Wednesday 30 April 2014

I’m not a poet, and I already know it - Lari Don

This month, I’ve taken part in NaPoWriMo14: National Poetry Writing Month 2014. I’ve faithfully written a piece of poetry every day, though I haven’t actually gone public with any of it. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to inflict any on you here either.)

Why did I want to do NaPoWriMo? I’m a far-too-busy prose writer, with deadlines to meet and children to look after (when I remember), so why take on another creative responsibility?

Because I thought challenging myself to try something new as a writer would be interesting, and possibly even useful.

I already knew I wasn’t a poet. I was put off poetry at school (yes, just like everyone else) so I don’t read poetry very often, and I never attempt to write it. I do write riddles, because my Fabled Beasts adventure series contains lots of magical creatures and characters who use riddles as clues, tools or weapons, but I think of riddles as verbal puzzles than poetry.

And NaPoWriMo14 has certainly confirmed that I’m not a poet.

I did enjoy writing the poems, I did manage at least one a day, and it was fascinating discovering that the subjects I wanted to consider in poetic form were very different from the subjects I’m drawn to examine in fiction. (Observation rather than question, emotion rather than thought, location rather than journey.)

However, the most important thing I discovered is that I don’t like rhyming.

I can find rhymes easily enough, but I don’t like them. I don’t feel fulfilled or satisfied by writing one line which rhymes with another line.

But I tried very hard to rhyme a few of my poems this month, and while doing that I discovered why I don’t like rhyming. I want to pick the absolutely right word for the job, the word which most precisely and vividly tells the story. I don’t want to pick a word just because it ends with useful letters and sounds.

I don’t feel like I’m telling the truth when I rhyme.

None of this means I can’t admire and enjoy rhyming verse written by someone as skilled as Alan Ahlberg or Julia Donaldson. But when I try to rhyme myself, it comes out as either forced or flippant.

So this month of poetry has taught me more about what kind of writer I am. I am a writer who cares about the meaning of the words much more than the sound, and as I already knew I was a writer who cares more about plot and ‘what happens next’ than any other aspect of a novel, that makes sense. Perhaps that explicit realisation will allow me to be more analytical about my editing decisions in the future.

This sudden discovery (well, month-long discovery) about my relationship with words reminds me of the night I discovered that I’m not a stand-up comedian. I already knew that too, but I was invited to take part in a project linking storytellers and stand-ups, and I do love a challenge. So when I was telling a story in a comedy club, with lights in my eyes, unable to see the audience, only able to hear them when they laughed (which they did, occasionally!) I realised that I’m not primarily interested in the moments of humour in a story. I’m not interested in the laughs. I’m interested in the moments which make an audience or reader gasp or sit forward or hold their breath. I’m interested in the moments of drama.

So I had to stand up in a comedy club to realise what is important to me in a story.

And I had to spend a month writing poetry to realise what is important to me in a word.

Perhaps that’s the main value of trying out new ways of writing or performing: it allows you to discover more about the core of what you do best.

Did anyone else try NaPoWriMo14? And if so, what did you discover?


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. 

Tuesday 29 April 2014

In Praise of the Pram in the Hall – Anna Wilson

Last Thursday, a fellow Bath author, Clare Furniss, launched her first novel for teens, The Year of the Rat, at Mr B’s. The little shop was heaving with friends, family and well-wishers as Clare talked about how she had come to write the book, before reading a tantalizing extract, which now has me itching to read my copy.

There was a lot of buzz surrounding the novel as it has already received high praise, and was also announced as one of Radio 2’s Book Club choices the very day of the launch.

Almost more remarkable, some might comment, is the fact that Clare wrote this book whilst looking after two pre-school children. Almost as if to illustrate the enormity of this task, her two young sons were at Mr B’s with her, clambering over her while she spoke, evidently keen to share the limelight. Clare did a fantastic job in delivering a speech while encumbered in this way, and it led her to make a passing comment on ‘the pram in the hall’; a phrase which, more often than not, is used negatively as a metaphor for how motherhood can prevent women from reaching their full potential in their careers. However, as Clare said, for her, ‘the pram in the hall’ actively helped her to achieve her dream of writing a novel, as it meant she had to concentrate her efforts into the small amount of free time she had available.

