Saturday 30 April 2016

A Compelling Idea? Lari Don

I am driven to write by questions – most of my books start with What If? and are powered by a constant stream of What Happens Next? So I carry bits of paper or notebooks with me all the time, everywhere, just in case a question pops into my head.

I usually welcome these questions, even when they arrive at inconvenient times and especially when they send stories in unexpected and challenging directions.

However, very occasionally, I resist these questions. The What If? that prompted my teen thriller Mind Blind arrived unexpectedly and inconveniently. So I scribbled it down, then pushed it to the back of my mind because I didn’t think I had the time, the skills or the desire to do it justice. But it kept pushing forward and demanding to be written, bringing a longer and more enticing line of What Happens Next? questions every time it reappeared. Eventually I gave in and started writing, and I’m really glad I did.

But I had an odd experience earlier this week. I was eating my breakfast and reading a wildlife magazine (I’m writing about hares, crows and toads at the moment, but my eyes sometimes slide off the domestic wildlife articles onto the bigger beasts like lions and tigers and bears...) And while I was reading an article about giraffes, I had a sudden What If?’ idea.

I considered the question for a moment. Then I realised that the story it was leading to was dystopian, sci fi, YA and dark. I don’t mind dark, I’m keen to write more YA, and I suppose you could class Mind Blind as sci fi, but I really really don’t want to write a dystopian book. We’ve already given every possible future world quite enough of those...

So I shrugged, turned the page in the magazine and took another spoonful of muesli. But the question, the thought, the idea, the story, wouldn’t go away. I could feel it. Rattling about in my head. Itching in my fingers. I couldn’t eat any more. I couldn’t concentrate on the next page. I had to write the idea down. I didn’t want to write the book but I felt compelled to scribble down the idea. I had to acknowledge the existence of the question, even if I never intended to answer it.

So I got my ideas notebook and I scribbled the question down. And suddenly all was well with the world. The question had moved from my head to my notebook, and even though I am 99% sure I will never follow it up, I had at least written it down.

But that felt a bit weird. As if I was being compelled, by an idea I didn’t even like, to write it down. To give it houseroom in my creative space.

My notebook is filled with questions and ideas for more books (books I do want to write!) than I will ever have time to write, so I suppose there is no harm in a book I don’t want to write sitting quietly in there.

But it was extremely odd sensation, that compulsion to give this question, this idea, this potential story, its moment. Even though I know I would never follow it through, I nevertheless had to write it down, just as I would with an idea I was excited about.

What was going on there?

Was it a worry that if I didn’t give this What If? question respect, I might block the flow of other (more useful) questions? I’m not a superstitious person, so I don’t think so.

Or was it a process thing, instead? This is what always happens: I have an idea, I write it down. So, when I have an idea, that’s just what I automatically need to do with it. Hmm. I don’t like admitting that I’m such a creature of habit.

But it’s probably better than believing that ideas have an independent and autonomous life of their own! Which could of course, lead to a potentially dark and dystopian future... (I’d better go and scribble that down...)


Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 

Friday 29 April 2016

Guilt and Inspiration - John Dougherty

Guilt, it's inbuilt, and I'm in it right up to the hilt
If I'm working day and night, then I pay the bills all right
But I don't have time to write the things I want to write
Which is never what I'm working on right now
-from The Writer's Anthem by Jo Cotterill


I spend a lot of time feeling guilty. 

There are all kinds of reasons for this, not least that when I was a kid my family was dysfunctional and my school wasn't much better; and it's always easier to tell a four-year old that he's wrong or stupid or naughty than to admit your own mistakes and try to correct them. And one of the things I feel guilty about is that, whatever I'm doing, I should be doing something else. If I'm answering emails or doing other admin, I should be spending time with the kids. If I'm spending time with the kids, I should be doing housework. If I'm doing housework, I should be writing. If I'm writing, I should be answering emails...

You get the picture. And as my lovely friend Jo's wonderful Writer's Anthem - one of the songs, incidentally, that we perform together, along with Helen and Paul Stickland, in our author band First Draft - makes clear, guilt is very bad for the writer. Not least, it's very unhelpful when you're seeking inspiration. The more I feel I ought to be starting on a new idea, the less likely I am to find one  - however much I wrack my brains.

And then something happens that makes you want to write, or inspires you in a quite unexpected way. Something like that happened this week. I've been wrestling with a few ideas for a new story, unable to settle on one, and feeling like a bit of a fraud - after all, what is a writer who isn't writing?

And then, a couple of evenings ago, I was helping my son with his GCSE revision and we read together a poem called 3AM Feed, by Steven Blyth. It's a lovely piece about a father feeding his baby in the night. We read it a couple of times, and discussed it, and, well, I found myself getting quite emotional. This almost-man, this 15-year old pointing out the cyclical structure of the poem and analysing the poet's use of imagery, had been my baby once. I'd warmed his milk, held him in the crook of my arm, listened to him sucking, just as the poem describes. And those times are gone forever; I'll never have them back.

I think I was still feeling emotional the next morning when, before settling down to work, I started browsing the web. Of course, I felt guilty about it - I should have been writing - but, still, I browsed. And that morning, link after link pointed me towards articles about the Hillsborough case.

One particular article, by David Conn in The Guardian, grabbed me and wouldn't let me go.  It takes apart the lies that were told, tells how the innocent were blamed by the guilty for the deaths and how the powerful protected one another. And suddenly, for the first time in several days - if not weeks - I found myself with something to say. I wanted to write. It wasn't what I "should" have been working on, but I didn't care. 

