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Sometimes, I can't seem to write fiction. I blame the fact that I've been writing almost only non-fiction for a couple of years - and have just agreed to do some more. When I try to get back into writing fiction, something feels dead inside. My brain feels like an imagination-free zone. And that is a desolate thing, like a moonscape without the moonbeams.

In October, I am going to write fiction. I am. For a long time now I have had that month set firmly aside, event-free, non-fiction-free. I've put in place all sorts of mechanisms to make this happen. I've told lots of people that I'm doing it. I've told my agent that I'm doing it. I've turned down paid work and told people that they cannot give me a deadline which involves me doing anything for them in October. At all.

And yet (or perhaps therefore) I'm very afraid that my imagination won't wake up, won't do its job, won't show me moonbeams.

Or I was until this morning.

A daughter phoned. My daughters may be in their twenties but a daughter (or son, presumably) is never too old to cause instant fear in a parent's heart when her number comes up on your phone. Especially at one of those times of day when daughters aren't prone to phone for a general chat.

Instantly, even before I heard her voice, my imagination was running riot. In that split second, this imagination had no words - it was all a rush of adrenaline and cortisol and raw, nameless dread. Emotion. Then her voice, "Don't worry, I'm fine." OMG, she's not fine. You don't randomly say you're fine unless you are about to say something not fine. And in the few seconds it took her to explain what the thing was, my imagination had, quite literally, taken me through visions of death, illness, job loss, burglary, injury (including actual details involving a bone), and a complicated combination of emergency services.

And after all this had calmed down (because she was, in actual fact, fine) I realised the key to imagination: emotion.

So, my October - and any time I or you want to write fiction - has to allow and encourage and nurture and conjure emotion. Maybe I'll read a poem each morning before I write; maybe I'll read the news - there's enough emotion in the human stories there; maybe I'll read a chapter of the best fiction I can find. Maybe I'll brainstorm sad words or angry words or whatever words I need to make it happen. Maybe I'll play anthemic, emotional music to waken my heart.

But I'll draw the line at asking a daughter to phone in the morning. Mind you, it's her birthday today, so I may just phone her...

Nicola Morgan writes novels. Oh yes, she does. She also writes non-fiction about the teenage brain and stress. BUT NOT IN OCTOBER. www.nicolamorgan.com

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(Kate Wilson of the wonderful Nosy Crow asked me to write a guest post for her on my experiences of self-publishing as a published author. For your info, she didn't know what those experiences were, so there was no direction or expectation. I have re-posted it here, with permission. Note that this is personal experience, not advice.)

Many writers, previously published or not, talk excitedly about why they enjoy self-publishing. Let me tell you why I don’t.

I’ve self-published (only as ebooks) three of my previously published YA novels and three adult non-fiction titles which hadn’t been published before. From these books I make a welcome income of around £250 a month – a figure that is remarkably constant. So, why have I not enjoyed it and why won’t I do it again?

It’s damned hard to sell fiction! (Over 90% of that £250 is from the non-fiction titles.) Publishers know this. They also know that high sales are not always about “quality”, which is precisely why very good novels can be rejected over and over. Non-fiction is easier because it’s easy to find your readers and for them to find your book. Take my book about writing a synopsis, for example; anyone looking for a book on writing a synopsis will Google “books on writing a synopsis” and, hey presto, Write a Great Synopsis appears. But if someone wants a novel, the chances of finding mine out of the available eleventy million are slim. This despite the fact that they had fab reviews and a few awards from their former lives.

But some novels do sell well. So why don’t mine? Because I do absolutely nothing to sell them. Why not? Well, this is the point. Several points.

First, time. I am too busy with other writing and public-speaking but, even if I weren’t, the necessary marketing takes far too long (for me) and goes on for too long after publication: the very time when I want to be writing another one. This is precisely why publishers tend only to work on publicity for a short while after publication: they have other books to work on. We may moan but it has to be like that – unless a book does phenomenally well at first, you have to keep working at selling it.

Second, I dislike the stuff I’d have to do to sell more books. Now, this is where you start leaping up and down saying, “But published authors have to do that, too!” Yes, and I do, but it’s different. When a publisher has invested money because they believe in your book, you obviously want to help them sell it. But when the only person who has actually committed any money is you, the selling part feels different. It’s a case of “I love my book so much that I published it – now you need to believe in me enough to buy it.” I can’t do it. Maybe I don’t believe in myself enough. Fine. I think books need more than the author believing in them. The author might be right and the book be fabulous, but I tend to be distrustful of strangers telling me they are wonderful so why should I expect others to believe me if I say I am? And I don’t want to spend time on forums just to sell more books.

Third, I love being part of a team. Yes, I’ve had my share of frustrating experiences in the course of 100 or so published books, but I enjoy the teamwork – even though I’m an introvert who loves working alone in a shed; I love the fact that other people put money and time and passion into selling my book. It gives me confidence and support. They won’t make money if they don’t sell my book and I still like and trust that model.

And I especially love that once I’ve written it and done my bit for the publicity machine and done the best I can for my book, I can let it go and write another.

See, I’m a writer, not a publisher. I may love control – the usual reason given for self-publishing – but I mostly want control over my words, not the rest. (That control, by the way, is never lost to a good editor, and I’ve been lucky with genius editors.) So, yes, I am pleased with the money I’ve earned from self-publishing and I love what I’ve learnt about the whole process, but now I’m going back to where I am happy to do battle for real control: my keyboard.

It’s all I want to do.

Nicola Morgan has written about 100 books, with half a dozen "traditional" publishers of various sizes from tiny to huge. She is a former chair of the Society of Authors in Scotland and advises hard-working writers on becoming and staying published, and on the marketing/publicity/events/behaviour that goes along with that.

She has also just created BRAIN STICKS™, an original and huuuuuuge set of teaching resources about the brain and mental health.

