Thursday 30 April 2015

Tracking Down Unicorns - Lari Don

I’ve spent the last month trying to track down a unicorn. You probably won’t be surprised to discover that unicorns are hard to find!

I’m currently pulling together the background research and references for a collection of horse stories (a companion to Girls, Goddesses and Giants, and Winter’s Tales.) And I want to include a unicorn, just like I want to include a centaur, a kelpie and a hippogriff. But the unicorn is proving the hardest to track down.

I keep glimpsing the perfect unicorn story, but never actually finding it. I keep finding hints of a Ukrainian story about the unicorn refusing to go on the ark with all those other smelly animals, which is apparently why unicorns aren’t exactly common these days. I like this little fable, and I want to include my retelling of it in Wild Horses, Wings and Warriors.

But in collections of myths, legends and traditional tales, I always put information at the back of the book about where I’ve found each story, with a genuine trackable source.
sources in my collection of Scottish tales Breaking The Spell
And though I keep glimpsing the unicorn story, though I keep seeing partial hoofprints, I can’t find a source that isn’t gossip, rumour or hearsay.

Google doesn’t help. The same few lines are repeated on lots of different sites, but all the sources seem to be copying each other, like a circle without a starting point. And even proper books - old dusty books, hardback books, books in the library - lots of them mention the same story but even they don’t give an actual source.

And in a slightly unlikely twist, when I mentioned my quest to my best friend, she pulled from the back of her amazing brain a SONG about the story I am hunting for, and sang it down the phone to me. Which was fun, but not really what I was looking for…

So, how much should I care about sources and provenance? All traditional tales have been made up, by someone, some time. Does it matter where I found them? Any book I use as a source, however old, will still just be one version of the story, captured at one moment. You can’t point at a particular version of an oral story and say – that’s the original story.

Even so, I think it does matter. I like to feel that anyone reading a collection of mine can go back to the sources I used and discover more about the story, perhaps find their own way of telling it and perhaps find out more about the culture the story came from. I’m retelling these old tales, not creating them myself, and I want to give credit to the sources that inspire me.

But this particular story seems to be, like the unicorn itself, very hard to find. Elusive. Frustrating. Perhaps non-existent.

I’ve never had this trouble in any other collection, with any other story. Perhaps it’s only unicorns that are impossible to track down…
a helpful child drew me a unicorn!

So should I just shrug and think, it’s only a story, and stop worrying about it? Or should I make a virtue of the fact that finding the unicorn is uniquely impossible? (It does feel quite appropriate!) Or should I keep looking? Should I keep hunting the unicorn, with my telescope, my seven league boots, my map saying ‘here be dragons’ and my compass with the needle pointing to Once Upon a Time…

I think, for now, with the deadline for Wild Horses still more than seven leagues away, I will keep hunting for that unicorn.

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 22 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 
Lari’s own blog 
Lari on Twitter 
Lari on Facebook 
Lari on Tumblr

Wednesday 29 April 2015

Copyright. It's a piece of cake - John Dougherty

Who would have thought that copyright would be one of the issues of this election?


Not one of the major issues, obviously; not one of the really important issues like how best to eat a bacon sandwich, or whether Scottish MPs should be allowed to help make the laws or should just sit at the back doing raffia. But amid all the high-level politicking, someone noticed that the Green Party website expressed an apparent desire to reduce copyright to a period of 14 years.

Obviously, some people got cross. Some other people, however, couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. They started saying things like, It was an initiative to get copyright owned by artists & writers, not companies, and The idea is to support arts, and It is in all of our best interests to have a vast public domain, and No one needs decades of monopoly, and If you write a book and after 14 years you haven’t made enough money, maybe you should write another book.
Much of this demonstrates a real misunderstanding not just about the working life of the average writer, but also about the basic principle of copyright, which is this:
If I make something, it belongs to me.
This applies whether it’s a song, a story, a poem, or a cake. I suggested this to someone on Twitter, who replied, I give cakes away. And you know what? That’s fine. If you make a cake, and you want to give it away, you can. You can give it all to your friends, or you can put it on the wall outside your house with a note saying “Help yourself”, or you can throw it at the seagulls. That’s fine. It’s your cake.

Similarly, if you want to sell it, that’s up to you. You can set up a cake-stall and sell it slice by slice; you can put it on eBay; you can sell the whole thing to someone who forgot to bake a birthday cake, or who’s having guests round for tea and hasn’t been to the shops, or who has a cake-reselling business, or who just likes cake. Or you can ask the cake-shop down the road to sell it for you at an agreed commission. That’s fine. It’s your cake.

