(*in front of Malorie Blackman this year!)
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):
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?
On Wednesday 14th August 2013, I submitted my just-short-of-4k opening, synopsis and bio for SCBWI -BI’S Undiscovered Voices 2014 competition. When I pressed that button labelled SUBMIT – the other meaning seemed all too relevant. I felt trembly and humble – like sneaking my homework onto the Headteacher’s marking pile and running away.
It was that line about it cannot be changed. All that irrevocability.
I felt the poor thing was dead, embalmed, or pinned down like a Death’s Head moth in a Cabinet of Curiosities.
One comfort was the remaining 67k or so.{ If any agents or editors are reading, yes, it is finished!} Those words have possibilities for playing with, some life left in them. I feel there are still aspects I can nurture, prune, train up a trellis.
To an extant, a story is never finished. It’s always tinkerable. But when to let go? I had no choice with that first sample.
Is writing a story like gardening – never done?
Or is it more like painting? You get to a point where you send it out and let the viewer, or the reader, decide.
Now there’s a happy thought. I believe that the reader brings life to a writer’s words. Another person interacts with your scribbling, imagines, creates a world out of your work in their heads. How ASTONISHING is that? It emerges like a living thing in a new form.
So now I think I may be waiting till December to see if my work has pupated successfully!
In medieval times, they say, Good and Evil were pictured as a devil and an angel sitting on your shoulders whispering advice. That’s why you throw salt over your left shoulder, to blind the little devil.
I’m editing (still) and I’ve got two voices whispering in my ears. They are not Good and Evil, but more like Imagination and Creativity on one side – and Logic and Analytical Reason on the other. I have to keep testing and refining what I am revising – as Scientific an enterprise as you could wish for – but I also need to generate new scenes on occasion. Cue Art – and the need to stick a gag in my Critical self’s gob.
Should my door be shut or open? (to use Stephen King’s metaphor) Tricky.
I need to come up with new material, to innovate, to avoid cliché – but at what point am I re-inventing the wheel? Is the accuracy and honesty of, say, a particular image worth disrupting the flow of a paragraph for?
make it simple and easy to read, please the target readership , give them what they want
be true to yourself, use your own voice, the readers you are meant to have will love it that way
Who do I listen to?
The Princesses of Sweet Rhyme and Pure Reason talk to Milo in The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster , illustrated by Jules Feiffer. (I wish I had their advice.)
I need other voices guiding me – external ones. I am aware of my own stubbornness, my (surprising-to-some) shyness and reticence in seeking help. Partly I feel embarrassed, ashamed that after years of teaching , and a Masters’ Degree in Creative Writing , I still don’t know how to write for children.
I have to squash my ego and seek advice. It’s the task that matters , not some day-dream of being An Author. And then comes the really important bit:
I must be discriminating in what I do with that guidance.
As my wonderful friend and musician colleague Pam Wedgwood said the notes are only a guide. It’s up to me how I interpret them.
I need both passion to rise above the ordinary to keep me going – and commonsense coupled with humility to be thankful for those who have helped along the way. (SCBWI/Golden Egg pals – this means you.)
So I’m rather hoping by responding to both, I can figure out my own way. Something like having callers on both sides of the river telling me which way to steer – from their point of view.
Today [ 27th June 2013] I am preparing to go to Foyles, Charing Cross Road. It’s the Northern Talent Summer Salon 2013 and I have been invited as a runner-up in the Mslexia Children’s Novel competition. I shall have the chance to pitch my work to agents and editors.
My veins are filled with a blend of delight and terror.
On one hand, I get to tell people about The Selkies of Scoresby Nab. These are industry professionals who could help my story on its way to readers. They could become colleagues who bring about my dream – to see one of my stories in the hands of a child who is enjoying it.
On the other hand, I have to pitch my work in front of industry professionals who all know SO much more than I do – and not look like a blinking idiot. I must make sure not to gabble, act the giddy kipper or gesticulate like a complete loon – even though they are all variants of my shy-person-on-the-inside response to such an occasion.
My double-aspected Imagination tempts and torments me.
Like Kali – mother and destroyer
She shows me agents swarming and competing, a waggle-dance of yearning to sign me up. It’s all very Hollywood small-town-girl-does-good.
She also shows me a tongue-tied numpty boring ever-so-polite agents and editors into a catatonic state. Or else they wander away – with well-mannered excuses, of course – leaving Billie-no-mates on her own and warning their pals to stay clear.
Neither are likely – but my Imagination prefers to present the extremes. I think she’s rather adolescent – everything is all-or-nothing.
This reminds me of the lovely Lucy Christopher at the SCBWI retreat in May. She exhorted us to think about the threat and the promise in the moments we were writing. That the scenes worth showing needed to have that pull – of teetering between success and disaster. That’s where the drama lies.
That’s what’s meant by WRITE SCARED, I think. And that’s what’s so exciting about such an event, about presenting your work to the world. It could go either way.
So, whatever happens – and I will keep my lovely readers informed – I resolve to enter into the experience whole-heartedly. Quite likely, in the thick of it I won’t actually be able to tell which way it’s going. But at least, I will be in there.
I owe an apology to Nick Cross.
He is this month’s moderator for the SCBWI -BI email group – and he sent round a great suggestion to get us all thinking and replying.
They say that “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down” and much the same can be said of writers…
So, I’d like to open the floor for a wobble workshop today. Are you reeling from a rejection, a bad review or a self-inflicted confidence loss? Why not let the group know and I promise we can deliver an instant confidence boost!
