Tuesday 31 May 2016

What is success? - by Nikki Sheehan

What is success?

So, my second book came out a few weeks ago. It was the first Thursday in May, on what I like to think of as the Black Monday of children’s book publication. On May the 5th this year around 22 MG and YA books were blasted into the world to soar, make it as far as next door’s garden, or get stuck on their way out of the cannon, and I got to thinking about how I should judge the success or otherwise of Swan Boy.



In the run up to publication there are obvious things that wouldn’t be good, filed under What Can Go Wrong:

  • You hate your cover
  • There are typos in your book
  • Everyone hates your book
  • Everyone hates your cover
  • A box of books falls onto and crushes to death a salesperson at Waterstones
  • A fire during the process of printing your book leads to the collapse of the entire industry
  • A string of one star reviews
  • No reviews
  • What book?


Working out what success means is more subjective, but I think that it’s a helpful thing for me to do, just so that I notice if and when it happens, and am not busy looking out for falling boxes of books.

I know it’s hard, but I’m trying to remember that when you start out, getting one book on the shelf in a bookshop is a huge success. But that’s before you know about sales figures, rave reviews, prizes, foreign deals, film rights, and advances that make doing the whole thing viable. All that stuff is important, but, crucially, it’s largely out of an author’s control, and not achieving it can lead to such paroxysms of self doubt that a success can start to feel like a failure.

Nikki
Aside from all the wonderful people I’ve met, I think that my best experience of the last few years was when I met my first publisher. Over a nice Italian meal, we had a conversation in which they talked about the characters in my book as if they were real. They had bought into my idea and and it had affected them. Now, when I go into schools and children talk to me about my books, I get the same feeling, like they’ve somehow been eavesdropping on my dream.


And while the success stuff, prizes and sales etc, is what makes it more likely that you can keep on writing, it's not the aim. Connection is the aim. It would be amazing to make that connection with tens of thousands of people, but if a few hundred, or even just a handful read Swan Boy, that still has to be worth celebrating.

Monday 30 May 2016

Writing under siege in my shed - Lari Don

This spring, I’ve been writing in the garden shed. The shed is home to lots of tools and paint pots, but there's also a desk, which is vital when my house has been taken over by a revising teenager on exam leave.

In many ways, my shed is a lovely place to work. So I shouldn’t be surprised that other beings, smaller than me, choose to work there too.

Recently, for example, I have been joined by:

Wasps, building a nest, and buzzing busily;

Spiders, building cobwebs, and lurking quietly.

This has made writing a bit difficult. I have a genuine fear of spiders (in a running about screaming sort of a way) and though I’ve never had a problem with wasps before, being shut in a small wooden box with a large angry wasp (understandably angry, after I’ve knocked her nest down with a brush) is not relaxing.

The stress and occasional terror of sharing my creative space with small scary beasties has added a certain tension to my writing of battle scenes and character betrayals. It has sometimes felt like writing under siege, listening for every little buzz, flinching at every tiny movement, suspicious of every shadow.

But, to calm me down after all the unwelcome visitors, I’ve had a one very welcome visitor – my lovely tortoiseshell cat Winnie, who has now realised she can get pawprints all over my manuscripts in the shed as well as the house.

Here is a picture of my cat. I do not have any pictures of the smaller visitors, because I was too busy dealing with them (and my fear of them) to take photos.

So, that’s the wildlife (and tame-life) I’ve been sharing my writing with this month. What wildlife do other writers share their working day with, willingly or unwillingly?


Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 

Sunday 29 May 2016

Poo bum willy - John Dougherty

Forgive the entirely crude title to this piece, but - inspired by the post my friend Tamsyn Murray put up on Wednesday - I've been moved (if I can say that in this context) to pen a few words about toilet humour.

As Tamsyn observed, if you're a children's author there are those who will advise you to put toilet jokes into your books. There are even those who think that this is all you really need to make your book a success.

Are they right? Well - probably not. There's a lot more to writing a children's book than repeatedly shoehorning the word 'poo' into your prose. Otherwise, the top-selling titles would all be books like Pooey McPooface and the Enormous Poo. Which, actually, would get a bit of a laugh.

Once.

But probably only once. Taboo-breaking humour is funny precisely because it pushes at the boundaries of a taboo. But the more you break a taboo the less, well, tabooey it feels. Someone walking naked down your local high street would provoke a reaction - perhaps shock, perhaps laughter, perhaps both. But if you could guarantee the sight of a streaker every time you wandered into town, then - even if the prohibition on public nudity remained, and even if the police were to respond with an arrest every time - the effect on passers-by would diminish rapidly. After a few weeks, a passing exhibitionist would be lucky to get an eye-roll.

So am I saying that you shouldn't bother using toilet humour at all? Well, no. But I am saying that it's not an easy option. Writing a good toilet joke - or a good willy joke for that matter, or indeed any joke that pushes at the boundaries - is no easier than writing any other kind of joke. Or, put another way a poo joke has to contain a joke as well as poo.

This is on my mind at the moment partly because my latest book Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Great Big Story Nickers, contains a poo joke. In fact, if I can say this without being misunderstood, it contains a running poo joke.