And if you want, you can leave it on the kitchen table till it goes stale and mouldy. You can hang it from a tree and throw apples at it. You can put it in the bath. You can bury it in the garden. You can do any of these things, because it’s your cake. Whatever you want to do with it, that’s fine.
What’s not fine is for someone else to decide that it shouldn’t be your cake, and help themselves without your permission. 
It doesn’t matter why they don’t think it should be yours. They can argue that you’ve got more than enough cake; they can argue that you wouldn’t have been able to make the cake if someone else hadn’t produced the flour & eggs & sugar; they can argue that cake should be for everybody. They can argue that the big corporations make too much money out of cake; or that wider distribution of cake benefits society; or that if you haven’t got enough cake then maybe you should make some more; or simply that they really really like cake. Some of these may be true, but none of them is relevant. Because it’s your cake.
Nobody’s been able to explain to me why a story or a song should be any different in this regard than a cake - or a business, to use another comparison. If someone builds a business up and then hands over the day-to-day running to an employee, would we say that after 14 years she should lose her rights either to profit from the company or to control its direction? I don’t think we would. If someone builds a house and then rents it out, would we say that after 14 years of not living in the house he should lose his rights of ownership? Again, I doubt it. When you strip away the sound and fury, most of the arguments for reducing copyright seem to boil down to one of two:
  1. I want free stuff
  2. The internet has made it easier for people to steal stuff
We wouldn’t accept either of these as a good reason for removing other property rights. I don’t see why intellectual property should be any different.

Cake images © Michael Dannenberg. Used with permission. Because, so to speak, it's his cake. 

Further reading:
The ever-wise Sarah McIntyre in defence of copyright
Jonathan Emmett on why, even as a solid supporter of copyright, he's voting Green. I think I may do the same. Thanks to Jonathan for sending me a link to this.
John Degen on myths about copyright. I found this one on Sarah's blog.
The wonderful Joanne Harris - again, thanks to Sarah for the link. This one contains a cool little test to help you work out if you support the copyright principle or not.
Tom Chance, a former Green party spokesperson on Intellectual Property, gives his view
The Society of Authors's statement in response to concern over the Green Party's position. The Society's quick guide to copyright may be found here.


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John's latest book is the extremely silly Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Evilness of Pizza, illustrated by David Tazzyman and published by OUP.




Tuesday 28 April 2015

Yay YA! What a great day! - byLinda Strachan



   First Scottish YA festival to celebrate Young Adult fiction
took place last Friday as 200 Young Adult readers from 9 schools arrived at Cumbernauld Theatre.

All eleven authors who took part live and work in Scotland, writing a wide range of books, from gritty realism to fantasy, historical settings from Vikings to the First World War, adventure, humour, weirdness and wonder.  An amazing bouquet of words and writing  to delight any reader.





Kirkland Ciccone 










After the success of the YALC (Young Adult Literature Convention) in London last year YA author Kirkland Ciccone decided there should be something to celebrate the wealth of YA books, and their authors who are living and working in Scotland.

A larger than life character, with typical enthusiasm and humour he gathered together a 'novel' of authors (is that the collective term?) and asked if we would be keen to take part.

No one was sure what to expect, least of all Kirkland himself, I suspect, but by the time the sell-out crowd arrived on Friday morning it had already gathered great momentum.


Kirkland had approached sponsors and secured a commitment from both the Cumbernauld Theatre and North Lanarkshire Council's CultureNL, who supported the event with great enthusiasm and helped to make it such a success.

Kirkland had everyone laughing with his introduction. Waving his ray gun and wearing a tin foil top he started it off by saying ...
 “Welcome to the first annual Hunger Gam…oh wait!”   

Almost immediately the audience was split into two halves with some spending the morning in the auditorium listening to three great authors -  I would have loved to be there but I was busy elsewhere as you will discover below. I did hear that the audiences were hugely entertained with their presentations, mesmerising words, and a few interesting props...


Barry Hutchison, Cathy MacPhail and Theresa Breslin
 Catherine MacPhail showed the trailer for the film of her book Another Me, which is delighting  and scaring audiences as much as the book does its readers!

Theresa Breslin took them on a trip into the past showing off her gas mask and some shrapnel from WW1

Barry Hutchison apparently had them enthralled with stories about death and.... squirrels  - I really must get in to listen to him sometime soon!


Meanwhile in lots of different nooks and crannies, such as dressing rooms and tiny bars scattered around Cumbernauld Theatre, with amazing efficiency the Front of House staff led groups of between 5 and 15 young readers around each of the other six authors.  We had about 7 or 8 minutes with each group before they were moved on to the next author.

In the Cottage Bar
What a challenge that was, to find a way to engage with the audience and let them feel connected with us and our books in just 8 minutes.