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(Reposting a post I wrote on my Heartsong blog a couple of weeks ago, because I still think it.)

I rarely review books but I did when Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks first came out, so I'm on record as thinking it brilliant and brave. Now it has won the prestigious Carnegie Medal, and a storm has brewed. Many adults vehemently object to the book's bleakness, darkness and violence.

I’m not addressing whether it’s the right sort of book for the Carnegie because I want to tackle the wider issue of whether it’s right to write books like this for teenagers and whether it’s OK for them to read them.

I don’t seek to change the minds of those who dislike the book – anyone is free to dislike, even detest, any book. Many of the detractors are experts in children's books; their opinions are strongly held and well-meaning.

What I want to do is shed light on the following things, as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about adolescence, human nature and the psychology and science of reading:

1. The reasons why many adults wish teenagers wouldn't read such books.
2. The reasons why many teenagers do.
3. Whether it matters that they do.

1. Why do many adults wish teenagers didn't read such books? Or, perhaps, that such books weren't written?

Good adults are programmed by biology and culture to protect babies and children. We protect them from actual harm and, when we can, from fears and nasty thoughts. We hope they never have to deal with nasty things themselves, though we realise many eventually will. We know, somewhere in the logical part of our brain, that they must learn to take risks, one day, but we try to control when that risk-taking happens and how. This is right and proper. We want to "protect their innocence" as long as possible. This is understandable.

When I did my first talk as a YA novelist at the Edinburgh Book Festival, I was floored by a question: "How do you feel knowing that you damage children?" It turned out that the questioner had 11 year-old grandchildren and since then I have often met this fear in parents or other relatives of that age group. Through my work, I understand how hard it is to move from being the parent of a child to the parent of a teenager. It's tough to let go. And tougher when it’s the young people themselves who insist on pulling away – as they are biologically driven to do. We don’t like the fact that some of them choose nasty books. We worry.

So, adults who protest against novels like Bunker Diary are being nurturing and protective. That's what we do with young children. At some point, however, we need to remove the cotton wool and tolerate bruises gained in the pursuit of knowledge and independence because they are not damaging. Bruises are temporary, after all.

Teenagers are not children. In the arguments about Bunker Diary, the word "children" has sometimes been used instead of "teenagers". This is not a small distinction. “Adolescent” means "becoming an adult", and that needs to be allowed to happen.

2. Why do many teenagers like bleak books?

First, let's remember that all readers, within any age range, are different; some teenagers will and some won't like reading such books. But why might some be drawn to dark stories? Because fiction is, among other things, for exploring emotions, testing them, feeling what experiences are like. Fiction is for breaking boundaries if we want to break boundaries, and for coming back safely as we wake up and realise that it was "only a story". Just as when we wake up from a nightmare we feel relief that it was only a dream. Sleep researchers tell us that a purpose of dreaming may be to process emotions, stresses and fears healthily. I argue that fiction has that role, too.

The magic of fiction is that we get carried away into the fictional world and almost forget that we aren't really there. That no one is; that it was all constructed inside a writer’s imagination. So strongly does this narrative transportation happen that we can end up having heated arguments about made up stories…

Teenagers often feel extreme emotions; their emotional and reward centres are highly active, bombarded by the changes in their lives, bodies and brains. Hardly surprising that they need extreme books, whether extremely frightening, passionate, funny, or sad.

And how do we practise empathy - that supreme effect of fiction - if we can't practise extremes of feeling? Those extremes will be different for each person. Each of us has our limits. I won’t argue with yours if you will allow me mine.

Teenagers don't always think the same things are horrible or for the same reasons as we do. Adults often require less or different stimulus to be shocked, saddened or scared. Many adolescents love watching horror films or reading misery memoirs. They sometimes feel the need to, perhaps to exorcise some of their fears, to practise the emotions, to test their limits. In safety.

In safety. Freely chosen. And you can stop the moment you want to. (In books, if not so easily in films.)

I remember the first time I cried in a film: Ring of Bright Water. You know the bit. The ditch. The spade. I was nearly twelve. I was shocked - and embarrassed because I didn't know films or books were things you cried in. (I was born and had lived all my life in a boys' school. Does that explain it? It did then. We didn't have YA fiction, either.) When my mother said of course it was OK to cry in a film, I wanted to watch it again, just to cry again. And, remember, RoBW is not fiction. (Actually, at the time I thought it was, which was probably a relief.)

Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The bleakest fictional ending ever. The moment when Winston gives in to his torturers and betrays his girlfriend with the searing words, "Do it to Julia" and, later, betrays himself and the rest of humanity. I know, it's not a teenage book. But we make teenagers read it. We don’t tell them it’s too bleak for them.

3. So, does it matter that they often choose to read bleak books?

Hell, yes, it matters. It matters that they read, that they engage passionately and willingly with stories and reading. And it matters that if that is what they want to read, it's there for them. Whether it’s Nineteen Eighty-Four or Bunker Diary or whatever. It matters, too, in my opinion, that their choice is not disparaged. It matters that adults don’t imply that they are sick for enjoying it. (And adults are now using a vile term for books in which young people die. I'm not using it here as I think it's also demeaning to the readers of those books.) We don’t have to enjoy the books they choose but we should be very cautious before undermining their enjoyment and choices. (Not all the adults have - I'm just saying we should make sure we don't.)

On the other hand, carry on - teenagers like to read what adults don't like...

But doesn't it damage them? I think it might, conceivably, if you forced a young person to read a book that they didn’t want to read because it was making them feel things they didn’t want to feel or making their low mood worse. Or if the young person had to face ideas or scenarios they weren’t ready to think about. And if they had no way to process those ideas and fears healthily, by talking them through with others, for example.

