Thank you for coming to my Royal Book Muttering. There are so many versions of the Queen to think about. I wonder what story you'd suggest?

Penny Dolan

@pennydolan1

ps. One of our ABBA bloggers, Lynne Benton, has a royal book out right now: Billy and the Queen

Getting Rid of Mum: Books With Single Parent Dads in Children's Fiction - Emma Barnes

I wasn't sure why I created a family without a mother when I wrote Wild Thing. I've nothing against mothers. I've a very nice one of my own. Many of my best friends are mothers. Not to put too fine a point on it, I AM a mother. It wasn't something I thought about at the time. Kate and Wild Thing just didn't happen to have a mum. They had a dad looking after them instead.

interior from Wild Thing Gets A Dog - copyright Jamie Littler

I think a lot of the reasons writers choose something are unconscious. Afterwards, bringing a more deliberate analysis to bear, the reasons become clearer. So now I've no doubt that the reason I got rid of Kate and Wild Thing's mother was because I wanted as much mayhem as possible. I planned these to be funny, chaotic books. Although I hate to admit it, I suspect that's easier without Mum.

Single Parent Families featuring Dad have a lot of advantages to a writer. Somehow, it seems entirely natural for dad to be fun and quirky, to be a lousy cook, and to forget about things like the start of term, or a child's need for new socks. Of course, mothers are quite capable of forgetting these things too. (Well, I am.) But it strains the credulity of a reader more. (Or it's just harder as a writer to break that “responsible, boring Mum,” stereotype.) So maybe writing about a Single Dad is the best way of writing about the chaos and mishaps which are, if truth be told, absolutely normal in all families everywhere.

Here are some children's books featuring single dads.

Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl

Danny adores his dad, and together they have crazy adventures – would a fictional mother have been allowed to be so irresponsible, and yet so loveable?

The Summer House Loon by Anne Fine

Ione's dad Professor Muffett is an absent-minded academic, preoccupied with his research into “Early Sardinian trade routes”. He is also blind. An entirely sympathetic character, it is not surprising that a certain amount of chaos flourishes in their household in this witty, sophisticated book. A really fun read for a certain kind of teenager – the kind that doesn't want angst, but some comedy instead.

The Penderwicks  by Jeanne Birdsall

Another absent-minded professor, Mr Penderwick is left to bring up his four daughters when his wife dies, in a book which is a bit like a more modern version of Little Women, but with a dad replacing “Marmee”.

Rooftoppers by Katharine Randell

This prize-winning book features...another academic single dad. (Hmm, beginning to detect a bit of a trend.)   Charles is the foster father to Sophie, who is an orphan from a shipwreck. He is absent-minded and eccentric and he and Sophie eat off books rather than plates, their bizarre house-keeping getting them into trouble with social services. It's rather whimsical but also very appealing.

The Longest Whale Song by Jacqueline Wilson

And finally...you can rely on Jacqueline Wilson to be a bit more down-to-earth, and although she's written several books with single dads, I don't think any of them are absent-minded academics. What is especially nice about this one, is that it features the relationship between a girl and her stepfather, forced to work as a team when the mother enters a dangerous coma after her baby's birth. Ella's stepfather is far kinder and more responsible than her biological father, and once again Wilson shows that a successful family can come in all shapes and sizes.

Please tell me your favourite single dad stories...with or without absent-minded professors.

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Emma's Website
Emma’s Facebook Fanpage
Emma on Twitter - @EmmaBarnesWrite

Emma's Wild Thing series for 8+ about the naughtiest little sister ever. (Illustrated by Jamie Littler)
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman

 Wolfie is a story of wolves, magic and snowy woods...
(Illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark)
"Funny, clever and satisfying..." Books for Keeps

How do we judge quality in children's books?

By Cecilia Busby

There are a couple of things recently that have made me think about how we judge quality in children's books. One was the rather interesting discussion about kids reading 'trash', started by Clementine Beauvais on ABBA and continued in other places for a few weeks afterwards. The other is my decision this year to try to read all the Carnegie shortlisted books. Both have made me think about how we judge what is good in children's literature.

