The Unwanted Guest

Posted on 9 January 2014 by KMLockwood

…inspired by one element in Christine Deakers’ piece here in HuffPost books.

Credit: julio.garciah/flickr via Creative Commons

She’s the close family you can’t get shot of after Christmas. You get on with things but her sour breath brushes the back of your neck. The squelch of her chewing gum doesn’t cover up the halitosis of her nasty opinions.

So you push past, trying to keep going. The badly worn slippers slob behind you, follow you everywhere. Flap, flap – quiet, banal and inescapable.

She so convinced she’s the righteous judge, that she channels what must the views of all right-thinking people. Hers is a deep reek of certainty that seeps upwards like voice of drainage. Her snide opinions stain. They stick like the soup spills on the housecoat she’s worn three times too long.

Into your study she sidles.

No-one wants historical fantasy any more, she says.

You ignore her and type on.

What exactly do you know about modern children? I’ll tell you – nothing.

She settles down in a shadowy corner; rearranges the cushions into a damp nest.

Too old and too out-of-touch – that’s what it is.

You shush her and she picks up a book. Just in the corner of your eye, she flicks the pages and looks pained; jaundice-yellow with distaste. There’s all the peace and quiet of armed neutrality for a while. Then come the stage -whispers.

Did she really think modern kids would read this? The language is all wrong.Comes as no surprise she hasn’t been published.

You snap back. What about the good things people have said? The positive comments from respected authors.

She looks at you pityingly. The make-up creases in her wrinkles.

They’re only being ‘nice’ – like you do when you read a rubbish novel.

Sure she’s hit home, she gives her collar a primp. You get a whiff of unwashed hair.

You’re not someone whose dreams come true -just look at your track record. Face it – you left it too late.

You shoo her out – she comes back. You might as well try to stuff her fag-smoke into a pillowcase.

She’s the bluebottle in the bedroom at night. You switch on the light, try to splat the tormentor, but it hides. Or it seems to have flown away, only to come sizzle by your cheek in the dark. You flinch, knowing it’s a thing fed on carrion.

Like the uncle spouting racist claptrap, you can’t actually get rid of her, kill her, shut her up for good.

You have to learn to live with Doubt.

Last post …of 2013

Posted on 19 December 2013 by KMLockwood

It’s the time of year to review what happened over the previous twelve months. Part of me wants to just put the past behind me and look forward without reflection – but the history-lover in me recoils. How can you know how far you’ve travelled if you don’t know where you’ve been?

Don't look back. You're not going that way.

So here it is – a collection of events and thoughts about this writing year.

January – the launch of the Golden Egg Academy in Bath. Such enthusiasm for the world of writing for young people. Inspiring – and smashing to be in at the beginning.
February – first Chi-SCBWI event at the Fountain Inn in Chichester. Reminded me what a talented and kind bunch of writing pals I have locally.
March – Book Mapping Weekend at the Golden Egg Academy. So wonderful to have someone professional taking me and my work seriously – and some pretty challenging things to think about.

April – Major structural revisions to my Georgian lamp-lit novel. I found the saggy middle the worst – radical surgery left a lot of bagginess.
May – Scoobies’ retreat. Inspired by Lucy Christopher to deepen my story. Encouraged by mad and lovely friends to get even more involved in SCBWI (British Isles).
June – up to Newcastle for difficult and very worthwhile pitching workshop courtesy of Mslexia. (I did get to dance with David Almond’s daughter at the Kathryn Tickell gig the night before. though.)Then speed-date-the-agent event in Foyles. Exhilarating, fun and apparently successful: 5 agents and 1 editor interested in my selkie story. No takers though.

July – a stay in Devon at Deborah Dooley’s Retreats for You. Partly for my writing, partly for industrial espionage as I want writers to come here to Sussex-by-the-sea. Little details and thoughtfulness can make a big difference.
August – Arvon, Lumb Bank. Glorious – it felt like coming home, the other writers were great and I gained a great deal of insight from Steve Voake and N. M. Browne doing a brilliant good cop, bad cop routine. Also the Magical Books exhibition at the Bodleian Library – who knew Alan Garner had such distinctive and beautiful handwriting? And Phillip Pullman and Neil Gaiman in conversation at the Oxford Playhouse. Definitely a great deal of wannabe moments there.