I admit, too, that reading bleak books when you are already sad is not likely to be therapy. And that reading a book about suicide when you have suicidal thoughts yourself is a very bad idea. In The Teenage Guide to Stress, I recommend fiction as relaxation strategy, but I caution against reading books that make you feel sad if you are already sad.

But those are specific circumstances and Bunker Diary is not a book about suicide. Bunker Diary is a book in which the characters find themselves in a horrifying situation and try to work together to get out of it. (Regarding the Carnegie, I agree there's a possible issue because it's for a wide range of ages and there are shadowing groups, in which a younger than 12yo might be in a position of reading before he or she is ready. But the responsible adults will handle that situation with care, I'm sure. We can't exclude an eligible and highly recommended book because it only suits parts of the valid age range. Very few books suit a 9yo and a 14yo. Anyway, as I say, this isn't about the Carnegie argument.)

Books don’t damage – they do change and transform us. Everything we read and hear and see and think changes us. We are never the same at the end of an engaging book as we were when we started. And that's somewhat scary if you're a caring adult nurturing an adolescent. But we have to be brave and trust teenage (as opposed to younger) readers to make their own choices and feed their thirst for knowledge and ideas, so that they can decide for themselves.

A friend of mine told me how her then nearly-twelve-year-old daughter started reading The Lovely Bones. After a chapter or so, the daughter had to stop, too scared to read on. So scared that she buried the book under a pile of clothes in a cupboard. Next day she took the book out and read the whole thing. Her choice. She was ready. Changed but not damaged. At any time she could have stopped again - and she would have if it was making her feel awful. But she knew it was a story. She knew how to read it. She took control as she explored her emotions.

So, for those teenage readers who want to push the boundaries of their emotions, we need brave and risky books like Bunker Diary, even if it's too bleak for adults. If you can't block them from hearing or reading about the dark side of the real world in the news, don't try to stop them reading about such things in the safety of fiction, where they can explore and experiment on their own, without fear of actual harm.

Let go. Don’t stop caring, but worry less. 

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Don't get me wrong: humour is an essential part of life and wellbeing. The ability to make an audience laugh is a laudable one. When kids come out of an author visit still laughing, the endorphins fizzing round their brains, it's a happy result indeed. It's visibly A Success.

But authors should not feel they have to "do funny" and I wouldn't like schools to fall into the trap of thinking that the only engaged audience is one falling off its chairs with laughter. I say this because I've seen children's authors recently worry that their events aren't "funny enough" and comparing themselves unfavourably with talented comic authors and speakers.

We should not forget that not everyone always wants to be made to laugh; not everyone laughs at the same things; and some people have different needs. I, for one, given the choice between an hour of laughter and an hour of having my heart and mind spun dizzy with new ideas or shocked into a new groove by fresh images and stories, would opt for dizzy or shocked. And I was always like that. Doesn't mean I don't have a sense of humour or like laughing, just that they are not at the top of my priority list. They are fairly high up it, but not at the top. I know I'm not alone.

If our books don't feature pants, slime or slapstick, our talks may not lend themselves to funny. I've written funny - and in my talks on Chicken Friend, yes, it was great to see the kids laughing when I chose the funny bits to read, though I preferred the more thoughtful bits, the bits where my main character really struggled with things in her world. But my YA novels are far from funny. A mastectomy without anaesthetic isn't funny; nor is being stalked; nor is mental illness or alcoholism. Even my talks on the teenage brain - which some adults might say, unjokingly, was a genuine comedic mine - only look for the occasional release of laughter. And that's usually when I quote Shakespeare.

I do "funny" talks when appropriate - a Burns Supper "reply from the lassies", a launch speech to friends, or after dinner speeches, and I think an introduction to a keynote speech is improved by a smidgen of engaging humour - so this is not about not being able to do funny. And, of course, it's very heart-warming when people laugh (assuming you meant them to), as humour is social glue. But it's not the only glue and I'm not most interested in making people laugh. I often prefer the echoing silence that accompanies a new idea entering the minds of the audience, the shock on their faces as they take in a new possibility, and the way they will come up afterwards (or email me privately) and tell me something about their own lives that they now see differently. With The Teenage Guide to Stress, what I like most is responses such as the girl who emailed to tell me my talk had "settled" her mind.

She didn't want to laugh about her stress - even though laughing about serious things is no bad thing. She wanted her mind to be "settled". A book and a talk should do whatever they should do: inspire laughter or excitement or thoughts or emotions or resolution, whatever.

Today, I'm heading to Gordonstoun for two days of almost entirely unfunny events. However, I will at one point wear a knitted brain on my head (thanks, Cat!) and I can pretty much guarantee that people will laugh. That's fine. Especially since the brief laughter will flood their brains with chemicals which will make them better able to absorb the serious stuff.

But the value of an event is not measured in the decibels of laughter. If you set out to be funny, then it is, of course; if you set out to be thought-provoking, you might measure it in the silence and stillness. Or in the chatter afterwards. Or in a single question or email. Measure it how you like but don't be overwhelmed by the hegemony of humour.

So, to my fellow authors planning events: you do not have to wear your pants (or a knitted brain) on your head. Just wear your best ones.

The Teenage Guide to Stress is published on July 3rd by Walker Books. It's not funny so don't laugh.

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All romantic and richly-dressed, swash-buckling and thigh-booted, breeches of brown doe-skin, rapiers atwinkle, mounted on ebony thoroughbreds - that's the glamorous highwaymen. And as for the pirate chiefs, well, fearsomely moustachioed, portly stomachs bursting through silver-buttoned jackets, with scarlet-breasted parrots joining in the comradely sea-shanties, slicing their ships through the waves with the sleekness of dolphins. Ahoy me hearties! Stand and deliver! Romantic rapscallions on highways and high seas.

