Monday 31 March 2014

The "NOT THE THREE PAGES AGAIN" Report. By Penny Dolan



(I know it’s the first of April, but this isn’t a Fools Day post. )

Silence. It’s a horrid thing to have happen. The words in the head gone, or never hanging around long enough to be useful. The shameful feeling of no longer being able to be the writer I've thought I was,.

The silence crept up on me, bit by bit, started by several petty reasons. A sudden family incident that it doesn't help to go on about. A smattering of nagging anxieties, boring and best suppressed. A while with scaffolding rattling outside my workroom window, and similar. A longish Arts Project ,and a worthy commitment that both ate up too much administration time. (Oh, why didn’t I weigh up the time involved at the start?) As well as all the good stuff of life that still needs planning and attention and enjoyment. Way too much on your mind? Best keep your mouth shut, and just get on with it all.

The silence grew, added to by the shadow of a “big book” not doing as it should, and one single minor review that hurt badly. Beware too thin a skin. Then there was that guard-down, coming-out-of-the-loo moment slap into the face of a slightly sneery librarian’s harsh remark. (Just who did I think I was, pretending to be a writer, I thought.) Then that one twisted school visit – out of many good ones, I know, I know - that didn’t go quite right. (Curse you, Powerpoint facilities!)  Gradually the book that should be being written, is half-written, has paused for far too long a time.

Don't worry. I don't need a large red-spotted hanky or sympathy to wallow in. 

This is just my explanation of why, slowly, the words had stopped, and that some kind of action was urgently required. 

What action? I decided to try the “Artist’s Way” again, again. So the rest of this post is about is the famous Three Pages -  or my version of how I did, and how I DO do them.



A quick aside, if you haven't yet heard  that expression yet. The Three Pages writing exercise comes from the American writer and creative renewal guru, Julia Cameron. Her first book (1994) had the title “THE ARTIST'S WAY: A COURSE IN DISCOVERING YOUR CREATIVE SELF", and took the model of the AA 12-step programme. Julia continued with more books on this theme and a strong on-line presence. Her books do offer good and wise suggestions and I respect her enormously, especially for fighting her personal demons.

HOWEVER

Julia writes very American, and I am not. When she lyrically describes breakfasting on her sunlit porch, or riding her horse through the desert, or spending money on sparkly pencils in stores, or walking the streets of Manhattan, or meeting up with this or that creative film or theatre person in her cafe, or suddenly having a dream about putting on a musical and that happens . . .


Oh dear. Apologies. Julia. The crabby bit of me makes me shrug my shoulders and go “meh”. I'm sure it is all true, but that life is not my life. Never has been my life. These events may be a movie or life elsewhere, but not here. (Peers out at the grey drizzle outside)





FURTHERMORE
Julia’s main demand, echoing Dorothea Brande’s original and earlier book Becoming A Writer, is this. Every morning, as you wake up, you write three pages. I tried this often, as my family grew from babbling to teen-sulking around me. Sorry, Julia, but I failed too soon each time I tried. ( Back then, I was a working, work-worn mum. Somehow my role was to get everyone out there each morning or we starved. Time management wasn’t my thing - and I was doing diplomas and degrees around that time too, studying in the evenings. Not a good mix.)

BUT YET
Last November, with that cold grey dog Silence crouched by my ankles, I decided to try the Three Pages method again. (Not Page Three, please note.) However this time I would do it MY way. I would scribble those Three Pages down whenever I could. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t grieve. Or feel bad. Or all that other negative stuff that cascaded down. Agreed? Yes.

AND SO
I did -  and have now been doing - the Three Pages. I've done them for (counts on fingers . . .) about five months now, and the good news is that - even in my revised, occasionally feeble and now-guiltless version - the Three Pages have worked. I miss it when I don;t do them. Words and ideas have started whispering in my head - and something’s begun ticking again on my big project.

BUT WHAT DO YOU DO FOR THE THREE PAGES?
I use a large A4 yellow-paged notebook. Yellow because it isn’t white work paper, and the colour cheers me. Size is important too. Three large pages gives a generous space for you to listen to your muttering mind, and let all the low-level, hidden frets to rise up to the surface, to spill out somewhere around mid-second page. Aha, you think. So that’s what’s really making me so cross and fidgety!

I use a beautiful old green art-deco fountain pen, inherited from my father, which makes for comfortable writing. I keep away from the scary computer screen, the scene of my failure. The physical act of writing by hand seems to feed the task.



I use green ink, because this is not work, right? (Blue ink: school. Black ink: for depression or drawing Red ink : corrections and being marked. ) Green ink? Yes! Interesting and inspiring. Even if my fingers are always covered in green stains.

I note the day, date and year at the start, keeping a light watch on when I last made time for myself. If I have missed any days, I let myself wonder why, then start again. I even note where I’m scribbling. “Writing this in bed  . . .” or “At my desk. 4.30am”.