I was in the Cottage Bar, a lovely space with cottage-style windows and as each group was ushered in I had decided I would tell them a quick, hopefully atmospheric, snapshot of each of my three YA crime novels - Spider, Dead Boy talking and Don't Judge Me.
After that I threw it open to them to ask me anything they liked.  Almost every group had at least one or two who had questions for me and I thoroughly enjoyed that it was very much more personal than a large school event.  The pressure of the limited time was also less of a problem than I had expected.

Alex Nye
Next door to me was the lovely Alex Nye with her books Chill and Shiver and announcing her forthcoming novel.  Hers was the only presentation I got
in to hear a part of, because one school had cancelled (there had originally been 10 schools) which meant we all had a few minutes to catch our breath. . Alex passed around her notebook with all her changes and scoring out. It was lovely (serious notebook envy!)

The other four authors involved in the ' 8 minute speed dating'  were Lari Don, an amazing storyteller and writer for younger readers who was talking about her first YA novel, Mind Blind;  Roy Gill, with his werewolves in Daemon Parallel, is taller than anyone has a right to be;  Matt Cartney, a real life adventurer, with his Danny Lansing adventures, and V Campbell and her Viking Gold!


Roy Gill and Lari Don in the 'selfie' area




At lunchtime there was a chance for the young readers to buy books and the lovely Scotia Books had an amazing bookstall.





The enthusiastic teachers, librarians and bloggers seemed to be enjoying the day, too.


I saw lots of young readers with four or five books, eagerly chasing down authors for a signature, or a photo! 

 After lunch it all started again with the audience changing places so that those who were in the auditorium in the morning came around to meet us for their 8 minute chat, while the others had a chance in the auditorium.

Author Keith Charters joined us at lunch time for the latter part of the afternoon and excellently chaired the final event which was a panel of authors taking questions. Alex Nye, Roy gill, Victoria Campbell and Lari Don fielded some challenging questions and generally agreed to disagree with most of their answers which is probably exactly how it should be, because no two writers are the same!


V Campbell, Matt Cartney and Keith Charters


Despite all the rushing about, chatting and book buying sometimes you want a quiet spot to get stuck into that book you've just bought......












Finally it was all almost over when Theresa Breslin presented Kirkland with the Chocolate Trainer Award, which he promised to enjoy!


Chocolate Trainer Award
Everyone agreed it had been an excellent day and hopefully Yay YA! will continue next year!

Our thanks to Kirkland Ciccone without whose delightfully over-the-top exuberance, patience and organisation, this would never have happened. Well done Kirkland!




---------------------------------------------
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's 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

website:  www.lindastrachan.com
blog:  Bookwords 







Monday 27 April 2015

The Confessions of a Book Hoarder: Lynn Huggins-Cooper



Until recently, I was drowning in a sea of books. A happy 'problem' - but a problem nevertheless. About four years ago, I moved from a large farmhouse into a small cottage. My book collection was huge but it didn't matter; whenever the piles of books started to topple from every surface, I just built more bookcases. Now, once I made the move into the cottage, I had to decant a gallon into a pint pot - and it didn't work. Books were piled three deep; there was no room for more bookcases. I even had boxes of books in the study. Trying to find books when I needed them was a nightmare and I wasted many frustrated hours searching for the books I needed. The house where I grew up was held up by books. It was a small three story town house, and every flight of stairs and each passage were flanked with book shelves. The bedrooms and my dad's study were crammed with books. So the child of book hoarders became a book hoarder, as you do. Again; a happy problem but a problem nevertheless. This year, I have felt the urge to 'downsize' and simplify even further. I have happily sorted through wardrobes and cupboards and taken bags of items to our local charity shop. I have even donated some items of furniture. But the real test came when I recognised the need to cull my book collection. A scary thought. Giving away some of my home library...shudder.



 The funny thing is, once I started it wasn't as alarming as I thought. I started with cookery books. I had far to many, stretcjing back to my student days. considering I am now fifty, some of those bedsitter-on-a-budget books didn't really fit my needs any more. Then I moved into the living room - more books than anything else. It gives the delicious feeling that one is watching television in a library. However, books were piled up higgledy-piggley and it did not look inviting. More books were collected for redistribution. I took two huge sacks of craft books to a women's project and they were delighted by their treasure. I took blue IKEA bags and boxes of books and donated them to the charity shop - they were very happy with their haul and will hopefully make some funds. I am delighted to think books that I haven't opened in several years will gain a new lease of life with new owners. I kept going - more and more books made that journey to the charity shop. I have given away piles of 'free' author copies of my books to charities and clubs. It has been lovely seeing the pleasure these rather neglected books are giving to new owners. Although the flood has now slowed to a trickle, I have kept donating. Apart from showing me rather embarrassingly that I buy several copies of favourites (handy when it is so hard to find what is needed - but who needs four copies of 'Food For Free'?), culling my collection has taught me some other things. I am ashamed to say some of the books had almost become wallpaper, and I didn't 'see' them any more. No book deserves that! However, with books now all safely and sensibly homed on shelves, I can see what I have more easily. I have rediscovered forgotten gems. It almost feels as though I have a new book collection, without spending any money! I have also moved some of my books into different rooms, and shaken up the mix a little. It is encouraging me to browse and graze happily on books I have not read for years. Give it a go - you may find it quite refreshing.