Most of us love or have loved a good highwayman or pirate story and where would those tales be without the romance and swash-bucklingness, the sense of robbing the rich to give to the poor - or at least just robbing the rich in an era where all the laws were made for the rich and justice was hard to come by?

We don't much enjoy being reminded of the truth about highwaymen and pirates - that pirates ruthlessly and violently terrorised (and still do in some parts) honest seafarers bringing food or goods from country to country and that highwaymen were reckless and cruel in their robbery of people of all classes, ages and weaknesses. Dick Turpin's gang, for example, is said to have been responsible for countless violent robberies, mostly against people too poor to matter to the authorities, with gleeful torture and rape thrown in.

Which brings me to that other sort of "pirate", very different from both the parrot-ridden, shanty-singing, jolly-roger myth and the genuinely dangerous, ruthless robber of the seas: I'm talking about the scummy thieves who steal our work and prevent us being able to earn. I wish people wouldn't call them pirates, because there's really no comparison, either in perceived glamour or in power. Scummy thieves, they are. They just take what isn't theirs, without bravery, risk or effort.

This is close to my heart right now, as yesterday I received a Google alert, directing me to where I could (apparently) get free downloads of my ebooks. These are ebooks I published myself, no advance, no fee, no earnings unless people choose to pay the c£2 I dare to charge for them. No publisher to serve a take-down notice for me. They took me countless hours to create, and I paid real money for proof-reading, cover design, formatting and promotion. And three days before they appeared on this torrent site, I noticed that my sales on Amazon had plummeted to almost zero.

Well, thanks for that, to the thieves who put them up on the site.

And thanks, I must say, to people uncaring or unaware enough to download them.

I can't do anything about the site and the scummy thieves - though I'm following a few leads and doing what I can without spending a ridiculous amount of time. I contacted the Society of Authors, and, amongst other things, they suggested informing the Publishers Association about the pirate scummy thief site. If you're an SoA member, you'll find helpful articles in the members' section of the SoA website, by the way.

NB - incidental warning: I did not click on the links to download my books - including the audio version, which I was particularly intrigued about because I never created an audio version - and Kate Pool at the SoA said I was right to be cautious: "By no means all sites purporting to offer pirated copies are in fact doing so. In addition to entirely legitimate online retailers offering to sell new copies, or second-hand copies some are virus-ridden, and some are pfishing sites just after bank/personal details e.g. encouraging rights holders to contact them, and promising (not always truthfully) that they will remove the book from their site if the rights holder pays a fee." And I think, in fact, that's what this particular site was; which doesn't make it better, just different.

Anyway, as I say, I can't do much about the little thieves with their scummy sites. But I can do something about the uncaring or unaware behaviour of people who download from them.

And so can any of us. Two things. First, call them on what they're doing. Whether it's our kids or our friends, or casual acquaintances who drop into the conversation with a little laugh that they know a place where you can get any ebook/music free. Ask them (and yes, it can be done politely, and usually that's all it takes before the penny drops) exactly in what way deciding not to pay for a book or music or image because it's easy to steal is any different at all from shop-lifting? Explain that actually yes, writers need and deserve to be paid for their work, in exactly the same way as the shopkeeper or any other human does. But even if a writer happened to be very rich and moderately unsaintly (only one of which things I am), you still can't steal from them - just as if I left a cake cooling on a kitchen windowsill you wouldn't steal it. "But Nicola doesn't need that cake and anyway, I don't like her," doesn't make it OK to steal my cake.

And second, stop calling the people who steal the files and put them up there "pirates". Just stick to scummy little thieves. Because they are.

Most people, I still believe, are decent, and wouldn't do this if they understood and realised that it does hurt and that there are victims. Call me an idiot, but it is what I believe. And I think that making decent people understand is the best thing we can do.

For my article on copyright for ALCS, see here.  Anne Rooney and John Dougherty have also blogged for ABBA on the topic before. So have I. (And so have others.)

PS At only a slight tangent and still on the subject of money, please note that there is NEW SOA ADVICE ABOUT FEES FOR AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATOR VISITS. If you detect my voice in it, there's a reason... Each author/illustrator is entirely at liberty to charge whatever feels right, but you might like to know what many were charging last year. And yes, every author/illustrator is different and every event/school/budget is different, but if your visit is valuable, give it a value. Interestingly, a lot of wonderful librarians and schools have retweeted that article, with supportive comments. Thanks, to all of them.  

PPS Entirely irrelevantly, if you work for or want to support a school, note that I am offering ONE free BRAIN STICK™ only to a randomly-chosen school, in my next Brain Sane newsletter. Details of how to enter (free) are here.

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This won't be the first time an ABBA blogger has praised editors but it would be hard to praise them too often, so I'm going to do it again.

When I had my Help! I Need a Publisher! blog, I used to come across so many writers who had turned or were planning to turn their back on the idea of aiming for trade publication because "the editing process would suppress my voice" or some such twaddle. Because twaddle it is. A good editor is a bit like a good singing teacher: nurtures and nourishes your voice so that it can sound its best. A singing teacher would also be a critic, suggesting when you've got it wrong. And you might occasionally disagree with the teacher, and you might be right, but that wouldn't make them not a great teacher.

Stick with the voice analogy for a moment: you accept how when you sing or speak you are hearing your voice through your own head, reverberating differently so that it sounds different when it hits someone's ears? Well, a good editor is that other pair of ears and can show you how you might wish to tweak or polish your voice to sound best for other ears. Because what it sounds like in your own head isn't as important as how it sounds to others.

And I am not so arrogant that I don't want to listen to a trusted expert, a trusted expert who a) wants my book to be as good as possible and b) can help me make it so.

Here I have to mention the long-suffering, eagle-eyed, hyper-intelligent and just plain darn brilliant editors working on The Teenage Guide to Stress with* me. Caz Royds and Alice Horrocks are editors to die for. And this has been a BIG task. (Notice the "with", because this is the ultimate teamwork.)

