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My name is Tamsyn and I am an introvert.

It took me a long time to realise this, mostly because I am also (for want of a better phrase) a bit of a show-off. I used to put my hand up when I knew the answer at school. I do am-dram, which involves singing and dancing and acting, sometimes in lead roles, in front of hundreds of people. Since I became a writer, the performer in me has been even busier, because what are school visits if not extended performances? I can do interviews for TV, and smile and chat to people I've only just met in social situations, make small talk without any apparent paroxysms of terror. How can I do all of that and not be an extrovert?

It took one of those lists you see popping up on Facebook every now and then to teach me the truth about my nature. Things You Should Know About Introverts*, it said. And I thought that as a writer, I knew plenty of introverted people so maybe it was worth a read.

Point 1 made me pause: We need to recharge alone. I do, I thought. In fact, there's nothing I cherish more than a bit of alone time (although alone time = working time for me because alone time is a rare commodity) and I constantly feel I don't have enough of it. And certainly after an event of some kind, what I yearn for most is to be on my own. Hmmm.

Point 2: We don’t hate being around people, but we probably hate crowds. I thought about this for a while because I wouldn't say I hate crowds but I don't love them either. Unless it's a festival crowd, in which case I love them all. But I do quite often feel overwhelmed by crowds - the urge to go and find a quiet place to sit is strong (or sometimes even to go home) and I get around this by starting random conversations with people. This is a trick I have learned and I almost always enjoy the conversation.

Number 3: We don’t mind silence.This one depends on the silence. I had a boss once who used to come and sit in my office and say nothing. Those were not good silences and I would say anything to fill them (which resulted in more silences because I had said something stupid.) But there's nothing wrong with a companionable silence.

And point 4: Just because we are introverted doesn’t mean we are shy. Very few people would describe me as shy. But by the time I read this one I was starting to realise that there was a good possibility I was an introvert.

Number 5: We can turn on an extroverted personality when necessary, but it is especially draining. This was a clincher for me - I know I do this. When I'm in a crowd and I want to talk to people because I feel uncomfortable (point 2) I switch on. Or for a performance. Actually, being extroverted is a lot like acting, except that I'm just being a much brighter version of myself instead of playing another character. And afterwards I am invariably exhausted.

Point 6 was: We aren’t judging you. And again, this depends on the situation. If you are supporting UKIP then I am judging you pretty hard.


7 made me cringe in shame because I know I do this: We secretly love it when you cancel plans. It doesn't mean I don't like you, it just means I don't have to be switched on.

Number 8: We can get very wrapped up in our own thoughts. AKA Daydreaming. Thinking time. Plotting. So I'm not ignoring you, honestly. I might just have forgotten you are there.

At number 9 we had: We can be pretty bad at connecting. And I wondered about this because I think I am good at connecting. Then I realised it's because I am good at listening - I like hearing other people's stories. And as luck would have it, listening means I have to talk less.

In at number 10 was: We don’t like to hang around. I decided this one depended on the situation. If I'm comfortable somewhere then it can be hard to get rid of me. But in a crowd situation when I've been switched on for a while, an unguarded exit can be too difficult to resist.

The last point was: We have strong opinions. And I decided this wasn't an introvert or an extrovert thing, because almost everyone I know has strong opinions about some things. Writers in particular have strong opinions - why else would we write?

So on balance, I decided that I'm an introvert. And it's nice to know finally that it's OK to want to be alone, to enjoy being on my own. Many of my writer friends are great to be around because they know how that feels, because they are introverts too. But ultimately, I'm not sure it really matters what you are, except that it feels good to know even when I'm alone, I'm not really.


*Things You Should Know About Introverts taken from http://playfullytacky.com/

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Last week, I had a very sad experience. We found a stray cat in the woods and brought it home, hoping to find its owner. The cat was horribly thin but very friendly and I was certain he belonged to someone, although he had clearly been lost for some time. So we did what we could - fed him, stroked him, nicknamed him Huck and the next day, took him to the vet to see if he had a microchip.