Sunday 26 April 2015

I Love Books So Why Did I Hate English Literature? - Julie Sykes


It often surprises people to learn that I gave up English at 16. As someone who earns a living from writing, and a keen reader too, I'm expected to have at least an A ‘level in the subject.

The reason I don’t is simple. You couldn’t study English Language at my sixth form college. It was English Literature or nothing. I hated English Literature, so I opted for nothing.

Shakespeare left me cold. It still does. If I want to read in a foreign language then I’ll learn something useful like German.

At 16, Thomas Hardy and Steinbeck depressed me. Chaucer, Hemmingway, Gerald Manley Hopkins…no thanks!

There, I’ve said it. My guilty secret is out. Please don’t yell at me. I can’t help what I like and it’s not that.

I’m not alone either. A few months ago, Orli Vogt-Vincet (the 15 year old book blogger) wrote for the Guardian, ‘I Love books so why do I hate studying English GCSE?’ 

Orli argues that, ‘We need a bigger variety of fiction, modern and classic that have themes that can be translated and can be relevant to teenagers today...’ She also says, ‘we need books that bring up intense messages of modern themes: sexism, racism, homosexuality. It’s not even like these books don’t exist…’

I couldn’t agree more.

I’ve talked to other teenagers about the books they’ve read in school. Joe told me that his class spent a term studying Holes by Louis Sachar. He loved it the first time they read it. He’d quite enjoyed it the second time, too. But after a term spent re-reading, dissecting and analysing the text Joe confessed that he hated not just Holes but reading full stop!



Can you blame him?

Reading is an essential life skill. It’s something that can be taught.

Reading for pleasure, encouraging children to become lifelong readers can’t be. That takes encouragement, enthusiasm and above all passion.

It’s about time we listened to the young. Ask them what they want to read. What they’d like to see on the English Literature curriculum. It doesn’t matter if it's comics, magazines, fiction, non- fiction or the manual that comes with the PlayStation. If it has words then it counts as reading.


You’d never force an adult to read a book they’re not enjoying. Why then, if we want to encourage more children to read for pleasure, do we force books on them and then over analyse the content?


What my 13 year old self thought of 'The Old Man and the Sea' by Ernest Hemingway



Saturday 25 April 2015

Which Superhero Would YOU Be? by Tamsyn Murray

I don't know about you but I've never really thought of myself as a superhero. I'm more of 'quietly gets on with things' kind of operator rather than the type who single-handedly fights her nemesis and saves the world while looking awesome in skimpy tight clothes and snogging the love interest. And then I organised an inspirational LOVE Writing day at a fancy hotel in Hertfordshire and invited Miranda Dickinson and Julie Cohen along as guest speakers, and they taught me that there's a superhero inside me, inside all of us, struggling to get out.

The idea is simple and comes from this TED talk by Social Psychologist Amy Cuddy, who suggests that 'power posing' for a short amount of time before an important or stressful event can give us the right body language and self-assurance to do better. It can confer self-confidence and an aura of awesomeness. Miranda suggested we find a pose that worked for us - our Superhero Pose - so that we could invoke the power it gives in our everyday lives. And to help us on our way, Miranda made us practise our pose in front of each other.


As you can see, we looked pretty amazing. And the best part was that it actually worked - after thirty seconds of holding the pose of a strong, confident person, I actually felt stronger. So the next time I have something terrifying to say or do, I'm going remember how it felt to channel my inner Supergirl and tell myself I can conquer the fear to stand tall. Or was it Wonder woman? Or maybe just Superwoman? Whatever helps me to stand tall.

Who would you choose to copy in your Superhero pose and why? And don't forget to strike the pose as often as you need to. It's your key to feeling better about yourself and the thing you're about to do. Now...which superhero shall I be today..?

Friday 24 April 2015

How the Light Gets In - Liz Kessler

In the past couple of months, I've had kidney failure, liver failure, an unnamed tropical disease, another disease that is hard to diagnose because the symptoms are very much like a cold; I've cracked a rib from sneezing too much, my blood pressure has gone so high that I have spontaneously combusted, oh, and I've gone blind from glancing at the solar eclipse.