Editing fiction is a tricky thing (and they do that, too) but editing non-fiction requires a different set of skills and tuning. Five levels of headings - and have we at last got the hierarchy of information right??? Is the order of material right? Is everything perfectly balanced and weighted? What do we do about the fact that the author is paranoid about leaving things out and yet perhaps it can't all go in? Have we got the voice just right for 12 year-olds and 18 year-olds and adults? Is it sufficiently serious and yet not too dark? How do you tackle blushing and self-harming, sweating and suicidal thoughts all in one book? How deep shold the contents list go? Index? Wahhhh! Glossary or not? And then the design issues that come with non-fiction become part of the editorial process - and here a big mention for the so-patient and talented Beth Aves, who somehow manages to incorporate every text change or order switch without complaint.

The complications of this rather large book meant that we have gone to the wire, time-wise, with last-minute "ARGGGGH"s flying back and forth, and yet with humour, respect and mutual admiration all the time. We go to print on April 29th and I'm sending them fizz to celebrate. We may have to have a Skype party!

Next project: The Demented Writer's Guide to Self-Inflicted Stress. You can all contribute!

NOTE: For the chance to win a copy of The Teenage Guide to Stress, signed on or before publication day, visit my blog and leave a comment on any/all April/May posts with "Exam tips" in the title. Each comment = one entry to the random draw, so comment on each post if you wish!

Nicola Morgan's free Brain Sane newsletter is full of links and articles about the brain, reading, tress, positive psychology and mental health. Next issue is a special one on SLEEP, with gorgeous sleepy giveaways and books to be won. 

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No, not visits from dead authors. I mean seeing author events from the other side, the side that's not the author's side. And not from the audience's side, either. From the event organiser's side.

I was thinking this the other day, after writing another blog post about organising author events, which was aimed at organisers. It struck me that sometimes we - the people giving the talk - spend a lot of time working to make sure that the audience has a beneficial experience and also a fair amount of time afterwards fretting about whether we've been given coffee, treated well, introduced properly, paid sufficiently, respected. Those things - how well we prepare and how well we are looked after - are very important to the overall experience of not just us, but our audience, because if we are relaxed and positive we are likely to do a better job. But they are far from the whole story and we may have become blind to something else important and useful.

How about we walk a mile in the shoes of the event organiser? I'm not talking about stealing their shoes, though if they were gorgeous I might well be tempted. I'm talking about looking inside their heads, properly, sympathetically, and then using what we find there to help create a really good event, one that is not only great for the audience and us but great for the person who bridges the void between the audience and us, person who can make a real difference: the organiser. Because just as the event is better when I'm happy, the event is better when the organiser is happy, too.

Let's call the event organiser Mary. (This is not code for "I'm thinking of an actual person called Mary but let's pretend I'm not." As far as I can remember I don't know a Mary who has ever organised an event for me. It's just a name, and a very nice one.)

Mary may be nervous about meeting us. This is apparent from phrases we often hear Mary use when introducing us to people, such as "real live author" or "famous author", or from her high-pitched laugh or her exasperated voice as she tells a group of kids, "I told you five times that the library would be closed at lunch-time - we have an  author visit." To Mary, we are not just a stranger, we are a stranger who has been dominating her emails/work/life for a few weeks or months; we are a stranger who may be strange - and often are; we are a stranger who may wreck her day and reputation by delivering a bad event; we are a stranger whose services take up some of her department's precious money; we are a stranger who may actually be "famous"; we are a stranger who may be judging her and leaping to wrong conclusions about her.

Mary's nerves may also be apparent from the fact that she forgets to introduce us, or introduces us badly, or says, "This is Nicola Morgan, who needs no introduction." She may genuinely think I need no introduction. I do very need one, because without one I feel inadequate, but Mary doesn't know that. She just wants to get the hell off the stage and back into the audience. I had one organiser once who was so nervous that she forgot my name entirely, at the very moment when she said, "I'd like to welcome..."

Mary has other things to do than my event. My event is not actually the most important thing in her life. It may well be the most important thing of that week, possibly even longer, but it's not the only thing she's worrying about.

Mary has no idea what I'm feeling. She has never had to "perform" in front of a large audience of 14year-old strangers. She probably thinks, if she thinks about it at all, that because I've done it for years I am totally relaxed. She would almost be right, but it's that "almost" that's crucial. She certainly doesn't know that there are several innocent things she can do which will topple my equilibrium. Years ago, before I was published, I had to organise an author visit to my daughters' school. I'm cringing as I think about how little I understood what those "famous" authors were thinking or how cack-handedly I treated them, but I know that I was wrapped up in my own stress.

Mary is worried that she might have forgotten something. She's made a huge list on the back of her repeat prescription form, but, although she knows she's done everything on the list, apart from order her repeat prescription, she's still worried she might have forgotten to put something on the list in the first place. Which is worrying.

She is also worried that George is going to do his mad-March-hare-crazy misbehaving thing again and she is particularly worried because she's just noticed that George is sitting next to Michael, which she'd expressly asked the teachers to make sure didn't happen, not least because Michael is supposed to be leaving early for his anger management class.

She is not only worried: she is also excited. She has a lot invested in this day. She had to bid for the funding and she's going to have to justify the outcomes. She really wants it to go well. She wants the pupils to be inspired by the talk, library borrowings and reading interest to rise in the ensuing weeks, the teachers to feel it was worthwhile and me to be happy and impressed with the school, the pupils and the library and...and...she's studying my face as I arrive and I'm looking a bit tense and now she's worried that I've just had the experience of walking through the foyer while Year 9 were stampeding to lunch. Or meeting Shannon and Donna from Year 10, who she's pretty sure are waiting outside the Head's office. Because they often are.