I note the time I start, out of curiosity, and when I end. Dawn, morning, afternoon, late night, before I sleep. All sorts of times, whenever I can. The aim is to do it, not to be perfect. (Sometimes my three pages take 50 minutes. I note that I lose focus, get distracted. Small must-be-done’s arrive, start yapping and too soon I give in, but I try better next time. Yet, thinking about this blog, I got three pages covered in 20 minutes.

I use the Three Pages for . . what? Not for “writing on a given theme” at all, nor as a diary, although some entries do sound a bit like that. Nor are they reflective odes to all that is lovely around me, ever searching for the precise, right , perfect word. The Three Pages work by getting the hand and head moving, and even if angry thoughts flicker on some pages, somehow the yellow paper isn’t greyed over with gloom.

The Three Pages are just me writing, however the writing turns out, whatever the words think: a sort of low-level meditation. The pages are private: what’s in three pages stays in three pages, or they did until I used one set to consider my thoughts for this blogpost. Maybe the pages are changing? Maybe they are becoming about what I write about? Who knows?

For me, the Three Pages have become a place to rest and be alone. No readers, no editors, no revisions, a space where inspiration is not demanded, where my writing doesn’t matter - although in a way, it does, very much. And day after day - or almost - the pages have helped the other, the “Real Writing” begin again, too.
 
I’m sure that, to some of you, this wittering about silence will sound self-indulgent and weak. "Lives are different" is all I can say, and I have worked on some briefs that ended up in print and cheered me immensely. It was the big writing thing I'm wanting to finish that scared me. Onwards - and this post makes sense to anyone, thank you for reading.

 Penny Dolan
www.pennydolan.com

Kidding Around: by Julia Wills


How comic writer Morris Gleitzman helps children face difficult things

As a comic writer for children and starting my Master’s course soon after the long decline and death of my mother with Alzheimer’s, perhaps it was unsurprising that the topic I chose to research was how humour helps children cope with seriously unfunny issues in their lives, particularly in the work of Morris Gleitzman.

Laughter is important at any age, but how much more can it offer the child reader, already so less empowered to deal with the big stuff than we are, to have that someone between the pages, calling them in and making them laugh about the things that worry them, thereby shrinking those problems and offering the child the sense that they can master their fears, too?

Much has been written about humour and three big theories still dominate.  Superiority Theory says we laugh at someone because we feel smarter than them; Incongruity Theory holds that funny is when we are surprised by two contradictory things coming together; Relief Theory maintains that we laugh at the things that scare us. 

Whilst none of these theories on its own can explain every instance of what we find funny, I felt that Relief Theory seemed most likely to answer my particular question, not least because a model of children’s humour proposed by Wolfenstein[1], with its roots in the same theory, seemed able to neatly explain why, unlike adult’s humour, which tends to remain fixed, children’s humour changes as they grown up.  

In short, Wolfenstein linked children’s laughter to fear.  Her theory explained why a very young child mastering toilet training finds potty jokes hilarious whilst a slightly older child, grappling with language, revels in puns and riddles that play with words.  By laughing at the things that worry them, Wolfenstein maintained, the child gains an affective mastery over them.

So, I wondered, was this also something that happened when they read a humorous book about a difficult situation?

Interestingly, when a child reaches school age, a time when socialisation is much greater, homemade jokes are discarded in favour of ready-made ones.  Might this mean that when they are becoming aware of some of life’s more unpleasant realities – such as death, loneliness, divorce – a ready-made fictional character in a book, rather than a joke, allows them to gain control over their own issues?

Morris Gleitzman, a children’s author of more than thirty books, has achieved the remarkable feat of making the most extraordinarily difficult subjects funny.  His stories deal with topics as gloomy as parents’ over-ambition for their children, euthanasia, famine and crippling loneliness.   In “Two Weeks with the Queen,” Colin’s brother is terminally ill; in “Bumface” Angus’s mother forces him to become a substitute parent for two under-fives.  Yet, without a doubt, the books are laugh-out loud funny. 

So if the character is allowing the reader the opportunity for the affective mastery that Wolfenstein talks about, how do they do it?

According to the writer John Vorhaus[2], despite coming in all shapes and sizes, comic characters have one thing in common: comic distance.  This is their out-of-stepness with reality and us.  It might be physical - the crazy clothes and red noses that clowns wear, or the fact that The Simpsons are bright yellow.   Or it could be an exaggerated trait – Harold Lloyd was accident prone, but it was the exaggeration of that flaw that led him to hand off a civic clock-face a hundred feet above the city.  In Gleitzman’s work the comic distance comes from the main character’s attitude: the distance between the reality of a situation and the child’s perception of it.  The character’s misguided “Can-do!” determination inevitably leads to things becoming funny.

In Gleitzman’s “Two Weeks with the Queen,” rather than accept the reality of his brother’s plight, Colin decides that the doctor is wrong.  A better doctor, he decides, would be able to cure Luke.  Such a doctor must obviously be really smart, like the one who looks after the Queen of England.  Consequently it’s not long until Colin happens on the “obvious” solution of breaking into Buckingham Palace (with the help of a few tools from his uncle’s workbox) to have a chat with her. 

