A day in the life of a writer in lockdown with a toddler - Holly Race

6am - Alarm goes off. Snooze it several times during early morning browse of Netgalley and Goodreads. My first novel is being published on 11th June and I have not yet found it within myself to heed my fellow authors' advice to step away from the reviews, Holly.

6:30am - Reluctantly get up and even more reluctantly do some yoga to ease the toddler-related back pain that has been plaguing me since the second week of lockdown.

7am - Load up 4thewords.com and speed write 500 words of second novel, keeping an eye on the baby monitor for signs of movement. For those not in the know, 4thewords has been my lifesaver during lockdown. I have always found it best to write early drafts as quickly as possible, and using programs or games that encourage me to type against the clock are the best way to get me to ignore my inner editor. 4thewords is extra brilliant because every word you type helps to fight monsters and buy equipment like golden chests and raw gold. A good one for writers who also enjoy D&D.

8:30am - 2-year-old daughter wakes up and demands Peppa Pig for the first - but not last - time today. My feelings on Peppa are very similar to Stanley Tucci's, but if it keeps her occupied for twenty minutes then I'm not complaining. I spend my time well, browsing Netgalley and Goodreads just in case anyone's posted a review in the last two hours.

9am - Attempt to fool the toddler into believing that Duplo, train tracks and serving cake to her soft toys are every bit as exciting as they were when we started playing them nine weeks ago. Eventually give up and let her daub the kitchen in paint while I catch up on emails.

10am - Bribe toddler with raisins to get her to behave while I call my cousin on Zoom. We moan at each other for thirty minutes solid. It feels amazing.

10:30am - Say 'tag!' cheerily to husband as he gets off his morning work calls and lie to him that 'she's in a good mood today'. Maybe if he goes into it with optimism it'll rub off on the little one. Speed write another 500 words on 4thewords while husband and toddler run backwards and forwards past my office door. Defeat a 'Wignow', which looks like a cross between a hedgehog and a gerbil. Would quite like one as a pet.

11am - Facetime with a scriptwriter who I am doing some freelance editing work with. The majority of our dealings have occurred during lockdown so we've never met in person, but we have already shared in depth details of our various bodily pains, and photos of ourselves wearing onesies. She's brilliant and I am a bit in love with her.

12pm - Retrieve obligatory lockdown homemade sourdough from the bread bin and attempt to persuade the toddler to eat some with poached egg. Eventually give in and hand her a fruit pouch. Husband and I make comforting noises but share dispirited glances: she is regressing during lockdown and it's making us feel like utter failures.

1pm - Read The Gruffalo and If I Had a Dinosaur for the millionth time. Share a cuddle with toddler as she tries to convince us that she can fall asleep in our bed. Heart swells as she scrunches her eyes up and makes loud breathing noises. Gives up after three minutes, licks my nose and giggles loudly. We take her to her cot, tuck her in and close the door. Agree that she really is the cutest. Especially when she's asleep.

1:30pm - Attempt to write while listening to toddler babbling away happily to herself upstairs. It's becoming abundantly clear that she is ready to drop her lunch nap. Reader, we are not ready for her to drop her lunch nap. Give up on writing and read 'The Bookseller' instead, adding a multitude of books mentioned in its pages to my already bulging Amazon wishlist. Ten weeks ago I had somewhat foolishly imagined that lockdown would give me a chance to catch up on my reading pile, apparently forgetting that I have several jobs and a sproglet.

2:30pm - Give up on all pretence of work and spend twenty minutes eating crisps and watching clips from The Greatest Showman on YouTube,  just to admire the perfection that is Zendaya.

3pm - Admit that toddler is not going to sleep and let her drink milk while watching CBeebies. Browse Netgalley and Goodreads - it's been a whole five hours, after all.

3:21pm - Surprise delivery! The proofs of my book have arrived! They've been stuck in a warehouse since the start of lockdown and I actually received the finished copies a few days ago, but this is still thrilling! Persuade toddler to hand me the books one by one so I can arrange them on my bookshelves. Only a few get creased covers in the process.

4pm - Husband takes toddler out for a walk while I attempt to write another 1000 words and write five blog posts and record a video for my publicist and read a script for a production company. I manage 200 words, a bullet point and a social media browse before he returns.

5:30pm - Take toddler into the garden while husband returns to work. Get her to load the mealworms into the bird feeder because I am creeped out by them and she isn't. Try to convince her that watering herbs is a fun game.

6pm - Concede to toddler's demands to watch 'Hey Duggee' and retire to the kitchen to make dinner. Try to listen to podcasts for intellectual stimulation but instead can only hear the distant beat of 'Stick stick stick stick sticky sticky stick stick' coming from the sitting room.