The Carnegie Book Prize is probably the best known and most prestigious prize awarded to children’s books in the UK – it’s effectively the Booker for children. It generates a great deal of interest, a lot of attention for the shortlist of nominated books, and it’s a brilliant show-piece for the best in children’s writing.

A couple of years ago, my son’s school, like many across the country, took part in a Carnegie shadowing event – children at the school read the shortlisted books and then met to discuss and vote for their own favourites. It was the occasion of his most epic reading challenge ever: with only a week to go before the vote, he read the entire Chaos Walking trilogy, as he didn’t want to just read Monsters of Men on its own.

This year, I thought I’d do a little Carnegie shadowing of my own, wondering if it would be worth doing something similar with the primary school where I am Patron of Reading.  Normally, Carnegie shadowing is done by secondary schools, and when I looked at the shortlist, I realised why. I was struck by just how dark the themes were, and how many of the books were for older readers. Of the eight books, three are designated 14+, four 11+ and only one 9+. Only one of these books, then, sits firmly in the classic 9–12 age range. The others are aimed at secondary school readers: either 11–14, or 14–17. In the descriptions, the words that caught my eye were ‘trauma victim’, ‘difficult’ or ‘bleak’ circumstances, ‘a brave book that pulls no punches’, ‘unimaginable terror’, ‘shocking brutality of war’, ‘abusive, alcoholic partner’, ‘dysfunctional family dynamics’, ‘brutal act of cruelty’, ‘political tension’, and ‘family conflicts’. Only two of the books, Katherine Rundell’s Rooftoppers and Rebecca Stead’s Liar and Spy (the 9–12 book), appear to have a more light-hearted element.

Maybe this is just about the periodic shifts in what is ‘of the moment’ in children’s literature, or maybe just coincidentally the best of the books published this year have tended towards an older age range and a dark strand of realism. But the shortlist chimed for me with a growing sense that children’s book prizes, like children’s book reviews, tend to favour the more ‘literary’ end of writing, and particularly the older, more adult books. Is this because their quality, as children's literature, is better? Curious, I went to find the criteria for the Carnegie nominations, to see what these judgements were based on.

The criteria are here, and they make interesting reading. There is no mention of the world ‘children’ anywhere, except in terms of eligibility: nominations must be for children’s books. In the main criteria, it is emphasised that the book should be ‘of outstanding literary quality’, and the specifications for this relate to plot, character, and literary style. The list could just as easily be applied to an adult novel.

Children’s writers, even those for young children, use and display fantastic skills in plot, character and style – but it’s important, I think, to specify that these are being assessed in relation to child readers. Because the skill to engage a child reader may involve certain linguistic tricks, certain exaggerations of character, certain simplifications of plot, that would not necessarily work in a novel for older readers or adults, and that can, at first glance, seem less, well, less ‘literary’. Not always, of course, and indeed, one of the younger age-range books on the Carnegie shortlist, Rooftoppers, is full of astonishingly inventive imagery. But is this what makes it a great children's book?

If we make 'literary' writing the main criteria for judging quality then in effect we are judging children's books in the same way we judge adult books. This seems reasonable for the older teenage books: a literate fourteen year old is, in essence, an adult reader. Their interests, in terms of subject matter, may be different, but their ‘reading’ skills are sufficient for the deployment of the full range of adult literary styles and tricks of plotting and language.

The Carnegie judges are skilled and established children’s librarians, so it’s likely that the panel do consider these elements in relation to the age of the reader. But I wonder if the often dazzling language effects and narrative innovations that writers for older teens can utilise inevitably appear to fulfil Carnegie criteria to a higher degree than the simpler (though no less well-judged) effects used by writers for the younger age range. I wonder if the more hard-hitting and controversial subject matter that can be delved into in a teen book inevitably makes the lighter touch needed for young readers appear to be lacking in intensity by comparison. Looking at the last ten to fifteen years of the Carnegie would seem to confirm that it’s the teen books and ‘difficult’ subjects that predominate, with only a couple of winners that would not be considered YA.