In “Bumface” Angus is desperate to stop his mum having any more children for him to look after.  All he really wants is to be a pirate in the school play and not have to be mum’s “Mr Reliable”.  His desperation to “fix” the problem even sends him to the Family Planning Clinic to try and sort supplies for her. 

In both these stories, as in the rest of Gleitzman’s oeuvre, it is his astonishing ability to use hilarity to bring home the characters’ plights in a way that no amount of writerly hand-wringing ever could that sets them apart.  The characters’ attitudes give the reader license to laugh.  But do they give the reader affective mastery too?

Significantly, in both books, the child cannot fix the problem.  Colin’s quest leads him to a man whose partner is dying of AIDS and the realisation he must accept Luke’s fate.  Angus befriends another child whose parents are pre-determining her path and together they “break free” as children.

And this, I think, is where the true affective mastery lies.

In correspondence with Gleitzman, he told me that he “liked to write humour that helps young readers feel that insoluble problems won’t crush them and celebrates their capacity to never give up on the rest of life”.

In conclusion then, the humour in his books doesn’t seek to give the reader an emotional control over a particular problem in question.  His books don’t say, “Laugh at this and it will no longer be a problem”.  Much more importantly, it offers them a more sophisticated sort of mastery: the insight ­- through laughter - that beating every problem isn’t possible, but that choosing to remain optimistic despite them, is.

And I can’t think of a better use of humour, or indeed a more important “mastery”, to help a young person through life.  Can you?




[1] Wolfenstein, Martha Children’s Humour: A Psychological Analysis, Glencoe III, Free Press.
[2] Vorhaus, J. The Comic Tool Box: How to be funny even if you’re not (Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1994)

Sunday 30 March 2014

SHHHH! I’m writing - Lari Don

“Miss Molly had a dolly who was sick sick sick…”

Many writers create playlists of the music which inspires them to write (my publishers revealed the playlist for my own recent teen novel earlier this month) but I doubt that the nursery rhyme Miss Molly Had A Dolly is on many novel playlists.

However, a couple of weeks ago, I was in an Edinburgh library, grabbing half an hour to write while one of my children was at a music lesson, when I realised I was in the library for exactly the same half hour as the local Book Bugs rhyme time session.

So I wrote most of a scene about treachery and betrayal in a library filled with the noise of nursery rhymes and bouncing songs.

And it didn’t distract me at all. It was very noisy, but it was pleasant noise, noise which made me smile whenever I surfaced briefly from my fictional world to listen to boats being rowed or bus wheels going round, and it didn’t prevent me writing.

Which made me consider what does and doesn’t distract me.

I spend a lot of time visiting schools and book festivals etc, so I do a lot of writing in trains, staffrooms, libraries and cafes. And I get a lot of serious focussed work done in those places. I can ignore teachers talking about unruly pupils and difficult families (they must assume that anyone typing on a keyboard can’t hear them…), I can ignore waiters dropping glasses and drunken hen parties at the other end of the carriage.

I can write efficiently in the midst of any amount of noise. Provided it’s nothing to do with me.

Because the one place I absolutely must have peace and quiet for writing is my own house. At home, the slightest creak of a child getting up unexpectedly early in the morning can knock me right out of my imagination (who is that? is she ok? do I have to make breakfast already? oops, I’ve forgotten what I was about to type…) Whereas in a library, a dozen adults singing Miss Molly Had A Dolly to a dozen children who are not my children, is just background noise.

At home any loud noises or even quiet sounds (is anything more distracting than someone making an effort to tiptoe past your study door?) feel like they are my responsibility, so they pull me out of my imagination. But outside the house, the toddlers treating dollies or the waiters clattering or the teachers gossiping are nothing to do with me, so I can stay happily in my own wee writing world.

In order to write at home, I prefer everyone else to be away at work or school, or soundly asleep. Anywhere else, I can write with any level of volume at all, so long as the noise is not my responsibility. And usually, however cheerful the singing or fascinating the gossip, the real world isn’t nearly as compelling as the story I’m creating…

Indeed I often find the outside world inspiring. Unlike some writers, I don’t tend to get ideas from other people’s conversations (so those teachers can keep gossiping…) but I do watch people: how they dress, how they walk, how they act with each other.

I watch the landscape too, from moving trains. And I change what I’m writing if I see something more interesting through the train window.

A couple of years ago I was writing a scene set in a playpark, when the train taking me up the east coast of Scotland passed the bright flags of a golf course. Suddenly a golf course seemed like a much more interesting place to set the hunt, chase and fight. So now Mind Blind, my new teen thriller, has a couple of chapters set on a golf course (though no-one plays a round of golf, it’s all sprinting and martial arts) and those chapters would have been very different if I’d written them sitting at home.

