Category Archives: Writing

Why bother?

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You might well wonder. Why would any sane person face rejection after rejection, hours of work for an income of maybe £5k,  and people asking ‘so what’s your proper job?’ or ‘are you the next JK Rowling?’ One answer, of course, is that children’s writers and illustrators are not sane!

A recent  SCBWI group topic set by Candy Gourlay  was  “Authors and Illustrators in Waiting … How are you coping?‏”  Paul Morton of Hot Frog Graphics came up with an excellent response:

 ‘ keep at it and keep believing’

 I rather thought that could well be a SCBWI motto. It also set me to thinking about optimism in general.

It is hope that that inspires people to make New Year’s resolutions. Although we can be a little dismissive of such clichéd vows, we have to admire and learn from those who do make it through the grotty days of January and February sticking to their promises. The tough nuts who carry on cycling to the gym, the reformed smokers, the impressive slimmers – each deserves our admiration. Indeed, any sort of promise or vow is predicated on hope: I believe it is another reason why we love weddings, and why a baby brings joy.

Sometimes the sheer difficulty of attaining your dream can make hope shrivel. It seems hidden, and keeping going seems more a case of dogged determination than optimism. Tolkien had Aragorn hidden and named Estel  (Hope) as a child. He made the future king of Gondor wander the wilderness for the best part of sixty years. He suffers moments of terrible self -doubt:  “An ill fate is on me this day, and all that I do goes  amiss”  – but his stubborn determination and belief in good over evil end in triumph.

It is also hope that makes campaigners speak up for the things that matter to them:  campaigner Steve Ross and children’s writer Michael Morpurgo bother to call on the government to “stand up” for libraries on Radio 4’s “You and Yours” as part of the show’s debate into library closures.  Why Kate Mosse, Philip Pulman and Alan Gibbons keep banging on about this too – because they have hope. And it was why anti-slavery campaigner Olaudah Equiano wrote:

I hope to have the satisfaction of seeing the renovation of liberty and justice, resting on the British government, to vindicate the honour of our common nature.

Just as well something else other than  the world’s ills came out of Pandora’s Box.

Books to build upon

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First off, let me not claim any form of originality. It all probably started with my fab friend Dave Cousin’s Festive Fifteen  (well worth a look) – which then inspired the lovely Candy Gourlay. She wrote more about the longer term influences on her work – and so did the inspiring Keren David. Another couple of my favourite blogsters took up the baton – Nicky Schmidt and Kathryn Evans ( just because they’re yummy and my friends doesn’t mean I’d link unless they had something worth saying!)

My slant comes from a quotation passed round the  British SCBWI yahoo group – courtesy of the aforementioned Candy Gourlay:

In the movie You’ve Got Mail, the Meg Ryan character sums it up beautifully when she explained what her mum, an independent bookseller vs a discounting chain did:

“It wasn’t that she was just selling books, she was helping people become who they were going to be. When you read a book as a child, it becomes part of your identity in a way that no other reading does.”

So I had a good think about ten books that could make me the writer I aspire to be.