So, Mary is nervous, worried and excited and that's a recipe for things not to be completely perfect.

How can we, the authors, help Mary and therefore help ourselves? In my view, it's simple, as soon as weve have recognised what Mary's shoes feel like to walk in. Here are my five tips:

1. Prepare Mary. Make sure that she knows exactly what we need, in advance. In my case, these needs are on my website, on the page which I have asked her to read, and can be summed up as follows: a) she (or someone) will give me an introduction which makes the kids feel they are going to have a great event b) the kids will have been prepared and at least some will have looked at my website and thought about questions c) a few minutes of peace and quiet just before an event and between events. That's all. If Mary knows that, she can stop a whole load of her worrying.

2. Remind Mary. Mary may have forgotten everything in point 1 above, so remind her a couple of days before the event.

3. Forgive Mary. Because you have walked in her shoes and noticed that they are a bit leaky in wet weather and not really as comfortable as they could be. Especially the bit pressing on the toe that the pile of books fell on last week.

4. Smile at Mary. Smile at everybody you meet, even George and Michael and Shannon and Donna. Smile when you arrive. Smile when you shake Mary's hand. Smile as you walk with her to the library and after she's told the kids yet again that the library is closed because there's an author visit. As the well-known saying almost goes: "Smile and Mary will smile with you." And then everything will be all right and, if it isn't, smile anyway.

I honestly think point 4 is far more important than we might think. It's about first impressions, chemistry, putting people at ease. You're a bit anxious, but Mary is more anxious; take control of the situation; don't be a victim of Mary's anxiety or your own - cure it with a smile. Even if Year 9 did stampede all over you on their way to lunch and you met George on a mad March hare crazy day and Michael when he'd forgotten his medication and Shannon and Donna when they were just being Shannon and Donna. George, Michael, Shannon and Donna are probably nervous, too. And Mary. Besides you get to go home and not come back; they don't.

And you have chocolate in your bag. Because that's the fifth tip: Have chocolate in your bag.

You could even share it with Mary.

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A couple of days ago the Daily Telegraph told us that "Schools in America are to drop classic books such as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye from their curriculum in favour of 'informational texts'." The article went on to say that "American literature classics are to be replaced by insulation manuals and plant inventories in US classrooms by 2014."

OMG, clearly.

Well, that was the desired reaction and it was the reaction I duly gave. However, it appears, judging by the early comments below the piece - which I hadn't read at the time because comments beneath online newspaper items generally give me appalling indigestion - that the article was wildly misleading. The third comment, by Deborah Brancheau, seems particularly informed and suggests that we needn't worry too much.

Anyway, I am not here to say who may have exaggerated what and why, or not checked which facts. I am here to shut the stable-door before the horse bolts, just in case anyone from our Government could possibly be so stupid as to consider trying to undermine the importance of reading fiction. Hard to imagine, but still.

I have done many different talks about literacy and the reading brain over the years, as it's one of my hobby-horses. I will also admit that I used to recommend non-fiction as equal in value to fiction, particularly as I used to teach reluctant readers and am a dyslexia specialist, and keen never to undermine anyone's reading choice.

However, while it's certainly true that readers should be allowed to come to a love of reading by whichever types of book they wish, I can't get away from the increasing research that suggests compellingly that reading/listening to fiction is necessary to developing empathy and an expanded Theory of Mind, which are in turn necessary for tolerance, wisdom and the strong foundations of human society.

If you are interested in this research, here are some resources:

Four fascinating books:

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A while ago, I was tidying up after a school event. The librarian had already started her next class, which, I quickly surmised, was the annual “tell them about copyright and plagiarism” lesson for new senior school pupils. Hooray! So, I listened in.

After explaining something about copyright and plagiarism, she gave the reasons why they shouldn’t break the laws. Well, she gave two reasons.

1. You might get caught plagiarizing in an exam or coursework and then you could be disqualified. 
2. You are committing a crime and if you get caught you could get a criminal record and/or pay other penalties. 

These reasons, though true, are neither the whole truth, nor the most important truths, nor the arguments most likely to convince. We (people in general) are not very good at risk analysis. These risks seem far off and unlikely and once we observe that in fact it’s very possible to break copyright over and over again and not get caught, the argument loses all power.

Here are some better reasons (which she may have given after I'd left):

1. If you break copyright laws, you are stealing; in doing so you are directly hurting individual, real people, most often people who really can’t afford to be victims of your theft. (When people hear specific stories of hardship, this is powerful, and most young people care deeply about such things. In fact, it’s my belief that most people of any age care, and those who don’t are perhaps unreachable anyway. Some people will steal and hurt whatever we do or say.)
2. If you download illegally, you are also putting money into the rapacious pockets of large corporations. (Most people don’t particularly like the thought of benefiting huge companies while harming individuals.) 
3. If you wrote something and discovered that, although you were making no money from it, someone else was, how would you feel? How would you feel if that happened over and over again, and you remained poor while the people stealing it grew richer and lazier? (The “imagine if it were you” argument is a strong one.) 

I’ve been thinking (and talking!) about copyright and its effects recently, and I’d like to draw your attention to some things.

1. ALCS have produced some wonderful classroom resources for primary and secondary pupils, which outline the issues in useful and clear ways. Consider pointing teachers in their direction?

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Two years ago I gave a talk called "How To Sell Your Book on the Internet".  It was, needless to say, about the "Author Platform" we writers are supposed to be standing on top of, dominating the world of books, and gave handy hints and tips about how to use things like Facebook, Twitter and blogging for the uninitiated writer.  I wasn't the only one talking about the subject.  Our very own Nicola Morgan has, until very recently, been giving brilliant advice about it on her Help I Need a Publisher blog (much better advice than mine, I can tell you!).

Last week I read a thought-provoking piece by Candy Gourlay on Notes from the Slushpile.  She asked this question:

If everyone's now got a platform, how are you going to stand out?  

