Stand and Stare - Joan Lennon

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

That's the cliche.  That's the bit everybody can quote.  Lots of you may also know the rest of the poem, but for me, it came as a surprise.  Here it is, in full - "Leisure" by William Henry Davies (1871-1940):

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

We are, all of us, busy people.  And William Henry Davies was not Shakespeare.  But he was absolutely, unarguably, ineluctably right.  So that's why I'm not here to respond to any comments you may leave (though I look forward to reading them on my return!)  Instead, I'm over on the west coast of Scotland.  Standing and staring.  Like the man said.

(This isn't me, or the west coast of Scotland, but I took the photo.)

Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.

Plotting With Pinterest - Lucy Coats

Last time I was here I gave you my 5 Top Tips for Staying in the Writing Zone. The good news is that I'm still there, writing away. The other good news is that I have a new plotting and planning tool to share with you - and a brand new way of envisioning characters.

Let's go to the plotting and planning first.... I've been on Pinterest for a while, but was really just messing around with it and wasting time before now, and not really seeing the point of it as far as writing is concerned. However, yesterday the light dawned.

I'm writing a new novel, and needed to pull together some images for it - some to inspire, others to inform - in other words, I needed a plot setting mood board. Now, I could have done that by laboriously printing, cutting and pasting images onto a big sheet of paper. I've tried that before. But my colour printer is playing up, and, frankly, the thought filled me with a sense of extreme lassitude. Then I remembered Pinterest.  It took me about half an hour to call up the images I needed, make a new Pinterest board and pull everything together.  Now all the pictures I want are on one big webpage, and I have a visual feast to help me step into the time and place I need. I can add to it any time, and I've also plugged it into my 'research' slot on the Scrivener document for this novel. I can therefore split my page and see both writing and pictures at one time, and I feel like a dog with two tails.

Now to the envisioning of characters.  That sort of came out of the Pinterest thing too. After a little searching, I found an image of a modern day young man which fitted my idea of what my hero looks like.  But I needed to take him back to another time and make him a bit different to fit what I had in mind.  How to do that?  I have an iPad app called InspirePro (it's the one David Hockney uses) which has, quite literally, inspired me to try my hand at painting again. It's amazing and fun, and has rekindled my love of messing about with colour and technique experimentation.  I thought I'd give remodelling the photo a go with that.

Here's the image I found (I wish I knew where it came from originally - apparently he's a male model, but unfortunately I can find no photo credit to acknowledge).

Here's what I did with him.

I still need to do some work, but he's pretty much how I imagine my character to look, barring the nose (which needs to be bigger) and the hair, (which needs to be shinier). Still, it's a start, and I'm going to do the same with my other main characters when I find images which suit them, as this small expenditure of effort has already helped me to connect with who my hero is.

Do any other writers do stuff like this?  I'd love to know.

Lucy's new picture book, Bear's Best Friend, is published by Bloomsbury 

"A charming story about the magic of friendship which may bring a tear to your eye" Parents in Touch 

"The language is a joy…thoughtful and enjoyable" Armadillo Magazine. 

"Coats's ebullient, sympathetic story is perfectly matched by Sarah Dyer's warm and witty illustrations." The Times   

Her latest series for 7-9s, Greek Beasts and Heroes is out now from Orion Children's Books. 

Lucy's Website

Lucy's Tumblr

Lucy's Scribble City Central Blog (A UK Top 10 Children's Literature Blog)

Join Lucy's Facebook Fanpage

Follow Lucy on Twitter

Lucy is represented by Sophie Hicks at Ed Victor Ltd

Observation and a Splash of Imagination - Linda Strachan

 People are fascinating, aren't they?  I think so and if like me you are an avid people-watcher, you probably do, too.


Waiting around for a bus or a train or in a queue for a show, or even in the supermarket there are lives being lived, secrets kept, tears held back as people maintain an acceptable public face.
 
Perhaps you are the person who is standing in the queue tapping their foot or making little sighing noises of irritation because of the time you are wasting?  It can be boring or irritating but it doesn't need to be.

The other people in the queue or sitting in a waiting room beside you are a fund of information and interesting stories if you care to look at them with a little imagination.


It's all about how they sit, or stand, the way they wear their clothes and how they inhabit their own bodies - with confidence or apology, exhaustion or discomfort.

Travelling on the underground can be fascinating. It's not something I do very often so perhaps I approach it with fresh eyes. I noticed that people don't look at each other, they tend to maintain their own private space and avoid eye contact, but even looking down at the floor can be informative.