By the time I sat down at my desk, a poem had begun to form in my head, and with very little teasing out it took shape on the page. And then I wanted to share it with other people; so I created a new page on my website for grown-up writing, videoed me reading it, and posted it there.

It wasn't what I "should" have been writing, but it was what I needed to write. And sometimes, that's more important.
______________________________________________________________________________________________












 The latest in John's Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face series, illustrated by David Tazzyman and published by OUP, is Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Great Big Story Nickers, published May 5th.


His other new books in 2016 will include the sixth Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face title, his first poetry collection - Dinosaurs & Dinner-Ladies, illustrated by Tom Morgan-Jones and published by Otter-Barry Books  - and several readers for schools.

First Draft will next be performing at the Wychwood Festival in early June.

Thursday 28 April 2016

Writing a gender-neutral character - Clémentine Beauvais

Here's the story of how I wrote a gender-neutral character that everyone now calls 'he'.

(in other words, here's a story about how I failed to create a gender-neutral character.)

The character in question is called Nel, and s/he's the angel driving this flying car, onto which a (nominally dead) grandma called Mamie Paulette is currently attempting to fight off some demons:

the amazing illustrator who drew this is Eglantine Ceulemans

I didn't set out to write the most radical of MG stories, nor to rewrite The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler in the clouds, but it was important to me that Nel and other young angels were neither male nor female. It's a relatively popular vision of angels in France, whether or not scripture agrees (which is something that French people care little about anyway).

But let me tell you that gender-neutrality or genderlessness is a very difficult thing to achieve in French. Firstly, and unfortunately for my purposes, the word 'ange' is masculine in French. Secondly, you wouldn't believe the number of words that need to be in the feminine or masculine form when referring even very vaguely to a character mentioned eighteen pages ago. I got to the stage where I started to suspect that even adverbs, which, as I dutifully recited at the age of six, are in-va-ria-ble-in-gen-der-and-num-ber, might be secretly gendered in spite of all.

Such writing is pretty much impossible in the 3rd-person pronoun, for grammatical reasons too boring to explain here, so Nel is the first-person narrator. But whenever s/he talked about other angels (in the third person), life became extremely difficult for me. I avoided those situations like the plague. As a result, Nel has very few angel friends. Poor Nel.

I had to carefully sidestep the verbs that give away the subject's gender, which is extremely convenient because they are all verbs of the first group, which, being the first group, is not illogically the biggest group of verbs. I also had to avoid most verbs of the second and third groups, and eventually developed advanced strategies of writing without verbs, or conjugating only in specific tenses that don't give away the gender of the subject (i.e. not in the passé composé, the recent past tense, which is perhaps the most-used in children's fiction).

But there's a lot you can do with verbless sentences, even though, as I dutifully recited at the age of six, a sentence begins with a capital letter, ends with a full stop and contains at least one conjugated verb. (This book would make my primary-school teachers cry.)

Of course, four out of nine pronouns were out of the question (he/she/he plural/ she plural). Miraculously, possessive pronouns in French work differently than in English - they give away the gender of the possessed rather than the possessor (so 'Linda's brother' would be 'his brother'). This is pretty great as I could refer to Nel's things without any problems. It was more difficult when Mamie Paulette needed to address Nel as 'my' something. So I created a whole battery of things that Nel could be in the eyes of Mamie Paulette, and expressions such as 'my little chou with hazelnut cream filling' proliferated to adequately conceal any evidence.

she's the kind to say that kind of thing, anyway

Trickiest of all were the collective adjectives to refer to Nel and Mamie. In French, the masculine always wins, because history, magic potion, reasons, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and the Académie; so if you say 'Mamie Paulette, all the women in the world, and Nel are nice', 'nice' will be in the masculine even if only one of those 3 billion characters is male. This was exceedingly difficult to manage in sentences when Nel talks about the two of them. I mined for so-called epicene adjectives, namely adjectives that are spelled the same in the feminine and masculine. There are as many of these in France as there are varieties of cheddar that I would pick over even the chalkiest wheel of supermarket camembert, which means not very many at all. Nel and Mamie could be 'tristes' (sad), 'stupides' or 'difficiles', but they couldn't be happy. As a result, they are nearly always sad, stupid or difficult. It's a great book.

Somehow, I promise you, I managed to make that novel sound normally-written, with the genderlessness of Nel a constitutive but not forced aspect of the story. I liked the fact that such a story would exist in a very gender-divided slice of the market, and that it was not a gimmick, but a logical part of that universe.

We worked a lot on getting that haircut just right 

But as I soon discovered, everyone who's read it, touched it or looked at it immediately refers to Nel as male. Of course, in French, we don't have a singular 'they' - so we do need to pick a pronoun. But never have I heard anyone utter the word 'she', or even 'he or she' to refer to Nel. My editor says 'he', the reviews say 'he', the children say 'he'.

Now, even I say 'he' without even realising.

I don't know if it's because s/he drives a flying car, but I suspect so. I don't know if it's because s/he lives tons of adventures, but I suspect so. And the story appeals to boys much more, so Nel is obviously a he. 

Well, if that's that, then that's that. In spite of all the Alpha Male driving, Nel's main characteristics are, in fact, that s/he is extremely sensitive (sensible, another epicene, yay!), and sincere (another one) and tender (another), and even a little cowardly (another). If the readers have made him a he, that means they take it as self-evident that those attributes are fine for a young male character to have. Silver linings.