‘I worked while the boys were sleeping, or while my parents took them off me for short periods; I wrote late into the night – I took any and every opportunity I could to sit and write,’ she said.

This resonated strongly with me, for I share Clare’s conviction that if it were not for that pram in the hall, I too would not have found the drive necessary to get on with it and become a writer.

When my son was born and my daughter was just two years old, my husband’s career took us to France. I had been working in London and had to give up my job to go with him. I found myself thinking I should use my enforced career break to finally do something about being the writer I knew, deep down, I had always wanted to be.

It was tough. I was exhausted a lot of the time and had no friends or family to call on. My husband worked long hours and often travelled, leaving me with the kids for days and nights at a time. Although my daughter went to a little garderie des enfants a couple of times a week, I still had a newborn baby to look after. 

I decided that the only way to get anything done was to use the children’s rest times to my advantage. Luckily my son was a good sleeper, so while his sister was out, I would feed him, put him in his car seat and rock it gently with my foot while I sat at my computer. He would eventually drop off to sleep while I tapped away at the keyboard.

Recently Maggie O’Farrell wrote an article in the Guardian on how she combines motherhood with her working day:

‘How to write looking after a very young baby: get a sling . . . Walk to your desk, averting your eyes from the heaps of laundry on the stairs, the drifts of cat hair on the carpets, the flotsam of toys in every doorway . . . Do not check your email, do not click on your favourites . . . do not be tempted to see how your eBay auctions are faring: go to work, go directly to work . . . Write. The clickety-clackety of the keyboard will soothe [the baby] and you. Write without looking back, write without rereading . . . Write until you feel her twisting her head from side to side, until you lift her out and into your arms. You might be in the middle of a sentence, but no matter. Type “HERE” in capitals and then push yourself away from the desk, carrying her out of the room, shutting the door until next time.’

I am sure many mothers will recognize this description of making the most of the free time they can grab for themselves. O’Farrell’s experience mirrors my own: this is pretty much how I wrote my first picture book, my first short stories and it is how I began to see myself as a writer rather than a mother taking a break from work. The added bonus of motherhood was that it actively contributed to my writing life: I was seeing the world through my children’s eyes on a daily basis, and realizing that was how I wanted to write it.

The kids are teens now, so I have a lot more time to myself than I did when they were babies. The demands are different and sometimes writing time is still broken up, particularly in the school holidays when I am asked to drive them here and there and everywhere. And of course I still have to walk past the laundry, the drifts of cat hair, the piles of washing up . . .

It hasn’t always been an easy ride, mixing writing with motherhood, and I am certain I would not want to go back to those sleep-deprived days, those snatched half hours of writing time interspersed with breast-feeding, nappy-changing and Lego-building. Yet there is no doubt that having only tiny amounts of time to write did focus the mind and keep me keen, not to mention giving me valuable material. I agree with Clare Furniss: in the end, it was the pram in the hall that set me on the road to being the writer I had always wanted to be.

So if you want to write, but think, ‘I haven't got the time’, draw strength from the fact that it can be done, how ever little time you have. I have learnt that one concentrated hour (or even thirty minutes) is a golden opportunity, not to be wasted; and all thanks to the pram in the hall.

Anna Wilson

Monday 28 April 2014

Looking at Children Reading - Clémentine Beauvais

OK, who's up for some more controversy? Just kidding. This time, what I've got in mind shouldn't earn me so many death threats and marriage proposals; I want to talk about child-reading 'scopophilia', a term slightly nicer than voyeurism: the pleasure adults derive from looking at children reading.

Henri Lebasque
Visual art, in particular painting, is full of children reading, presumably in part because posing for hours is an incredibly boring thing to do for an eight-year-old so it's a good way of keeping them still. Look at the amazing number of paintings on this Pinterest devoted to that theme.