And, actually, it might appear to the casual reader that the joke is simply about the repetition of the word 'poo'. But I'd like to think it's a bit cleverer than that. The first time the joke appears, one of the badgers - the villains of the piece - has defaced a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, writing the words 'And then she did a poo' at the end of a paragraph. So for the young reader, there are two taboos being pushed against here: the 'toilet talk' taboo, and the prohibition against writing in books. The scene continues with some of the other badgers getting very silly and giggly about this piece of vandalism, and another getting cross about it even though he secretly thinks it's a bit funny as well - so now the joke is not about the word 'poo' itself, but about how people react to it.

As the story progresses, the badgers get hold of a copy of Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Great Big Story Nickers itself, and discover that by - among other things - writing in the book, they can change things to their advantage. But one of them doesn't quite get what's going on, and keeps suggesting that they write 'And then she did a poo'. So now the joke is about comprehension, and incongruity, and context, and focusing on the trivial at the expense of the bigger picture.

Yes, all right, and it says 'poo' as well.

But - seriously - writing humour isn't the piece of cake it's sometimes seen as. And that goes for writing poo jokes as much as any other kind.

______________________________________________________________________________________________












Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Great Big Story Nickersillustrated by David Tazzyman and published by OUP, is the latest in John's Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face series.


His other new books in 2016 will include the sixth Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face title, his first poetry collection - Dinosaurs & Dinner-Ladies, illustrated by Tom Morgan-Jones and published by Otter-Barry Books  - and several readers for schools.

First Draft, the author band featuring John, Jo Cotterill and Paul and Helen Stickland, will next be performing at the Wychwood Festival in early June.

Saturday 28 May 2016

How long does it take to write a book? - Clementine Beauvais

During school visits, different age groups have different favourite questions. Primary school children want to know what your favourite books are and how old you are. Teenagers are dying to hear how much money you make and if you're famous (or, failing that, if you know any, like, really famous authors). Adults will bully you until you tell them what you should do to get published. Kindergarteners will need to know if you have a cat, if your dress is scratchy, if it hurts your hand to draw all the covers, and they will probably ask a question that's not actually a question, in the form of 'My nan's got a fireplace'. But two questions recur across all age groups.

The first is the much-bemoaned 'Where do you get your ideas from?' which I actually do find interesting when it's connected to a particular book. The second, whose agonies are less often discussed, is -

How long does it take to write a book? 

What do you, dear colleagues, reply when you're asked that one? I always launch into the same, ten-minute-long, painstaking explanation: that writing a book isn't a linear process; that ideas might swirl for years in your head, sometimes disappearing for months at a time, and then coming back from their holiday with a new tan and interesting new things to say; that writing itself is a difficult process to measure exactly, because you might start by binge-writing 30 pages, abandon the project for a year, start again, stop, delete, start again, etc.; that you never (well, at least I never) spend whole days writing in neatly-packaged Pomodoro units that can be conveniently added up; that even after the manuscript is delivered, editing may take many more months, but then again it's not a full-time thing; that proofs, blurbs, cover checks, associated blog posts and signings are... kind of part of the writing process too; that the length of the book itself isn't a reliable indicator of how long it took, nor the quantity of illustrations; that some scenes may be written very fast and others really slowly; that much time is spent deleting, and then how do you count that time? Pieces of string, etc.

Oh the look of boredom on people's faces every time I deliver that answer. Oh the number of swallowed yawns, of glances at the clock. It's almost like their question has mutated into another: for goodness' sake, woman!!! how long can you drag an answer about how long it takes to write a book???

Once, for a change, I tried being Gradgrindingly factual about it. When I was asked "How long does it take to write a book?", I just replied: "A year and a half."
Some of the children said: "Wow."
I said, "Does that sound like a lot, or not much?"
They shrugged, and, looking like the matter interested them extremely little anyway, they said, "I dunno."

_____________________________________

Clementine Beauvais writes in French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia. 

Friday 27 May 2016

An Enjoyment of Editing - Lynn Huggins-Cooper

Surely I am not the only author to enjoy the editing phase? Reading posts on social media, you might get that impression. I read lots of groans and moaning about the time spent on this stage of writing. I have just finished writing my latest Young Adult novel, The Journey Jar. I say 'finished,' but well...not really.

I have written 72,000 words, but the novel isn't finished exactly. I now get to pore over the manuscript, killing my darlings, taking out any beloved words that have led to dreadful repetition and other dull things like that...but I also get to do the fun part. I get to make sure the narrative flows and hangs together; I can ensure (hopefully!) that themes are subtle and properly blended into the story - and sometimes I even discover new ones.  I think a book is about one thing, and then another theme bobs to the surface at the editing phase. I know my book is about the journey through loss; it's about identity and finding our 'tribe' in our friends and partners. It also explores the casual racism thrown at the Romany community. As I have started to read the manuscript through, I have found hints of undiscovered themes, such as a strong thread of colour that describes the way values and more are passed down through the generations.

My nanny, mum and uncle. 