_____________________________________

Clementine Beauvais writes in French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia.

Wednesday 27 April 2016

The Importance of Self-Support by Lynn Huggins-Cooper

Hmm...that title makes it sound as though I am going to be writing about Spanx, or something that 'lifts and separates' - and at fifty-one, I truly understand what my mother meant about the importance of supportive undergarments. However, I meant writing support.

I have recently instituted a new rule. I set my alarm two hours early, have a quick cuddle with my sleepy husband, then make a huge pot of tea. I sit at my desk and write until I have at least a thousand words of my latest manuscript. I know that isn't a huge daily word count; I see many writer friends talking on Facebook about their five thousand or more words produced, but I am really happy with it.

The thing is, previously I had been writing every day, but that has been commissioned educational work, or non fiction, or teaching and mentoring notes and critiques. Thousands of words every day, but none of them words for my novel. By the time it got to evening, I was too tired to write any more. So the novel - seen by two agents who were interested in seeing more - languished and made no real progress. Even that interest was not enough to make me write!

I had been through a period of great stress and anxiety; loss and bereavement, and huge changes in my life had knocked the stuffing out of me, I think. You'd think a bereavement counselor would be a little better at recognising the signs, but strangely, no. My writing took a back seat, and my self confidence was low. I was in my very own slough of despond.



I don't know what changed. Possibly just the knowledge that I kept sinking, and that every time I stopped writing, it just reinforced my sense of uselessness. Something, as they say, had to give.

Getting up earlier is a pain, but it is working for me. I 'expect' to write every morning, and have given myself permission to write 'on spec.' That's been a real breakthrough for me, as for several years now I have written very little in this way, and I am loving it. I have had fantastic support from my writing groups both online and in person, and that has made a huge difference to the 'keeping going' factor. Yet until I truly committed myself to the project, the work didn't happen.

I currently have forty six thousand words, and some of them are even good ones. The important thing is, though, that I am writing this novel daily. That is keeping my head in its world, so the ideas are composting even when I am working on something else.

I finally feel like a writer again.


Tuesday 26 April 2016

How to be a Writer in Residence. Erm? - Eloise Williams


I took up my post as Writer in Residence at Oriel y Parc in St. Davids, West Wales a week ago.

Hurray!

Erm…

Hurray again!

*Cue tumbleweed*

 


 

So I know what a WiR is (WiR is how it’s written by people who know stuff about stuff btw) sort of… erm…

 

I turn up at a vast and empty room with my laptop in my sweaty hand, smiling inanely at anyone within a twenty mile radius and showing willing by introducing myself to EVERYONE whether they wanted to be introduced to me or not.

 

I have never been cool or at ease with myself in any capacity so sitting in a room - where they usually have Artists in Residence filling the space with beautiful paintings or innovative art - by myself with a computer, half a packet of polos and an effort-at-a-diet bag of fruit and nuts would have been more than a bit mortifying for me. What if someone came in to chat? EEK. What if someone came in to ask me what a WiR does exactly? Double EEK.

I ducked out into the storm which had just blown in from the Irish Sea on a previously crystal clear day and walked the town searching for Writing Inspiration and trying to look like a Writer. Or anywhere near someone who wasn’t a complete out and out cowering Non-Writer of the worst and weirdest sort.


The bookshop, my haven, my sanctuary, my place of cheer and comfort in a cruel, cruel world, was closed. The library was closed (please see the government for more information). The Cathedral in all its gloriously hailstone lashed beauty was open but the knelling bell made me sway away from the cavernous mouth beneath the devilishly smiling gargoyles. I half expected lightning to strike me down and a coven of witches to turn up, convince me to walk into a big wicker man to keep dry and strike a match…

I am ashamed to say I was more than a bit of a wimp and having bought two scarves in the local charity shop (to give myself more of a writerly air) I came home and whimpered to my husband, who empathised and cwtched, and my dog who told me to grow the hell up and stop being a complete blouse. Or barks to that effect.

 

Being a writer is a constant test for me. I thought I’d be ensconced in a lighthouse making an absolute fortune whilst occasionally taking trips to London to do some shopping, not a person who is always having to put myself out there, talk to people, be myself, answer questions, be myself, actually really talk to real people and really be myself.

I gave myself a good talking to (having bored my husband into the shed, accompanied by the dog and any sense of self-worth I had left) and scoffed a couple of bars of chocolate washed down with a glass of something bubbly (ish) left over from a forgotten occasion and with dubious credentials.

‘For crying out loud Eloise! You are afraid of an empty room! What is it going to do? Eat you with its emptiness? Do you think people will walk through the door and point and laugh at you sitting there in the emptiness? In they’ll come, pointing their fingers and laughing their really loud laughs! She’s supposed to be a WiR! They’ll say. HAHAHAHAHA. WiR my foot.’

Now there are two ways of looking at this. 

I am a completely pathetic nerve-bag of an idiotic screwball nut-job.
I am a professional artist who is offended by an expanse of white unpainted by my beauteous words.

 

I’d go with A.

 

It was time to woman up! I had to take a leap for once.

Jump and then think while I was floating / falling, so in the end and after much frail and disappointing-the-dog quaking, I did this….







 

 

My very own 60 Minute makeover!

And I thought about what I actually want to do with the residency. What I want to get out of it and also what I want to give. And then it just suddenly wasn’t scary any more.

The staff there (who all looked more than a bit nervous when they first met me – probably due to my incessant laughter and hysterical babbling) are lovely.
The town is lovely and dark and mysterious and beautiful.
I’ve been given such a gift with my residency there and I’m going to grab it however much people point and laugh.