I have no objection to the Carnegie celebrating the best that older teen fiction has to offer, and such books can be reasonably judged on adult literary criteria. But what if we want to celebrate the best in classic childrens books, the 9–12 (middle-grade) books? This, after all, is the age when children most fully engage with books, the age when they love them with an intensity I don’t think you ever truly find again. Books that spark that kind of love deserve to be lauded. Maybe it's time for two Carnegie Prizes - for young adult and for children's books.

If we want to celebrate these books for younger readers, though, do we need different criteria? Should we acknowledge that they simply can’t be judged by (or only by) standard ‘literary’ criteria, that these don’t fit with the way children (as opposed to teenagers) read books? Perhaps so, but then  how do we judge them? That's a trickier matter. Drawing on my own experience of the books I fell in love with as a child, I would like to suggest some criteria for judging quality in children's fiction.

1. Is a child who reads this book likely to put it down with a sigh at the end and say, “That’s the best book I ever read’?

2. Would a child who read this book want to immediately read the next book in the series, or make a note of the author and find everything they’ve ever written?

3. Is the book likely to make its child readers laugh out loud, and/or cry, without it necessarily being a wholly ‘funny’ or wholly ‘sad’ book? (Both require skill and judgement, although personally I think making them laugh is harder. But both show that the reader’s emotions are fully engaged.)

4. Is a child reader likely to be so absorbed by the story in this book so that by the end they don’t want to eat, sleep or engage with the outside world until they’ve finished it and found out what happens?

5. Are there characters in the book that will be so fiercely loved by many of the children that read it that they would give anything to walk around the corner and find them walking the other way?

6. Are these characters and the world they live in so loved by the child reader that they are likely to feel bereft when the book is over, and more than half inclined to read the whole book again from the beginning, just to keep those characters alive a little longer in their heads?

Of course, these criteria are subjective. They also rely on an adult making judgements based on their own memory of being a child reader, based on talking to children, based on their experience of children's likes and dislikes. But all judgments (including literary ones) are subjective - and these are at least very different questions to ask of a book than ones about the deployment of style, narrative, characterisation and language (although all these things contribute to the end effects I’m talking about). They are first and foremost questions about the heart and soul of the book, and its effect on child (not adult) readers.

Perhaps, if these had been the criteria over the last decade, the Carnegie winners would still have been the same books. Perhaps it doesn’t make a difference. What do you think? I am certain that the Carnegie winners over the last years have been great books. I am less certain about whether they have been great children’s books.

Cecilia Busby writes fantasy adventures for 7+ as C.J. Busby. Her new book, DEEP AMBER, is aimed at age 8-10, published with Templar.

Website www.cjbusby.co.uk
Twitter @ceciliabusby

Why children’s books are the opposite of tragedies - C.J. Busby

I was thinking the other day about how, in so many children’s books, the hero finds they have hidden powers. I think it’s one of the aspects of children’s books I love the most, and loved especially as a child myself – the sense that, however ordinary you felt you were, there might be this magical ability hidden inside you, or some unexpected aspect of your character, just waiting for the right opportunity, the right trigger, to reveal itself. 

In one of my favourite books as a child, Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones, Cat Chant discovers, after many trials and mix-ups, that he’s an enchanter – from being a child who could do absolutely no magic, he becomes one who can make almost anything happen by just telling it to. In Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising, Will discovers he’s an Old One, and learns to use his new powers to fight the Dark. And Harry Potter, ordinary downtrodden child, finds he is really a wizard, and a very special one at that. 

But in more mundane ways, many children’s books chart the ways their protagonists learn to draw on hidden strengths or find reserves of bravery, intelligence, compassion, understanding, or determination to overcome obstacles and win through in difficult or challenging circumstances. 

In The Lord of the Rings, for example, it is the 'children' of the book, the hobbits, who really save Middle Earth - and they do so by finding in themselves the sort of courage, grit, compassion, confidence and ability to survive that they'd never have dreamed of in sleepy Hobbiton. The change in them is made gloriously manifest in their final return to the Shire and the battle with Sharkey.

In essence, these sorts of stories tell their readers – you can be amazing! It’s a great message for children – indeed, for any reader. It says, nothing about you is fixed, you don’t have to accept that you are only ever going to be this person or that person. Round the corner, an adventure might be waiting that will draw out of you all sorts of things – that will change you into a kind of hero, with new and unexpected powers. No matter that you are not top of the class, or ‘gifted and talented’, no matter that you think of yourself as ‘ordinary’ – there’s always hope.