I’m now wondering whether I should write all my books out of the house, where I’m less easy to distract and more easily inspired. That strategy would cost a lot in train tickets and herbal teas though! So probably I should just keep getting up early and staying up late, to write in my nice quiet study…

I’m also wondering if I could test this 'nothing distracts me' theory, and try to write in the middle of a rock concert, a soft play area, or a thunderstorm. Does anyone want to challenge me to write in loud and potentially distracting locations?


Lari Don is the award-winning author of 21 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers.
Lari’s website 
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Saturday 29 March 2014

TIME TO MAN-UP! – Anna Wilson

A couple of things have happened this week which have made me think about how I promote myself as a writer who also happens to be a woman. I would like to share these things to get your opinions, which I know will be many and varied!

On Wednesday 26th March I went to an event organized by the wonderful Bristol Librarians. It was, as much as anything, to say a fond farewell to Margaret Pemberton and to thank her for her inspirational and tireless work in the Library Services over the years.




It was also a fantastic opportunity for authors to network, as it was advertised as ‘Speed-dating with Librarians and School Teachers’ – every bit as scary as it sounds, but not quite as dubious.

We children’s authors were invited to bring along samples of our work and be prepared to talk about our books and what we can offer for events. Every five minutes or so, a bell would be rung and the teachers and librarians would move on to another author. Clearly the idea was for us to sell ourselves convincingly in a succinct and engaging manner in order that the teachers and librarians would remember us, buy our books for their establishments and hire our services for events.

I was on a table with Che Golden, whose Mulberry pony books are hilarious, action-packed tales about (in her own words) ‘evil’ ponies - definitely ‘not your average pony books’. She has also written a series about ‘homicidal’ fairies, the first title of which The Feral Child, has sold in the US and already has a large fan base. Sitting with us was Rachel Carter: her debut novel for 9-12s, Ethan’s Voice, has been extremely well received. Rachel is a Bath Spa graduate from the MA course, Writing for Young People. She is a talented writer with more stories in the pipeline.

So, of course, the three of us sat there telling the teachers and librarians how marvellous we were, blowing our own trumpets and generally setting out to impress . . .

Did we, hell. (I know Che and Rachel will agree, because we discussed it afterwards!) We were bashful and self-deprecating, we had brought no books to sell and we shared each other’s business cards as we had not thought to bring much in the way of promotional material.

Then there was John Dougherty: he had a stack of books to sell and a pile of beautifully put-together, carefully thought-through leaflets which helpfully and concisely laid out what he does, how much he charges, what a school can hope to get from a day with him and how good he is at doing it. He had added selected quotes from happy readers, teachers and librarians who could testify to how good he was and what benefits his visits had brought to their schools. It was brilliant! And it gave a very professional impression. (I have since showed his leaflet to friends and family who have said, ‘Why don’t you do this?’ Why, indeed?)

Che and I also discussed events and festivals with Wendy Meddour (author of the wildly funny Wendy Quill books). Wendy said at one festival she was on after two well-known, hilarious male authors, and that it made her anxious as it was ‘like following two stand-up artists’.

I went home thinking, ‘Why is it that women writers do not put themselves out there as confidently as men?’

The next morning the headline below featured in the Guardian. It provoked some heated debate on Facebook amongst a few female authors I know:

Discover the Booktrust 2014 Best Books awards shortlist!
David Walliams, Jeff Kinney and Jonathan Green [sic] make the shortlist for the Booktrust's Best Book awards – which children's books do you think should win?


Apart from the glaringly obvious mistake that it is in fact John Green’s name on the list, not the mysterious Jonathan, the thing that riled me and more than a few of my friends was the lack of women’s names in the headline. If you scroll down through the shortlist, you will see many prominent women writers included on the list, some of whom (Lucy Cousins, Joanna Nadin, Sarah McIntyre, for example) are well-known, well-loved writers who have already won or been nominated for prestigious awards, and so are hardly also-rans who deserve to be tacked on after the men.

Both the article in the Guardian and the ‘speed-dating’ event made me wonder about how we women promote ourselves. I know that in an ideal world it would be great if there was an entirely level playing field to start with, and it would also be lovely if publishers did not leave the lion’s share of promotion to us authors who really only want to get on and write rather than be cajoled into the role of performing monkeys . . . But with John Dougherty’s leaflet sitting on my desk and Wendy’s words about men’s events being ‘like stand-up’ ringing in my ears, I did wonder what I could do to change things for myself.  

My husband works in the food industry: I asked him if women were as backwards at coming forwards in business as I felt I was in the book world. His reply:

‘Oh yes, the women I work with admit that if they have only 20% knowledge on a certain subject, they will hold back until they feel they know about 80% before they voice an opinion, whereas I would say that men are happy to chip in confidently with their views when they know only 20% of what they are talking about.’

This would certainly back up what teachers have said to me about the differences in male and female behaviour in the classroom, too. Girls will tend to sit quietly and wait until they are sure they know the answer, whereas boys will have a go even if they are not 100% (or even 80%) confident.

So, I have made a decision. If I want people to take my writing seriously, pay me what I charge for events and (maybe one day) put my name in a newspaper headline, I shall have to take a leaf out of the men’s book and talk myself up a bit.