Of course once its finished I’ll be buying a lighthouse and throwing banana skins at paparazzi from my balcony but until then I’m creating my St. Davids story.
 

Wish me luck!

And also wish the people who have to put up with me even more luck!
 

Monday 25 April 2016

Writer Friend Benefits by Tamsyn Murray

**Before I write this blog post, I need to disclose that I've just come back from a visit to Chipping Norton Literary Festival, which was so wonderful and so stuffed full of lovely writing friends that I fear I may not be entirely impartial...**

Anyway, I wanted to write a post in celebration of writer buddies. When I first started writing properly in 2008, I had no idea how close and generous the UK writing community was. I don't suppose I really thought about it much - I was too busy trying to write something worth reading. But somehow I stumbled across other writers. Some were published, others (like me) were just starting out but they all had something in common: they were warm and kind.

Fast forward eight years (EIGHT!?!) and I am constantly being amazed by the loveliness of other writers. I met Katie Dale for the first time this month, after a couple of years of knowing each other online, and not only did she collect me from the station before my event in Cambridge but stayed with me for the duration of the signing to keep me company. We talked about how much nicer it was to have a friend there and wondered whether it was an idea for other writers to 'buddy up' for events - after all, who hasn't felt the soul-destroying loneliness of a big pile of books and no one to sign them for?

Bali Rai, Adam Guillain, Charlotte Guillain, Candy Gourlay, John Dougherty, Phoebe the blogger, SF Said
Jo Cotterill, me, Cas Lester and Milly Weaver at ChipLit Fest last Thursday. So many LOVELY writers and friends!

I also recently announced a new middle grade series with Usborne, to be published this July, and I was delighted by the number of retweets and kind mentions on Twitter. It's worth pointing out that a large number of these came from other writers. And at the end of a day, when you want to vent a little about a paragraph that won't go right, or a character who stubbornly refuses to do what you want, who better to listen to you than another writer? They get exactly what you mean.

An editor once said to me that they didn't want to ask another writer for a cover quote because they felt there was an element of competition between the titles - I was amazed at this, because it's usually been my experience that writers are keen to give a leg up to another writer. And I do wonder whether the rest of the publishing industry understands this special relationship writers have with each other: this recognition of a kindred spirit even if you've never met before. It isn't true of every single writer, of course, but it's been the case for me so far.

So before I get even more mushy, why not show a little recognition for your writer friends today? Give them a compliment, or a retweet, or even a hug? Pay it forward and support an event they're doing. With a bit of luck, they'll return the favour and we all win.

I blummin' love you lot. Yes, even you...

Sunday 24 April 2016

On Becoming That Person - Liz Kessler

Here’s a story. It’s set in early 1985. A girl is in her first year at university. Lots of things are changing around her. Politically, times are volatile. Margaret Thatcher is barely halfway through her time as Prime Minister. The miners’ strike is going strong. Clause 28 and the Poll Tax are only a few years away.

Inwardly, things are just as volatile for our protagonist. She’s been feeling confused about herself recently. Feeling things that she can’t quite put into words – or maybe she can, but she’s scared to.

She’s tried dropping hints to a couple of her friends about what she’s going through – but where to start? And does she dare? Sharing her theories about herself feels like a big risk to take on such new friendships.

And then she meets someone new, and the theory becomes reality. She meets a girl, and falls in love. Nothing has ever felt so right – but nothing has ever felt so scary either. The girls sneak around as secretly as they can, hiding their kisses, whispering their feelings, hoping that no one will guess. Of course, people do. Some are understanding. Others – like the girlfriend’s housemate who pours a pint over the girl’s head in the student bar and calls her disgusting – not so much.

The girl feels alone. Who can she turn to? She’s not ready to publicly walk through a door with a big ‘GAYSOC’ label on it yet. So she turns to books. It’s pre-internet, though, remember, so this isn’t an easy task, and involves building up the courage to go to the ‘Lesbian and Gay’ section of the women’s bookshop she’s heard about in London. But she does it. And there, she finds Rubyfruit Jungle, The Well of Loneliness, Patience and Sarah and a few others.



These books might be dated. They might be worlds away from what she’s going through. But at last, she is reading the words of someone who has trodden the path she is trying to navigate. Finally, she is not on her own.

You might have guessed by now, or you might not. (Which, incidentally, is a line from my first book, The Tail of Emily Windsnap, which my brother has always maintained is an allegory for coming out as gay, but which – well, if it is, it was purely accidental on my part.) The girl is me. Was me. The ‘was’ is important because of how different those times were. At least, in many ways they were different, and thank goodness for that.

If you spend a lot of time in certain circles, mixing with crowds who are cool, up-to-date, politically aware, cosmopolitan, you might be forgiven for thinking that we’ve advanced to a point where sexuality is no longer an issue. But that’s not the whole story.

In these advanced times, ‘That’s so gay’ is still commonly used as a derogatory term. In these advanced times, LGBT students and young adults still have one of the highest rates of suicide attempts. In these advanced times, a leading Cardinal in the Vatican feels able to go on record advising parents not to let their children have anything to do with ‘wrong’‘evil’ and ‘intrinsically disordered’ gay people.

So no, we are not there yet. But we're on our way. And I might be biased but I happen to believe that literature - and particularly Young Adult literature - is leading the way. 