But it's not just convenience, it's also a fascination of sorts. There is, apparently, something profoundly romantic, profoundly moving, and also rather erotic, about the image of a child reading. This is by children's literature scholar Peter Hollindale:

One January afternoon many years ago I was window-gazing in the shopping streets of Cheltenham... In the window of an art shop I sawa  picture of a boy, lying on his bed, reading. He was dressed in pyjama bottoms, spreadeagled over the bed in an attitude of rapt and intense involvement in his book.... "That", I thought, "is what I want to produce. If being an English teacher is about anything worthwhile, it's about that." (The Hidden Teacher, 2011 p.12)
I don't need to stress the transgressiveness of this description: the adult's delight in this very intimate scene (a child on a bed, lost in his fantasies, in "rapt" and "intense involvement" - onanistic to say the least...) and his desire to elicit such jouissance in the future, too... Of course, Hollindale is aware of all these innuendos. There is something in visions of children reading that creates longing and a kind of pleasurable loss in the adult viewer. And art and literature frequently attempt to capture that something.

It's all the more interesting when it happens in a children's book. Matilda is the perfect example. 




Over the next few afternoons Mrs Phelps could hardly take her eyes from the small girl sitting for hour after hour in the big armchair at the far end of the room with a book on her lap. … And a strange sight it was, this tiny dark-haired person sitting there with her feet nowhere near touching the floor, totally absorbed in the wonderful adventures of Pip and old Miss Havisham. (Matilda, 1988 p.19)

There's a form of religious adoration in the way adults look at Matilda while she's reading. Mrs Phelps and Miss Honey are described as 'stunned', 'astounded', 'quivery', 'filled with wonder and excitement.'

What's the position of the child reader when they read this passage? Well, it's quite weird. They're aligned with an adult viewpoint on another child reading, and enticed to take pleasure in it too. But by virtue of being themselves child readers, they're also enticed to see themselves as a pleasurable sight to adults, an object of quasi-religious desire and fervour. 


Why are visions of children reading so inspiring for visual artists and authors? It's not just that they like children who are 'absorbed' in a story: the vision of a child 'absorbed' in a film or video game does not have the same effect. There's something about reading that makes adults particularly nostalgic, and particularly emotional.

Part of it is simply nostalgic remembrance of our own days of reading as a child, if we were also big readers. Part of it is also linked to the ideologically problematic celebration of reading over other activities (cf previous controversy ok I'll shut up).

But part of it may be also that we can't have access to what exactly the child has in mind when s/he reads - we may know the book, but what we picture of it in our minds cannot be the same as what s/he is currently picturing. There is mystery there, something secret, and like all secrets of childhood, we are quite fascinated by it.

Maybe we like to see children reading books because there's just enough mystery (what exactly are they seeing there?) and just enough control (it's a book; s/he's safe). This Goldilocks zone is  perfectly titillating.

is that child reading
or thinking of something else?
In Claudine's House, French writer Colette writes about how disturbing she finds it when her daughter, Bel-Gazou, is sewing. It is more dangerous, scarier than when she reads, Colette says. When Bel-Gazou reads, "she comes back, looking lost, flushed, from the island with the jewellery-filled chest... She is full of a tried and tested, traditional poison, the effects of which are well-known."

But when Bel-Gazou sews, "Let's write the word that scares me: she thinks…" 
"What are you thinking about, Bel-Gazou?"
"Nothing, Mummy."
...
"Mummy?"
"Darling?"
"Is it only when you're married that a man can put his arm around a lady?"
"Yes... No... It depends... Why are you asking me this?"
"No reason, Mummy."


With no trace in her daughter's hands of a book that could have triggered these questions, the mother is faced with Bel-Gazou's thoughts in freefall, and a terrifying question - where are they coming from?
_____________________________________

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

Sunday 27 April 2014

Isolation - Lily Hyde


I’m not sure how to begin describing the IZOLYATSIA literature festival in Donetsk, which I participated in last week. Over three days in a former factory making isolation materials, now a fantastic arts and cultural centre, writers and philosophers from all over Ukraine met to discuss the topic ‘Language and Violence’ with residents of Donbas (the name of this region of East Ukraine).



 It felt isolated in some ways: as the Russian and Ukrainian media shouted more shrilly than ever about terrorism and fascism and civil war, as tortured bodies were found in nearby rivers and journalists were kidnapped - there we were, surrounded by abandoned industry and works of art, talking and reading and arguing.


 But the location and the subject of our discussions goes to the heart of what is happening in Ukraine. Years of abandoned industry and no jobs have driven people to desperation. And language is literally shaping their world now, as an information war drives them to take up arms over whether they speak Russian or Ukrainian, whether they live in Russia or Ukraine or an independent republic, whether their actions make them heroes or terrorists, patriots or separatists. 