  • ‘The Lord of the Rings’  by JRR Tolkien. This is terribly nerdy, not one you should admit to if you want to be taken seriously. I was allowed to read this ‘under the counter’ by a sympathetic librarian when I had finished all the children’s books in our little local library. Inside the plain dark covers I found such grandeur, such terror and beauty – not to mention a shieldmaiden and maps! This makes me want to write about big things.
  • ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ by CS Lewis  – in fact all the Narnia books. I loved the gloomy heroism of Puddleglum, Lucy’s innocence , the gallantry of Reepicheep and the redemption of  Eustace the dragon. All these inspire me to show loveable, fickle humane characters – I hope.
  • ‘The Water Babies’ Charles Kingsley – unabridged version! I was moved by Tom’s plight as a chimney sweep, delighted by his underwater adventures and terrified by Mrs Be-done-by-as-you-did. I should love to convey the sheer wonder of life that Kingsley does at his best, and to have that certainty of purpose shine through.
  • ‘The Children of Green Knowe’ by L.M. Boston. Oh, how I identified with the lonely Tolly so wanting brothers and sisters and finding that he had friendly ghost family. I have a prized letter from Mrs Boston and I have had the joy of visting Hemingford Grey. Her work is imbued with a great sense of place and its history – I aspire to that too.
  • ‘The Ghosts’ by Antonia Barber ( re issued as ‘The Amazing Mr Blunden’ after the film). I love ghost stories of any stripe -but this had such a sense of regret, of someone wanting to put things right (a little like ‘A Christmas Carol’) that  I loved it. I’d like the sense of compasssion from this.
  • ‘The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler’ by Gene Kemp. Spoiler Alert I was utterly thrilled by the undisclosed protagonist turning out to be a girl ( this was the Seventies) – I am still very, very interested in gender ascribed roles. I would still love to write a book where the protagonist might be male or female – and leave it to the reader to decide. Not a chance of getting published though – they wouldn’t know which shelves to put it on – or whether it should be black or pink.
  • ‘His Dark Materials’ by Philip Pullman. Here, more recently, I found another world of big ideas – and Lyra Belaqua, what a heroine! I also have a soft spot for Lila in ‘The Firework Maker’s Daughter’. Unsurprisingly, I want to give my female characters room to express their courage and talents.
  • ‘A Hat full of Sky’ by Terry Pratchett. Tiffany Aching had to make an entrance, didn’t she? All the books with the witches in are brilliant, and Susan Sto Helit , and… and… Bother it – bung in all of Discworld. The man’s a genius and won’t be properly recognised by the-literary-powers-that-be because he has committed the ultimate crime of … being popular. People read him and laugh and so he can’t possibly be any good, can he? Well, if I could have a smidgeon of Sir Terry’s observation and good sense to sprinkle on my work, I’d be very pleased.
  • ‘Moonfleet’ by J. Meade Faulkner. An oldie but a goodie – this was read to our class way back in the Seventies and had us absolutely gripped with smuggling, diamonds, secret codes  and splintering coffins. I love derring-do – and I would love to grab my readers by the imagination like that did. Of course, it’s melodramatic and overblown and often sentimental – but then again, so am I.
  • ‘Kit’s Wilderness’  or anything else by David Almond. I’ve only read his work relatively recently – and I have been enthralled by his voice. It has such a sense of place, of his local character, without being off-putting. I was so heartened to read a regional voice that wasn’t clichéd – and got published. I have to be true to my roots too.

What would you like to suffuse from the books you love into the books you write?

 

Seven things in Seven Weeks

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1. Coffee is necessary – or any substance that keeps me attentive enough to learn about semiotics, transitions and why the passive voice is A Bad Thing.

2. Sleep is not as necessary as I thought. Sheer delight and interest in this writing lark can keep you going – though sometimes it’s down to dogged persistence. (Why do I have images of the Fellowship leaping from falling pillar to falling pillar in Moria in Peter Jackson’s film of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ playing in my head as I write this?)

3. Everything that tells a story is worth thinking about – Foyle’s War, the songs of Noel Coward and Tom Lehrer, the opening of the children’s film ‘Robots’, even the Archers. It’s got to the point where I watch an advert and think, ‘Well they don’t waste their time on flashbacks and psychonarration much, do they?’

4. Many creative people are really generous – with their time, their knowledge and their encouragement. It’s amazing how supportive people can be: quotations to help my academic work from Bel Mooney and Susan Hill; lifts from Greg Mosse, Jean Levy and Kerry Edwards  – and so many people at West Dean College who have taken an interest.  The other writers on my course are a great bunch who put up with my interruptions, stupid questions and me bombarding them with half-formed piffle to read with good grace.  Thanks Abla, Anita, Carol, Dana, Davy, Helen,Kerry , Jean, Joe, John, Lucy, Olivia, Susie and Suzanne .