Think back to the girl in her hall of residence, hoping no one had seen her come out of her friend’s room late at night, secretly reading books with lesbian characters and hiding them at the back of a drawer, hoping no one shouted insults as she drank in the union bar. Think about what she got from the books she found. The worlds they opened, the strength they gave her. The knowledge passed down from the generation that went before her.

And now think about this. I am that person. I’m not just the girl being called ‘disgusting’ by her girlfriend’s roommate. I am the person ahead of her too, the one further down the path, helping to light the way for the next generation. Because society has changed as much as it has, because my publisher wanted to be part of that change, not just watch it take place outside - my YA novel Read Me Like A Book was published. This month it came out in paperback.




I can hardly even put into words how much it means to that student back in the 1980s. In fact, I can, because I am her. It means the world. And I use that word on purpose. Because I am proud to be part of the world that has made these changes. And I hope to be part of the world that strives to make more, until a girl struggling to come to terms with her sexuality is such a non-issue that the idea of writing a book about it doesn't even make sense.

Buy Read Me Like A Book
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Check out Liz's Website

Saturday 23 April 2016

Shakespeare The Shapeshifter by Steve Gladwin


On the day this blog comes out I have been invited to a wedding. I do not especially want to go as I hardly know the people involved, but it will I'm sure be a joyful occasion, made all the more so by the difficulties they have had to endure,before getting there What is fairly certain is that after a couple of hours of registry office and reception, people will know this couple – Pat and Tony, that bit better.

Life is full of times like this, when we do something new and end up adding to or enhancing our knowledge. It can be a new TV show or film, a new author as recommended by a friend, or taking that last minute, cut - price holiday offer.

We might think we know William Shakespeare as well, for we are constantly shown something new in reading or seeing his plays or in other’s interpretations of them. Of all writers, the poor old Bard has been messed about with more than most and yet always comes up not just smiling but relatively fresh and sometimes even a new kind of new. He can survive the attentions of Blackadder and the two lovey actors played so memorably by the late, great Kenneth Connor and Hugh Paddick, suffering the endless nose tweaking every time someone says the dreaded word ‘Macbeth’. (Sorry). 

Equally we can accept a pretty as a picture interpretation of Romeo and Juliet by Franco Zefirelli, with actors of more or less the right ages, and Baz Luhrmann’s great urban, street smart re-invention of 1988. I saw the latter in a small cinema in Burnham on Sea in Somerset. There were two teenagers behind us, who had only just removed their trainers from behind our heads. As the credits came on, one turned to his mate.

 ‘Ah, you ‘aven’t brought me to see ******** Shakespeare?
‘Yeh but see - after the first couple of minutes - you don’t notice.’’ 




And much to his mate's and even my surprise, you really didn’t. Around that time we were touring R and J for Key Stage 3 in local secondary schools and what chance do you have with your plastic looking knives when most of them have just seen that?
.
Around the same time at an evening performance of the Scottish Play at Bridgwater Arts Centre, I was surprised to see crowds of Years 5 and 6 and their teachers milling around in excitement, waiting for the performance by Cheek by Jowl to begin. But why should I be surprised? At that time I simply hadn’t got it – the fact that anyone can appreciate Shakespeare and no-one can really put their finger on why. To some people its the language - which, we are so often led to assume, he must have crafted so carefully and thoughtfully - so surely it must only be spoken in a suitably beautiful way? Except of course that he couldn't have done, because more than anything he was a jobbing actor, a sharer in first The Lord Chamberlain and later The Kings Men. The scene at the beginning of Olivier’s tub thumping film of Henry the Fifth - where we see a most convincing wooden ‘O’, and the deliberate tripping up of the poor bloke playing the archbishop - or the opening scene of Shakespeare In Love where Geoffrey Rush as Henslowe has his feet toasted by an impatient Tom Wilkinson are probably all too authentic.


Henry Fuseli's uniquely eerie take on Mr and Mrs Scottish Play


Somehow we still convince ourselves that we are seeing is in some way Shakespeare as it would have been performed, which of course is so much nonsense. There is the absence of boy actors alone, or that what we see nowadays is mostly lovingly detailed and imagined rather than the simple representation of the times, more’ two planks and a passion’, than high art. We may gasp and cry for poor drowned Ophelia or the deeply disturbed Lady Scottish Play, but we forget that audience responses in the 16th and 17th centuries would be more like pantomime. Returning kings were cheered, villains were hissed and with poor Ophelia it would be more a case of ‘look at ‘er – poor cow.’

In their own way however, every member of that audience would have cared what he or she saw during that ‘two hour traffic of our stage’ and even sometimes have gone away just a bit changed. It will be equally so at this wedding where two characters who I hardly know, will - for a few hours - be the leading lights on this particular stage. Shakespeare understood this and he did it better than anyone.

Last year I did a ten week online Shakespeare course with Professor Jonathan Bate and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. I lasted nine and a bit weeks before I got learner overkill and bowed out. It wasn’t Shakespeare I grew bored with, but the other online learners analysing every nuance and in several cases setting themselves up as experts with their own merry bands of followers. I enjoyed the course, but mostly it was because of the plays I read, some for the first time, (oh all right, maybe not Anthony and Cleo which Morecambe and Wise and Glenda Jackson did far better!). The others I  
hadn’t read – The Merchant of Venice and The Merry Wives of Windsor - I enjoyed thoroughly and would read again. Above all I responded - as so many people did - to the stories in the plays and the story of the man who wrote them.