It's easy to trace where this story comes from. It's a real 'heart story.' My mum died several years ago, and I have drawn on my experiences as a bereaved daughter as well as the emotions I see in my work as a grief counselor. Mum came from a Romany family. It was there in the piercing blue eyes and raven hair (which I sadly didn't inherit, but hey - you can't have it all!). My lovely father-in-law from my first marriage is from a gypsy family too. So it hurts on a personal as well as ideological level when I hear the prejudice still shown to gypsies today.

I am looking forward to the polishing, general mulling over and strengthening process of editing. Does that make me an odd-bod, or do other writers enjoy this stage too? See you on the other side...

Thursday 26 May 2016

The Boy who Drew the Future by Rhian Ivory - Eloise Williams

For my blog piece this month I've decided to do a fabulous interview with the fabulous Rhian Ivory. Absolutely...


 

What is The Boy who Drew the Future about?

Noah and Blaze live in the same village over 100 years apart. They are linked by a river and a strange gift: they both compulsively draw images they don’t understand, that later come true. They can draw the future.
1860s – Blaze is alone after his mother’s death, dependent on the kindness of the villagers, who all distrust his gift as witchcraft but still want him to predict the future for them. When they don’t like what he draws, life gets very dangerous for him.
Present day – Noah comes to the village for a new start. His parents are desperate for him to be ‘normal’ after all the trouble they've had in the past. He makes a friend, Beth, but as with Blaze the strangeness of his drawings start to turn people against him and things get very threatening. Will he be driven away from this new home – and from Beth?

Will both boys be destroyed by their strange gift, or can a new future be drawn?

 

The book interweaves chapters from the present day (Noah) and the past (Blaze). What sort of research did you find yourself doing?

 

I did a lot of historical research for Blaze’s chapters, reading court reports about the real Sible Hedingham Witchcraft Case which is fascinating.

For Noah’s chapters I read as much as I could find about art and Gustav Klimt in particular. I wanted to immerse Noah’s character in a very visual world.

 

Your previous novels (published by Bloomsbury under the name Rhian Tracey) are contemporary YAs - what made you decide to write a book with such a strong historical element?

 

I’ve always wanted to write historical fiction, it is my favourite genre and I’ve read a lot of it but have been a bit nervous about approaching it. However I really liked the idea of contrasting Noah’s experiences in the present day with Blaze’s in the 1860s.

 

 

What is your next book about?
My 6th novel is actually a novella and is contemporary fairy tale retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Matchgirl. My version is called Matchgirl.

Thanks to an Arts Council Grant I have had a year off in which to write my 7th novel Always, Hope which is about stalking, social media and singing.

I’m starting my 8th novel this month which is exciting and scary at the same time, entering a different world filled with new characters.

 

You are a Patron of Reading and Creative Writing specialist, what does this entail?

I visit primary and secondary schools promoting reading and sharing my writing skills. I love school visits, they are so much fun!

 

Have you got any public events coming up?
Yes! I’ll be at Waterstones Oxford in August, Waterstones Milton Keynes in September, Waterstones Cirencester in Sept/October and Waterstones Cheltenham in November with Emma Carroll, Katherine Woodfine, Lauren James and Helen Maslin. We’ll be talking about historical fiction. Here’s a write up of our event most recent event at Waterstones Birmingham by the wonderful Chelley Toy -
http://talesofyesterday.co.uk/2016/04/tales-events-brumhist-waterstones-birmingham-april-2016/

 

I’m at YALC in July which I’m really looking forward to.
I’ll also be at YAShot literary convention at Waterstones Uxbridge in October running a workshop on how to write historical fiction.
 

 

You can follow Rhian on twitter @Rhian_Ivory and find out more about her by visiting Firefly’s website - http://www.fireflypress.co.uk/node/162

Wednesday 25 May 2016

'Children's Books are Quite Boring' by Tamsyn Murray

So it seems Simon Cowell wants write a children's book. He's read some with his son and thinks they're quite boring. It will be about animals, he says.

Children's authors were naturally raging a little put out. Lord Philip of Ardagh wrote an open letter urging Mr Cowell to consult a librarian to find some exciting children's books. Michael Rosen welcomed Simon to the party, pointing out that there were some great children's books already but that celebrity interest in reading was never a bad thing. Generally speaking, the conversation about children's books (already fairly buoyant) took a spike following the publication of Cowell's comments.

Anyway, taking a leaf from his book (geddit?) I've decided to write a pop song. I've thought about it and now I think I'll do it. It will be about rabbits dinosaurs Lola Mr Blobby love. Having ears, I've had to listen to a lot of these pop songs and they're quite boring, I think I could do better.

So here's how I think I'll do it. First, I think I'll find some monkeys with typewriters songwriters to work with. The song will be based on an idea I've had, so obviously I'll do all the hard work, but they can contribute all some of the notes and the lyrics;  these should rhyme 'you' with 'true' and possibly 'ooh' ad infinitum. No poo, though - that's better in children's books. Then I'll get some musicians in to play the music - I could probably do that better myself but I'm very busy. Lastly, I'll hold auditions for victims singers to sing the song once I've written it - actually, there could be some TV mileage in that: we'll call it Tamsyn's Got Music. Get my minions ITV on the phone, quick.