black and white photograph of Neil Gaiman

September – brief sojourn in Devon again – but this time with Charlie of Urban Writers’ Retreats. Lovely venue – much to enjoy – but also gained the inevitable realisation that cannot escape yourself. Bum on seat, fingers on keyboard and crack on – the only way that works.
October Spain – glories of the Alhambra followed by the shooting star of my writers’ retreat dream plunging into a cold ocean. The house we wanted was sold to someone else. Remind me never to share my hopes far and wide. On the other hand, attended thoughtful and stimulating talk with Susan Cooper, Chris Priestley, Geraldine McCaughrean and Sally Gardner on Halloween. Resulted in my best/most popular blog post yet.
November – NaNoWriMo: 55k of a first draft done. I proved to myself I could do 2k or more every day for 21 days non-stop . I found sometimes I could outrun the inner critic – and I ended up exhausted with a grubby house. Scwbi-con was fun – met brilliant people and somehow found the chutzpah to read short story out in front of the utterly smart and encouraging Malorie Blackman.
December – so disappointed not be long-listed for Undiscovered Voices. Got back in the saddle and sought editorial help from Golden Egg Academy with new funds (thank you Father Christmas for coming early). Full circle, eh?

So there you go – I hope I didn’t bore you too much. It was a useful exercise for me at least. I now know three things;

I will carry on writing throughout 2014, published, agented or not .
My fellow writers mean so much to me.
I still haven’t given up on the writers’ retreat idea!

Finally, to quote Peter Sinfield:

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave New Year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear

I hope to see you in 2014.

Landscape – with editor

Posted on 13 December 2013 by KMLockwood

A painting of a figure walking a long a beach by David Pott.

Study by David Pott

After over six weeks of lying in a metaphorical drawer, I am looking at one of my scripts. The frenzy that was NaNoWriMo certainly meant I wasn’t thinking about it during that period, and I am now able to look at it with some detachment.

I can see the sparse clearings and the lush dells; engage with the inhabitants I had grown to love, and generally see the wood for the trees.

There will have to be felling of some parts – and some judicious pruning. I may have to sacrifice some sub-plots I had lovingly tended to make the whole thing healthier and stronger – like a fire-break has to be cut through the forest at times. And even the best and sternest of lumberjacks needs help, I expect.

I had hoped that my MA ( can it really be two years ago?) would equip me to edit better. I think I am a slow learner at times – or just plain inexperienced. So I am buying help in. There’s a small, whiny, possibly egotistical voice, says that this is failure.

This book – if it ever gets published – may well end up costing me more than I could ever earn from it. Nonetheless, I have learned a great deal. If nothing else, tremendous respect for those whose work is good enough to be published – and in some cases, downright awe.

I do hope I can get the best out of the advice. That I can sit on my ego – hard. That I can find the humility to accept what is said in the spirit it is meant – and the self-confidence to argue my point when I really have one.

I’ve read my story again – and I can honestly say, some of it is good. Now I need help to make it better.

I love the SCBWI-BI Conference because…

Posted on 25 November 2013 by KMLockwood

I get to hug people I mostly ‘see’ on-line
I can talk to people who understand what a mad, wonderful thing it is we do
I have the chance to read something aloud that I have just written*- and no-one sniggers
I have the opportunity to ‘refill my well’ by gazing at the illustrators’ beautiful work
I see people I love and admire succeed – and it gives me joy and hope

Malorie Blackman smiling

(*in front of Malorie Blackman this year!)

NaNoWriMo UPDATE

Posted on 14 November 2013 by KMLockwood

Current status:

14 days in

30k+ words
14 chapters
15 characters (gulp)
47 cups of tea drunk
29 cups of coffee
1 really gooey hot chocolate
far too much wine ( lost count)
1/2 box chocolates eaten
1/2 a fruitcake
a pile of biscotti and crumbs

No more to add at present. Go bid on

instead!

Chiaroscuro

Posted on 7 November 2013 by KMLockwood

On light and dark in children’s literature

This is a conflicted post – unresolved and written from the heart. I really don’t know what I think – yet. I feel it is genuinely important – and not just intellectually. There’s an undercurrent of empathy with younger readers and what stories mean to them that runs deep.

In the winter months especially, I crave the dark and the macabre. I revel in ghost stories. I re-read shadowy treasure such as M. R. James and Joan Aiken’s spookier tales. I listen to haunting audio (Kate Mosse’s The Mistletoe Bride and Radio 4’s Edinburgh Haunts). I itch to review Frost Hollow Hall for my Wedding Ghost blog.

As far as I can recall, I’ve always loved the dark and frightening. One of my very earliest memories is of my lovely and much-missed Nanna chasing me up the stairs bear-fashion and me begging her to ‘growl me Nanna’. It’s a deep-rooted part of my psyche.

It was therefore a pleasure for me to go to London for an IBBY talk involving Sally Gardner, Chris Priestley, Susan Cooper and Geraldine McCaughrean. (There’s an account of it here with some of the wisdom the four writers kindly shared). En route, I read Tinder -Sally Gardner’s new and extraordinary book so that I could cover it for Serendipity Reviews.