And maybe that sums up Shakespeare! He may be a shape-shifter - able to survive any amount of ‘mucking about with’ - but he is also first and foremost a storyteller and boy did he know how to do it. His stuff isn’t all about kings, and queens and lords and ladies. As Jonathan Bate himself says in his revealing book The Genius Of Shakespeare, one of many facts which makes nonsense of the ‘Shakespeare was the Earl of Oxford/Christopher Marlowe, who wasn’t really dead/a lot of monkeys with typewriters/my granny, debate, is that he so clearly spoke not just for the common man or woman, (which he certainly did), but for the ordinary life and experience as much as the extraordinary one.. Shakespeare often wrote about a Pat and a Tony and helped us to know them better. 
Emma Rice, courtesy of www.kneehigh.co.uk

After all it is a wonderful time for us Shakespeare fans - what with all the plans the good old Beeb, (leave it alone - it's fine as it is!) - has for the Bard's birthday. More exciting for me is the appointment of Emma Rice, former director of Kneehigh Theatre Company as the new director of The Globe. Emma directed and starred in the best piece of theatre I have ever seen, Theatre Alibi's "Sea of Faces', which I saw at Bridgwater Arts Centre in 1997. It was based on the finding of a collection of old family photos on a rubbish heap. Out of these lost faces Emma and Dan Jamieson created the most wonderful magical and often tender two hander which brought all of these lost people back to life.
Shakespeare made us care too and most of the time he ensures that a character - whether they be a king and queen or a Pat and Tony - is never just a 'face'. That is one of the reasons I'm happy to raise a glass not just to Pat and Tony, but to the man who would surely have appreciated their story. 














New Globe Theatre director Emma Rice on her first season and a whole lot more.

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jan/05/shakespeares-globe-emma-rice-if-anybody-bended-gender 

I found Shakespeare again on Future Learn, where you can find a whole lot more besides

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses

Friday 22 April 2016

Shoulder to shoulder with Tommy Donbavand - Nicola Morgan

Many of you know that our friend in the children's writing world, Tommy Donbavand, is fighting cancer. Yes, I am using the word "fighting" knowingly. I know that many people rightly take issue with the way we use words like "fight" and battle" in association with cancer but not with other illnesses. It's right to quibble about words - words are important and they reflect and can also define and refine our emotions. But it is the word Tommy uses - and he talks about that here - and, damn it, he can call it whatever he wants and we should call his encounter with cancer a fight if that's what he feels about it. Personally, I don't see any problem with using these words for cancer; the problem is that we don't - and should - use such words for other illnesses that people go through treatment and adjust their lives for.

Anyway, I digress.

I've never met Tommy in person but it's easy to feel you've met him even if you haven't. And I should have met him: he joined the committee of CWIG, the Children's Writers and Illustrators Group of the Society of Authors, back in November. But he wasn't able to make the first committee meeting. And then, cancer struck.

I'm really looking forward to meeting him when he has won this war but he has some beyond-tough battles to go through first. I know that serried ranks of good people, children's writers, readers and a vast army of others, are behind Tommy as he faces this tricksy enemy. I don't know if it's OK to say that we are "shoulder to shoulder" because, however hard we try to understand what it's like, we aren't experiencing what he is experiencing. But I want him to know that we are with him, as much as we can be.

And there are things we can do to help.

1. We can read his blog. It's extraordinarily open, vivid, searing, mind-opening. Important. We can leave comments there, showing our support.

2. We can do our very best to enter that very human and absolutely crucial mind-state of empathy. Reading his blog helps us in that. Reading helps empathy in deep and powerful ways. When writing works - and Tommy is a highly skilled writer, so his would - it allows the reader in some way to experience or mirror the mental state of the writer. That may be painful for a reader, but if we can do it, I think that strikes a powerful blow for humanity.

(Please note: although I'm against the over-use of trigger warnings, I do completely get that some people really may not be in a position to cope with reading about Tommy's treatment and feelings. If you feel you can't, for personal reasons, don't feel bad. You can still do the next two things!)

3. We can spread the word about his TOTALLY brilliant idea: virtual creative writing lessons for schools. As he's said - and as his great friend, Barry Hutchison, explains here - losing his income from schools events and writing workshops has been a massive extra pressure for him and his family, and will continue to be so because the treatment will damage his voice for some time. Schools, this is a huge opportunity for you and I think Tommy's offer is immensely generous. You won't regret it!

4. We might be able to support financially, as Barry explains here.

5. We can help keep him smiling. I chickened out of this yesterday. I had to choose a Get Well card for the CWIG committee to sign. You've no idea the problems my over-thinking, neurotic brain had with this simple task! Many cards are hopelessly trivial and fluffy. Some I felt were too flowery or wishy-washy and old-fashioned. Some talked about feeling "under the weather". Loads had pictures of thermometers in teddy bears' mouths. I wanted one that not only didn't underestimate what Tommy is going through but also reflected his character - or what I believe I know of it from his social media presence. So I bought one I thought would make him laugh. A really silly, bonkers one.

Then ... I chickened out, because I stupidly worried that making him laugh wasn't "appropriate", that it was disrespectful, that it wasn't right if coming from the Society of Authors. So I bought another one, brilliant sunflowers, uplifting, I thought. But not funny. We've signed that and sent it.

But no: forget serious and respectful. How about trying to make him smile? So, here is the one I didn't send:


Go, Tommy! Beat the hell out of the enemy and Get Well Soon!

Thursday 21 April 2016

Nearly there - by Anne Booth

It is the 20th April - so tomorrow is my blog post date. I am nearly there.