And of course, this song will be a smash hit - why wouldn't it be? After all, writing a successful pop song is easy, just like writing a book that children will love. It doesn't take imagination, skill and years of practice. You don't need to constantly think about your audience and their levels of understanding, finding the right vocabulary or creating a generation of readers or whether that toilet scene is a poo too far. It's as easy as falling off a log.*

I'm off to get started right now. All lyrics gratefully received!

*Not a poo joke. Or is it?**

**I don't think children's books are all about toilet humour but, rather inexplicably, kids love it. Parents have advised me to write poo jokes into my books before now.

Tuesday 24 May 2016

How to score top marks at school - Liz Kessler

A local school gave me a serious problem this week.

First of all they invited me to come to their school. They then proceeded to be one of the most wonderfully helpful, friendly and accommodating schools I have ever had dealings with.

Doesn’t sound too much like a problem? Well, no. Unless you are the next school who invites me to visit. This school has set the bar so high that they will be a VERY hard act to follow.

Now, I’m a great believer that every problem has a potential gift in it, if we are open to seeing it. And here’s the gift. As well as the lovely day, the school has given me the chance to write this blog, which means that from now on, if anyone invites me to visit their school, I can simply point them here and say, ‘Can you do it like this?’ and if the answer is ‘Absolutely,’ then we’re on. So, thank you Truro School for making those conversations much easier.

So here are my top ten tips for a great school visit...

1. The first email from the school’s librarian was friendly, clear in what they were asking of me and polite. Oh, and it included this line:

‘Your books are extremely popular, particularly with their local connections, and we very much hope that you will consider visiting us!’

Lesson one: flattery will not hurt your case.

2. When I stated my fees, the librarian was absolutely fine with this. No quibble; no, ‘We can’t afford to pay you, but it will be great exposure for you’. Just a, ‘Great. Please can we have a full day’s visit?’ Heaven.

Lesson two: please remember that in order for an author to visit your school, they will be giving up at least a day that they would otherwise have spent working at home and earning money, so please do not ask us to visit you for free. Before you do, ask yourself if anyone else – the teachers, the librarians, the head of English, the cleaner who will prepare the rooms for the visit, the admin staff who will send letters home – will be in school that day without being paid.

NB: If you still have any questions about the whole ‘being paid’ thing, take a look at this wonderful blog by Nicola Morgan. Hopefully this will ease any remaining doubts.

3. Approximately four emails into the exchange, the librarian brought up the issue of selling books. We discussed which ones would work best for the age groups I would be talking to, she agreed to send a letter home to parents letting them know books would be available and organised the ordering and selling of all the books.

Lesson three: Our livelihood depends on selling books. Most of us love visiting schools and talking to children – but we do need to sell books or our publishers stop publishing us, and if this happens, we stop being authors and you don’t get to invite us to your lovely school. So, yeah – well organised book sales will make us happy every time.



4. The exchange of emails was extremely friendly and lovely and easy from start to finish.

Lesson four: authors spend all day in front of their computers. We LOVE receiving friendly, lovely emails from people.

5. The librarian asked me how long I would like my sessions to last, how many children I’d like in each group, which ages I'd like to talk to, and we discussed between us whether workshops or talks would work best.

Lesson five: find out your visiting author’s strengths. Ask what works well for them. Negotiate. Do NOT ask them to do eight sessions in one day. Ever.

6. A couple of weeks before the visit, I was sent a proposed timetable for the day. It was just as we had discussed, showed the number of students in each group and included important things like ‘tea break’ and ‘lunch.’

Lesson six: Going to a school you’ve never been to can make even the most experienced amongst us nervous. The day will be full of people, places, routines and rules that YOU are probably very familiar with but we are encountering for the first time. A very clear schedule for the day that tells us where to be, when, who with and what will happen in between takes a lot of question marks out of the day for us.

7. Let’s just go back to the bit about lunch. Two librarians took me to the canteen with them. I was shown where everything was, and we sat together and enjoyed a lovely lunch. The only hardship was the bit where (because I’m on a diet) I made myself walk past the delicious-smelling fish and chips and choose a jacket potato and salad instead. Which was actually very lovely, as was the company.

Lesson seven: It doesn’t have to be grand or gourmet, but please do feed us. And even better, eat with us and chat to us and don’t make us have to sit on our own in a scary staffroom wondering where to go to get some food.

8. A week or so before the visit, the librarian emailed to ask me how I’d like to be paid. I was given an email address for the finance department to send my invoice to and was assured that payment would be made direct into my bank.

Lesson eight: Pay us. Please. On time, nicely, easily. No one likes to chase money, and most of us don’t like to spend all that long talking about it. 

9. The day itself! This was absolutely wonderful from start to finish. I was met in the foyer by the librarian who by now felt almost like an old friend. I was taken to the library where my books were on display, with showcards and posters everywhere. 



I was offered tea regularly throughout the day. I was greeted by the school’s headteacher who came in to see me and thank me for coming. I had plenty of teachers on hand for the crowd control during the talks. I had friendly, enthusiastic kids, teachers, librarians who listened, asked questions, joined in and generally made the whole day feel wonderfully smooth. I have to mention the lunch time session with a small group of very keen readers. This session was so warm and lovely and gave me an opportunity to share my writing process and some of the more personal aspects of the job with young people who I think really appreciated the opportunity to have this smaller session with me.