The vet had bad news: Huck wasn't chipped. Even worse, he needed a raft of expensive tests and treatment, which I couldn't afford on my own. So I put a shout out on Twitter and Facebook, asking people to donate if they could to Help Huck to recover from his ordeal and get back to his family. Many, many people donated and we smashed the £500 target in less than twenty-four hours. It didn't take long before I noticed something: almost all of the people who gave money were writers. Now you might think that there's nothing so very unexpected about that - I know a lot of writers, after all. But I think there's more to it than that. I have a few thousand followers on Twitter, several hundred Facebook friends. The proportion of people donating from that pool was very small, especially when you factor in retweets and shares. And they were mostly writers. Lovely, lovely writers.

I think it's because as writers, we empathise. In Huck's case, we empathised with the owners, searching in vain for their lost cat. We imagined he was our cat, lost and scared, and hoped that someone kind might find him and do what they could to help him. Some of us put ourselves in Huck's place, lonely and hungry. And because we could imagine ourselves in some or all of those situations, we were moved to do something to help. And we wanted a happy ending, the one where Huck got better and was reunited with his family. We wanted that so much.

Ultimately, the kindest thing for Huck was to let him go to sleep one last time, without fear and hunger. I am still desperately sad about that. But one of the things that helped me do this very difficult thing was the messages I received from the people who'd donated. Eloquent, heartfelt messages of support, reassuring me that I had done the right thing, thanking me for caring and pledging support to my idea of using any left over donations to create a small bursary for any owner who was struggling to pay for their pet's care. Some people donated even after I'd told them Huck had gone, wanting to help another animal in Huck's name. These people were writers too.

It's proof (if proof were needed) that writers are the best people. Writers empathise to make their characters and stories work. Of those people donors who were not writers, I am willing to take a gamble that they are readers, because readers make the best people too. And it's why I will argue and argue that children need to have access to books, need to be readers for pleasure. Reading teaches empathy and empathy makes the world a better, kinder place. In fact, we all need to be readers.

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Psst...PSSSSST!

You...yes, you...come here, I've got a confession to make. I've been a naughty girl, see. I've been thinking bad thoughts. I have been working out the best ways to break the law. And last weekend, I met up with a bunch of people who were doing exactly the same thing. I went to the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate.

First of all, can I say that there can be no finer place for contemplating murder than Harrogate. It's genteel and gorgeous and manicured to within an inch of its life. If you were to bump someone off, I feel the chief concern would be not getting blood on the geraniums. But we weren't there to admire the blooms or take in a cream tea in Bettys Tea Rooms (although naturally, I did) - we were there to consider dark deeds and twisted motives. We were there to bring on a crime-wave.

TOP Crime Festival is a great mixture of readers and writers. Because I don't write crime, I was technically there as a reader and I certainly picked up a lot of new books but I actually went as a writer, to see how other authors put their stories together. I'm a great believer in being inspired by fellow writers and I knew from the very first talk I intended that I'd made a good choice in coming to Harrogate. Not only did I flesh out my crime novel idea (well you knew that was coming, didn't you?) but I learned a lot too. Denise Mina taught me about Narrative Inevitability (the way the story arcs towards an inescapable conclusion), Natalie Haynes explained that Oedipus Rex was the first whodunnit? SJ Watson revealed the meaning of the Rubber Ducky moment, where an antagonist confesses that the reason he is a cold-blooded serial killer is because his mother took his rubber ducky away when he was six. And I know way more than I need to about the effects of rats on corpses and the inner workings of saunas.

One of my biggest light-bulb moments came during JK Rowling's interview as Robert Galbraith. In her discussion with Val McDermid, they touched upon why whichever book you are writing feels like your worst story ever, and why the book you want to write next is so enticing. And I was amazed to discover that JK Rowling herself suffers from the same insecurities and fears we do. I frequently tell my writing students that every writer I know fears they might never write another book again. At TOP Crime Festival, I discovered that it really is true: even the most successful among us struggle with self-doubt and the conviction that our WIP is a steaming pile of poo.

Now I'm back home and I'm still thinking about breaking the law. The difference is that I know exactly how I'm going to do it now. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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It struck me recently that writers are a bit like magpies. We look out for snippets of pretty shiny things to appropriate for our stories - a line of dialogue here, a character description there - and secrete them away until we need them. Then, when we're ready, we gather all our scraps up and weave them together to make something out of them. And I decided that this process reminded me a little of nest building.