5. Weird has its place in the scheme of things – I don’t feel quite so out of place in a setting where making giant apples out of willow is encouraged, where the Principal Rob Pulley  scoots round on the wheelie chairs with as much enthusiasm as the rest of us in our long  gallery and where 20’s  Surrealism is a frontrunner for the Christmas Party theme.

6. Being properly edited hurts – but it does you a power of good; which does make it sound rather like having your tonsils and adenoids out, admittedly. As yet I haven’t much idea of how my work is likely to be perceived by a reader, so seeing the error of my ways (useless gerunds, non sequiturs and editorialising) has been a salutary experience. Bring it on!

7. Writing well is a really emotional business – and the community at WDC is such a blessing. You would be amazed how a little wave from Kate Mosse, or a kind enquiry from Roger Bown, or a smile from  Stephen  & Martin the Security men can make such a difference.

What I did on my weekend

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I have:

  1. critiqued three other writers on Friday evening and listened to their comments on my work ( the embroidery scene in Municipal Moon)
  2. learned about incorporating magical elements in junior fiction on Saturday morning with Linda Chapman
  3. interrogated an industry panel about the future of children’s books after coffee
  4. had steam coming out of my ears about gender stereotyping
  5. had a one to one with Rebecca Hill of Usborne Young Fiction at lunchtime (she would like to see a reworked 13th Pharaoh)
  6. considered a sense of place with Marcus Sedgwick ( and got him to sign my book)
  7. worn a tiara for the 10th anniversary party on Saturday night/Sunday morning
  8. stayed up too late
  9. honed a pitch for The 13th Pharaoh and tried it out on Jasmine Richards of OUP on Sunday morning
  10. tried to get my head around the use of social networking for writers
  11. read out my there-and-then attempts  in a workshop on character using dialogue, mini pen portraits and confrontation, with Miriam Halahmy after lunch
  12. sold an awful lot of badges
  13. laughed a lot
  14. chatted even more
  15. cried ’cause I had to come home

That’ s the Winchester SCBWI conference for you.

Character building

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We’ve been looking at character and back-story at West Dean College. Here some ideas  which could be useful. Some are probably familiar – but others may help.

Interrogation – get a writing friend to quiz you, go all Mastermind and make sure know them better than a Wikipedia entry!

 

Musical mindset – is your character a Beethoven sonata in a plainchant world? Bebop or folk?

 

Headspace – if you could map the phrenology of your character, what would each bump mean? What symbols would you use?

Try out some textures – what do they feel like? Chamois leather, birchbark, sea glass. In different moods -cork, or slate or thistledown?

 

Cultural refs – is your central character a Renaissance Prince in a Revenger’s Tragedy? (Greg Mosse about Hamlet) A Goth in Cranford or Boadicea in Disneyland?

Gallery – a Caspar David Friedrich surrounded by Gainsboroughs, a David Hockney among Vermeers?

Roll up, roll up …

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1.The Spider and The Lantern

We have a yukimigata or snow viewing lantern set in our pond. We also have a gooseberry bush growing amongst the pebbles on the bank. One early Autumn day I spotted that a beautiful orb web linked the two. In the middle was a large-bodied spider of the sort with brocade for a back. How on earth had it created the web?

Did it swim across to the lantern on its little island pulling its silk behind it? Did make a raft? Parachute in? Persuade one of the koi to give it a lift? Or ping off the goosegog branches like a catapult? I wish I could draw the spider’s methods.

2.  Killer Budgie

A mild- mannered budgerigar gains a new cage -with the legend Killer Budgie on it.  He finds he has a roulette wheel – at which he excels – winning enough money for his mistress to indulge his mistress’s other passion: horseriding. They go out on the pony together – what happens next?