As Caitlin Moran says in her marvellous book, How to Be A Woman:

The boys are not being told they have to be a certain way, they are just getting on with stuff.

Now, where is that excellent leaflet of John Dougherty’s? I feel a copy-cat session coming on . . .

Find me on the web at http://annawilson.co.uk






Friday 28 March 2014

'Sure, the book is awful, but at least they're reading something.' - Clementine Beauvais

Is it better to read 'anything' rather than 'nothing'?

Like most people interested in children's literature, and like many authors, I like asking booksellers, librarians, teachers and parents what children and teenagers are currently reading a lot of. And like many children's literature academics, I don't conceal my disappointment and my judgement when they tell me that a lot of children are reading what I consider, subjectively of course, but still with (I hope) some good reasons, to be trash; bad literature; literature that is facile, bland, formulaic; literature that relies on easy responses from young readers; literature that doesn't count on the intelligence of its readers to be understood.

In response, people often say, 'Sure, I agree with you - these books are awful. But at least they're reading.'

'At least'. At least they're reading. This is such a minimal kind of success that it doesn't, in my view, actually qualify as any kind of success. At least they're reading! hallelujah... When do you ever hear people who care about children say: 'Oh, they love fries and cheeseburgers. Sure, McDonalds food is awful, but at least they're eating.' ?

It's like 'reading' is a monolithic 'thing' that one 'should' do, that it is always good to do. It's like there's no other alternative. Reading instead of doing what?

If the other option is going around throwing puppies off cliffs, sure, I'd rather they be reading. If the alternative is watching reality TV, would I still prefer them to be reading? To be entirely honest, I wouldn't really care either way. Undemanding, unsophisticated TV is equivalent to undemanding, unsophisticated books in my mind. If the alternative is watching the latest Pixar film, I'd much rather they watched that. But comparing activities is, on the whole, a fairly fruitless debate.

The myth that all reading is good is associated to the myth of trashy reading as 'gateway' to better reading: 'But then they'll read more sophisticated books!'. I doubt it.  

Reading sophisticated, demanding books is not the 'next step' on the same literary ladder as trashy, unsophisticated fiction. It's a different kind of reading altogether. It follows the reading of sophisticated, demanding children's fiction, not the reading of undemanding, unsophisticated children's fiction. It's a type of reading which requires a specific, rather ascetic mindset, a mindset which cannot be a comfortable step away from trashy literature. A mindset which, I would argue, is in fact directly at odds with the one cultivated by trashy literature. 

However, it could be a sidestep, or a parallel step, to the watching of demanding, sophisticated films, or the playing of demanding, sophisticated video games.

To me, there is no value, and I do mean zero value, in reading books which (most adults agree) are of low quality - lazy, unoriginal, facile and immediately appealing. It is dishonest, I think, to keep asserting that it is a good thing in itself.

Oh, I'm aware, by the way, that all of the above makes me sound like a horrible snob. I'm also aware that it is a frequently-debated issue, and that people have very strong feelings about it.

It's important that we keep having this discussion. There are problematic ideological and economic reasons why so many well-meaning adults (who would never be content to see children swallow down huge quantities of junk food) just go 'Oh well!' and smile when they see them gulping down the literary equivalent of junk food.

The relativistic myth that obviously, 'all reading is good', followed by the idea that obviously, 'trashy reading will lead to better reading', is hugely convenient, in both financial and political terms, to a lot of people.

So let's keep talking about it, because in these benevolent sentences there are transparent values, much too 'obvious' to be benign.

_____________________________________

Clementine Beauvais writes children's books in both French and English. The former are of all kinds and shapes, and the latter, a humour/adventure detective series, the Sesame Seade mysteries. She blogs here about children's literature and academia and is on Twitter @blueclementine.

Thursday 27 March 2014

Politics and Fairytales - Lily Hyde


 At the moment I’m in Crimea: occupied Ukrainian territory/annexed state/proud and permanent part of Russia (delete as your politics deem appropriate).

I’m witnessing Crimea become more and more polarised, closer to breakdown, as everything – food, money, language, family, friends, conscience – is informed by politics. Even children’s stories – perhaps stories first of all. Even fairytales.

Russian fairytales, someone told me today, are characterised by heroes who never do anything to help themselves. It’s all done for them. The stove they lie on gets up and carries them off to fame and fortune, and they win by virtue of being lazy.  

I’ve heard this before, and to a certain extent, in some tales, it’s true. As someone who’s quite lazy herself, maybe it’s one reason I’m very fond of Russian fairytales

And that’s the Russian character, this person went on to say. Always expecting something for nothing, unable to act or think for themselves, just thinking they’re entitled. Like all the Russians in Crimea who voted to become part of Russia last week, because they think they’ll get something for nothing, they think they’re entitled to higher pensions and better salaries without putting in any effort, they think they’re entitled to Crimea. Just like in 1944. Just like in 1783…

There is so much propaganda on all sides of this conflict now, no one can begin to see clearly anymore. Even fairytales are press-ganged into the service of politics. So in Crimea now we have the stupid Ukrainians of fairytales, the cunning dishonest Tatars, the lazy entitled Russians… all beginning to hate each other. 