6:30pm - Sit down for dinner. Attempt to discuss news and work with husband but just end up explaining thirty times in a row why toddler can't get down from her high chair until we've all finished eating.

7:30pm - Begin bedtime routine. Read entire collection of picture books before toddler finally concedes that she is actually quite tired.

9pm - Tidy house in manner of zombie and collapse onto sofa to answer emails, Zoom friends and cry quietly about how little work we have actually got done today compared to how much we needed to get done. Briefly consider trying to write a bit more but admit defeat.

10pm - Go to bed, but spend at least an hour refreshing Netgalley and Goodreads in a cloud of self-reproach before finally falling asleep.


Holly Race worked for many years as a script editor in film and television, before becoming a writer.

Her debut novel, Midnight's Twins, is published by Hot Key Books on 11th June 2020. She also selectively undertakes freelance script editing and story consultant work.

www.hollyrace.com

www.patreon.com/hollyracewriting

Keeping going in the summer holidays - Alex English

The school holidays are looming, in fact, here in France they've already begun and will go on for nine (nine!) weeks. These long summer months are a great time to relax and unwind with the kids, but not so great for getting any writing done. Here are a few things I've tried to help keep my writing going while school's out.

Summer's here!

1. Down tools for the summer

In the absence of deadlines, the most obvious option to the summer conundrum may be to stop writing and take a break. Unfortunately for me, while working around the children is difficult, not working is even worse! Ideas bubbling inside me with no time to write make me a tetchy and irritable mum. So, while I've tried this before, I don't recommend it unless you want a break.

2. Embrace childcare when you can

This is an obvious, albeit sometimes expensive one. We live in France so grandparental help is limited, as are holiday clubs, but whenever there is a chance to palm the kids off on someone else and write, I am not ashamed to take it.

3. Work on mini projects 

When the kids were babies, I wrote in nap times. I was mainly working on picture books at that point, which were easy projects to pick up and put down. I sometimes even worked alongside my children. If they were busy playing with Brio trains on the floor, I would sit alongside them and scribble picture book ideas longhand in my notebook. As long as I was sitting with them, and not staring at a screen, they were happy to play alongside as I doodled. So, a picture book text or a few poems might be the sort of writing to do over the summer to keep your writing brain well-oiled and ready for September. Similarly, bits of research or website admin can be easier to do in small snatches than longer pieces of fiction.

Drawing lizard characters for my WIP with my co-conspirator

4. Co-work with the children

As my children have got (a little) older and started to enjoy colouring and drawing, working alongside them has become easier. My boys' love for drawing has inspired me to start myself, so often in the holidays I can be found sketching maps of book settings with my children, drawing my characters or key props. I also like to test out potential school visit workshop ideas on them, or take them to interesting museums for research under the guise of 'fun'.

5. Get up early

Longer fiction demands periods of deeper concentration, and this summer I was loathe to completely stop work for two months when I had just put together a synopsis for my next middle-grade novel and was bursting with inspiration. I've often read about writers getting up early and writing before the children wake, but have only recently tried it for myself (night-time waking and general knackeredness had always precluded it before). Anyway, I am pleased to report that it really works! I don't write masses, but I tend to get around 300-500 words done by jumping (staggering) out of bed thirty minutes earlier. A bit like running, I never want to do it but I am glad afterwards that it's done. There's something very liberating about having a little bit of writing complete before I've even had breakfast, and it leaves me free to enjoy the rest of the day with my boys.

6. Don't beat yourself up

Lastly, life as a writer with kids is tough. If after all this, you get nothing done at all, don't beat yourself up. There's always September!


Alex English is a graduate of Bath Spa University's MA Writing for Young People. Her picture books Yuck said the Yak, Pirates Don't Drive Diggers and Mine Mine Mine said the Porcupine are published by Maverick Arts Publishing. More picture books and her first middle-grade novel are forthcoming.
www.alexenglish.co.uk

Now, more than ever, young children need to be read to – David Thorpe

Penny Dolan wrote here on 1 March, World Book Day, that she was in a library reading to children. How ironic then that on the same day Northampton County Council announced it was closing 21 libraries and only opening another 21 just one day a week, because of spending cuts.

What a short-sighted decision. Every time a library closes, part of a community dies. Literacy and libraries are part of the glue that binds the members of communities, they provide intellectual and emotional nourishment which, in the case of children, may later help them become more mature members of whatever community they come to live in, and grow into more rounded social beings.

Last month saw the publication of yet another report showing a decline in the number of parents reading to children, saying that less than half of pre-school parents now do this.