3. Tiddles the Seagull

There’s a rustling in your fireplace. You look up into the chimney and find a fledgling seagull, covered in ash. You put him on the roof for his mum and dad to find. The wind blows him off again. You rescue him again and feed him cat food because that’s what you have. He likes it. He makes friends with your pet cats and sleeps in their basket.  He grows and flies away. So sad. Then he returns with the missus and nests on your roof six months of the year. There are more baby seagulls.

4 My name is Jack.

Hello. My name is Jack, Jack Russell. I’m at the seaside to-day. What fun. I like running. I like chasing the ball. I like my master. He brings me to this windy place. We play with the ball.

Oh dear, the ball’s gone. I must fetch it. I must fetch it for my kind master. Oh, look , there it is. I will jump down and get it. I will jump and fetch the ball.

This is a big jump. This is good grass down here. I am pleased. I have got the ball for my master. I can hear him calling. I must fetch the ball for my master. This is a big jump. I will try again.This is a very big jump. I will try again. I can hear master calling me  again.

This is too big a jump. I will sleep.

I do not like the cold. I do not like the rain. I do not like the dark . Where is my master?

There is a light. I am pleased. It will be my master.

It is not my master. I am sad. The light has gone away. I am sad but I will wait. My master will come for me. I will sleep.

The sun is up. I am awake waiting for my master.  I do not like the wind. I do not like the rain. When will my master come?

There is another man. He is near me. He is not my master. Perhaps he will take me to my master?

He is a nice man. He takes me with him up the cliff.  I am happy.

There is my master. I am very happy. I am so very happy it makes my tail ache.

Why does my master cry?

Poetry pleas

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First off, let me beg you to buy some poetry. Don’t just download it, please. Poets have to eat, too.

Change from schoolmistressy voice to reflective.

Here are some poems  you might like to try or revisit  – the first few that sprang to mind which have a vague connection to the theme of home – and one of mine.

Might I suggest a little Gerard Manley Hopkins – “Inversnaid “? 

The heartfelt entreaty of  “What would the world be, once bereft/Of wet and of wilderness?” speaks to me of the moorland that I love in my Yorkshire homeland. I studied GMH out of sheer perversity ( ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’ with Miss Grey at Wakefield Girls’ High School) – and grew to love him. The intensity of his feelings, the texture of his words, almost crunchy in their concentration, and the sheer weird beauty of sprung rhythm.

Secondly, John Donne: “The Sunne Rising”. Another passionate priest. Hear the power of romantic love contemptuous of anything that distracts  “Nor houres, dayes, months, which are the rags of time.” I like my Donne unfiltered, I hear him better through the original spelling: “saucy pedantique wretch”. Is there any  better distillation of ‘home’ than being in bed with the one you love?

I have no qualms about reproducing this one on the same theme – I think the copyright’s well and truly gone!

O Western Wind
Anon, 14th century

O Western wind, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again.

Anon is a favourite poet – I cannot resist the bleakness of “The Lyke Wake Dirge” for one ( another bit of grim Northernness) – “Fire and fleet and candleleet and Christ receive thy soul”  .

Being inside in foul weather seems to be a theme: I love “Wind” by Ted Hughes. Who can beat the directness of “This house has been far out at sea all night” ? It’s the vigour of his work that gets me.  “The Remains of Elmet” with the haunting photographs by Fay Godwin is a much-loved book.

You will probably have guessed by now I like unsentimental nature poetry so George Mackay Brown, RS Thomas, John Clare and  DH Lawrence get an honourable mention but Edward Thomas never fails to move me. His works are as delicate and deep as the etchings of Robin Tanner. I immediately thought of “Tall Nettles” – Asquith’s farm behind my home in Wakefield had a machinery graveyard I loved.

And to end with – a poem that I wrote which was published in the same anthology as two by Simon Armitage, no less. Only because we both had a Huddersfield connection at the time, I have to confess. Author’s Note: Ellis Laithe is a place, not a person (laithe is a Viking word for a barn, and shippon is dialect for a cow house).