Creating a back-story about the people around you can start with their feet because shoes tell a whole story of their own.
Are they smart and shiny, but uncomfortable, showing evidence of where they are rubbing at the heel or are they casual, scruffy or scraped?
The shoes a person wears could be telling about you how much care they give their appearance - whether it is that they don't care and place no importance on the state of their shoes, or simply have no time to think about it. Or are the shoes pristine and cared for, evidence of someone who takes great care with their appearance?  Are they in bright, garish colours or making a statement about wealth or fashion?

If you are invited to a wedding or celebration, a meeting or any event where you are seated with people you have never met before, take a few moments to check out the people around you.  What is their story?

Can you tell the heartache, the selfishness, the heroism or the fear that lurks behind the façade we all adopt in front of strangers?


People are fascinating, diverse and complicated. Everyone has a story, whether they care to share it or not and with a little careful observation and a splash of imagination you never know what you will discover.

Are you a people watcher?  What do you think reveals the most about the strangers around you?


.........................

Linda Strachan is the author of over 60 books for all ages from picture books to teenage novels and a writing handbook Writing For Children 

Her latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me  published by Strident 2012 

website  www.lindastrachan.com
Blog http://writingthebookwords.blogspot.co.uk/

If You Go to the Bluebell Woods Today, by Saviour Pirotta

last year's bluebells

I'd planned to give you all an update on how my first ebook is progressing but I had a little mishap at the gym yesterday, which took up all of my time to sort out.  So instead, here's a post from my own blog  which, I hope, will do just as well. 

I live close to  Hirst Wood where you can normally do a bluebell walk at this time of year. The bluebells are late this Spring, in Yorkshire at least so there's nothing for it but to seek the flowers in books and  stories. 

Bluebells have always figured large in European folklore and fairy tales.  Known by various names, including the fanciful witch’s thimble, one of their scientific moniker is Endymion non-scriptus.  In Greek Mythology, Endymion was a handsome shepherd or, in some versions of the myth, a hunter. Selene, the moon goddess fell hopelessly in love with him and begged Zeus to keep him young and asleep forever, so that she could admire him from the sky.  Zeus granted her wish, and Endymion fell into a deep sleep from which he never awoke.  In the past, bluebells were believed to be so intoxicating, their perfume made anyone who walked into a field of them fall asleep. Hence the connotation in the Latin name.

Endymion and Selene, by Victorian artist J. A. Grimshaw

The idea of bluebells sending people to sleep also pervades Native American folklore. In a popular fable, a hummingbird and a crane race each other, much like the hare and the tortoise in the renowned fable by Aesop. Hummingbird, being small and light on her wings, assumes she will win – so she stops for a rest in a patch of bluebells.  With unfortunate results!

Woods have always been considered enchanted places in the collective imagination. They are dark, mysterious realms which teem with unseen forces and magic beings. As bluebells grow mostly in the woods, they have been associated with fairies, and woodland creatures. In The Fairy Caravan, Beatrix Potter’s only chapter book, which is inspired by Celtic folktales, the author describes wild dwarfs called oakmen living in a forest full of bluebells.  In other European tales,  unwary travellers wander into clearings full of bluebells, often encountering fairies, or incurring their wrath.  Popular legend had it that blundering into a patch of bluebells broke the fairy spells hung on them to dry.  

The Bluebell Fairy – C. M. Barker

Fairies were believed to be summoned for midnight revelries by the pealing of bluebells.  But beware the hapless mortal who hears the sound. He will die by morning.  Unless, of course, the fairies had rung the bluebells to summon him. Which does happen a few times in fairytales.

In a German folktale, a goldsmith and a tailor travelling along a country road are lured into the woods by the enchanted sound of bluebells ringing in the breeze.  The music leads them to a group of dancing fairies, who ply them with treasure teach as well as teaching them the importance of not being greedy.

Some country folk considered growing bluebells in your own garden, or bringing a bunch of them indoors, incurred the ire of the fae folk. They would be dogged by bad luck.  Others thought clumps of bluebells outside the front door brought good luck, and tinkled to warn when unwanted visitors approached the front door.  Wearing a bracelet of fresh bluebells around your ankle, especially on the eve of Beltane, summoned the good fairies to protect you.