I hope Candy will forgive me for using her excellent pictures to illustrate this point (on the 'picture is worth a thousand words' principle).

How it was....

How it is now....
The question I want to ask is:

How do you feel about those two pictures? 

I can tell you how I feel.  Kind of relieved actually.  What Candy said in her piece chimed with my own feelings. It meant that the misgivings I'd had recently about all this jockeying and jostling were not so stupid after all.  Don't get me wrong.  I love blogging here (and reading about the myriad facets of writing life from my fellow bloggers).  I love running the current series on mythological beasts and beings on my own Scribble City Central blog. I love chatting to people on Twitter, though I'm not so keen on Facebook these days.  But, quite honestly, all that stuff does crunch chunks out of my writing day if I let it, however much I protest to the contrary, and that's before I've even started trying to get through the mass of links and intriguing industry bits and bobs provided by others.

The sad fact is that we live in a time poor world where there just aren't enough hours in the day to process all the information flooding over us, however interesting it might be.  I'd like to read all the interesting blogs out there - but if I did that, I wouldn't have time for my own writing.  In the final analysis that writing IS the most important thing for me.  It's what puts the food on my plate, and clothes my family. So, I've taken another look at that Author Platform of mine, and am now only doing what I have to to keep it alive and kicking, and concentrating on what I know works.  The energy and hours I've saved are already paying dividends in productive writing output.

Je ne regrette rien - building my Author Platform has taught me a great deal.  But I'm no longer its faithful skivvy, slaving away at it for fear of being left behind. I've stopped running to catch up with myself. That, ladies and gentlemen of the ABBA community, is my New World Order - and it feels good!


Lucy's latest series Greek Beasts and Heroes is out now from Orion Children's Books
Lucy's Website
Lucy's Scribble City Central Blog (A UK Top 10 Children's Literature Blog)
Join Lucy's Facebook Fanpage
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Recently, the Guardian reported the story of author Terry Goodkind, who "turned to Facebook to name and shame a fan who pirated a digital version of his latest novel".  As usual when a case of theft is revealed, there were arguments on both sides, regarding whether words should be free or authors should be entitled to protect their work and earn from it. Paulo Coelho is quoted as calling on "pirates of the world" to "unite and pirate everything I've ever written". Coelho has every right to say this of his own work - he is exercising the degree of control (or lack of) that he chooses.

However, I do not recall him calling on pirates of the world to pirate steal everything that anyone else has ever written. 

And this is what the proponents of the "words should be free" argument so often forget. Surely the choice should be made by the creator of the content? Otherwise it's theft.

Recently on my Crabbit At Home blog, I linked to an excellent but long piece arguing why illegal downloading is morally wrong, but to be honest, when will we stop making the arguments so complicated?

Taking something without the owner's permission is theft and theft is wrong. I grant that if you'd die without the stolen item, it's forgivable. But it's still theft. And last thing I heard, books may be important but you don't generally die for the lack of one.

It really is that simple.  

Recently, I downloaded the remarkably wonderful Adblock program, a piece of free software which instantly removes all adverts from my internet experience, including those dreaded "belly-fat" ads on Facebook. After I'd downloaded, I was given the option of paying a contribution, if I wished. I paid $5.

A few days later, I received this email (my bold):

Hi Nicola
I wanted to say thanks for paying for AdBlock at http://chromeadblock.com/pay. I wrote AdBlock hoping to make people's lives better, and you just told me that I managed to do it :) Thank you very, very much! &nbs

10 Comments on Caught read-handed... by Nicola Morgan, last added: 7/24/2012

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verytessatangent said, on 7/24/2012 12:44:00 AM

Well said. A theft by any other name would still be wrong.

JO said, on 7/24/2012 12:45:00 AM

I think it's about respecting the work of others.

Just because it is relatively easy to steal written material is no excuse for doing it. And I think the same goes for photographs - someone has gone out with camera, done clever twiddly things with it, then played with digital whatnots to make it as wonderful as he/she can, before offering it for us all to enjoy. We don't have the right to appropriate these images any more than we do to steal the written word.

Nick Green said, on 7/24/2012 1:14:00 AM

Well, I reserve the right NOT to pirate Paulo Coelho's work, or for that matter buy, borrow or otherwise read it by accident.

'Words should be free?' What a disingenuous thing to say. Of course WORDS are free, but that's not what we as writers are selling, any more than musicians are selling vibrating air molecules. What we are selling are the stories and ideas represented via the medium of words in a chosen combination. That is artistry, that takes vast amounts of time and effort, and that (unless the author says otherwise) should never be free. It's WORK.

Catherine Butler said, on 7/24/2012 1:50:00 AM

I'm coming round to thinking that people are quite primitive creatures in this regard, and don't truly deeply regard something as theft unless it involves a physical object. This applies to piracy, but also to tax evasion. Many people who evade tax would probably jib at stealing fivers directly from the purses of pensioners, even though that's effectively what they're doing. Without the physical object, it lacks the moral heft to pull on your guilt strings.

The other aspect is replicability. If you have 12 apples and I take one, you've only got 11 left. Whereas, if I download your book, you're "no worse off than before".

In a world where more and more possessions are in non-physical form, this is an area where people are going to have to catch up fast.

peterdomican said, on 7/24/2012 1:50:00 AM

The problem is the internet / digital. When things are physical, no one seems to have a problem with the concept of theft but once online, a lot of people seem to create a ‘moral’ differentiation / justification to take / use work and use as they see fit.
I did a National Crime Survey recently with an interviewer. We spent 30 mins talking about crime in the neighbourhood but there were no specific questions about on line theft and I had to type a mini essay into her computer about my credit card being phished and my photos taken without my permission online.
If the Government doesn’t recognise fully recognise it as crime, it’s no wonder people think it’s ok.