Lesson nine: I think by now, if you do all the things above, the day with you will probably go a bit like this too. I know that schools are all different and it won’t always be smooth and easy all the way – and nor should it be. But as librarians and teachers, what you can do is put in the legwork to make the day as organised as it can possibly be. The rest is up to us. If you’ve done your side of the deal, it makes it easier for us to do ours – which hopefully means that everyone involved will get the most out of the day.

Oh, and if you want bonus points, saving a space in the car park for your visiting author would be an extremely lovely touch.



10. After the event, the school wrote a little article about it which they sent to me. They emailed to say what a lovely day it was and shared photos on twitter and Facebook. This rounded the whole thing off perfectly.

Lesson ten: remember, in a few years, you’ll have a whole new set of students. If we had a wonderful time, we will almost definitely want to come back next time!

Thank you Truro School for setting the bar so high and for making my job a pleasure!


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Monday 23 May 2016

Divine Madness by Steve Gladwin



'My name is Bess and I'm a mad girl.'

Some time last spring I wrote those words and from them sprang a brand new story – the current WIP which may or may not make my fortune, get me an agent, snare a brace of publishers or just keep me in cheese and CD's for the next few years.

The mad girl was a character who had rather unceremoniously muscled her way in from another unpublished book and who knows – perhaps the right story has been waiting for her and the other one will never see the light of day. But one thing's for certain - that is that my Bess firmly insists on not being ignored and seeing the light of day in her own right and who am I to argue?

Bess is the alter ego of Elizabeth Curzon, a young girl in 1850's London, who, finding herself in near poverty due to her feckless father, discovers a new life on the streets as apprentice to Old Lizzie, a professional Bess o' Bedlam. Hopefully you will eventually be able to read what follows but for now Bess is merely the springboard to this blog.




Of late I have been rather taken by the notion of madness. No, don't worry, the divinity of madness hasn't actually come upon me – well no more than usual – but I seem increasingly drawn to the idea of what madness actually is. A few years ago I taught confidence classes in a drop in centre for people with mental health issues. One of the oddest things about this was that there was little obvious sign of any disturbance to the user's equilibrium, due to medication keeping things largely on an even keel. Rather like that wonderful scene on the boat in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, most of the time you really could believe that the 'clients' could be the doctors.

Of course any health matter is all about interpretation and quite often the mood of the person at the time. For the most part the people I taught - even those who I just saw on a day to day basis - were happy and secure as long as they were familiar with both people and environment, which was surely the point. As part of a similar project called 'Chasing The Sun' I also taught several sessions at a halfway house facility. Again - although there was clearly an undercurrent of life away from my teaching sessions - the whole experience felt a great deal less 'mad' than say the three months I taught in HM Prison Shepton Mallett in 1994, where on the first day we were locked in a woodwork room stocked with abundant 'weaponry' - albeit in glass cases - with a group of eight inmates who had arrived to find that woodwork had been cancelled and they had to do drama!

It was when I had finished my confidence work in 2010-12 however that I came to feel increasingly depressed and for most of that time also, worthless. I have never entirely picked out the bones of why that was and this is not the platform on which to do it. One thing it did do was to make me think. A lot.

What does a mad person look like? Most of us who suffer one of several levels of depression look just like you or me because they are you and especially me. We don't wear a badge or carry a government health warning on our lapel. What we do – to coin a wartime phrase – is just to keep on carrying on.

Perhaps part of my own way of dealing with something as common as depression has been to write a novel where someone is pretending to be mad and where – in the end – she almost loses sight of who is Bess and who is Elizabeth. I recently re-read one of my favourite books, Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, and if you haven't I urge you etc. The book is, among other things, about identity and deception whereas my book is more about hiding a true self behind a deliberate deceit. But unlike Fingersmith - where the deceit comes via others and the plans they weave around the heroine - Elizabeth's deceit comes solely from herself. In the end her alter ego construct is so great that she begins to use her as a convenience when she wishes to ignore or escape from 'soft Elizabeth.'




Robert Schumann wasn't soft and, despite his early death at 46 in Endenich   asylum, he didn't suffer from a split personality. But in his recent, otherwise excellently argued biography, John Worthen tries so hard to convince the reader that RS never suffered from depression that he only convinces me that he surely did. Just because Schumann never uses the actual word 'depression' in his diaries and – crucially – because he continues to work during his many black times - surely - Worthen suggests - he can't really be that depressed if he manages to produce 130 of possibly the greatest songs ever written within 11 months. With the benefit of hindsight we know that the actual reason Schumann went mad and - in the end - had to be put away - was likely due to tertiary syphilis.. But that doesn't take away the question his continuing mental problems. I presume the author himself has never suffered from depression, or he would surely recognise that bouts of creative brilliance do not always equal happiness and that it may quite often be quite the opposite!


Tom Philips - Last Notes From Endenich 
What also emerges in the story of Schumann and so many other brilliant creative people, (Tchaikovsky, Van Gogh and Poe are just three picked for different reasons at random) is that idea of divine madness, where that journey into the near white hot brilliance of your next creation can too easily tip over into something else that you cannot deal with. I know there will be many of you out there who will recognise that this is true.