I’m fascinated by the universality of fairytales, the way the same paradigms crop up in stories from Central America to the Middle East to Siberia. Desite the cultural differences they represent, I think they grew out of parallel imagination, from common human experience. Fairytales can cross borders and languages and bring people together.

Or they can be used to drive people further and further apart.

Dream Land by Lily Hyde - a novel about the Crimean Tatars

  






  

    

Wednesday 26 March 2014

The Good, the Bad and the Quirky.

For the last five years I’ve been writing and rewriting a book in which twin sisters, taking alternate chapters, tell their life story.  They are child prodigies, musical geniuses, but rather than virtuosos, their instruments are the enigmatic black boxes and warm circuits of the recording studio.
 
There is a third voice, their bitter old brother.  He is the main protagonist, but he’s almost a ghost.

I created playlists of music to listen to as I constructed each character: one sister always seeking out new sounds, forever stretching the possible, the other twin crafting these experiments into something intricate and more beautiful. One is an experimenter, the other is obsessed with craft.

Creativity, it seems to me, is the constant smashing of the old and familiar, and then remaking something new with these fragments.  I wanted my book to be about creative children, and about creativity.  How we battle against our own instincts to make something worthwhile.

Authors are forever compromising, trying to do things differently, yet always holding back, aware that something too idiosyncratic will frighten publishers and audiences away. My new book may be a little eccentric, but I hope it's not that quirky. 

I’ve spent five years nurturing this trio of siblings, taking them from their father’s recording studio in Frankfurt, via their grandparents’ loft in the west of England to the improbable denouement in the deserts of Kazakhstan. Their musical odyssey is a search for authenticity, theirs and mine. It’s the book I’ve always wanted to write, I just hope I can find a publisher who believes in it too.

Tuesday 25 March 2014

In Which I Am Lost For Words - Tamsyn Murray

I'm not often lost for words (obviously a jolly good thing in a writer) but tonight I was asked a question about writing I didn't know how to answer. As you might already know, I teach Writing For Children at City University and we're approaching the end of the course, where the students are preparing to submit a piece of writing to me for feedback. And this evening, one of my students told me he had been reading a how to write book and one of the things it had apparently advised was to avoid 'friendly uncle' type characters in your stories as these could be perceived as immunising children against the risks of potential child abuse. Should he cut the mad professor character he had in his story, my student wanted to know, in case it was taken the wrong way and it went against him when being read by agents and editors?

My first reaction (after a startled, 'What?') was disbelief that any writing book would advise this. Then I started to think about it and I could kind of see what the book was getting at but still found it mind-boggling that anyone would come away from any of the children's book I've read with that thought uppermost in their mind. There are hundreds (thousands) of innocent characters in books whose actions could be misconstrued if you chose to see them in that light - does that mean that they shouldn't exist? Or is it offensive to friendly uncles and men in books everywhere to tar them with this horrible brush?

I failed to come up with a satisfactory answer to the question, partly because I was struggling to get my head around the idea. I advised the student not to get too bogged down in that kind of advice - to write the story and the characters the way he sees them in his head and not allow them to be subject to the projected interpretations of adults. I also said it might be a nice idea to make his nutty professor a woman, since it's a reasonable subversion of a well-used trope and side-steps the whole issue. But I walked away uneasy. Obviously, we have a responsibility to our young audience when we write. How far should we take that responsibility?

Monday 24 March 2014

Seven Ways To Make an Author Happy - Liz Kessler

Earlier this month, I was Author in Residence at Waterstones in Truro as part of World Book Day. It was a fab, fab day where I think most of us came away smiling.

I’m a strong believer in telling people when they’ve done something well, so I thought I’d share what was so good about it. That way, if you are a bookshop person or a library person or even, in fact, an author, you can wave this blog in someone’s face and say, ‘Look! Earrings! Tea! Showcards!’

Eh?

Read on. All will become clear.

1. Showcards.



I didn’t actually know showcards had been organised until a friend of mine who happened to have been in the shop posted a photo on twitter. Which made me very happy.

2. Books. 

You might also notice that as well as the showcard itself, the shop had also bought in a large selection of all my books – in plenty of time for the event. It was in fact the first time I’d seen all my books together like this, and made me feel very proud and ‘Gosh, look, I wrote all of those books’-ish.

3. Tea.




It is always advisable to greet your author with the words ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ When this is then followed up by said cup of tea arriving as if by magic in plenty of time for the author to have a few sips before the event, that's even better. (And very nice Earl Grey it was, too.)

4. Radio Interviews.

Local BBC Radio host Tiffany Truscott happened to be in the shop and noticed the showcard a week or so before my event. She invited me onto her programme at the end of my stint in the bookshop. 



We talked about World Book Day and about my books and about movies and mermaids. Which made me very happy.