Richie Brown said, on 7/24/2012 1:52:00 AM

It's very much a conscience thing - that's why 1% of people who find free software useful pay a donation. Sadly, it's this 1% who will agree with what is written in this blog post, while the other 99% won't even read it. They'll be too busy reading their illicitly-gained copy of 50 Shades - not that the 50 Shades franchise is losing out.....

The issue of illegal downloading has affected the music industry arguably much longer than literature and we should look to see how sites such as bandcamp allow bands to distribute their material often on a "pay what you think it's worth" basis.

Of course, this method (the Radiohead method as it's often known as) means you have to rely a lot on self-promotion to even reach those who are willing to pay.

There is now an entire generation online who do not see illegal downloads as theft and it will be difficult to ever change their minds.

In the meantime, the only people making a fortune are those who run those 'Facebook fat' ads which these illegal download sites are plastered in.

Susan Price said, on 7/24/2012 1:52:00 AM

Hear, hear, Nicola. My impression is that those who defend pirating - 'everything should be free' - are thieves and know themselves to be thieves, just as pickpockets, shoplilfters and burgulars do. But the downloaders like to hide behind this nice, shiny defence. 'It's about freedom!'
I'll believe them on the day they defend their bosses' right to get a long year's work out of them for nothing - and a book often takes longer than a year to write.

Nicola Morgan said, on 7/24/2012 2:21:00 AM

Susan - "My impression is that those who defend pirating - 'everything should be free' - are thieves and know themselves to be thieves, just as pickpockets, shoplilfters and burgulars do." Absolutely.

Richie - "the only people making a fortune are those who run those 'Facebook fat' ads which these illegal download sites are plastered in." Yes, indeed. That was the powerful aspect i took away from the very long article I linked to. It's very interesting that people are happy to knock big business at the same time as stealing from small people in a way that only helps big business.

Catherine - yes, this is the really hard bit to explain, isn't it? It doesn't look as though it hurts us, especially when people don't realise that this is not a hobby but the way we feed ourselves. So, one theft is a deduction from my income.

Dan Holloway said, on 7/24/2012 4:25:00 AM

The only issue I have with this whole debate - this specific one with Terry Goodkind, that is - is that there has been too little discussion of the actin he chose to take. Authors - as your post attests - are desperate for piracy to be taken seriously as what it is - a crime. Which means the correct response is to report instances to the authorities. By not doing so (with any other crime, if someone decides to act on their own initiative we call them a vigilante), Goodkind is weakening authors' claims that this is a crime to be taken as seriously as other crimes so the way he has been championed (not here, I should add) really does no favours.

And excellent for you for paying for Adblock

Nicola Morgan said, on 7/24/2012 7:35:00 AM

Dan - when I started writing the post, I was going to go into that but a) I decided that the post was going to be too long and b) I decided that the important parts to me were not the rights and wrongs of retaliation but the wrongs of the thief and the rights of authors. If I disagree with TG's actions, I do so very mildly and on a theoretical level that doesn't really grip me. I don't blame him even if i don't agree with his action; I do blame the thief, and I don't want to detract from that.

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The other day, I was discussing with my family whether people can change. Actually, it wasn't so much a discussion as me posing a theory, them agreeing, and then all of us providing more and more evidence. Which is pretty much my favourite kind of discussion, at least while on holiday.

My theory was that it is very difficult, very difficult, and relatively rare, for people to change themselves. (And this has an implication for novelists, as you'll see.)

Of course people do change. We know that. Any individual changes a tiny bit each day, imperceptibly, adding up to large changes over decades. Sometimes, changes can be more sudden, especially during the growing up years. Various landmarks change us: leaving school/university, having children/not having children, close bereavement, major changes of circumstances. These bring changes to our personalities over the years, and changes to our habits.

But these changes tend to be a) gradual b) an adaptation to changed surroundings/ environment/ people around us and c) largely involuntary. They do not answer the question: CAN people change? In other words, can they change when they want to? Can we often change our behaviours when we see a negative consequence, or, indeed, a positive one? (I know that people sometimes can - change addictive behaviours, for example - but they generally need a great deal of help and intervention.)

The reason I was thinking about this was because I am hopelessly useless at changing bad behaviours. How many times have I looked at the bathroom scales and said that I was going to eat less, exercise more? (Twice today, anyway.) How many times have I made resolutions to drink more water and less wine; eat more fruit and less sugar; not buy ice-cream "just in case one of my daughters comes home unexpectedly"; do an hour's writing before answering emails; say no to speaking engagements; spend less time at my desk; enjoy weekends properly; be less of a workaholic; get less cross when people are stupid; not snap at my husband (no link there to the previous remark!); do more gardening and cooking (hobbies which I love and are good for me); get up from my desk every hour? Countless times, is how many. And I never change my habits. At all.

I am utterly beholden to my adult, middle-aged personality, which happens to be that of a driven workaholic, hopelessly Type A, unstoppably entrepreneurial, unable to say no to any exciting idea that pops into my head at four in the morning. I was different when I was fourteen and will probably be different when I'm 84. But there is no discernible change between how I am now at 50, how I was when I was 40 or 30. I have a whole different life, but my bad habits and behaviours I'd dearly like to alter remain stubbornly unaltered, even though I recognise completely that changing would be good for me and probably give me a longer life.

SO, writers and readers, why oh why oh why oh why do the characters in our books always have to change and develop? Even if the action takes place over two weeks, or two days. It seems to be one of the unbreakable rules of novels. 

The Carnegie Medal even has criteria for characterisation, including:

Are the characters believable and convincing?

Are they [the characters] well-rounded, and do they develop during the course of the book?

Do they act consistently in character throughout the book?

You know, it rather bugs me that a character must develop during the course of what may be a very short timespan

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