Which might again beg the question not only of how we define madness but how much of it might be 'divine'. By modern definitions of schizophrenia for example, a whole host of saints,mystics, hermits and holy men and women, (Buddha springs to mind), might have been put away for their own and the public's safety.Equally, sensitives, shaman and even the odd inspired bard like me might find themselves at the very least forced into treatment, without any understanding that all too often these are almost dictated vocations which are all but unavoidable

Surely then the best the rest of us can do is to sympathise with all those troubled voices when we hear them, whether they were smiling when they were creating their masterpiece or not. The character in my book has - for her own reasons - chosen madness as both a profession and a life style. Not everyone gets the choice.  

I'm aware that this is all a little serious so I'll leaven it with a true recent anecdote. Having finished the Schumann book, I was talking to my mother on the phone about it. I was telling her how in the asylum, the doctor's became obsessed with the firmness of Schumann's stool as being some kind of monitor of future sanity!  Wishing no doubt to consolidate my role as family wit, I suggested that this might actually be a good idea because if his stool hadn't been firm enough, he wouldn't have been able to sit to play the piano! The next night my unfortunate elderly father was rushed into hospital with a - shall we say - not unrelated condition.

I'd like to say that I'll keep my big mouth shut in the future but unfortunately I know myself all too well!    

  

John Worthen's Robert Schumann - Life and Death of a Musician is published by Yale University Press.

If you fancy checking out Schumann's astonishing bursts of creativity - whether he was depressed or not?  - you could do worse than begin with Hyperion's 11 Volume Complete Schumann songs with the pianist Graham Johnson. The gems - and a great deal of small jewels more besides - are there for all to hear. 


Saturday 21 May 2016

HAVING A LOVELY TIME by Anne Booth

I am on a train to Berwick upon Tweed at the moment, and am eating smoked salmon sandwiches and drinking gin and tonic. I am in First Class, because there was a special offer. It is very exciting. I have free wifi, and free food and drink and I am on my way to Lindisfarne, where I will stay for 3 nights and visit the castle and work on my edits of my (finished and submitted) novel set there and check I have the location details completely right (I worked from maps and memory).  I felt a little daunted about this trip and being so far away from home, but so far so good. I couldn’t go the first time I booked this trip because I was ill, but now, second time around, I am having a lovely time.


A few weeks ago I went to Hackney, to Millfield Community school, and talked to children about my first novel, ‘Girl with a White Dog’. I should have gone a few months ago, but again, around the same time I had to cancel the first Lindisfarne trip, I was ill and had to cancel this visit too. The date was rearranged by the charity which had asked me to go (and was paying me). As the new date approached I was bit daunted, but it was one of the most rewarding and fun days I have ever had. The children were so enthusiastic and engaged and excited about meeting a writer and the staff were so welcoming. I really admired them all.  At one point I couldn’t speak because I thought I would cry. I got the most lovely letters and cards afterwards which I will keep all my life. I am even getting paid for it! I had a lovely time.

Then, a week later, I was back in London talking about my second MG novel ‘Dog Ears’, because children in Lambeth had voted it on to the shortlist of the Phoenix Book Awards. I was so moved to see children stand up on stage and act out a scene from it, and also read out why they wanted it to win. I also met a lovely author, Jane Elson,  whose book ‘ How to Fly with Broken Wings’ was also shortlisted. Neither of us won, but we sold lots of books and signed lots, and just had a really lovely, lovely time meeting the librarians, teachers and children. One of the girls gave me a beautiful bracelet I will cherish, and I felt so, so happy to meet the actual readers of my books, and to find out that ‘Dog Ears’ had meant so much to a group of London girls from such different backgrounds to mine.

I want to write this because the writing life can be hard. We can all worry about money, and ideas, and sales, and whether we are good enough. But sometimes it is just wonderful. 

And above all, it is the writing. I love it. I have so many ideas and I have so many books I want to write. I feel so, so lucky that at the age of 51 I have a job where my job is to think of stories. I have been imagining stories all my life - I have been writing all my life - and it is so, so lovely to find that I now have a lovely agent and publishers and readers who are pleased I am doing it. What I love doing makes other people happy - how wonderful is that?



So this is a post about being grateful and happy. The writing life can be lonely and worrying and the sensitivity of writers can work against us. Today I have lots of ideas - tomorrow I may doubt them. We can imagine bad things very easily.

But today I am not going to let myself imagine bad things - I am going to  imagine only good things - publishing deals and lovely books and  readers. I am going to sit in my first class carriage and enjoy every minute. I am having a lovely time.



Jane Elson and I having a lovely time!

Friday 20 May 2016

3000 Empty Chairs - Joan Lennon


The first chair by Jackie Morris

It started with Nicola Davies' poem The Day the War Came, written to draw attention to the UK's decision not to give safe haven to 3000 unaccompanied Syrian refugee children.  From there it has grown into a call for illustrators, authors, readers, parents, children to each contribute an image of an empty chair.  

Until there are 3000 of them.  

To say we disagree.

Please, consider sending an image.  It's not about your artistic skill.  It's about being part of an evolving symbol of support.  Teachers, parents - there's still time to let your pupils and children get involved.  

