Tag Archives: SCBWI

‘Psst – wanna do something illegal?’

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Truth told, Kathy Evans didn’t quite put it like that – but I did get the chance to go with her to the launch of Miriam Halahmy‘s ‘Illegal’ at Blackwell’s Bookshop, Portsmouth University . She mentioned it on Facebook and I blagged a lift – she is a delightful chauffeuse, I have to say (or I might have to go in the boot in future.)

As a writer, you don’t tend to get out a lot. It’s a solitary business – so a bit of human contact is good. Not only that but the outside world provides its own stimulus. Even a change of scenery can prompt better writing – and going anywhere near a place of learning – well…

There is more. I was glad to see Anita Loughrey and Amanda Lillywhite there – more SCBWI pals. Regular readers will know how much I value the fellowship that SCBWI offers. Not only do they understand the obsession you have, they share it too  – and encourage you in your lunacy. That’s some support network.

I hope Miriam felt suitably encouraged.

It isn’t just about the friendships, though. There is also a good chance of meeting agents and publishers at launches. You might build up other contacts such as publicists – and it does no harm to be seen.

However, it was when Miriam read the beginning of ‘Illegal’ that I found the most personal reason to be there. People from a fair old variety of decades and types stood and listened. They went  into that little world that Miriam had squashed inside the pages of her book. It wasn’t a world that I could make. It wasn’t marketed at the readers I write for – but the story still existed. And that’s what mattered to me – one day it could be me. People might want to enter my little worlds.

I need that hope to hang on to.

Thank you, Miriam and Kathy.

What sort of writer do you want to be?

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The viva voce for my MA in Creative Writing was on Monday. I have passed ( thanks to superb tuition from Greg Mosse) – and I am immediately wondering which subset in the Venn diagram of authors I should inhabit.

I’ve been asked to consider writing for adults. Straight off I flinch at that. I will admit to an entire Harry Ramsden’s on my shoulder about the status of children’s writers. It is compounded of my experience as a teacher that your rank is in direct proportion to the age of the children taught; the same impulse that made the ‘Children’s Writing IS a proper job’ badge sell out so quickly in November 2010, and Martin Amis’s remarks in February about brain injury and writing for children. The subtext is that writing for adults is somehow better, cleverer, more valuable.

Well, I’m with John Dougherty:

Don’t worry Martin. We can’t all be imaginative and versatile.

One of the things I admire most about the literature published for young people is the sheer range and breadth of ideas. Big ideas, written for people who will not be blinded by the effulgent beauty of your prose nor give one microfortnight of attention to reviews by your literary chums.

It is notable that David Almond (a literary hero to me) found a sense of liberation in writing for the young. I am put in mind of this concept:

Australian Aborigines say that the big stories—the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life—are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush.

Robert Moss, Dreamgates 

Quite simply, I believe young people are more likely to be receptive to the stories following me about and asking to be told than adults. And I bother to write because of my belief in those same young people, and what stories are for.

 Every word written, every sentence, every story, no matter how dark the story itself might seem, is an act of optimism and hope, a stay against the forces of destruction.

David Almond, Hans Christian Anderson Award acceptance speech

Now before I get all too Messianic, I’d also like to point out that despite all the moaning of the pessimists, the children’s book market is thriving. According the ‘The Bookseller’ in 2001 it was worth £193 million – and in 2010 £325 million. Christopher Paolini’s ‘Inheritance’ sold more than 76,000 copies in UK in first week of publication this November.
Hilary Mantel’s ‘Wolf Hall’ (Man Booker winner) ? 14,600.
Children’s books often demonstrate the effectiveness of long tail marketing: they carry on being bought long after the brass bands and banners have left town.
It’s possible for me and my colleagues to do well.
When I decided to get serious about writing, I read Alison Baverstock’s unsettling but finally very useful ‘Is there a Book in You?’. She made it quite clear how important a support system is for any writer. My best scaffolding comes from SCBWI – I know I can contact wonderful people who will talk me down off the parapet, sort out my formatting issues or just plain be there. The conference in Winchester is a highlight of my year.
What other sort of writer could I possibly want to be?
Then come the next questions: YA or middle grade? Fantasy or thriller? Ghost stories or sea stories?
 to be continued….

No right to be published.

