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Shh! I shouldn't be writing this on the Wednesday afternoon before it's due. I'm locked away in Devon, and I should be head down, working on my novel. But as usual, life got in the way, and I didn't manage to post something wise and insightful a week in advance.
The thing is, life has got in the way quite a lot lately. I won't go into details, but there it is. I'm behind where I should be, running to keep up and not miss deadlines and not disappoint people (including myself). I knew it was going to happen, and that's why, for Christmas (and birthday and probably next Christmas as well), I asked, for once, for something I really really wanted.
Time to write with no distractions.
It's a precious thing, is time, especially writing time. I can't actually remember when I had a stretch of it unbroken by that life-getting-in-the-way thing I mentioned earlier. But now I do, and I'm appreciating every moment of its extreme preciousness. So here I am, in the tiny village of Sheepwash in Devon, at the amazing
Retreats for You, being cossetted (including nightly hot water bottles and glasses of wine brought to my room), cared for, fed delicious meals (which I'm not allowed to clear up after), and above all LEFT ALONE to do what I really want to. Write.
Yesterday I wrote over 3000 words. I haven't done that in a long time. Today I'm already up to 1500 (and that's not including this post). I'll be at 3000 again by the end of the day or bust, and I'm here for nine more whole days, leaving the family and dogs behind to take care of themselves.
I can't even begin to tell you how marvellous it is to say that. Sometimes, as writers, we just crave quiet and time and space to think, and it's not always easy to come by. As a mother and a carer and a person who wears far too many hats, I'm pretty hard on myself. Writing is supposed to be my full-time job - and yet, far too often, I find myself squeezing it in around everything else. The gift of what I really need - time to do the work I love - may not be everyone's idea of the perfect present, but it is mine, and I am grateful to my family for understanding that and for making it possible.
Long live
Retreats for You (trust me, if you're a writer you NEED to come here!), and I know you'll forgive me if I get back to my novel now. I'll see you all again on the other side!
"rippingly funny…offers food for thought on everything from absentee parenting to the mistreatment of animals (even immortal ones)."
Publishers Weekly US starred review
Coming in May 2015 from Orchard, Cleo (UKYA historical fantasy about the teenage Cleopatra VII)
I'm feeling a littleemotional, to be frank. I've spent the past eight years writing three books about a group of talking animals (The Last Wild trilogy), whom I've grown very fond of. Last week I sent the final book off to the printers. I won't be making the animals in it, or any others for that matter, talk again for the foreseeable future.
And, pausing before I blunder off into a whole new imaginative realm, I've been reflecting. Why do we do it? Why do we take these dignified, self respecting other species we share the planet with, and imbue them with often wildly mismatched human characteristics, psychology and dialogue? Why are those characters so perennially popular with younger children? Equally, why are they such a literary turn off for some, and many older readers?
There are many answers to those questions, and they've changed as continuously as human behaviour. One argument is that in making animals talk and walk like us, we seek to play out the mysteries of our deeper and more unknowable feelings. For children, growing slowly cognizant of more complex and challenging human emotions on the adult horizon, animal characters in books can be like a literary version of play therapy, safe proxies through which to navigate those feelings. (Perhaps that equally repels older or adult readers who have no desire for proxies, hungry for the authenticity of real human interaction.)
But that’s the young reader. What’s the appeal to the adult writer, seeking to put words in the mouths of mice? For me, I keep coming back to the haunting story of another writer and his far better-known talking animals.
In 1906, he was nine years old, known to all as ‘Jack’, and living in East Belfast, enjoying a quintessential turn of the century middle-class childhood.
 |
| The Lewis family, 1906 |
His father Richard was a successful solicitor, and his mother Flora was the daughter of an Anglican priest. His elder brother Warren was away at boarding school in England, but when he was home for the holidays, the boys enjoyed long walks and cycle rides in the leafy suburbs. The spacious house might sound boring for children - with what Jack later described as its “long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude” - but he and Warren happily filled it with imaginary worlds and games of their own, inspired by their father’s substantial library.
But 1906 was the year everything changed for Jack. Quite suddenly, his beloved mother passed away at an early age, from cancer. The world he knew and loved, the idyll of his early childhood - had been changed forever. And Jack’s response was to lose himself in one of the fictional worlds he and Warren - or Warnie - had created together. A world he called ‘Animal Land’ - full of delightful characters such as this natty frog.
In 1907, he wrote to Warnie at his school in England, describing in detail the story of one of Animal Land’s many kingdoms.
My dear Warnie
…I am thinking of writeing a History of Mouse-land and I have even gon so far as to make up some of it, this is what I have made up.