It's on Twitter at (hash)3000chairs and on the online Guardian page - have a look here for the details, and get drawing!  (Or painting or photographing or making a chair shape out of pebbles or post-it notes or ...) 

Thank you.


Also, if you've missed Tess Berry-Hart's powerful and useful posts about the refugee situation here on ABBA, just type her name into the Search this Blog box over on the right - well worth reading!


Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
Silver Skin website.


Wednesday 18 May 2016

What's the story, how do you do it, what is a picture book? - Linda Strachan


It's a srange thing.
When you don't do something for a while it is easy to think that you have forgotten all that you knew, or that your knowledge is not as useful as it once was. It is almost as if it has filtered out of your head into the air.  But when someone asks a question about it, everything rushes back in.


 I spent a wonderful 10 years working beside the lovely and talented illustrator, Sally J. Collins, on the Hamish McHaggis books.

It was 2012 when the 10th and latest of the Hamish McHaggis series was published, but when I was asked last spring if I would write a short Hamish story for our local children, to put in the Gala Day programme, I slipped right into it as if I had never stopped. I wrote a story called  Hamish McHaggis and the Gala Day Mystery.

I am often asked questions about writing picture books, and the other day I was asked -

'Do you think 1200 words for a childrens' picture book (aged 3-8 years), is too long?'

 It is an interesting question on different levels. 

Picture books are wonderful in so many ways and often deceptively clever.  They can make you laugh or stop and think, and some may bring you to tears.  Their simple format, short text and gloriously colourful images are often less appreciated because they are destined to be read to small children and many adults consider anything for toddlers is simple and would of course be 'child's play' to write.

But when you break down the requirements for writing them it soon becomes obvious that they are anything but simple and to make it all the more complicated you can always find something that a successful author has written that breaks all the 'rules'.

The question above is not so easy to answer. or at least the answer is not as simple as it seems at first.

let's take the age range. (3-8 years)
 
Normally a picture book is aimed at 3-5 year olds but they are often enjoyed by children much younger than 3 years.  Many years later favourite picture books are often well loved and remembered
by parents. But by the time children are 8 years old, sadly they often feel they are too grown up for picture books. They want meatier stuff to exercise their newly acquired reading skills, perhaps scary adventures or funny books, stories that involve kids their own age or older.

One of the best pieces of advice for a new picture book writer is to spend time reading picture books
  • Looking at why they work (or don't work) as a story
  • Looking at structure of the story, the way it begins and ends
  • At the way it makes you feel
  • Looking for the lesson it slips in without seeming to teach
  • At the use of words
  • At the use of rhythm, occasional rhyme
  • Reading them out loud to see if the words trip you up.
  The general advice from publishers is to avoid rhyme, or at least not every line.  Yes, I know you cna point to  dozen or more bestselling picture books that rhyme, but if you look closely at the best of them you will notice that the rhyme is never pedestrian, the rhythm, text or storyline is never bent out of shape to make it fit the rhyme.

All rules can be broken, but only with skill and experience so best to try to stick to them, at least at the beginning.

 You need to be aware that it is not a merely story with some pictures, the pictures have to be part of the story. As you are considering each double page spread, you need to have an idea in your head of what the pictures will show, and let them tell part of the story.

 New writers often forget that and think the words tell the story and the pictures are just for something to look at. The best picture books are an integration of both words and pictures working together.

A picture book is normally 12-14 double page spreads (that is when the book is open - across those two pages is a double page spread)  You have to make sure that the story is long enough to last, and not too long so that it crams too much into the end.  Each spread has to be visualised because the illustrator has to have something new and interesting to illustrate over each spread.

   Sometimes there are things in the pictures that contradict the text, children love it when they spot that.

How long should it be?
 Some say 1000 words but many picture books are a lot less, and some are a fair bit more.When you think about word count it should be after you have been though it time and again, pruning, polishing and editing,  so that each and every word in the text has earned its place on the page - that every word is the right word. After that go back and do it again.

It does not have to be over elaborate language but don't think it has to be simple either. Even very young children understand a lot more complicated vocabulary than you would expect, when taken in the context of the story.

Then put it away and go back to it a week or two (even better a month or two) later and read it out loud, better still give it to someone who is not very good at reading out loud and see if they trip up on your words.

 A picture book is meant to be read aloud so if it is difficult to read without stumbling, it is not yet good enough.

It was a simple enough question but the answer is anything but simple.  Look closely at a picture book, you may be astounded when you realise the work that has gone into it.

Picture Book Den is a great blog all about writing picture books and well worth a visit.



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Linda Strachan is the author of over 60 books for all ages from picture books to teenage novels and the writing handbook - Writing For Children.
Linda is currently Chair of the SOAiS - Society of Authors in Scotland 

Her latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me . 
She is Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh.

Her best selling series Hamish McHaggis is illustrated by Sally J. Collins who also illustrated Linda's retelling of Greyfriars Bobby.

website:  www.lindastrachan.com
blog:  Bookwords
 
 
 
 
 

Tuesday 17 May 2016

SPAG, SATs and other Horrible Things - by Emma Barnes

This post is an expanded version of one that I wrote a few days ago for GirlsHeartBooks.  In particular there is new section on "Where is the evidence?" for the current approach.