I like my fairy stories unbowdlerised – and Tinder is certainly that. I don’t want them sanitised and sweetened. The same goes for many other stories – I thought the Hollywood-style ending of The Woman in Black film was a travesty. I can take a dark and tragic ending.

Yet the discussion on ‘happy endings’ left me stimulated but confused. On one hand, Chris Priestley definitely doesn’t feel the need for cheery resolution to a story – a tale doesn’t have to have a point, a function in his view. That resonates – cheap and easy ‘morals’ and ‘issues fiction’ strike me as patronising and likely to be favoured by the Mr Goves and Mr Gradgrinds of this world.

However, one of the things I dislike most is cynicism. I loathed the end of The Hunger Games trilogy – it seemed to say the world is a bleak mess controlled by vile people and there’s nothing you can do about it. My still-adolescent heart wants to change things and I think defeatist, miserablist attitudes allow greed and all manner of other nasties to triumph. (rant over)

So I rejoiced when Geraldine McCaughrean said ‘Catharsis is good for you’ – that she wanted stories that left children with ‘some kind of hope.’ As she said, ‘all their colours are acid-bright and their feelings burn with adrenaline’. I feel writers do have some sort of responsibility.

As a survivor of depression, I need hope. Happy-clappy, isn’t everything lovely endings don’t work for me – if anything it makes matters worse. But the utterly bleak fills me with despair too. I don’t think younger readers are so much different – or at least, not the ones I’m writing for.

So as I said, I have no definitive opinions on this one – I’m still fumbling around. At present the best I can see as my purpose is:

to comfort the disturbed

and disturb the comfortable

What are your thoughts? What place is there for hope, or unadulterated grim reality. Should we focus on the shadow or the star?

Sunday Special

Posted on 3 November 2013 by KMLockwood

On Thursday 31st October 2013 I took myself from West Wittering to Swiss Cottage Library. I didn’t get the prize for furthest travelled – my friend and colleague Julie Pike from Dorset earned that – but I did come away with several small and special treasures.

Firstly the most obvious – signatures from the illustrious guests in copies of their books which I had taken especially. The event was organised by IBBY and focused on using myth, legend and history in writing for children and young people. The four wonderful writers were:

Sally kindly signed my review copy of ‘Tinder’ which I had just finished reading on the train. I shall be writing about it on Serendipity Reviews shortly – but what I can say is that the complete book is most beautifully produced – and was perfect reading for Halloween.

I took ‘Mister Creecher’ for Chris to sign . Those who know me well will know I hold this in high regard – but I am also itching to read ‘The Dead Men Stood Together’. I thoroughly enjoy his thing of taking something from an earlier creepy masterpiece and then genetically engineering a whole new organism out of it.

Susan Cooper made me come all over tongue-tied. Not only is she the author of ‘The Dark is Rising’ sequence, but so cool and laid-back and wise I just wanted to breathe the same air in the hopes that something would transfer to me. After all, she inhabited the same Oxford as Tolkien and Lewis, and I think she knows Alan Garner. Phew.

Last but never, ever the least was Geraldine. I took a little paperback copy of the first book I ever read aloud to a class (Dog Days). Geraldine has written so many smashing books – from Monacello to A Little Lower than than the Angels – that I was spoiled for choice. But I have soft spot for frost fairs and Old London Bridge, and it was a pleasure I shared with the children.

I also took away some less tangible but no less special treasures – in fact I filled the last remaining pages of my Moleskine with them. Here’s a small selection:

Sally Gardner:

children can’t be policed in historical fiction – they can have truly great adventures
imagination allows you to float your mind out of a situation
the pea-soupers she knew as a child around Gray’s Inn were made of ghosts and Charles Dickens

Chris Priestley:

historical fiction allows child characters to be master/mistress of their own destiny
dystopias are historical fiction – just in another direction
he writes for the vestigial 14 year old inside him beguiled by grotesquerie

Susan Cooper:

she is obsessed with place, with the layers of time
uses the past to illuminate the present but ‘God forbid messages’
what a child gets out of a story is not what is put in deliberately to educate – or even to entertain

Geraldine McCaughrean:

history was another place where I had often gone as a child
after a brilliant rant about bowdlerised folk stories – she said the originals were a a place where we can taste the amoral terrifying darkness, the inchoate beings we all nurse inside
research as much as you like – and then around half-way, throw it all away!

I can only agree with the librarian (whose name sadly I did not catch) who thanked the panel for ‘not dumbing down’. It was an exhilarating evening with far more than these brief highlights – much of which is fermenting in my imagination.