It was a strange, wonderful, inspiring, occasionally surreal event. One of the more surreal moments was the reason I was there, to launch in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking heartland the Ukrainian translation of my book, Dream Land.    

A presentation of a British book translated into Ukrainian, about the Crimean Tatar campaign to regain their homeland of Crimea which has just become Russian-occupied territory; held in a city once called Yuzovka after Welshman John Hughes who founded it – now Donetsk, epicentre of an armed protest movement to declare an independent people’s republic and secede from Ukraine, while just over the border Russian troops are amassing perhaps to invade, as they have taken over Crimea…

Dream Land in Ukrainian and English - with journalist Konstantin Doroshenko and IZOLYATSIA director Paco de Blas 
www.lilyhyde.com
http://rambutanchik.wordpress.com

Dream Land by Lily Hyde - a novel about the Crimean Tatars' return to their homeland

Saturday 26 April 2014

The Outer Limits - Andrew Strong

Long ago, before most of you were born, I used to listen to music on vinyl.  A vinyl single was usually about three minutes long, and a vinyl album, or LP, twenty minutes a side.  When I started playing in bands, and writing my own songs, I thought it was best to write three minute songs, or to think in sets of songs forty minutes long.  The technology of playing music dictated what I wrote.

When I watch a film I wonder how the screenwriter’s plotting is influenced by a movie's eventual length.  If a film is ninety minutes long, each of its three acts gets to be thirty minutes.  People will feel short changed if a movie is less than an hour, and often complain if it goes on for too long.

But what dictates the length of a book?  I’m led to believe that publishers prefer children's novels to be shorter, but why?  Is it simply because huge books don't sell? Are they too daunting or too heavy?

The original draft of a book I’ve just finished was 120,000 words.  My agent insisted I cut in half. I did so, and although the book is neater, and sharper, I think it’s lost something of its rambling essence.  (Can an essence ramble?)

So, like a DJ who creates an extended mix, or like the Directors Cut of a movie available on DVD, I wonder whether it’s possible to publish both long and shorter versions of my new book.  And while I’m at it, I wonder if I could write an even shorter short one.  Take this to its logical conclusion and my book will end up as a short story, a poem, or even a tweet.  Perhaps it can exist, like matter, in a variety of states. The book is about music, so I suppose I could include a cd, or a link to a download.

These days so many of the contexts in which artists work are  in flux.  Writing is no longer confined to print, but to a myriad of forms.  We can write blogs of infinite length (that no one will read).  We can tweet pithy wisdom. (Nobody will read these either).  At sea in the online world, we have no limit to their imaginings.  I can write and record my music at home, upload it on to Soundcloud and don't have to concern myself with the memory capacity of the means of distribution.  The LP, the CD, even the concept of music of any finite length has been challenged by software such as Koan which enables music to be ‘generative’ – that is, the composer determines certain settings (key, pitch, tempo, arrangement) and the music unfolds infinitely.

As someone who trained as a painter, then spent ten years in music before writing books, I see many art forms suddenly released from their bonds, in freefall.  Of course it is liberating: there’s a new world out there, and it goes on forever. 

Writers have always enjoyed creating their own restraints: Joyce’s Ulysses, Georges Perec, the works of Italo Calvino, the Oulipo movement, they have all sought to devise structures to give their work some limit, a reaction to, perhaps, a sense of reality as too chaotic. 

Reality is too daunting to capture in its entirety, so we all need to be selective, to choose, to  limit.  But the boundaries of our reality are dissolving in the online world.  We get vertigo, we run to find the edges, there aren’t any.

And our security, like the security we get from good parents who give clear boundaries, is threatened.  It’s a brave new world.  It's daunting and exciting in equal measure.

So, if and when my new 'work' eventually comes out, maybe it will be in several forms, the least of which will be the printed book.  And if you miss most of them, please make sure you don't miss the tweet.

Friday 25 April 2014

Never Put Your Giraffe in a Scarf - A Cautionary Tale by Tamsyn Murray

 
First, a confession: I broke my own rule. As you can clearly see, my giraffes are wearing scarves. But I can justify my mistake - where I live, 99% of the giraffes could wear scarves without a single problem. It's only when you go towards the Midlands and the North that giraffes might get a bit of stick for their accessories. Why? Because in a southern accent, giraffe and scarf can be made to rhyme. In a northern accent (see also American), they can't. And before you know it, you have hoards of disgruntled parents (OK, two so far) complaining that your rhyming picture book DOESN'T ACTUALLY RHYME.