Think about it: we build the structure first - these are the hard twigs, the acts and the scenes. Sometimes the twigs need to be broken a bit to make them fit but that's OK. Once our twigs are all knitted together, we add feathers and bits of moss - the characters, settings, description and dialogue. We make the story a good place to be. It can take several attempts to get the feathers in exactly the right place so that we achieve the effect of making the nest user so comfortable that they forget they are in a nest at all. And lastly, we add our shiny borrowed snippets - the decoration that sparkles and twists in the wind and makes our nest stand out from all the other nests.

I freely admit to being a magpie. In fact, I have a whole notebook of stolen snippets. Last night, on the train, I borrowed an old soldier who was on his way home. I stole sneaky little glances and captured every detail about him, from his spit and polish shiny boots to the brass buttons on his cuffs and the regiment badge on his jacket.

So come on, writers, admit your true nature and tell me what you've taken recently for your nests. Magpies love company.

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First, a confession: I broke my own rule. As you can clearly see, my giraffes are wearing scarves. But I can justify my mistake - where I live, 99% of the giraffes could wear scarves without a single problem. It's only when you go towards the Midlands and the North that giraffes might get a bit of stick for their accessories. Why? Because in a southern accent, giraffe and scarf can be made to rhyme. In a northern accent (see also American), they can't. And before you know it, you have hoards of disgruntled parents (OK, two so far) complaining that your rhyming picture book DOESN'T ACTUALLY RHYME.

What I should have done, of course, is put my giraffes in the bath. That rhyme works no matter what accent you use (although I'm struggling somewhat with South African). And I suppose that's the point of this cautionary tale - if you're grabbed by the unshakeable urge to rhyme, make sure it works universally (don't worry about Mars - they don't understand the concept of rhyming there). In fact, I try to deter my students from writing rhyming picture books - they're a hard sell because obviously publishers need to ensure a text translates to as many territories as possible and rhymes rarely translate well into other languages. In the case of Snug As A Bug, they don't translate at all - the only co-editions of this little picture book are US and Australia. Even then, I get tentative enquiries from parents in California asking if I can suggest a way to make geeraff rhyme with scarff. I mumbled a bit about British charm and hid for three days.

So learn from my mistake, all you picture book writers: if you must make your picture rhyme, never put your giraffe in a scarf.

You're welcome.

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I'm not often lost for words (obviously a jolly good thing in a writer) but tonight I was asked a question about writing I didn't know how to answer. As you might already know, I teach Writing For Children at City University and we're approaching the end of the course, where the students are preparing to submit a piece of writing to me for feedback. And this evening, one of my students told me he had been reading a how to write book and one of the things it had apparently advised was to avoid 'friendly uncle' type characters in your stories as these could be perceived as immunising children against the risks of potential child abuse. Should he cut the mad professor character he had in his story, my student wanted to know, in case it was taken the wrong way and it went against him when being read by agents and editors?

My first reaction (after a startled, 'What?') was disbelief that any writing book would advise this. Then I started to think about it and I could kind of see what the book was getting at but still found it mind-boggling that anyone would come away from any of the children's book I've read with that thought uppermost in their mind. There are hundreds (thousands) of innocent characters in books whose actions could be misconstrued if you chose to see them in that light - does that mean that they shouldn't exist? Or is it offensive to friendly uncles and men in books everywhere to tar them with this horrible brush?

I failed to come up with a satisfactory answer to the question, partly because I was struggling to get my head around the idea. I advised the student not to get too bogged down in that kind of advice - to write the story and the characters the way he sees them in his head and not allow them to be subject to the projected interpretations of adults. I also said it might be a nice idea to make his nutty professor a woman, since it's a reasonable subversion of a well-used trope and side-steps the whole issue. But I walked away uneasy. Obviously, we have a responsibility to our young audience when we write. How far should we take that responsibility?

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I don't know about you but one of the things I like about being a writer is the amount of time I get to spend alone. Ever since I was a little girl, reading my way through the local children's library, I've been comfortable with my own company (never truly alone, because you aren't with a book) and now I'm mostly grown up, I'm still OK with not talking to another living soul for several days. Not that I get to go several days usually, but on the rare occasion it happens, I don't feel lonely.

So when I heard (last year) about a February meeting of children's writers, some of whom I knew online and others I'd heard of, I wasn't immediately sure I wanted to go. But one of my writing resolutions for this year is to socialise with fellow writers more, so I booked up and promptly forgot about it.