This kind of transformative possibility in children’s books seems to me to be the very opposite of tragedy. In tragedies, most often, it’s the inherent flaws in the protagonist’s character that lead to the inevitable tragic outcome. Hamlet’s total introspection, his inability to stop dithering; Othello’s insane jealousy; Coriolanus’s pride; or in the classic Greek tragedies, the hero’s hubris, or their rigidity, or the inevitable repercussions of one terrible action. There’s a feeling of watching a slow motion train crash – nothing stops the slide towards mutual destruction because none of the characters are capable of changing who they are. When I was in my twenties, life sometimes felt exactly like this, and when it did, my best friend and I used to wail: ‘Aargh - I’m in an Iris Murdoch novel!’

In much adult literature events unfold in this way – the characters, like Martin Luther, ‘can do no other’, they react to each other and to events in ways that drive the plot forward, and it’s not very often that one of them finds a hidden power that solves the tangle they’ve all got themselves into. For me, then, tragedy is a quintessentially grown-up (‘literary’) form of literature, about people working through the consequences of who they are, who they have become. But children are always becoming, and so children’s literature seems to me in its purest form the very opposite of tragedy – characterised not by comedy, but a kind of positive hopefulness, an expectation of finding some new, positive aspect of yourself which explodes into the plot and turns it on its head.

This seems especially important to me now, when schools – even primary – are riddled with exams and tests and gradings: children, according to Ofsted good practice, should know exactly what National Curriculum Level they are (a 3a, or a 4b) and why they aren’t yet at the next level up. There is only one path allowed: three points of progress in academic work per school year. Ofsted is not interested in whether you might, in the meantime, have fought dragons, or learnt to conjure a whirlwind.

As with all generalisations, I’m sure people will find exceptions and caveats, and I don’t at all mean to be prescriptive. It’s not that I think all children’s books must conform to this model – but for me, the ‘ideal type’, if you like, of a children’s book, is that it has this sort of transformative hope at its centre. And the ideal anti-type is the tragedy.


C.J. Busby writes funny, fast paced fantasy for primary age children.

Her latest book, Deep Amber, is a multiple worlds adventure for 8-12, published March 2014 by Templar.

'This is an adventure... here are runes and swords and incredibly stupid knights in armour – enjoy!' (ABBA Reviews: Read the rest of the review here).

Website: www.cjbusby.co.uk

Twitter: @ceciliabusby

A confession of my own - John Dougherty

It's my view that Liz Kessler's post of the 27th November is one of the most important we've ever published.

It's certainly been among the most popular; within hours of posting our stats page was showing it as one of the ten most-viewed pages on the site in its five-year history, and within a couple of days it had made its way up to the number four slot. Meanwhile, 92 comments were left, which is probably a record, and all of them were positive. As Liz says, as a society we've come a long way.

Which is why it feels appropriate this morning to make a confession of my own. You see, I used to be a bigot.

Is 'bigot' quite the right word? I'm not sure. My dictionary defines a bigot as someone who has 'an obstinate belief in the superiority of one's own opinions', and actually it was other people's opinions I held to be superior: God's, mostly, or at least the people who claimed to know what he thought. And apparently in God's book gay people were Very, Very Bad, and so were you if you disagreed with him. This chimed with what I'd been taught in the playground - gays were weird; gays were different; gays were to be cast out and mocked and despised; gays were you if you didn't conform or if the kid at the top of the pecking order didn't like your face.

Essentially, as so many things are, it was about stories. The stories told us that being gay was a choice; that it was a sin; that it only happened to people who were Not Like Us and who we'd probably never meet as long as we continued to be Good and Normal and stayed out of trouble.

What changed my mind? Stories. First and foremost, the stories of a friend who'd been told the same stories that I had, and found they weren't true; who found that he had no choice about being gay; who found that that no matter how hard he tried to be straight, he just wasn't; who did all the things prescribed by the People Who Know What God Thinks and found that the more he did them, the more messed-up his life became.