To Ellis Laithe – a Conversation

Which way did you go?

           Through a green gate sagging between stone pillars

           Like a drunk between his silent friends.

What was in the garden?

           Stacked slates drowning under nettle spires,

          Snow-and-sulphur tongued flags just linger,

          Like the crusted pear.

          Some outbuildings;

         Open mouthed coalscuttles,

         Gagged with rosebay willow herb.

Anything new?

         Only soaring thistles prickling the mothy air,

        And the gaudy burnet clustered on them.

        Some catpiss elders teem,

        And flittering tortoiseshells snap shut,

        On the hugely domed Fool’s Parsley.

Did you hear anything?

        Only the arguing spugs’ echo in the dustrailed shippon,

        And grit swilling down the gutter stone.

Who is in the house now?

         A grasping bramble had crossed the doorstep, no more.

Did you see aught of mine?

          In the kitchen, spiderstring nets cross the windowlight,

          Falling through a stalactite-papered ceiling,

         And in a mote-speckled spotlight lies

         One single laceless crumpled boot;

         A bleary sheen of mildew on the toe,

         And the dark slit of a peeling heel

         Distinguish it.

Goodbye old friend,

I’ll not visit there again,

Except in memory.

         It would be best.

Rosemary Tate … from ‘An Anthology of Local Poetry’, Huddersfield Polytechnic 1985

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Student

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Bag packed the night before, I wake up early. I am up, dressed and ready on time. The open dishwasher displays its clean load – I’d better do my duty.  I empty it, dash out and hear the bus. I run down the road. The driver  waits a moment then pulls away when my throat and lungs have got to their full scraped soreness. Blast.

I want to cry. I want to tell teasing bus drivers what I think of them. I want to beg strangers to give me a lift.

Ho hum. I wait. Schoolkids turn up. I wonder if I could jump off at the Sports Centre, run round to the Bus Station and still catch the Midhurst bus. The next Wittering bus is late. I will stay chilled. I will not worry. I will not look at my watch as we pass every telegraph pole, hoping we still might make it.

No chance:  Stockbridge roundabout and then the gates are down on the railway crossing. Pah.

I high-tail it up towards the Cathedral. Maybe I could get to the bank?  Get the cheque in I’ve been carrying round since August? I check the clock on the Cross – I’d be pushing it and it’s not good to be late on your first day. I give in and wait beneath the gargoyle.

I wait. I look at the brown and white pigeon, the corbels, the hole in the centre of the rose window, the wonky bits of the Cathedral. Quarter to strikes. No bus. I talk to an expectant mum waiting for another bus after mine. It comes. She goes. The hour sounds across the precinct. A child cyclist wobbles past. The heroine of my work-in-progress climbs the parapet of her school and finds she is locked out. The bus does not come. Quarter past and then the rumble. Not my bus. This one stops at the same shelter.

Ah, but mine is behind it. I wave as if it is a long-lost friend. The driver must stop, must see me. I now do everything very quickly as though it will make any difference to my utter failure at time-keeping.

An hour late I clump into the Old Library. Walking boots are not quiet on parquet – no sneaking in for me. The only things I learn from the Introduction and Address is that West Dean offers a Phd and that there will be a Christmas Costume party.

Probably enough to begin with.

More moaning from Mrs Maungy

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What do people want?

Last year’s SBWI conference, I submit my weird and wonderful work in progress for a one-to-one. I get a lovely agent: young, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. I have more butterflies in my stomach than Tropical World at Roundhay Park, Leeds. I almost run away. She is clearly a girl of taste: she says I can really, really write, but has some problems with the commercial saleability of the central idea. Okey dokey.

I read around. A lot. I learn lots more about ‘show not tell’, ‘killing my darlings’ and generally writing in, shall we say, a more conventional manner. My ‘voice’ is now not so thick with regionalism that you need translation.  I have a contemporary setting. I have a hero whose gender is very, very clear. I edit for consistent point of view, I cull my own adverbs and read every last one of the 30k+ words aloud.