Have you guessed yet that I might not really (as in, actually, in real life) have had all (or any) of these diseases? Well, no, as far as I know, I have simply had a cold, a prickly heat rash, a bit of anxiety and a lovely walk along the coast path during the solar eclipse.

The main thing I suffer from is too much imagination.

A good writer buddy and I used to call this "Writer's Brain Tumour". The thinking is that when a writer gets a headache – which to normal people is described as a headache – we 
immediately fear the worst and think we have a brain tumour. Since my partner had a – benign, thank God – brain tumour a couple of years ago, I tend not to call it this any more. Nowadays I call it (cue dramatic 'dum dum derrrrrrrrer' music)....

The curse of the writer.

While you chew on that thought, let's take a quick commercial break. I was pretty much brought up on an album called You Don't Have to be Jewish, which I have had a soft spot for ever since. There is a sketch called The Diamond, and if I ever use the word 'curse', I can't help thinking of it. It has the best pronunciation of this word ever in the world. I've managed to track down a video of the sketch. Do yourself a favour and watch this before you go any further.




OK, now that's out of the way, let's get back to the issue in hand. And also, can I briefly apologise if I've talked about this before. I probably have. It doesn't go away.

You see, as writers it is our job to spend our days delving into our imaginations, exploring in the realms of 'What if this?' and 'What about that?' and 'How about?' and 'Could this possibly...?' So it's no wonder we do that with our own lives – and often our own bodies – too.

Our day jobs involve us thinking about the least likely scenarios, not the every day events. We deal in the dramatic and our fare is the furthest reaches of our imaginations. How many of us have been told by editors and agents to 'raise the stakes'?

I've spent fifteen years working as a writer. That's fifteen years training my mind to raise the stakes. Luckily, I love to do it in my books. The feeling I get from exploring a story, an idea, a character – and yes, a highly unlikely scenario – is possibly as good for me as the adrenaline rush of scoring a goal is for a footballer. The issue is, how do we switch it off?

When children ask me for my top writing tips, one that I nearly always tell them is to carry a notebook around with you because you never know when you'll get an idea. 


I tell them that ideas are like butterflies and your notebook is a big net in which you can catch them safely and take them home with you so you can work on them later when you have more time.



At the heart of this advice is the fact that our stories and our imaginations don't clock on and off between nine and five. And therein lies the problem. 


If we're not writing, the imagination doesn't instantly switch off. It's like one of those cartoon characters who keeps running, even though the top of the cliff is way behind them. It takes a moment for them to realise they are pumping their legs in mid air – before they fall to the ground. 


So how do we get our imaginations to notice that we are approaching the edge of a cliff and calmly come back from the precipice until it is time to go to work again tomorrow?

It simply doesn't work like that.

Maybe we just have to accept, like Mrs Plotnick (have you watched the sketch yet?) that along with our beautiful gift, there's a curse. We can't change it, we can't get rid of it. Perhaps we can try to wrap it up and put it in a nice box on our desks at the end of the day and hope it won't follow us out of the office when we close the door behind us and get on with the rest of our lives. But it will probably follow us down the stairs – because it isn't just part of our job, it is part of ourselves.

Perhaps the only way to get rid of the curse is to change our language and call it something different. We're good at words - we've already established that – so it could work. 


Yes, I can sometimes (OK, often) exaggerate my physical symptoms and worry about what they might mean. Yes I do feel my blood pressure go up and my anxiety levels rise when my imagination is getting more involved in my backache/headache/slight feeling of tiredness than it should be. But I don't spend my entire life doing this. In reality, it is a small portion of the time – and a small price to pay for the opportunity to spend my days staring into space making up stories about mermaids and fairies and time travel and pirate dogs (and teenagers coming out as gay - subliminal ad for Read Me Like A Book. In all good bookshops from next month.) 

In other words, the curse is in fact part of the gift, and the best way to deal with it is to stop fighting against it and accept it as the imperfection that makes the gift perfect.

Or as Leonard Cohen puts it so beautifully:

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."

Follow Liz on Twitter
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Thursday 23 April 2015

When did you come out? – Jess Vallance



I was with a group of friends the other day when one of them announced she was pregnant. 

After all the congratulations and the looking at the scan picture and all that business, the rest of us started to carefully analyse the previous three months – the time when she’d known she was knocked up but hadn’t wanted anyone else to know.  I said something about how I didn’t think I’d be able to keep a secret for all that time, especially not from people I saw every day. She pointed out that I hadn’t told anyone I was writing a book, which was true. 

I know it’s not really the same situation, but I suppose there are similarities. I didn’t tell anyone I was writing a book because, to me, the whole writing a book/ looking for an agent/looking for a publisher episode is kind of like the trying for a baby part.  