What I should have done, of course, is put my giraffes in the bath. That rhyme works no matter what accent you use (although I'm struggling somewhat with South African). And I suppose that's the point of this cautionary tale - if you're grabbed by the unshakeable urge to rhyme, make sure it works universally (don't worry about Mars - they don't understand the concept of rhyming there). In fact, I try to deter my students from writing rhyming picture books - they're a hard sell because obviously publishers need to ensure a text translates to as many territories as possible and rhymes rarely translate well into other languages. In the case of Snug As A Bug, they don't translate at all - the only co-editions of this little picture book are US and Australia. Even then, I get tentative enquiries from parents in California asking if I can suggest a way to make geeraff rhyme with scarff. I mumbled a bit about British charm and hid for three days.

So learn from my mistake, all you picture book writers: if you must make your picture rhyme, never put your giraffe in a scarf.

You're welcome.

Thursday 24 April 2014

By The Seat of My Pants - Cavan Scott

According to writing lore there are two types of writers – pantsers and planners.

Pantsers write by the seat of their pants. Well, not literally. Most use pens, pencils or sometimes a keyboard, but you get my meaning - they start a story with a general idea of where it's going and then just make it up as they go along.

Shudder!

I am not a pantser. I am a planner. Before I start a story I can be found brainstorming and note-taking and mind mapping and all other kinds of plannery things. Next, I sit down and write a complete outline, chronicling the story from beginning to end.

Then, and only then, when the outline is done, I make myself a cup of tea, break out the biscuits and start to write.

The idea of making it up as I go along brings me out in a rash. No, don't ask where. You don't want to know.

Seriously, even the very thought of it is giving me the heebie-jeebies right now. It's probably due to the fact that I come from background of writing licensed fiction. Whether I'm writing Doctor Who, Skylanders, Angry Birds or whatever I need extensive outlines to get stories approved before I can start work. I've just got into a habit, which I can't seem to break. Try as I might, my mantra is always:

Outlines = good!

Sitting at my desk waiting to see what happens next = bad!

It's not to say that my stories don't adapt over time. Sometimes the outline needs changing as I work and I am flexible. Again, I have to be when writing licensed stuff. You never know when the licensor is going to throw a curveball when approving a story and you often have to be able to move quickly to make things work.

But when it comes to writing my own stuff the outline is always there; my constant companion, letting me know that everything is going to be all right and I really do know what I'm doing, honest guv.

This is why I am about to launch into a process that on many levels scares me silly. Tomorrow, my latest interactive e-book hits the Fiction Express website.

Snaffles the Cat Burglar,
scaring author Cavan Scott silly!
For those who don't know, Fiction Express is a literacy resource for schools. This Friday, at about 3pm, the first chapter of Snaffles the Cat Burglar goes live, ending with a cliffhanger and three options of where the story could go next.

School children all over the country read the chapter and vote for their favourite option. I get the results of the vote on Tuesday and write what the pupils decided would happen next. Chapter two is published on the Friday, ending with another three options, and the entire process starts again.

Gulp!

It's the second story I've written for Fiction Express. The first was The Gloom Lord at the end of last year, and I found the entire process absolutely fascinating and utterly TERRIFYING!

There was no way I could plan, not really. Yes, I had a general idea of where the story was going, but I was handing the power over to my readers and having to – you guessed it – write by the seat of my pants, depending on what they chose every week. Most of the time I was completely shocked by the decisions they made. There was no way to predict how the vote would go.

I admit, this is a rather extreme way to get over my fear of pantsing, but it's an extremely effective one. The Gloom Lord taught me to 'go with the flow' more when writing, letting the story lead me rather than the other way around. With Snaffles, I'm aiming to take it one step further, throwing in even more random possibilities that will keep everyone – including me – guessing until right to the end.

I think I know what's going to happen to our feline felon, but I can't be sure.

Hopefully, I'll come out of the other end without reducing myself to a gibbering wreck. Or find myself covered in an unsightly rash. I'll let you know - but don't worry, if it's the latter I won't be posting photos.