I wish I'd heard stories like that sooner. I wish that, when I was younger, there had been stories about people who happened to be gay without 'gay' being the whole point of who they are, who were gay without being ridiculous caricatures like Mr Humphries, who could have been my uncle or my friend's mum. Of course in those days even the hint of a gay character in a children's book would have been enough to have the Daily Mail and the Sun thundering BAN THIS EVIL BOOK! But I can't help wondering if perhaps the publishing industry should have been brave enough to try.

I'm glad it's different now. I'm glad there are books, however few, like Morris Gleitzman's wonderful Two Weeks With The Queen. I'm glad that Liz's publishers now feel the market is ready for her forthcoming Read Me Like A Book. And I'm glad that my friend no longer has to hide who he is. But I wish I'd made friends like him earlier, in the safety of the pages of a book, so that when I first met him I'd have understood him already.

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John's next book:  

 Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Badness of Badgers, illustrated by David Tazzyman & published by OUP in January 2014

Dumbing Down - Heather Dyer

Sometimes I wonder whether I am taking the easy option in writing for children. Not that I find writing for children easy – far from it – but would writing for adults be even more difficult? And more worthwhile?

I don’t have these thoughts often, but they flit across my mind sometimes when people (often other writers, who ought to know better!) actually say things like: “You’re wasted on writing for children.” Or, “Why do you want to dumb down?”

But I don't see writing for children as dumbing down. I see it as making complex ideas accessible – and that isn’t easy. As Einstein said, ‘If you can’t explain it to an eight year old you don’t understand it fully yourself.’

But it's true that I don’t think I could write fiction for adults – not at the moment, anyway. It just doesn’t grab me. I wasn’t sure why this was until I read the following account from Gretchen Rubin in her book The Happiness Project:

“I’ve never really figured out what I get from children’s literature that I don’t get from adult literature, but there’s something. The difference between novels for adults and novels for children isn’t merely a matter of cover design, bookstore placement, and the age of the protagonist. It’s a certain quality of atmosphere.”

Yes! Whether fantasy or reality-based, children’s books (especially for the younger ages) are nice places to be. That’s one of the reasons I write for children. I like to give them somewhere to go. Gretchen goes on to say:

“Children’s literature often deals openly with the most transcendent themes, such as the battle between good and evil and the supreme power of love… good triumphs. [Adult novels] focus on guilt, hypocrisy, the perversion of good intentions, the cruel workings of fate, social criticism, the slipperiness of language, the inevitability of death, sexual passion, unjust accusation, and the like.”

Actually, I’d argue that children – and their books – do contain all of these other murky issues, but because children might not be sophisticated or experienced enough to appreciate these machinations in an adult world, they have to be explored through a child’s world – or a fantasy world. But I think that children’s books do tend to strive towards ideals, promote the sunny side of the street, and prove that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Children’s books are optimistic. As Gretchen says:

“…maybe children are closer to their natural perfection than adults, less mired, can still feel like flying, want to be free, to be good, to be their best selves…”

And that’s pretty wonderful, isn’t it? When it is suggested to me that I stop writing fantasy and start writing about the ‘real world’, I re-read the following excerpt from an article in the Guardian, in which Jeanette Winterson (who has had more than her fair share of the ‘real world’ but has not lost her ability to fly) talks about the benefits of writing for children:

“… kids can hold on to a life lived on many levels, that does not altogether follow the calendar and the clock, or the straight line of events. Life has an inside as well as an outside, and the purpose of imaginative books and films for kids isn't simple escapism but permission to keep the Peter Pan part that never should grow up. This isn't foolishness, but openness, trust, good-nature, and a willingness to live bravely – as all the fairytales tell us we must.”

Because when you think about it, the world is magic after all. It’s only because we are accustomed to looking at it with jaded adult eyes that we see it as anything but miraculous. Children’s books can give us back a dimension of amazement, remind us how it feels to be enchanted, take us flying and show us the light. This doesn't feel like dumbing down, to me - more like a lifting up.



Heather Dyer - children's author and Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow

• For enquiries about creative writing workshops for children or adults, or editorial services, go to www.heatherdyer.co.uk
• For enquiries about academic writing workshops, go to:  http://rlfconsultants.com/consultants/heather-dyer/

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