The grounds were covered in these little beauties

The weekend of the meet up arrived and last Saturday morning, I found myself looking for excuses not to go - I'd had a chest infection I wasn't completely over, it was snowing, the baby needed me, the dog needed me and (scraping the bottom of the barrel) surely my husband needed me for something. Once again, I reminded myself that I was meant to be being more sociable and set off, hoping for friendly faces when I arrived at the snowdrop-bedecked Orton Hall in Peterborough. Of course, I needn't have worried - children's writers are famously lovely and the ones I was spending the next day and a half with were no exception. Funny, friendly and so generous with their experience and expertise, they were a pleasure to be around. I learned a lot but, more importantly, I was reminded that while you can talk to friends and family about the business of writing, no one understands you better than another writer. Over the course of the day, and then again over dinner, I talked to a lot of lovely people, all of whom knew what it was to receive a flurry of rejections, or get a character just exactly right, or just worry that you're RUBBISH. On Sunday, some of them very generously shared the ways in which they'd improved their social networking or helped sales or thought outside the box and introduced new ways of working.

At lunchtime on Sunday I made my way home, feeling inspired and refreshed and a little bit better equipped to deal with the ups and downs of writing. Of course, it will come as no surprise to any of you when I say that the brilliant group of writers I met was the SAS. Thanks for making a virgin Sassie so welcome, I'm so glad I went - bring on next year!

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I have a deadline. It's one those scary, imminent ones, the kind that makes my stomach contract every time I think of it. The only solution is to sit at my computer and write. I know I'll enjoy it once I get going. So why will I do almost anything to avoid doing the actual writing?

What I need is something to stick my bottom to my chair until I've done my daily quota (currently around 2000 words; tomorrow, it'll be 2200, because I haven't managed the required amount today). But with so much distraction out there (see Liz Kessler's post yesterday for details), how am I supposed to concentrate long enough to write? I don't have access to an isolated cottage in the woods\by the sea\in the mountains. What I really need is to catch Stickybumitis.

The symptoms of Stickybumitis are very similar to its sister disease, Stickybackitis, where sufferers cannot get out of bed, usually in the morning. With Stickybumitis, you're confined to your seat and can't spend thirty minutes sorting out washing when you should be writing. If you switch off the internet, you're not tempted to Google the people you used to fancy at school and even solitaire gets boring after six or seven hours. Faced with no other source of entertainment, you'll write.

Of course, the main problem with Stickybumitis is that it leads to complications. In many cases, it causes another condition - Writer's Arse. The only cure for that is exercise, which leads you away from your desk and you're right back where you started. But it's a chance I'm willing to take. Where do I catch Stickybumitis?

What extreme lengths are you prepared to go to for writing? And is your bottom print expanding as a result?

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Socks: Not just for feet?

Unless you've been living under a rock (or an impending deadline), you probably know about the latest scandal to hit the publishing world: sock puppets. Not the innocent, Sid the Snake variety but the name given to alter-egos used anonymously online, in this case by authors (and their friends and relations) to bump up the number of cracking reviews on sites like Amazon and Goodreads. The use of sock puppets by writers has become big news recently and the process goes something like this:



1) Create a bogus account on the site of your choice, preferably using a name which people will not link back to you. I expect you will need to place at least one order on Amazon as you can't write reviews otherwise, but that's hardly a problem in these days of 99p ebooks, is it?

2) Write a five star review of your book using this account: 'This is a masterpiece, like Stephen King only better, everyone should read this book, it changed my life' etc. (You could write a four star review if you wanted, to try to alleviate suspicion, but why risk bringing down your average?)

3) Get your family and friends to do the same, using real or pretend accounts depending on whether they can be linked back to you.

4) Repeat for every book you have written.

5) Quote these glowing reviews on Twitter, Facebook, your blog and anywhere else you think people might conceivably see them.

6) Start to believe your own hype.

Now, I'm not advocating any of that but I can kind of see how an author might be fooled into sticking their hand up a sock's bottom and wiggling it around a bit in the name of creating a buzz. Times are tough, sales might be hard to come by and word of mouth has to be kick-started somehow. What's the harm in adding a fake review here or there? Your work is worth it, right?