There was also another report, that paediatric doctors are finding that children are starting at primary school unable to hold a pencil properly because, rather than being encouraged by their parents to draw or write, they are given iPads or e-notebooks, resulting in diminished digital (in the original sense to do with fingers) dexterity. This impairs their ability to write.

All of these trends bode ill for the future. Reading and writing go together like milk and cereal. Both together nourish the mind and promote healthy intellectual growth. Kids need the added cognitive nutrients that books serve up by stimulating their imaginations and feeding their ability to form critical attitudes.

As Dianne Hofmeyr wrote here a couple of days ago, writers and illustrators – and publishers – are nowadays unafraid to produce books tackling difficult (some say 'dark') subjects. This is not darkness for the sake of darkness, but darkness because without it we – children included – do not fully appreciate the light – and vice versa: without the light we do not appreciate darkness.

We all experience darkness at times, so difficult subjects should be addressed – but with care, to promote understanding and empathy and help stimulate discussions by children. Only by coming to terms with these unpleasant experiences can we become fully rounded adults.

If children's books can help just a little to achieve this then they have done a great job - part of the reason that we have literature.

And part of the reason why we need libraries and need to read to children to get them into the reading habit.

Why do we have to keep repeating this demand? I feel I've been saying this for years. Isn't it obvious? Or is it just that too many other pressures are crowding books out despite it being obvious?

A weekly journey to the library was a staple of my own childhood, and opened my otherwise narrow world to a universe of possibilities. I would not be a writer – with the motto on my website "With imagination we can change the world" – without that library.

When my kids were smaller I looked forward so much to reading to them every night, and so did they – it was a terrific bonding experience. I miss it. I miss reading all the brilliant new books for kids, too, that have come out since – often borrowed from our local library – as well as the old favourites.

If I didn't read to them I made up my own stories – or we would do it together. They might give me an idea to start with and off we'd go, conjuring a new tale out of the air, a collective act of magic. Often I would draw pictures at the same time, illustrating the story while telling it, and we'd end up with a sheet of paper like a scribbled comic book page.

I'd catch my own kids using the box of coloured pens and pencils and stack of paper we always left on the low coffee table for them, scribbling away at drawings while chattering away happily to themselves – making up scenarios and illustrating them, explaining to themselves what they were drawing while drawing it – complete with sound effects (explosions, fights)!

It taught me that drawing is never just drawing but part of a narrative-making process, or perhaps a ritual, and I gained the idea that perhaps cave drawings made by long-ago humans (and Neanderthals, we now know, as well) could have been made the same way – as a collective activity that included the recital of a story or the chanting of songs or the acting-out of a scene. The original multi-media happening.

For culture is what sets us apart from all other animals. This ability to use language, pictures and story-telling is what constructs us as uniquely human, it helps fashion our social sophistication, it is the evolving skeleton of our world-view-making.

Parents must read to children. Libraries must be in every community – they are palaces of wonder. These two things should be laws and breaking them punishable by being made to learn George Orwell's 1984 off by heart. They would be if I were PM.

[I am the writer of Marvel's Captain Britain, the sci-fi YA novels Hybrids, Doc Chaos: The Chernobyl Effect and the cli-fi fantasy Stormteller. I also run a regular writing course, called 'Making Readers Care' that can be taken online. Contact me if interested.]

Reading for Pleasure in Schools - Joan Lennon

Many years ago a woman broke my heart.  She was sitting in a primary school class room and she was an expert and she said, "Your son will never read for pleasure."  It felt as if she'd taken my beautiful boy and thrown him out in darkness and slammed the door.

Sorry - that's a bleak sort of start to a blog about resources/groups/initiatives.  Except that it isn't bleak, really, because SHE WAS WRONG.  Totally.  I'm not going to trot out said beautiful boy's achievements and nay-sayers' confoundings or the last book recommendation he sent me (well, let's meet for coffee and I just might mention one or two).  But that woman does have a permanent residence in my brain and that memory rings a little bell whenever the phrase "reading for pleasure" is mentioned.

Which is one reason I'm so keen on anything that promotes reading for pleasure in schools, where the curriculum can overwhelm the joy. Here are two I know about - please let us know about more! 

Reading for Pleasure in Schools is a Facebook group/forum that is of interest to teachers, librarians, parents, authors - brimming with questions and answers and ideas and enthusiasm.  It's all in the title, really.  (The photos are from their page.)  

And there's the Patron of Reading initiative.  (This is their Facebook page.)  

(I'm Patron of Reading for the utterly fantastic Queensferry Primary School and I love it.)

Now, tell us more!
  

Joan Lennon's website
Joan Lennon's blog