I am writing my third middle grade novel and need to finish the first draft this month - after setbacks because of illness I am nearly there.

The book is set in Lindisfarne, which I have visited and stayed on lots of times and really love.  I had hoped to return there whilst writing my first draft but got ill and had to cancel. I will now be going there in May for a couple of days, and hope to be able to just add a sprinkling of details to the first draft and check I have local details right. But I will have to hand in the first draft before that so I am working from memories and imagination and books. In my mind, I am nearly there.



A friend told me that a vicar she knows says that often, when he is preaching a sermon on a particular subject, the week before he is due to preach it he has to deal with something relevant to it in his own life. Amongst other things my new novel deals with the problem of knowing what you really believe and being true to yourself , and coping with exposure and possible negative fall out. And in thinking about this I have had a very strange experience this past week with a local campaign to stop a school being made into an academy, and I have had to face the things I am putting my heroine through - I have had to try to be brave and tell people openly who live near me what I really think and cope with them not agreeing with me, and I have had to experience anxiety about this and worrying what they think of me afterwards. It's not quite what happens to my heroine in my story...but it's nearly there.

So I am trying my best, but as an introvert writer who has not had great health these last months, the whole campaigning thing is very tiring, and today I got so anxious and panicked about it all I realise I need to get away as I am getting a bit overwhelmed. I have done lots and lots for the campaign now and found lots of relevant articles and information and shared them, and written posts, but it is now up to other parents to do their bit. I need to finish my book. And so I am going away. I remembered I bid in an auction to raise money for Nepal, and I had won some days at Philippa Lockwood's writers' retreat. So I facebooked her today and I am so lucky as she has some days free and I am going away for four nights. And it is by the sea, so I can imagine I am on Lindisfarne, and I asked her what seabirds there are and it seems there are terns and curlews and others on Lindisfarne, and I think, when I get there, I think I will feel I am almost there.

And I am going on Friday, so I am nearly there.

http://www.peacehavenbandb.com/retreats--contact.html

But I need to write the story as well as I can, so that people who read about Eve, and William, my characters, and meet them on Lindisfarne.. will feel not that they are almost there, but they actually ARE there with them, experiencing their emotions, seeing what they see, feeling, hearing, touching, smelling what they smell, living the story with them

I'm definitely not yet at that stage with my story.  It's ever so hard but I want to get there. I hope my agent's advice and a skilful editor will help. I hope I am nearly there.

Wednesday 20 April 2016

Talismans and Emblems - Joan Lennon

I love reading about writers' quirks, superstitions and rituals.  I like to think I have some myself, but I'm too inconsistent to be really good at it - pesky life keeps getting in the way, and then I forget, and then ... But one thing I do do, quite a lot, is have an object that symbolizes the book I'm working on, that I like to have around when I'm writing.  For Silver Skin, I had two:

a broken Stone Age spearhead from Belize, brought back by a son who'd spotted it just lying beside a path deep in the rain forest

and

an amber necklace that I bought in Norfolk while attending a FCBG conference about a gazillion years ago. 

Silver Skin is a YA sci-fi/historical/adventure/romance, mostly set in Stone Age Orkney, at Skara Brae, in the time just before it disappeared.  The spearhead may be from the other side of the world, but holding it in my hand gave me a frisson of connection to another time.  And there is a much more spectacular version of the amber necklace in the book (though I can't say who's wearing it as that'd be a spoiler).



So now it's your turn.  Do you have talismans or emblems for any of your books?  And if so, indulge our curiosity and let us know what they are! 



Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.
Silver Skin website.

Tuesday 19 April 2016

What is Freedom? - Lucy Coats

Imagine this. You are a performance poet and comedian. You write a poem smearing Francois Hollande, the French President. There are many such poems, and this is, after all a free country. You perform the poem. People laugh. And then it becomes much less funny. President Hollande takes offence. He is insulted. He complains to David Cameron, and threatens to take you to court. Now a prosecution is probably going to be launched against you, with Mr Cameron's approval. You face going to prison for five years. And all because of a little comic poem you wrote. PEN International estimates that such 'insult laws' still exist in no fewer than 12 EU countries, including France. So insulting President Hollande is definitely a risk.

The thing is, this may seem like a ridiculous plot for a novel. But it isn't. It has actually happened to a young German comedian called Jan Böhmermann, who wrote a poem insulting President Erdogan of Turkey. 

Böhmermann was trying to go one 'better' than an another ditty insulting Erdogan, which the Turkish government made a complaint about earlier this year.

"What I'm about to read is not allowed. If it were to be read in public - that would be forbidden in Germany." 
Böhmermann said, before he read his "smear poem" out loud on public television.

It wasn't a very nice poem at all. But the thing is, poets, writers and comedians have been insulting politicians from time immemorial. Think of the long and honourable tradition of nursery rhymes. Hidden within them are all sorts of sly digs at royalty and politicians. Poets document, they hold up hidden things to the light, they protest - and yes, they use humour to throw insults at politicians and pop stars alike. This is what freedom of speech is about. Unless, apparently, you live in Germany. I find that really worrying - and even more worrying that Angela Merkel and the rest of the EU leaders (including Mr Cameron) are not standing up for the right to freedom of speech and telling Turkey where to get off. I am not going to go into the politics of this here - all I will say is that our freedom to speak our minds, to make comedy, to say what we think, even if it offends, should be an inalienable right.