I have to apologise because I said I didn’t want to wobble in a public forum – and guess what I’m going to do now?
I am definitely of an age when I can sing that irritating little jingle/earworm. In fact, I’ve often thought of it (sadly) as a something of a motto.
http://youtu.be/girA7GS9hDg
This would be cooler. But the principle’s the same – resilience. The more you put yourself ‘out there’, the more Life will poke your plump little tummy and send you rocking and reeling. It’s bonkers – and possibly addictive.
I put myself up for a writer-in-residence in Northumberland – and even with the support of David Almond ( how’s that for chutzpah?) – I didn’t get it. Wallop. Right over on the side looking at the battered daisies.
But then I think of the way Weebles work. They have a central weight inside which pulls them back to standing. I look at that as my core – not what I am trying to achieve but what is deep and essential; what I am. All the oscillations around that are just, well, wobbles.
So if any of my wibbles and wobbles can help some one else, great. Otherwise I will keep my wavering to myself.
And the quotation at the top? It’s from one of Jill Murphy’s marvellous Large Family books. At the end of A Piece of Cake, the elephants learn to accept what they are – large. In my case, that’s as wobbly as Bob Godfrey’s animations.
Tonight, Thursday 7th February 2013, Chi-SCBWI is having its first public event -organised by the lovely Kathryn Evans & Mariam Vossough . I’m really looking forward to it.
I love books.
The theme is the romance of books – originally conceived as a retort to that over-commercialised festival later on this month. Certainly, all the people I know that are attending do love books in whatever form they are presented.
We are holding the event in The Fountain. This old inn dating from 1798 in Chichester’s Southgate has a suitable pedigree for all things literary. There are ghosts – a Roman soldier (to go with the bits of Roman wall inside), and a man and his dog.
I wonder if they will like our bookish chatter?
The inn was once kept by George and Sarah Neal – the grandparents of H.G.Wells (his mother was in service at Uppark not so very far away). In my researches for Georgiana and the Municipal Moon – the city of Selchester not being entirely unlike Chichester – I found The Fountain was originally run by one Lucy Ladkin. Further nosiness led me to discover she lived till at least 83 in retirement at Fishbourne. Glorious.
He looks like a jolly soul.
Who knows what further literary triumphs will spring up from this event?
If nothing else it should be fun, as we are having the lovely Ali Sparkes to talk to us, we are swapping books we love (so tricky to choose!) and eating cake.
Ali with her old biology teacher and a blow-up turtle. As you do.
I may even partake of a little Tanglefoot as the bus is my taxi.
Now there’s a source of inspiration!
There may be to follow…
…holds the treasure you seek. (Joseph Campbell)
People ask me why I choose to write for younger readers. Apart for the wonderful freedom on offer, (which I have posted about here) there is also the company of fellow children’s writers.
I belong to SCBWI-BI. The lovely Kathy Evans talks about reasons to join here. I would add more to her celebratory post. It’s warm-hearted people like all of Chi-SCBWI, and Candy Gourlay and Nick Cross and Nicky Schmidt and…and…and…far too many to mention that I need.
Some of the stuff I do frightens me.
I’m going into parts of my self that are dark and hidden and oppressive.
I really appreciate my support team standing at the surface, cracking jokes, willing me to come back safely, egging me on to go further. All the messages about my recent successes have astonished and delighted me.( A bit of a sugar rush, to be honest.) It may well be that other writers are equally close-knit – but I know I can rely on this lot.
Thank you fellow children’s writers- and I promise to hold the rope while you go exploring.
Number One
It’s not me. Honest.
When you start a novel – where do you begin? Assuming you’ve done all your research and your thinking, how do you set about it?
I think there are two main approaches: Character-Led and Plot-Driven
Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.
Michelangelo
This mysterious process is how the Character-Led writer works it seems to me. They know who’s inside their imagination, set them free and follow their adventures.These authors see action and hear dialogue – and then record what occurs. Marvellous stuff.(Meg Rossoff, I mean you.)
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
But what if you make a mistake? If the chisel slips? If you find what the protagonist does on page 136 means you have to change pages 97, 43 & 25 and that means Chapter 3 is a bit dodgy too. Rather like sorting out a Sudoku when you write the wrong answer and only realise three entries further on. My puny little brain can’t hold all that in, but clearly some writers can.
Now for the other sort: Plot-Driven.
This seems to me like creating an armature when sculpting. You focus on getting the underlying structure to work first.
One day I will be a pussy-cat.
It might not much look much to start with but it gives shape to the finished work. You add more and more layers to create the final piece. And these are relatively easy to change. A small adjustment can make a big difference in characterisation – think of manipulating millimetres of Plasticine in Gromit’s face.
Of course, you can make your own frameworks. You don’t have to follow some pre-made thing like a Paint-Your-Own-Gnome set. It was fascinating to see how Marcus Sedgwick devised the structures for his novels on the SCBWI-BI retreat at Dunford House. He said he found that though some decisions seemed arbitrary at the time, the finished book showed them to be entirely right.
Not everyone feels confident about creating their own from scratch: there’s nothing wrong with using a tried & tested form and adapting it to your own needs. ‘Cinderella’ becomes ‘Pretty Woman’, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ becomes ‘West Side Story’. It’s a long and honourable tradition.
I think you can tell which I go for.
I made it!
One final thought: my perception is that many women writers can do the character-led thing, indeed prefer it, whereas male writers tend to favour the plot-driven approach ( and ex-tomboys like me). Is this imagined or real?