Probably.

_________________

Cavan Scott is the author of over 60 books and audio dramas including the Sunday Times Bestseller, Who-ology: The Official Doctor Who Miscellany, co-written with Mark Wright.

He's written for Doctor Who, SkylandersJudge Dredd, Angry Birds and Warhammer 40,000 among others. He also writes Roger the Dodger and other popular characters for The Beano  but has yet to buy a black and red striped sweater. It's only a matter of time.

Cavan's website
Cavan's facebook fanpage
Cavan's twitterings

Wednesday 23 April 2014

UNESCO World Book and Copyright Day - Maeve Friel


Happy Book Day! No, I haven´t got my dates mixed up. 23rd April,  is the UNESCO World Book and Copyright Day, a worldwide celebration of the book, the publishing industry and the intellectual property rights of the author. (Britain and Ireland as always are out of step with the rest of the world!)

The date was chosen by UNESCO because both Miguel Cervantes (1547-1616) and William Shakespeare died on that day (although that is not strictly true because of the difference in the Gregorian and Julian Calendars).

In Spain, Cervantes Day has been celebrated since 1923 and Cervantes is treated with the same veneration and respect as Shakespeare.  In Cataluña, the day coincides with the feastday of their national saint, St. George or Sant Jordi, and there is a longstanding tradition there of people exchanging roses and books on 23rd April although this custom is widespread throughout Spain now. Many bookshops present you with a rose when you buy a book and nearly all stay open late. There are thousands of book related activities throughout the country.

If you were in Madrid today, you could celebrate the life of Cervantes by going to the Convento de las Trinitarias, an old convent in the Barrio de las Letras (The Arts Quarter), where the Academy hold a memorial Mass with an empty coffin on display. Cervantes chose to be buried here because the Trinitarian Monks had helped organise his release after he was kidnapped and enslaved by Algerian corsairs on his return from the Battle of Lepanto (where he lost an arm): unfortunately, the location of the grave has long been lost.

Or you could take the train out to the old university town of Alcalá de Henares where Cervantes was born, the son of a barber-surgeon and a minor impoverished aristocrat.  His home is now a casa-museo and is a fascinating glimpse into 16th century domestic architecture.

Or you could go farther afield to Argamasilla in Castilla La Mancha. This small town claims to be the home of Don Quixote, "the place whose name I do not wish to remember"  - (el) lugar de La Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme. It is now firmly on the literary tourist map, on the Ruta de Don Quijote, a fabulous landscape with its wide horizons, crumbling castles and dozens of white windmills on the crests of the hills.


Cervantes, always poor, always unfortunate in business and in love, was thrown into prison in Argamasilla.  It was here that he said he had the idea for Don Quijote, who may have been based on the local Duke Rodrigo de Pacheco, the duke of the long countenance, who suffered from mental illness. His ex voto portrait hangs in the local church (he´s the man in the ruff, bottom right hand corner):



Or you could simply take down a copy of Don Quixote, the Ingenious Hidalgo of La Mancha and browse. Often cited as the first modern European novel, and nominated again and again by writers as their favourite book, it is funny, touching, wise and full of beautiful language - and yes, there are boring bits too but you can skip them. There are literally hundreds of editions, including ones illustrated by HonorĂ© Daumier, Gustave DorĂ©, Salvador DalĂ­ and Pablo Picasso.  In the whole literary canon, are there any profiles as recognisable as the long skinny lance-wielding hidalgo and his small round companion Sancho Panza?

Can I also recommend Don Quixote´s Delusions - Travels in Castilian Spain by Miranda France, an unusual travel book/memoir/literary biography. It will make you laugh out loud but is also a scholarly and insightful introduction to Don Quijote.

I have not been above borrowing a little from Cervantes. My books Tiger Lily - A Heroine in the Making, Tiger Lily - A Heroine with a Mission, Tiger Lily - A Heroine for All Seasons all feature a girl who, like Don Quijote, has also become a little mad from reading so many books and determines to become a heroine and escape from her home in the Middle of Nowhere in search of adventure.

"When Don Quijote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel." Milan Kundera





Tuesday 22 April 2014

Praise be to editors - by Nicola Morgan

This won't be the first time an ABBA blogger has praised editors but it would be hard to praise them too often, so I'm going to do it again.