5. Book jackets being turned into earrings.

I had been told in advance that the shop folk would be dressed up for World Book Day. What I hadn’t been told was that the librarian from one of the schools was going to make an outfit that included earrings she had made in the design of my book covers!!!!! That was a first for me, and made me very happy indeed.


6. Amazing librarians.

The above librarian actually deserves two mentions on this list for what she did for her children that day. Her school is in an area of high deprivation, where many of the children don’t have any books at home. For some teachers, that would mean that they would want to warn me that we wouldn't get many book sales on the day. Which would have been fine. But not for this particular librarian. Instead, she went to her Parent Teacher Association and asked if they could buy one of my books for EVERY SINGLE CHILD in the class. They said yes. So all the children from that school went away with a signed book. Happy children; happy bookshop; happy author; wonderful librarian.

7. Two words: Chocolate. Tiffin.

No pic to go with this one unfortunately as I was too busy eating it to photograph it. (Look up ‘Chocolate Tiffin Triangle from Costa Coffee’ in Google images and you’ll see what I’m talking about.) But just so you know, when it comes to lunch, the words, ‘Go up to Costa, order a sandwich and a cake and put it on the Waterstones’ bill’ will do very nicely.

And there you have it. How to make an author happy in seven easy steps. 

Please note, if you can't do all of these, just skip to the chocolate and we'll be fine.

With huge thanks to Isobel and everyone at Waterstones Truro, and to Karen and all the librarians and teachers who came along. Hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did! 

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Sunday 23 March 2014


Seeing Ourselves in What We Read – Maeve Friel

I am a great lover of Latin American literature from Pablo Neruda to Gabriel García Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Junot Diaz and Julio Cortázar. 
But a few months ago, I realised that I knew no LA children´s lit writers.

So I set myself the task to read and blog about writers and illustrators of children´s books from each of the 21 countries of Latin America. Although I speak Spanish, I decided to begin with writers whose books have been translated into English. 
Reading Latin America, as I am calling my project, is turning out to be a vast undertaking.

So far, I have discovered Ana Maria Machado and Lygia Bojunga Nunes from Brazil, both winners of Hans Cristian Andersen and ALMA awards.
From Argentina, there is writer and illustrator Isol who won the 2013 ALMA (have a look out for her fold-out frieze picture book It is Very Useful to Have A Duck) and the poet Jorge Elias Luján (Doggy Slippers) who is an ALMA nominee this year. 
I have adored a funny charming memoir (When I Was a Boy, Neruda Called me Policarpo) by Chilean Poli Delano about growing up with family friend Pablo Neruda who was clearly mad as a hatter.  Edna Iturralde from Ecuador is a great and prolific writer whose Green Was My Valley is a powerful series of short stories about the indigenous peoples who live along the Amazon, the title story being a powerful wake-up call about the damage being done to the environment by oil companies.
From Cuba, I was quite shocked by the brief but hard-hitting Letters to My Mother by Teresa Cárdenas, in which an unhappy young girl writes to her dead mother about the racism and domestic abuse she suffers. 
Rigoberta Menchú who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her support of  indigenous peoples and whose father was killed in the prolonged guerrilla wars of Guatemala,  retells ancient folk tales and the creation myths of the Mayan people as told to her by her grandparents.  
Next on my agenda are Julia Alvarez (Dominican Republic) and Irene Vasco (Colombia).

I have been delighted to find out along the way about the International Youth Library in Munich (how did I not know about this?) and about www.outsideinworld.org.uk, an organisation dedicated to promoting and exploring world literature and children´s books in translation. GroundwoodBooks, in Toronto, is a fantastic publisher who publish high quality Latin American writers in translation and in bilingual editions.

Inevitably, my search for Latin American writers brought me up against the need to distinguish between Latin American and Latino.
    
There have been articles recently about the invisibility of Latino children in books published in the United States despite the fact that Latinos are a significant demographic there, and Christopher Myers has written in the New York Times about the Apartheid of Children´s Literature and the absence of black children in US books – of 2300 books last year, he says that only 93 featured black children.
When I wrote to Edna Iturralde about what she was reading as a child in Ecuador, she mentioned Huckleberry Finn, Treasure Island and the swashbuckling books of the Italian Emile Salgari – all books in translation, none of them with South American characters or settings, but ones which made her a reader and a writer.

I understand that there are very important issues here about The Market and what publishers think they can and cannot publish, but it got me to thinking about what I was reading as a young and voracious reader in Ireland.
I´m giving my age away here when I say that I was lapping up The Famous Five, Heidi, What Katy Did, Little Women, Treasure Island, The Bobbsey Twins, the legends of Greece and Rome, the 1001 Nights and The Secret Garden.
The only books that I remember that had an Irish setting were by Patricia Lynch, all turf cutter’s donkeys, leprechauns, washerwomen and gypsy fiddlers, which were more remote from my experience and far less appealing than the adventures of Just William or Huck Finn on the Mississippi.