Such beliefs, of course, died a long time ago.  But the association between bluebells and fairies remains in folktales and literature.  Here is a sweet poem that I learnt as a child, and has endured the test of times:

THE BLUEBELL

BY Emily Bronte

The blue bell is the sweetest flower

That waves in summer air;

Its blossoms have the mightiest power

To soothe my spirit’s care.

ceramic tile by Victorian artist Walter Crane

There's No One Quite Like Grammar - John Dougherty

What "were" they "thinking"?

I’m not quite a grammar geek, but I’m certainly a bit of a pedant. It matters to me that my subjects and verbs agree, that my tenses are correct, that my possessives are properly punctuated. Misplaced apostrophes irritate and amuse me in equal measure. I’m angered more than is reasonable by the fact that even in broadsheets people write “lead” when they mean “led”. As for signs like this one (see photo), the less said the better.

I do think these things matter, and certainly they matter in my own writing, because it’s important to me that people understand what I write. When I write about somebody doing something to somebody else, the reader should be able to tell who did what to whom without having to read the sentence three times. 

What differentiates me from the likes of Toby Young is that I don’t think there is always only one correct grammar for every sentence; I don’t think being grammatically correct confers any kind of moral superiority; and I don’t think being able to spot a grammatical error, real or imagined, in someone else’s expression of an argument means that you can ignore its content.

Toby Young, in case you don’t know, is the poster-boy for Michael Gove’s free schools scheme, and last week he wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph’s blog entitled Are all Michael Gove’s critics illiterate?

Clearly, the answer to that question is “no”, although Young would have us believe otherwise. He rests his case on two points: firstly, that the one hundred academics who wrote an open letter criticising Gove’s new National Curriculum are such thickos that they won the inaugural Bad Grammar award, an award which seems to have been made up by Toby Young and some like-minded chums specifically so they could give it to some critics of Michael Gove; and secondly, that Michael Rosen, in responding to Gove’s blatant misrepresentation of his position on the teaching of grammar, at one point missed out a comma and wrote “is” instead of “are”.

I think it’s telling that Young’s article conflates “not always following the rules of grammar as I understand and venerate them” - and perhaps even “making the odd mistake” - with “being illiterate”. This is the damaging corollary of this sort of mindless pedantry, and it makes having a proper and sensible discussion about the teaching of grammar practically impossible. If the response to “Actually I don’t think that teaching grammar at this level to such young children is appropriate” is “Look! Look! You missed out a comma! That means you’re stupid and I don’t have to listen to you! Yah boo sucks!” then debate is futile.

Grammar is not a set of rules, but a set of descriptions. Language did not arrive with a manual of instructions; rather, at some point in history somebody - or a number of somebodies - decided to work out and set down the rules which had evolved as the language developed. And if those rules had evolved up until that point, it makes no sense to say that they have now stopped evolving - or that their role is now not to describe how language works, but to police it.

This is why it makes no sense, for instance, to say - as one of Young’s fellow judges did - that the sentence “Much of [Gove’s curriculum] demands too much too young” is “simply not English”. It is. It is perfectly comprehensible, and it is a nonsense to say otherwise.

Just to reiterate: I think grammar is important, and I think that it is important to teach good grammar. But I believe that the best way to teach good grammar is to expose children to as much well-written and well-spoken English as possible, for as long as possible, so that when you finally come to describe to them what grammar is, their heads are already full of it. It is not to cram their heads full of concepts like “adverbial clause” and then test them on those concepts.

Of course, Toby Young and his friends may feel differently; and they may even have good reasons for doing so. But as long as their response to criticism is to point and jeer, we will never know what those reasons may be.

__________________________________________________
John's website is at www.visitingauthor.com.
He's on twitter as @JohnDougherty8 

His most recent books include:

Finn MacCool and the Giant's Causeway - a retelling for the Oxford Reading Tree 
Bansi O'Hara and the Edges of Hallowe'en
Zeus Sorts It Out - "A sizzling comedy... a blast for 7+" , and one of The Times' Children's Books of 2011, as chosen by Amanda Craig

Getting the 'writing feeling' by Miriam Halahmy

When I give talks, in schools I am always asked, “When did you start writing?” My answer is always the same, “I was writing before I could hold a pen.”  Writing has always started with a feeling for me and I've had that feeling since early childhood. I loved to climb as a child and would often take a notebook and pen and sit high up in a tree, staring into space, in touch with my ‘writing feeling’. 