It’s not something I’ve done myself but I can imagine that trying to get pregnant is quite a big deal, taking up quite a lot of mental and physical (ahem) energy. But even though people must be thinking about it all the time, most people don’t really announce that they’re trying for a baby, do they? I’m guessing it’s because at that stage, you don’t know if anything’s ever going to come of it and you don’t want people asking you about it all the time. Pretty much the exact reason I didn’t tell anyone I was writing a book. 

And I definitely wouldn’t have considered calling myself an author at that point. I know you don’t HAVE to be published to call yourself that, but to me it would’ve been like someone who likes a kick-about on a Sunday calling themselves a football player. 

Then I got a book contract, and I did tell some people about the book, but I still don’t talk about it much. Not in real life anyway. I still don’t use the word ‘author’. This is partly because I get a bit bored of this conversation: 

Me: I wrote a book.
Them: Blah blah JK Rowling.
Me: For teenagers.
Them: Oh! Blah blah vampires.
Me: No.  

But also because I suppose I now consider myself to be book-pregnant. Hopefully, if all goes according to plan, there will be a published book. But I still won’t fully believe it’s going to happen until my publication date (Birdy, out 2nd July, thanks for asking). 

All sorts of things could happen between now and July. My publisher might decide it was all a stupid mistake and find something better to publish instead (fair enough). Their whole office and everyone in it might be swept away by a tidal wave. I might be swept away by tidal wave. 

So, at the moment, I don’t really think of myself as an author. I just wrote this book-thing once and it may or may not go down well. When people ask me what I do for a living I do say ‘writer’ because that IS how I earn most of my money, but I tell them about the training and educational stuff I write, never the books (unless conversation is really drying up).

Maybe I will be more forthcoming once my book is published. Once the baby is born. (I’m getting bored of the pregnancy analogy now.) But even then I’m still not sure. 

Maybe I just want to avoid all those question that Clementine Beauvais covered a few months ago. Maybe it’s just that I want to wait until I’ve sold a certain number of books.  Or until writing books takes up more of my time than my other work (a time which is unlikely to come). Or until it’s my main source of income (as above). I don’t know really.

Anyway, I’m interested: When did you come out?

www.jessvallance.com
Twitter: @jessvallance1

Wednesday 22 April 2015

Walking while working - Nicola Morgan

Big apologies - I have reposted this from my own blog, mainly because I only realised last night that I have to do my ABBA post but also because it's VERY relevant to writers...

A few weeks ago, I joined the band of people who work while walking. I type and do almost all my desk work while walking on a treadmill. It has been eye-opening, body changing and inspiring. And unexpected in some ways. Here’s what happened and what it is like.

Over the last year, I’ve been reading a lot about the health dangers of being too sedentary and not doing enough exercise. And I am (was) very sedentary. My desk work and my workaholic personality kept me rooted to my chair for hours and hours on end. It didn’t feel good but I couldn’t stop.

About a year ago, I bought a Fitbit One, to inspire myself to walk more. Although this helped at first, somewhat, there were two problems for me: 1) I was still a workaholic and still needed/wanted to get a lot of work done so I was still staying at my desk too long and 2) I have an arthritic and cartilage-wrecked knee which has been getting worse and which doesn’t like the manic walking pace that I do, partly in my effort to get the damn walking done as fast as possible and partly because it’s just a Type A personality thing. Walking on roads is painful and walking on hills very. Cycling, too.

So, I decided to deal with this sedentariness properly.

I knew that a friend of mine, Vee Frier, used a treadmill set-up, so I got her advice. I am not sure if I have the same setup but it’s the same principle.

(Warning, my solution is not cheap. But it’s tax deductible!)

I ordered this special desk to go on my desk to make it the height for standing at; and a treadmill especially designed for the purpose, because it’s slim, fits under a desk and goes more slowly than a gym one. And has no incline.

The desk arrived first and as soon as I started working at it, I hated it. (Fear not: this has a happy outcome.) It was extremely painful and my knee reacted disastrously. In the nearly three weeks before the treadmill arrived, I thought I’d made an expensive mistake. I was already wondering if I’d be able to send the treadmill and the desk back.

The treadmill arrived and I switched it on. Hooray! It didn’t work! Excellent! I could send it back.

Then I realised I’d misread the instructions and put the magnetic safety doobry on the wrong bit. As soon as I rectified this, the machine sprang into life. Unfortunately, I was kneeling on it at the time, fiddling with things, and – trust me – this is not a position you want to be in when a treadmill springs into life or anywhere.

The second thing I discovered was that it was NOISY. Hooray! A reason to send it back!

However, I am not faint-hearted so I duly lugged it up to my garden office, with the help of Mr M (I’m as strong as he is but it’s always good to give him a task). And left it there over the weekend while I dreaded Monday.