When I had my Help! I Need a Publisher! blog, I used to come across so many writers who had turned or were planning to turn their back on the idea of aiming for trade publication because "the editing process would suppress my voice" or some such twaddle. Because twaddle it is. A good editor is a bit like a good singing teacher: nurtures and nourishes your voice so that it can sound its best. A singing teacher would also be a critic, suggesting when you've got it wrong. And you might occasionally disagree with the teacher, and you might be right, but that wouldn't make them not a great teacher.

Stick with the voice analogy for a moment: you accept how when you sing or speak you are hearing your voice through your own head, reverberating differently so that it sounds different when it hits someone's ears? Well, a good editor is that other pair of ears and can show you how you might wish to tweak or polish your voice to sound best for other ears. Because what it sounds like in your own head isn't as important as how it sounds to others.

And I am not so arrogant that I don't want to listen to a trusted expert, a trusted expert who a) wants my book to be as good as possible and b) can help me make it so.

Here I have to mention the long-suffering, eagle-eyed, hyper-intelligent and just plain darn brilliant editors working on The Teenage Guide to Stress with* me. Caz Royds and Alice Horrocks are editors to die for. And this has been a BIG task. (Notice the "with", because this is the ultimate teamwork.)

Editing fiction is a tricky thing (and they do that, too) but editing non-fiction requires a different set of skills and tuning. Five levels of headings - and have we at last got the hierarchy of information right??? Is the order of material right? Is everything perfectly balanced and weighted? What do we do about the fact that the author is paranoid about leaving things out and yet perhaps it can't all go in? Have we got the voice just right for 12 year-olds and 18 year-olds and adults? Is it sufficiently serious and yet not too dark? How do you tackle blushing and self-harming, sweating and suicidal thoughts all in one book? How deep should the contents list go? Index? Wahhhh! Glossary or not? And then the design issues that come with non-fiction become part of the editorial process - and here a big mention for the so-patient and talented Beth Aves, who somehow manages to incorporate every text change or order switch without complaint.

The complications of this rather large book meant that we have gone to the wire, time-wise, with last-minute "ARGGGGH"s flying back and forth, and yet with humour, respect and mutual admiration all the time. We go to print on April 29th and I'm sending them fizz to celebrate. We may have to have a Skype party!

Next project: The Demented Writer's Guide to Self-Inflicted Stress. You can all contribute!

NOTE: For the chance to win a copy of The Teenage Guide to Stress, signed on or before publication day, visit my blog and leave a comment on any/all April/May posts with "Exam tips" in the title. Each comment = one entry to the random draw, so comment on each post if you wish!


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Nicola Morgan's free Brain Sane newsletter is full of links and articles about the brain, reading, stress, positive psychology and mental health. Next issue is a special one on SLEEP, with gorgeous sleepy giveaways and books to be won. 

Monday 21 April 2014

Anyone for Easter Solitaire? - Megan Rix


Did you know that there’s actually an Easter Solitaire game on the internet? I never let myself play games on my computer because I know it'd be too easy for me to get addicted and I'd end up spending all my days playing instead of writing. l don’t switch the TV on during the day either - for the same reason. :(

I was only looking up card games for this blog because I’d read that there are more ways to arrange a deck of cards than the number of atoms in the world!!!!?????!!!!
http://boingboing.net/2014/04/05/there-are-more-ways-to-arrange.html

Quite often I hear authors say: l wanted to write a story about such and such eg. vampires (lions (hedgehogs) headless zombies / Cinderella etc etc but I didn’t because so and so had already done it.

But the thing is, I always want to say, the way you tell a story is personal to you. Even if you start off with the same characters you will end up with a different story by the end because your version is different to everyone else’s. There’s lots of lovely writing exercises at http://writingexercises.co.uk

Every character we write about has multiple choices to choose from and every plot a myriad of twists and turns.

There's a whole TV channel devoted to crime dramas and each of them are their own unique selves.

 

Just like the storyteller and the story.

Hope you all have/had a very happy and creative Easter break. I'm still dancing with joy at my first ever book award. 'The Victory Dogs' has won Stockton Children's Book of the Year for 2014. Many many thanks to all the children that voted for it. :)