Oh, and one final thing – it’s a really good idea to wear something emblematic such as a silver Peter Pan brooch, a skull close to your neck, a gilded vulture or an interlaced symbol of Celtic mysticism. I leave you to guess who wore which…

What next?

Posted on 31 October 2013 by KMLockwood

How I feel now….

I am not certain if it’s delight or terror.

Since I am doing NaNoWriMo this year, I wondered if you would be interested in weekly posts on my progress, feelings and experiences. Please met know – especially if you have any questions to ask or suggestions to make.

Otherwise – I’ll see you on the other side.

Who knows what gif I’ll post then ?

We plough the fields and scatter…

Posted on 24 October 2013 by KMLockwood

I am old enough to remember singing Harvest Festival hymns at school – and thoroughly enjoying them. I love the cycle of the farming year and where I live I am fortunate enough to see it. There are times this rural corner of West Sussex can look like something out of The Ladybird Book of Proper Farming.

Traditionally Autumn is a time for ploughing and I have long had a soft spot for the word ‘fallow’. Not just for the beautiful dear – but the concept of leaving the land to rest. The sight of warm brown corduroy fields always pleases – and a tractor with a comet-trail of gulls makes it even better.

My writing is doing that at present – having a rest.

The idea of fallow land comes from the process of crop rotation I looked into it and found a surprising and rather satisfying correlation with what I am doing.

I am deliberately taking time out before my first attempt at NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) – thirty days of writing 2k a day come Hull, hell or high water. It’s a tall order – but I think it could be a fine way to bash out a rubbishy first draft and outrun both the Procrastination Imps and the Bog Monster of Self-Doubt.

If you remember your British Agrarian Revolution*, letting land lie fallow as part of crop rotation brings these benefits:

restores nutrients to the soil
minimises pests and diseases
decreases soil erosion

I hope that having a planned breather will;

give me chance to replenish my stock of inspiration (I am still researching & reading)
minimise my errors and writing tics – avoid rehashes of same old, same old
decrease my weariness

I will add that continuous production of the same thing in the same place leads to the need for artificial inputs. In the same way that I would endorse organic farming, I think writers need to take a holistic approach – or risk being depleted.

A change is as good as a rest they say, so I am sketching and taking notes and doing writing exercises to keep up my momentum, I hope. It’s just going in a different direction.

* and even if you don’t recall Turnip Townsend and Jethro Tull (no, not the one with the one-legged flute-player), it still does.

Fellow creators – how do you approach a new project?

Read all about it

Posted on 26 September 2013 by KMLockwood

I spent much of today in the rather delightful Book Nook in Hove. (I can recommend the rhubarb and ginger cake). It was good to hear a proper bookseller helping both adults and children find the right books for them with tact and knowledge.

I have to say how amused and impressed I was when a rather ambitious yummy mummy was steered ever so gently towards the concept of reading for pleasure – as opposed to reading to achieve. A triumph of manoeuvring.

The babble of babies and small children was a surprisingly pleasing background to editing tasks – perhaps reminding me of why I bother. I completed a major task – and then rewarded myself with a good browse.

What a pleasure it was to see the work of people I know at least by sight (in no particular order):

Dave Cousins
Lucy Christopher
Malorie Blackman
Meg Rossoff
Patrick Ness
Teri Terry
Jon Mayhew
Chris Riddell

The astute reader will have noticed how many of these are SCBWI folk. And there were more, I am certain. It gave me an interesting feeling of companionship to see them – and maybe a sense of pride. Pride that fellow children’s writers and illustrators made such lovely things.

I also felt a sense of achievement in knowing my genres, ages and stages much better these days. This is much to do with my reading for the lovely Vivienne da Costa at Serendipity Reviews. There is nothing like reading to give you a sense of the world of children’s literature – it’s just so broad and fascinating.

In the main , it’s good to see your friends and colleagues succeed – the world of writing for young readers is big enough for all of us. I would be a liar if I didn’t admit to the odd stab of pain when someone I know gets published – when I’ve just had another rejection. BUT it is only transient.

And if it’s a brilliant book, well, all the more for me to enjoy. That goes for authors and genres I didn’t know before, too.

Something to sing about.

Yet the very best thing is realising that I do have a distinctive voice emerging. I haven’t read anything quite like my work yet. Of course it might be that it’s uniquely weird – but that’s not necessarily a problem. Uniquely bad would be – but seriously, I know it isn’t that awful.

So I feel rather buoyed up by that – though a few quid lighter!

Who would have thought I’d buy books?

How about you – what does a bookshop browse do for you?

K.M.Lockwood

. . . a voyager on the sea of writing.

Category Archives: Writing