Mouse-land had a very long stone-age during which time no great things tooke place it lasted from 55 BC to1212 and then king Bublich I began to reign, he was not a good king but he fought against yellow land. Bub II his son fought indai about the lantern act, died 1377 king Bunny came next.
Your loving
brother Jacks
Animal Land, which soon evolved into a universe known as “Boxen”, was a complex imagined world created by the two brothers, which blended animal fantasy with mediaeval romances popular at the time and contemporary colonial politics. Crucially, it was conceived as a complete world - with its own rules, boundaries and belief systems. In one story, Jack wrote :
"The ancheint [sic] Mice believed that at sun-set the sun cut a hole in the earth for itself."
Much later in his life, Jack, in his better known identity as C. S. Lewis - wrote in his partial autobiography, Surprised By Joy:
“With my mother’s death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy, but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.”
To a pair of young children dealing with their grief, and shortly, further displacement as Jack was sent to join his brother away at school in England - the history, lives and laws of some imaginary mice or frogs offered the one thing their upturned lives suddenly lacked - security.
It's too simplistic for me to dismiss Narnia, as some do, as a mythical paradise completely driven by Christian allegory. Lewis himself always denied this, famously insisting
“I couldn’t write in that way at all. Everything began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion.”
Whether he protests too much or not, the promise of innocence, happiness and peace in a fictional land populated by talking animals would be one Lewis returned to again and again in his Narnia books. Perhaps not just to proselytise. Perhaps also to journey back in the imagination to the secure childhood happiness he could never recover in reality.
I didn’t grow up in Belfast in 1906, and nor did I suffer the tragedy ‘Jack’ did at a young age. I like to think that I had a happy childhood. But I also believe that when you write children’s books, especially those with created worlds, you inevitably write out – directly or indirectly – layers of your own feelings as a child. When you finish those books, and leave that world, in some small way, you finish a part of your childhood too.
And perhaps that’s why I’m feeling emotional.
Piers Torday
@PiersTorday
www.pierstorday.co.uk
If you're reading this post in the morning of the day it's come out, send me a positive brain wave and cross your fingers for me: I'm currently shaking fretting panicking calmly getting ready for a job interview in a university somewhere in the UK...
So I'm taking this blog post as an opportunity to reflect on the difficulties and joys of having another job in addition to writing, one that you really don't want to give up on. Most people tend to assume that I'm secretly dreaming of being a full-time writer. I often hear, 'Are you keeping up the academic side just for the money?'
That's easily answered in MS Paint:
To most people, if you have an 'artistic' side, anything else you do must surely be 'paying' for your artistic activity. If you're not giving up the 'day job', it probably means the artistic one doesn't earn you anything, or not enough.
Even my academic colleagues have somehow internalised the notion that I would 'prefer' to write children's books as a full-time job; that it's what I
really want to do. We were talking at lunch about what we'd do if we won the lottery (
yes, students: that's the kind of thing your lecturers and tutors talk about at lunch), and several colleagues said that they'd quit their job immediately. I said I certainly wouldn't stop working - I like my research and teaching, and I'd get bored. The immediate response was, 'But you could spend all the time you want on writing your children's books!'
Frankly, if I really wanted to spend all my time writing children's books... well, I would take the jump and do it.
And if I needed a job to subsidise this activity, I probably wouldn't opt for one that requires hours of teaching, reading, essay-marking, meeting-going, networking, jargon-deciphering, revise-and-resubmitting, email-sending at two in the morning, in a crazy incertain job market, with no weekends to speak of, holidays that are in fact conferences, and the absolute impossibility to stick to regular hours.
Well then, are you keeping up the academic job as a safety net, 'just in case the writing doesn't work out?'(The notion of academia as a 'safety net' is just... I mean, I wish, but...)
If the writing didn't 'work out',
it would probably be in part because of the other job. Writing success isn't some esoteric thing that does or doesn't work out according to the unpredictable movements of the stars - the more you work on it, the more likely it is to 'work out'. You might never be J.K. Rowling,
but you can get very respectable sales by being strategic, working hard, meeting children and promoting your books. This is more difficult when you've got another job.
So of course,
having another job isn't ideal for your publishers, agents and publicists. There is definitely faint pressure to 'quit the day job' and be a full-time author. School visits and festivals often happen during the week. Even if you can make some of it, you can't be one of these writers who do school visits all the time. Therefore your books might not sell as well, and you might not get as high an advance next time, or even asked for another book.