Wrong. In adding even one bogus review, an author devalues the whole user review system. Readers won't be able to tell which reviews are genuine and which aren't, so will discount the whole lot. In fact, some readers are already doing that, which is a real shame because the majority of reviews are genuine and honest, if not always flattering. Speaking personally, I wouldn't feel the same if I knew a percentage of the comments about my books were a lie (whether I manufactured them myself or not) - I'd feel like a fraud. But obviously not all authors feel like that or sock puppet accounts wouldn't exist for that purpose, and businesses built on the idea wouldn't be making money.

Some authors don't stop at writing their own reviews, though. For the dedicated sock puppeteer, there are extra steps you can take to ensure your books are well regarded. These are:

7) Look up the novels of your contemporaries. Give them one star reviews.

8) Pursue online reviewers who have dared to disparage your books. Question their credentials to hold an opinion and, while you're at it, their intelligence. Locate their other reviews and do your best to discredit those. Show them who the superior human being is.

9) Join online forums and talk about other writers in an unflattering way.

I wish I was making this up - sadly, all of the above has actually been done. I'm not going to name and shame anyone here (and it's not anyone from children's publishing, as far as I know) but if you want to know more, you could look up @jeremyduns on Twitter and follow the story there. The CWA has issued a statement about it and I expect more professional writing associations will do the same. Because it's bad enough that people are faking reviews, but panning other writers? Authors know how much an awful review stings - why selfishly inflict that on someone else?

I can't quite believe I'm writing this but it seems some people have forgotten the rules where reviews are concerned. So here's a reminder:

1) Never respond to a negative review (this goes for friends and family members too. Just don't do it)
2) Don't make up your own (Duh)
3) Don't write awful reviews of your peers' novels (Double duh)

But I don't need to tell you that, right?

No sock puppets were harmed in the making of this blog post

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YA books - sadly missed...

I heard a bone-chilling rumour the other day - Young Adult books were on their way out. The bubble which has made it the fastest growing area of children's publishing in recent years has burst and the big booksellers are wary about ordering large stocks of upcoming titles (unless it's a no-brainer - you didn't need to be Mystic Meg to have predicted that The Hunger Games would fly off the shelves this summer). Publishers are becoming more nervous than ever about taking a chance on something new - some of them, like Frances Lincoln, have closed their YA list altogether - and I hear that contemporary romance is as about as welcome as a dose of glandular fever. Bloggers are tired of paranormal romances (see here), which have been the big success story of the last few years, thanks to those pesky bloodsuckers and their werewolf 'mates'; they're starting to question the proliferation of these titles. And prizes specifically for YA writers, such as the Booktrust Teenage Prize, seem to be falling by the wayside. All in all, there are worrying signs that the whispers might be true: YA is gasping for breath and may not last the night.

It was certainly news to me. In the US, YA appears going from strength to strength. New titles are constantly appearing, featuring a rich diversity of genres and sub-genres. Here in the UK, fellow writers are working on exciting new novels for teens, blissfully unaware that they might not be of interest to publishers. The audience is still there - a lot of teenagers love to read, as any author making school visits will tell you. And perhaps bloggers aren't tired of YA novels, they're just a bit jaded with a constant diet of paranormal romance. I can understand that - wouldn't you be, if it was all you were offered to digest? Let's not forget, though, that there's heaps more to YA than vampire books and publishers like Hot Key Books are investing heavily in building a strong and varied teenage list. So why the rumours? I don't want to come across as paranoid but does everyone else in the publishing world know something authors don't?

Personally, I think we can hold off on the wailing and gnashing of teeth just yet - there are positive signs that YA books will defy the naysayers. New awards are appearing - the Romantic Novelists Association gave its first ever prize for YA Romance this year, won by Caroline Green's Dark Ride. Regional prizes across the UK continue to celebrate books for teens. Websites like UKYA are springing up, doing their best to pimp the brilliant diversity that the British teen market has to offer and lift it out of the shadow of our American cousins. Independent booksellers (or at least the ones I know) continue to be supportive of new and existing authors and enthusiastic about future titles. And anyone who has been into a Waterstones or WH Smiths recently knows that their YA selection is usually vast, if often skewed in favour of books coated in black and featuring sharp-toothed co

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