In 1770, Voltaire wrote the following in a letter (not the usual quote, but the correct one):
“I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.”
I agree with him. That's why I'm going to join in with The Spectator's 'President Erdogan Offensive Poetry' campaign. I'm not particularly keen on Douglas Murray - in fact I find him annoying in the extreme. But that's not the point. Freedom of speech is the point. And for that I will stand up and shout beside anyone.

Out now: 
Cleo 2: Chosen (UKYA historical fantasy about the teenage Cleopatra VII) 
Cleo '[a] sparkling thriller packed with historical intrigue, humour, loyalty and poison.' Amanda Craig, New Statesman
Also out:  Beasts of Olympus series "rippingly funny" Publishers Weekly US starred review, nominated for Beehive Award
Lucy's Website - Twitter - Facebook - Instagram

Lucy is represented by Sophie Hicks at The Sophie Hicks Agency

Monday 18 April 2016

Celebrating 20 Years - Linda Strachan


I would like to celebrate and share some of my journey with you, all those who are interested in books and writing, who have helped to make this such an amazing 20 years.  

It is still a bit of a wonder to me, but it is 20 years and over 60 books, since I was first published in 1996.  Like everything else in life, there have been ups and downs and I have certainly had my fair share of rejections!  But when I started I had no idea how exciting it was going to be, how many interesting people I would meet or what opportunities being a writer would offer. 

Unlike many of the writers I know, I never had any aspirations to become a writer.  When I was a child I had never met a 'real live author', or any dead ones for that matter (in case you were wondering).  


  Photograph Brian McNeil
I enjoyed reading, not because anyone said I should, but because I loved stories. 

I read a lot of books as a child and I recall going to Stockbridge Library in Edinburgh, a wonderful old red brick building. Accompanied by my best friend, Gillian, We regularly walked down to the library and we would often stop at a little sweet shop near by, on the way home.
I never thought about who had written the books I read, what their lives were like or that they might be ordinary people. The idea that writing could be something I could do or even that it was a job, did not enter my head at all.  

People come into writing through lots of different routes and my route to publication involved another library (useful things these libraries!!). #savelibraries. I won a short story competition at our local library (in East Lothian) that I had entered just for fun. Winning that competition made me realise that perhaps writing was something I could do, to some extent, and that encouraged me to look for a correspondence course on writing. With three young children it was the only option. I checked out a few courses and the only one that seemed remotely interesting was on 'writing for children', the rest looked incredibly serious and boring.


Ginn & Company- Zoola Series

Halfway through the course I sent off a submission to an educational publisher who liked my story but rejected it with the best rejection ever,
she said she could not use my story, but her colleague would be in touch with me.  A day later I got a phone call asking if I would like to submit ideas for a series of 8 books about the same characters.  I was delighted, if a little overwhelmed.

The series was aimed at children who really struggled with their reading, and it needed to have very simple text but with exciting stories.  My ideas about the adventures of a boy who meets an alien girl, Zoola,  who is green and gooey and can turn into anything she sees, were accepted and were published in the spring of 1996.


Since then I've had the opportunity to write a wide variety of books and work with many different publishers, editors and illustrators.
My books have been translated in different languages and I've written many educational books that are used in schools all over the world.



Sally J Collins. Illustrator
In 2005 I was asked to write a series of picture books with a Scottish theme and had to opportunity to work with a good friend of mine, the talented illustrator Sally J Collins for 10 wonderful years.  This became the Hamish McHaggis Series and with 10 books in the series, teachers notes, a Hamish McHaggis  costume and a cuddly soft toy, Hamish has touched the hearts of a lot of young fans.


Never without a challenge, in 2008 I had three books published in the same year, a book about writing, Writing for Children; the 8th in the Hamish McHaggis series, Hamish McHaggis and the Lost Prince; and I had long wanted try my hand at  writing for young adults. In 2008 my first YA novel, Spider was published.
 It was a very busy year.


I have to admit that I was rather nervous about writing YA and how it would be received, but Spider went on to win the Catalyst Book Award and it was followed by two more young adult gritty crime novels, Dead Boy Talking and Don't Judge me.
Quite a change from cuddly Hamish!

It's been an incredible 20 years during which I've met some amazing people, many of them fabulously talented writers. Especially the excellent SAS (Scattered Authors Society) and my Flatcap friends, (you know who you are!)

 I soon discovered that most writers who write for children are generous people, both with their time and in sharing their experience, and I am always keen to pay that forward in encouraging new writers.

I've had the opportunity to travel widely both home and abroad sharing my books and stories.
There have been workshops and school visits, festivals, conferences and quizzes.  I've talked about writing and run workshops in prisons, out in the countryside, and in residential retreats. I've been involved in parades, on radio and TV, written articles and blogs.

I've loved working with children, teenagers, students of all ages and adult writers from all walks of life and from many different countries.  It has been a privilege and I am eternally grateful to all my readers and those who have invited me to speak or who have come to my workshops.  But most of all I have loved having the opportunity to write, and lose myself in the lives of my characters.

When I was very young I was told by a teacher that I had no imagination. She was wrong, of course, we all know everyone has imagination and it grows as we use it.

Since I started writing it seems to have been spilling out of me in all directions.  I am always ready for new challenges and if you want to know where my imagination is about to lead me next...  watch this space!







---------------------------------------------------


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

Linda is currently Chair of the SOAiS - Society of Authors in Scotland 

Her latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me . 
She is Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh.

Her best selling series Hamish McHaggis is illustrated by Sally J. Collins who also illustrated Linda's retelling of Greyfriars Bobby.

website:  www.lindastrachan.com
blog:  Bookwords