My writing feeling starts deep in my middle, somewhere in the abdomen and it gives me an inward, reflective, feeling which signals that I want... no need ... to find a space to write and something to write on; back of an envelope, paper napkin, a corner of my daughter’s Polly Pocket notebook, whatever. It usually evokes the need for pen and paper but these days it can be satisfied sitting at a laptop.

The writing feeling cannot be ignored and anyway, it is so precious, I can’t imagine flicking it away. If there is no opportunity to write (difficult when you are changing a nappy or taking a shower) then I let it grow and fill my mind and take me on a walk to wherever the creative urge needs to go.

Picking up a pen for any reason can suddenly and without warning, evoke the writing feeling, so that the very act of writing – eggs, bread, three onions, green tea, small pack of mince - can feel like the lines of a poem. This is the beauty and the glory of the writing feeling. It doesn't mean you are about to write your masterpiece. It may not come during the writing of Chapter 10 because you are in total ‘struggle mode’ and your precious ‘feeling’ has buried itself that morning. But when it comes it comes with a great flood and great desire.

The certainty for me and I know for many others too, is that the writing feeling will never desert me, it will be there when it is there and it is the drive to write which has lived with me since before I was three years old  (the age I started to read independently).

I asked writer friends on Facebook: What gives you that writing feeling?

Here are some of their responses:

Anna Wilson : whatever it is I go all tingly

Cari Rosen : swimming

Wendy Meddour : bed and darkness, unfortunately

Non Pratt : songs

Denyse Kirkby : Music and a strong cup of tea. I can’t write when I'm running because I run to clear my mind.

How about you? What gives you that ‘writing feeling?’

Is this book any good? Some thoughts about reviewing by Tony Bradman

I was saddened to read in last week's Observer that the paper's esteemed film critic Philip French has announced his retirement. I've been reading his film reviews since I was in the VIth form, which means he's been a part of my intellectual life for over 40 years. In fact, if I'm to be really honest about my ambitions, reading Philip French's reviews made me want to be a reviewer, and one like him if I could possibly manage it.

There was always something about Philip French's reviews that made them stand out. He didn't just tell you what happened in a particular film, he set it in context - artistically, culturally, commercially. He always seemed to have seen every other film the director  had made or the actors had appeared in, so could make comparisons and assess whole careers. He wrote about the screenwriters and the editing, the the film's music, and all in a spirit that boiled down to one question - is this film any good? And last but not least, he always wrote brilliantly, with a fine turn of phrase and a dash of properly grown-up humour.

Years went past, and I eventually found myself working as a journalist, and lo, my wish was granted I began to review children's books, and it's been a part of my working life ever since. I've reviewed books of all kinds - picture books, short fiction, junior novels, books for teens. Through all that time my model, my gold standard for reviewing, has been the work of Philip French. So when I'm asked to review a novel, I feel it incumbent upon me to find out about the author's other work. I too like to set a book in its context and explore the particular challenges of the genre the writer has chosen to work in. Ultimately I ask the same question - is this book any good? Has the writer achieved what he or she set out to? A good critic should engage objectively and fairly with a book, and that also means not giving in to any special pleading. I've often heard the argument that as children's books get so little coverage, it's somehow 'wrong' to give 'bad' reviews. I don't buy that, and I'm sure Philip French wouldn't either. People sometimes forget that a professional reviewer is being paid by a newspaper or broadcaster to provide a service to readers or listeners - and to be anything other than objective and honest is taking money under false pretences.

Of course in recent years we've seen an explosion of amateur reviewing on the internet. I think it's fine for anyone to express their opinions, but - and maybe I'm old-fashioned in this - I would always rather read the reviews of someone who has enormous experience of a particular art form, and who can write well about it. Great professional critics in any field are vital. They draw our attention to works we might otherwise miss, they puncture the great balloons of hype that often obscure our view of what is really worth noticing, and they help creative artists to think about what they're doing and whether they're doing it well. A good review is in itself like a small work of art - or it should be if you're doing it right.  Philip French himself has said: 'No critic should ever say they are bored. It is not enough just to understand a film; you must try to say something of interest or value.' 

That's certainly a credo worth following. I'm going to miss Philip French's reviews - although I might be able to console myself by reading the first volume of his collected writings on film and culture - I Found It At The Movies. And I'll always feel that if the reviews I write can be a tenth as good as his, then I'll be doing a very good job indeed.

Tony Bradman's most recent review can be found here :http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/04/sun-catcher-sheila-rance-review/

Philip French's I Found It At The Movies can be found here: http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847771292