Monday came and I hobbled up the garden to my fate.

And walked for 3 hours at 2mph. With no pain. Gently lulled by the swooshing noise in the background. While typing. And concentrating unusually well on my work. With ideas pouring from my brain and onto the keyboard.

I also realised I loved the desk thing, too. It’s quite big and also sturdy. I can have my keyboard, laptop, mouse, notebooks, and COFFEE.

Thus began my personal revolution. Three weeks later, my knee is bearing up, I’ve walked between 12k and 20k steps each day (whereas on some previous days I’d be doing fewer than 1k) and I’ve lost 4lbs (which could also be the sugar I’ve given up, though I ate very little of it before). I’ve discovered that 2.5mph is the ideal speed for me while typing and it’s a speed I can walk at without thinking about walking. It’s much slower than my outdoor walking pace, and I think this is why it’s good for my knee – it’s motion without so much flipping force.

More to the point, I LOVE walking while working. I’ve
always found walking a great way of loosening my creative brain and freeing up ideas but how very much more convenient it is to do that while actually at the screen!

It feels very good in every way.

It’s very easy to put it on its side out of the way if I actually want to sit down.

Btw, can you see the odd thing under the upper desk? With a red button on it? That’s the console, where you adjust the speed and things. And there’s a red cord, which you are supposed to clip to your belt, with a red magnet at the other end, attached to the console. *cough* I erm, don’t… This is so that if you faint and fall off, the treadmill will stop.

I’ve only fallen off once and that was because I tried to turn round and pick something up. (Don’t do this, really. Especially while holding coffee.) Several friends sent me videos of people breakdancing on treadmills. That’s a trick for the future…

I have found another advantage: all this walking makes me feel nice and warm so, though I’m using some electricity for the treadmill (500W at the most) I don’t need a heater any more. In fact, I’m working with the door open a lot of the time.

It's the best of every world. I'm often reluctant to recommend things, as I know everyone's different, but if you're thinking about doing this - do!

Tuesday 21 April 2015

Having a Go

I think the thing I'm learning most about being a writer is that I just have to have a go at things, even if I'm frightened. In fact, the most frightening things often turn out to be the most worthwhile things.

Like writing in the first place. I spent decades not finishing work off, or not sending work off, for fear of being rejected. What was the result? Not feeling satisfied, not having many finished pieces, and being published.

Eventually I signed up, when my children were little, for a part time, once a week, evening M.A, in Creative writing at my local university. I was terrified - but it was so worthwhile, and after two years a I was so far into my novel for adults that I couldn't give it up. I went on to finish it, find an agent and then…nothing. After enquiring, a year after signing the contract, if my agent would finally send it off or was happy with the many changes she had asked me to do, I was told that the agent apologised for being so busy and..I was free to look for someone else.

And no other agent wanted it.


It felt like a dead end. All that trying to be brave and putting in the effort had led to nothing. had I just been deluding myself? I felt really low and…silly. Silly me, thinking I could be a writer.

But now I'm grateful. When I sent my children's work off and met my now agent, Anne Clark, I was really frightened. Would it all go wrong again? She liked my work - but so had my first agent. I knew what wouldn't work in a relationship. She asked me what I needed - I said regular communication - as I knew that months and months not hearing anything from my first agent had really eroded my self confidence. She in turn said she wanted directness and honesty - straightforwardness. She often rings and emails and I feel v valued by her - and she is someone I can talk to and have no fear of being honest with. All the people in her agency love her. Anne encouraged me and now in just over a year I will have three children's books published, and two more to come, and more being written. So being brave did pay off.

I still have lots more things I need to be brave about - personally and professionally. One is trying out illustration. At the moment I am doing exactly what I did with writing for decades - not doing enough, not finishing things, not feeling confident. And, guess what? This is a rubbish tactic. It is not making me feel good inside, and to be frank, at 50 I don't have decades left in which to procrastinate.

So I've just been a bit brave. My next book, 'Dog Ears' has an 11 year old narrator who writes lists and doodles. My publisher, Catnip, is very small and lovely and personal. Everyone I have to deal with is so kind. My agent is lovely. But it still made me feel sick with fear and I had to have lots of encouragement from my family , to say to Anne and Liz my editor and Pip the designer, that actually I had done some doodles that Anna the narrator might have done - and would they like to look at them.

They did! And because I had asked so late we couldn't really incorporate some of the larger ones into the text - but THEY LIKED THEM. Being rejected didn't feel so bad after all - because I could see why they couldn't use them and they hadn't laughed at me and said 'What? You thought THESE were worthy of being called illustrations? You FOOL!!" Instead, amazingly, and kindly, and encouragingly (Catnip are lovely) they are using my smaller illustrations as chapter headings. HOORAY!