Gone are the days when it was acceptable to write your books in your 'free time', and to decide that this year, you'll only publish one, or none. It doesn't work like that in the UK (to a degree, it still does in France). The publish or perish rule applies here like it does in academia; being a part-time writer will always put you at a disadvantage.
Implicitly, there is pressure also from other authors and illustrators who are full time.
There's a very legitimate worry that writers like me contribute to making our activity appear unprofessional, amateurish, dilettantish, something you do 'when you've got the time', or if a partner is subsidising your indulgent bohemian bourgeois lifestyle. I entirely understand this concern, and it does bother me that I contribute to this vision. Authors and illustrators should absolutely be in a position to live - and to live well - thanks to their work.
Saying that your writing brings you 'pocket money' or is 'a fun thing on the side' is quite insulting to the rest of the community.But choosing not to choose is perhaps the only authentic option when you have the luxury of having two activities that bring you different rewards, different challenges and different joys. And many people, I'm sure, secretly want to do
not just one thing, but
several. Recently a student asked me for career advice (I know, terrifying). She said she was split, because she wanted to be a film maker, but 'not just': she was also considering being a researcher in psychology, or perhaps a teacher, or even a consultant. Why can't we do several things at the same time, when we have so many interests?
I agreed of course, but said the reasonable thing: doing several jobs, especially an artistic one and another 'official' one, is difficult. She said 'Well, you manage it!' I told her 'managing' was a strong word - she doesn't see the moments when I'm marking essays all evening before updating my PowerPoint for a school visit the next day, or playing Google-Calendar-Tetris with deadlines on fiction-writing and article submissions and conference abstracts and book edits.
Since I was making it sound like my life was only slightly less sinister than that of the Baudelaire orphans, she blurted out:
'But you're happy, aren't you?'. I had to admit that I am...
_____________________________________
Clementine Beauvais writes children's books in French and English. She blogs
here about children's literature and academia and is on Twitter @
blueclementine.
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/
I’ve always been a planner; the idea of starting a novel and ‘seeing where the story took me’ was anathema to me. After all, I was the writer; I was in charge.
Despite this, my last novel, Still Falling, out in February 2015, was a mettlesome beast, running to nine drafts before I and my editor were happy. But I’d begun it without a contract, shelved it for nine months to write a commission (Too Many Ponies), and besides, the subject matter took me into darker psychological places than I’d ever gone before – so maybe it was natural that it shouldn’t bend to my will as easily as previous books.
 |
| the best-laid plans |
The work-in-progress, Street Song, would be completely different. Because my agent wanted a full outline for this year’s London Book Fair, I’d thought through the story and knewexactly where it would go. It was a simpler story than Still Falling and for once I hadn’t had to struggle with the main female character – I’ve always found boys easier to write – as she’s very like me as an eighteen-year-old.
I’d promised the couple of interested publishers that the novel would be ready by the end of the year. Challenging, but not impossible. I set a tight schedule – 80,000 words in three months, July to September. I knew I’d over-write – I always do in a first draft; but I told myself I wouldn’t over-write much this time, because of my great outline. By 30th September the first draft would be done; I could fit in something else in October, and get back to it with plenty of time to redraft.
What could possibly go wrong?
On the first page the male protagonist, Cal, announced he was a recovering addict. Unexpected, but it went well with the story, so that was OK. In fact, it made some of his later choices much easier to justify. I don’t tend to get fanciful about the creative process, but it really was as if I hadn’t made that fact up; it was part of the character’s history that he hadn’t been able to tell me until I actually let him speak.
As for Toni, my female MC – what a cow. If I really was as smug as that as an eighteen-year-old, it’s a wonder I had any friends. Her epiphany is meant to be the moment she realises that she doesn’t want to go to Oxford; it was her mum’s dream rather than hers. When I found Cal telling her that it was her dream, she was just scared of failure, I was annoyed at his cheek. I was the writer; he was simply a not-very-perceptive boy (and a made-up one): who was he to tell Toni what she was thinking when even I hadn’t known that?
But he was right. |
| Listen, guys -- I'm kind of in charge here... |
 |
| my low-tech approach to word count |
As July moved into August, and September loomed, the word count grew. At first it was all about hitting those magical targets. Then, on a week’s retreat to finish the draft, just before the climax, another unexpected thing happened. A minor character, meant to be just a random girl in a bar, turned out to be something more. She needed to be rescued by Cal. He won’t be up to the task, I thought: and anyway, I hadn’t planned this. Maybe I should just delete her? After all, I was now at 85,000 and no end in sight. But you know what? She was right too. I’d underestimated Cal, and in fact the ending (when I get there) will be improved by his actions.