IMG_20160512_142851 


If I'm looking a bit pained, not to mention puzzled, it's because I'm staring into my computer trying to do some of the questions that 10 and 11 year olds were doing for their SATS test papers this year. 

If you didn't do SATS yourself, you might want to take a look .  See how you do. 

 I'm a writer, so you'd think I would find these questions about the English language pretty easy.  Not so.  Sad to say I have never heard of a "subordinating conjunction", to take but one example.  And do you know what?  It hasn't exactly held me back so far. 

Ah, but that's because I write creative, airy-fairy stuff, I can hear you say.  Children's fiction.  I can even get away with starting this paragraph with "Ah". 

Think again.  I was once a civil servant.  I wrote briefings, letters, minutes and even politicians' speeches.  (I hope my writing was better than some of the stuff that comes out of government departments.)  I also went to graduate school, and not to study creative writing either, but political science. 

Actually, I'm not even against teaching grammar.  I didn't learn much of it in school (it wasn't fashionable then) and it would have been helpful when learning a foreign language later.  Also, some children enjoy a more formal approach to English. 

But like a lot of writers (and teachers and parents and - I'm guessing, because nobody seems to ask them - children) I think all this testing has gone too far.  The worst thing is, I can't see the link between the kind of tasks that children are being asked to do and actually improving their literacy in any meaningful way.  Meanwhile, a lot of truly valuable things - such as actual reading and writing - are being squeezed out. 

 And what's taking their place? SPAG! Now how bad can that be? Sounds like it's short for spaghetti, right, and everyone loves spaghetti.

Tomato souse pasta


But no, SPAG is actually short for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar, and in its current form many children probably feel it was dreamt up purely as an instrument of torture!

 On visits to schools, I meet too many stressed teachers and children, who are being forced to concentrate on SPAG and other SATS prep when they could be doing something more interesting - like actual reading and writing - instead.  When I do workshops, children write down their versions of the stories that we have invented.  In the process, they are practising description, narrative, dialogue, setting, sentence construction and many other important things.  They are also having fun.  What saddens me is that they often have little chance to do this kind of writing at school.  Something is going very wrong.

 I'm not the only writer who thinks this.  In fact, children's writers as a whole have said that they think SATS are actually damaging children's writing.  For example:
As I've said, I'd actually like to know more grammar.  Sometimes I'm not certain which version of a sentence is correct.  But do you know what?  It's not that hard - I just look it up.
IMG_20160512_142219
My Trusty Grammar Guide
What you can't just look up is language itself.  To be a fluent reader and writer, there is no substitute for practice.  You can give children endless rules to learn.  But they won't be able to read and write well unless they read and write regularly.  If they do, then most likely their grammar will be correct most of the time anyway.

 This requires time, and access to books.  So why not concentrate on those things rather than dreaming up ever more bizarre and convoluted tests?

Where's the evidence?

What I increasingly wonder about it where is the evidence for the current approach to teaching English?

If you go to a doctor, and are prescribed treatment, you tend to hope that there is some kind of evidence - based on research - that lies behind the choice of that treatment.  In fact in the UK there is an entire agency, NICE, which exists to look at particular medical treatments, review the evidence supporting them, and advise doctors on the best ways of treating various conditions.

You would think that educational policy - prescribing the way children are taught in school - would also be based on some kind of evidence.  Especially as it is constantly changing - placing additional burdens on the teachers and children who have to adjust.

Is there evidence that the approach taken at the moment is actually effective?  Does it produce more literate children - able to read and write more fluently, to cope better with the demands of their high school eduction?  Are they more likely to possess the literacy skills they need in adult life?

If there is such evidence, I'd love to see it.

By contrast, there is a huge amount of evidence that reading for pleasure is hugely beneficial to children's educational attainment - not only their literacy, but across the board.  This research regularly appears, and is international in scope.  Here's a link to just one such study - there are many more.

But what are the government doing to respond to this evidence?

I'm sure they would respond that they are not trying to deter reading for pleasure.  But they don't exactly seem to be going out of their way to encourage it, either.  Regional School Library Services - whose role it is to support schools - are closing.   The Society of Authors has campaigned for every school to have a library (every prison must have a library by law, but schools don't have to) - but so far without success.  With so many public libraries closing too (a truly national scandal) many primary children do not have access to the range of books they need to turn them into readers.

Furthermore, there is only so much time available.  The increasing focus on tests and SPAG inevitably squeezes out library time, quiet reading, the shared "read aloud" class novel.  Money spent on SATS revision guides cannot be spent on books for the school library.

Yes, I wish I'd learnt more grammar - but not the way it's being taught now.  Not at the expense of so much else.  In the end I did pretty well in that test.  That's because I've always been a reader and a writer. That's what I'd like to see children doing - learning to become lifelong readers.

There is a lot more to writing and reading than knowing a "subordinating conjunction" when you see it. As a first step - go and pick up a good book instead. 

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  • Emma Barnes writes funny, contemporary fiction for children - for more information see her web-page.
  • Her latest book, Wild Thing Goes Camping, is the third in her series about the naughtiest little sister ever.