And Anne my agent sent me an email saying 'Hooray! That's wonderful, Anne - you are now officially an illustrator!'

And THEN I went to Iona for a weekend illustration workshop with Jill Calder and saw how much I have to learn but absolutely loved the process.

And I know that I have already had illustrations rejected - and it was fine - and now I have some little ones included in my book - and that's indescribably WONDERFUL for me, and I know that I must now actually start drawing again, and need to do lots more work - and I will keep writing and feeling terrified and drawing and feeling scared to share anything I do.


But if I ever have the money I would like to enrol in an illustration course. I'm scared but I'm going to do it - because I've wasted too much of my life already, and I realise, for me, it's the only way things happen.



Monday 20 April 2015

How do you say 'Alaspooryorick' in French? - Clementine Beauvais

One of the questions you always get when you write in two languages is whether you're 'going to translate your own books'. This is a very flattering question, as it implies that (1) everyone uncontroversially wants your books from the other country, and (2) you're de facto blessed with perfect translation skills.

Of course, (1) is painfully wrong: the UK has so far never wanted any of my French books, which are too everything and not enough anything, but I suspect are also by default unattractive because they don't come with world rights. And (2) highlights the eternal plight of professional translators, whom no one believes when they say that their skills set goes beyond just 'being fluent' in two languages.

I'm fascinated with translation and have been for a long time: in my young days as a Harry Potter fan, I would work hard to understand the translation choices of Jean-François MĂ©nard, who changed in the French version a great quantity of names invented by Rowling. Hogwarts became Poudlard ('hog lice'), a funny and meaningful find that is also cleverly English-sounding to a French ear. 

'Tom Marvolo Riddle', who needed to work as an anagram, became 'Tom Elvis Jedusor'. Though it is a little bit hilarious, in retrospect, that Voldemort is called 'Elvis', the name's connotations weren't that strong for me as a child, and I very much admire the lovely 'Jedusor', which evokes a 'jeu du sort', a twist of fate. And 'sort' is also a magic spell... Can we say 'Jedusor' is actually better than 'Riddle'? I think so.

but the Hallows turned 'Relics'. Good choice?
Until now, paths hadn't crossed between my French books and my English series, but for the first time, this year, one of my British series is getting translated into French. I'm not translating it, for reason (2), but the French publisher, Hachette, is aware of my secret Gallic roots, so I'm allowed to okay the translations of the place and character names.

It's been quite a funny and interesting process. The Royal Babysitters series, illustrated by Becka Moor, are set in a magical and nonsensical world, but which in many ways corresponds closely to the 'real' world. Many of the place names - Francia, Daneland, Britland, etc - are relatively easy to translate into French (Francie, Danelandie, Brittonie). But what of the Independent Republic of Slough? Having a French city name there would make no sense, since it all happens in Britland. The translator decided to invent an imaginary city name.

We didn't have to change it to 'Les babysitters républicaines'
Similarly, the two heroines are called Holly and Anna Burnbright, which the translator first translated as 'Brillante' (Bright), but we felt after discussing it that the allusion to a poem should be kept. We're still working on it, but the suggestions involve cutting up bits of famous French nursery rhymes or fables. Not quite the same, yet faithful.

Alaspooryorick or Oroméoroméo?

'King Alaspooryorick', the villain, is a tricky one to translate. On the one hand, recognising the reference doesn't matter very much (if at all), but we might as well keep it; and it has to sound funny, which 'Alaspooryorick' or its French equivalent 'Hélaspauvreyorick' doesn't (at all). He could have been King 'Tobeornottobe' (roi Etrounepazettre), but again, it's not very funny. The translator came up with 'Oroméoroméo', which sounds very funny and is also a Shakespeare reference, arguably more famous to a French ear.

Of course, the reference is no longer to Hamlet, so the King being from 'Daneland' and having a special mermaid called Ophelia is no longer relevant. Does it matter? Frankly, not at all. 'Le roi Oroméoroméo' is just perfect for the role.

And what of the title? 'Les babysitters royales' would have sounded flat. We're going for an inversion of adjective and noun, 'Les royales babysitters', a rarer construction in French but which by the very fact of the inversion calls to mind the English language.

The Royal Babysitters is not by any stretch of the imagination a difficult book, but it's full of those little details that can make translation tricky - as many children's books are. Translators can't get away with footnotes in translations of children's books. And they have to be clever and good at languages, but they also have to be 'good at' children's literature.

Most often we don't notice the translation work, because it's well done, and because we might not speak the two languages in question, or simply because we don't stop to wonder what something or someone was called in the original language...

Toby Alone in the original French
I'd be curious to hear your stories of what got lost or found in the translations of your books, if you're able to read some of them, or if you've even contributed to them.


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