Out with the fey and in with the action.

Off a sample goes. Hoorah. She wants to see the rest. My heart is a party balloon.

I push the hope down inside me, trying not to let it slip out, trying to keep calm and carry on. I tell myself whatever happens, I’ve learnt a lot and I’ve nothing to loose. I tell myself she’s bound to reject it and not to get too Tiggerish.

 She’ll probably ask me to come back after the MA – that would be something. The dreams, the hope persecute me.

It’s not for her. 

She was kind enough to say she really liked the  strangeness of the earlier piece – she  found that rather appealing. And thoughtful enough to say ‘The Thirteenth Pharaoh’ has lots of great action.

But what do I do now?

Write self indulgent bizarreness that I fear no modern kid/agent/publisher would ever like?

There’s no point writing something so strange it’ll never get published – but on the other hand, I am strange. In the Venn diagram of normal, I’m not in any subset.  I like ghost ships and sea witches and Vikings and hobs and dragons and selkies and pirates and smugglers and weird underwater creatures. I know far too many fairytales, remember too much  folklore and definitely know far too much about Middle Earth. I have to write peculiar and children appreciate it better than adults.

Or get over myself, learn to please, learn what kids/agents/publishers want and deliver the goods?

I try to fit in. Honest. But oddball is as oddball does. I can’t write what most normal children want any more than I could belong to the school hockey team. ( I was rather good at cutting up oranges, though.)

I feel as though I’m learning how to steer a narrowboat – veering from crashing into one bank to denting the other. In slow but inevitable motion.  I’m careering from the freakish to the  frankly dull.

Eventually I might learn enough to get somewhere?

This week’s whingeing

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So why did what should have been a brilliant day for any normal person leave me in tears?

Lovely weather and a barbecue on the beach with a tripod cooking apparatus by Heath Robinson out of Bewitched! Delightful people: Anita Loughrey, Kathryn Evans and Candy Gourlay and then Hanna the Hungarian, plus a batch of assorted great kids. Even a bit of a splosh in the rather refreshing sea. Couldn’t fault it. So how come I felt so low?

The usual suspects: my innate sense of inadequacy and general patheticness. ( Told you you’d want to slap me.)

These are real people persons – oozing genuine warmth and affection for their children. Something of a contrast to my parenting skills. Gorgeous high-achieving but unspoiled offspring. I try to brazen it out about my lot – not an  ‘A’ level among them and me a teacher. Ho ho ho. No one is amused.

 I’m also shaken by their general talent and interestingness:

  • Candy – superb photographer, website designer and published author

  • Kathryn – brilliant blogger, belly dancing  beauty and funny farmer -with an agent

  •  Anita – witty, pretty and much published – I’ve even used her resources, for goodness’ sake…

Me. Mmmm. I have life on a plate and I still can’t get my act together.

I feel at sea with people  – I don’t get out very often. I try to tell a tale in ordinary conversation  but it falls away. People talk about something else because I’m boring. Or I miss the moment and an anecdote that might have been relevant becomes pointless. I try to be assertive: I just sound rude and pushy. What chance have I got at self-promotion in a hostile or indifferent marketplace when I can’t manage to get myself across in such a supportive environment?

Let me be quite clear I am not fishing for compliments, dear friends who read this. (Though, if you insist…) I’m just attempting to be honest in the faint hopes it might help

  1. me
  2. others who feel the same
  3. normal people to  understand us oddballs

‘The proper study of mankind is man’, Alexander Pope wrote. Well,  I think I might just have  a CSE in it.  Not brilliant when character is all important to a fiction writer. I expect I must be somewhere on the Asperger’s continuum – and so must Eeeyore and Puddleglum.

Reproduction of an original picture of Puddleglum by Illustrator Pauline Baynes

“Speaking as an outsider, what do you make of the human race?” as  our Dawn, my best friend, put it.