The emergence of contemporary Irish children´s literature began in the 1980s with  Marita Conlon Mc Kenna´s famine-based  historical novel Under the Hawthorn Tree.
Since then there has been an unstoppable flow of Irish childrens´ writers and illustrators with huge global reach -  Drum Roll please for Oliver Jeffers, Eoin Colfer, PJ Lynch, Martin Waddell, Darren Shan, John Boyne, Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick, Derek Landy, Siobhán Parkinson, Chris Houghton, Celine Kiernan, Niamh Sharkey, Roddy Doyle and  Malachy Doyle. (Forgive me, any Scattered Irish Authors that I have omitted here -  you are too numerous to mention.)
They write about monsters, lost hats, worried little owls, annoyed crayons, faery detectives, dystopian worlds, German concentration camps, alcoholic mothers and frustrated would-be heroines.
Few, actually hardly any, of their books have an obviously Irish setting.

If you look at the formidable shortlist for the 2014 Children´sBooks Ireland awards  (the winners will be announced in May), you will see what I mean:
The Sleeping Baobab Tree by Paula Leyden
Warp The Reluctant Assassin by Eoin Colfer
Heart Shaped by Siobhán Parkinson
Hagwitch by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick
Too Many Ponies by Sheena Wilkinson
Skulduggery Pleasant Last Stand of Dead Men by Derek Landy
Mysterious Traveller, illustrated by PJ Lynch
The Day the Crayons Quit illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

These are all wonderful books which will resonate with children in Ireland and all over the world. Only two of them are set in Ireland.

So I wonder if it is that important to see yourself mirrored in what you read? 
Should a writer feel a social responsibility to write about or to represent his/her national culture or ethnicity in a particular light?
I think not. I think we writers write the stories we want to tell. And our readers can be trusted to see themselves in a duck or a Victorian puppeteer or an African child or a disgruntled beige crayon.
What do you think?
www.maevefriel.com/blog
You can also find me on Facebook or follow me on twitter @MaeveFriel

Maeve Friel 

Friday 21 March 2014

My Publishing Life: Griselda Gifford


I always loved reading and once, aged eight, went missing for a couple of hours, eventually to be found reading Black Beauty in a hay 
field far away from the house.  Owing to the war, I went to about eight
Griselda Gifford
schools in all and ended up at a boarding-school in Kent where the head was reputed to have been engaged to Rupert Brooke.  She wore a short ginger tweed skirt, had shingled ginger hair and ginger eyes and kissed the whole school good-night (I managed to dodge!). She was a terrifying woman, but she did teach English Literature very well.


I wrote a novel for children mainly in the holidays, but then put it aside and trained as a secretary in London.  I hated typing but loved the journalism course run by an historical novelist. He liked my writing and even introduced me to his agent - who didn't sell anything!  After working at the Foreign Office and for a solicitor (ugh!), I went to work for Constable, a publishing house, doing donkey work for Mrs. Grace Hogarth and her assistant, Delia.  I also had an interesting time working as a secretary for AM Heath. I was paid ten shillings extra for reading a manuscript in an evening, making a synopsis and saying whether I thought it could go to one of the Elect Readers.  All good practice!

Later, when my son, aged two, was asleep (not often!) I wrote stories for the BBC Morning Story and was very excited when I got my first cheque – for £15!  This encouraged me to send the children's story off to The Bodley Head – who liked the writing but not the story and asked me to write another.  I did, and my first book was published and illustrated by Victor Ambrus. Margaret Clarke was a lovely editor of several more of my books. I also wrote for Gollancz and went to an amazing party stuffed with famous authors and presided over by Livia Gollancz, daughter of the founder of the company, Victor Gollancz.

Moving and having my daughter held things up a bit  but somehow between school runs and part-time jobs I squeezed out more books, for Macmillan, Longmans, Pearsons, ending up with five books published by Andersen Press, with another lovely editor, Audrey Adams – now, sadly, dead before her time. By then I'd divorced, remarried, moved, acquired three step-children – and always a dog!  I've had agents, the best being Laura Cecil, charming and clever.

I guess it was easier to get published in the past, and I have to admit I've found it hard lately. I have an Andersen book House of Spies on Kindle but all the others are sadly out of print except for two reading books which I wrote for Macmillan, selling the rights outright.  I gather Clarence the Crocodile is still in schools after nearly forty years!

Highlights: talking to children in many schools in the UK and abroad and having good reviews, especially one in the Independent not so long ago, and also in the TLS.  I've also enjoyed making new friends by teaching creative writing – two of my pupils are now published authors. I've been on long-lists for awards and came second in a Kelpie competition which led to my story being broadcast.  And it's good to find one of my latest books published in Thailand, even if the jacket illustration looked like a mango swamp. Quite a few of my books have also been published in Germany, Holland etc. One was sold to the States, but then the publisher went out of business!

Recently, I decided to try self-publishing – hard work but fun – and I'm visiting schools and giving talks about my historical novel The Cuckoo's Daughter , which is also on Amazon.  I've just finished a ghost story which is doing the rounds – so fingers crossed!