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Where we meet - photo by CrunchCandy

Today ( Thursday the 21st July) was one of the periodic meetings of the SCBWI Chichester twig. We were a mixed bunch: Penny already published, Kathy agented, me with a shiny new Post Graduate Diploma and Neil right at the beginning of his journey. One thing we have in common: we want people to read our work – otherwise we are sending words into the void.

The purpose of our little group, as I see it, is fairly straightforward: mutual support. There is a great sense of energy, which I find particularly stimulating, and plenty of encouragement.

Let’s look at that last word: encouragement. It’s not a blanket ‘there, there, dear, everything you write is lovely and it’ll soon be published’. It means inspiring with valour, the brave spirit in your heart. Going by some of the posts I’ve read about the state of publishing,  we all need valour. We need valour to put our work out there, we need valour to revise it for the umptieth time, we need valour to deal with the rejections which are an inevitable part of our chosen path.

This is where the wider pool of SCBWI -BI and our other writer-support networks come in. We need the on-line stimulus; the face-to -face honesty of critique meets; the CPD of conferences, workshops and retreats. It’s good to know there are others on our side, others who have made it in one way or another, others who can help.

But all this only works if we can give and take in the right spirit. If we are open to analytical and purposeful criticism, if we take care how we handle our colleagues’ feelings, then we will grow as a group. And that nurturing, which may include some pretty tough love at times, will help us all along the road. It will not guarantee a print run. That’s down to us and fate.

I’ll finish with a quotation from Thomas Edison (thank you R. J. Ellory)

‘Many of life’s failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.’

Our job is to keep our pals going.

Three for tea

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Today was the inaugural meeting of Chi-SCBWI ( Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators – Chichester Branch – or more of a twig). Present were the ever busy and talented Kathryn Evans; published author, Chichester Creative Writing MA graduate and kindly cat carer Penelope Bush; and me. Due to a car disaster, the amazingly prolific Elizabeth Dale was there only in spirit this time.

Our venue was St Martin’s Organic Tearooms. I had never been in this ancient and frankly eccentric building before. Being early, I spent a few happy moments on the rickety staircases and across the amiably sagging floors just looking. It was delightfully quirky: individual and inspiring.

My colleagues arrived. They rather suited the building – distinctive and wonderfully themselves . One published (big in Germany, I believe), one agented and me the one setting out: yet all of us with something in common. We discussed our aims for the group – social, supportive  and a safe place to let off steam. Despite our different lives, we were all aware of the potential isolation of our craft.

OK nowadays we have Twitter and Facebook and all that stuff yet it is all too easy to dwell on things, to imagine, to read subtext in emails that just isn’t there. But face-to-face – lovely.  Genuine warmth and hugs and gentle lifts of the eyebrows that convey so much – and oh-so-endearing moments of uncertainty and mutual support. Not pushing a brand or a self-promotion opportunity. Great – energetic people are energising.

More of the same please- 10 am Thursday 21st July, St Martin’s Tearooms, St Martin’s Street Chichester – love to see more artists and illustrators there.

We need to talk about it.

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First off, I suspect it’s down to how much dialogue says about your characters’ backgrounds . I am scared of consistently getting the register right – the best range of words for the character’s age, social class and period. I am nervous of expressing regional identity – how do I handle my own  dialect without coming across all clogs-and-shawls? I need lessons from David Almond. I’d also love to make my characters so distinct in the way they talk that the reader immediately knows who’s talking .

Secondly there’s the question of subtext. How much should the dialogue reveal what my characters feel? How do I do that without being trite or full of improbable psychobabble? On the other hand  I know it’s good when the underlying emotion is at variance with the spoken word. Then I worry about how to reveal the hidden feelings without confusing the reader. Complex stuff.

A third area of concern to me is the sheer logistics. How to orchestrate a duologue seems OK, though there can be status reversal, but including  more people gets tricky. It’s like maths with ‘perm any three’. Just how many lines of communication can I cope with?

Finally, though I doubt it’s the last word in anxiety, the technical stuff. I can get all in a tizzy about attributions: how much is too much? What about adverbs? They can be deadly – or revealing. Likewise with business – what do people really do when they’re talking?

In short the only way I’ve found is to write it. And then act it out. And the  cringe.

How about you?

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.

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?