It’s all just a bit… inconvenient. My characters are behaving like – well, like people.
And now my meticulously-planned 80,000 word draft is a huge messy long thing well over 100,000 (I’ve stopped checking). I’m two weeks late in starting my next project for which the deadline is – well, it’s too scary to type here but SOON. |
| have stopped checking the scary word count |
But you know what? Every surprise, though tiresome, has made for a better story in the end. Like an unexpected but essentially welcome visitor. She might throw your routines out, and need a bit of looking after, but it’s so much fun to have her in the house.
And if the book has outstayed its welcome in my carefully-worked-out life, well, maybe that’s taught me something important about the creative process too.
Though I do need to finish it TODAY.
What I love most about writing, and thought I would love most even before I was published, is the freedom it gives you. Freedom to write when you want and where you want, about what you want and how you want to.
For a few years I probably averaged a 1,000 published words a year (this was when I used to spend 6 months in the UK and 6 months travelling round the world). Now my average is more like 1,000 words a day. (I try not to work weekends unless I’m really behind on a deadline or so desperate to tell a story that it just can’t wait. I’m writing this on Saturday though - so I probably write more often at weekends than not.) If I've written a 1,000 words in a day I stick a sticker on my annual wall chart. I like seeing the stickers build up only... only there never seems to be enough. Not every day’s got a sticker and I want to write more. I always think I could do more, if I was more focused more, more disciplined yaddah yaddah yaddah.
I call it writer's guilt but really an average of a 1,000 words a day is good.... isn't it? I’ve won two children’s books of the year this year (Stockton and Shrewsbury) and will have had 3 novels out this year in 10 days time.
'The Hero Pup' is written under my Megan Rix pseudonym and being published by Puffin. It follows an assistance dog puppy from his birth until his graduation as a fully-fledged Helper Dog. Anyone who knows me knows how close this book is to my heart and I'm very much looking forward to working with guide dogs, medical alert dogs and PAT dogs on the book tour.
But not only do I have ‘The Hero Pup’ coming out under my Megan Rix pseudonym on the 1st of October I also have the first in a new series of books about the Secret Animal Society coming out under my Ruth Symes name. 'Cornflake the Dragon' is being published by Piccadilly. It’s about a school lizard that turns into a dragon when it’s taken home for the holidays.
How many words do other writers write each day? I don't know. They probably all do much more or maybe they do less but every word they write is pure gold.
And what about the thinking time? You've got to have thinking time, or I have. I like to mull over the story for a month or so these days. Not forcing it to come. Just researching and thinking about characters until I know, absolutely KNOW it's the story I want to tell. I don’t get a sticker for thinking but it’s just as valuable.
Then it comes to the talks at schools and festivals – meeting your target audience. In the past year I've spoken at 16 schools and 5 festivals - an average of little over one a mouth. Is it enough? It feels like the right amount for me but I know of other writers who do lots more. Should I be doing lots more? I don’t know.
And that's what comes with having a career where you choose so much for yourself. There's so many choices that it's hard to know if you've made the right one. But better to make the mistake yourself than be living someone else’s mistake. Maybe there shouldn't be writer's guilt or writer's goals maybe we should just have the aim of improving every day.
Chris Rock (excuse the swearing) has a very funny sketch about the difference between a
job or a career His main point, and I agree with him, is if it's a career there's never enough time for all you want to do to advance it but if it’s a job there is always far too much time and you can’t wait for it to be over. Writing is definitely a career and I wouldn't have it any other way :)
My website's are:
www.meganrix.com and
www.ruthsymes.com.
.jpg?picon=1806)
By:
C.J.Busby,
on 9/5/2014
Blog:
An Awfully Big Blog Adventure
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I have just had the second book of my second series for children published. It feels like a bit of a milestone.
It's called
Dragon Amber, and it's part of a multiple worlds adventure trilogy that started with
Deep Amber last March. The cover's lovely, as all of them have been (thanks to David Wyatt), and there's nothing quite like holding the physical copy of your new book in your hands (or even clutching it to yourself as you do a little dance...!!) But it being the second book of the second series made me stop and think. It's my sixth book to be published. While I'm far from being 'established' (whatever that means), it certainly means I'm no longer a total newbie.
Which feels ever so slightly weird, as I still think of myself as a novice, pretending to be an author.
This business of feeling as if you're pretending seems to be something quite a few children's authors suffer from. (It may be related to the fact that very few of us are actually making enough money to feel writing is a 'proper' job, but that's another story...)
Anyway, I thought I'd take this opportunity - as someone who can no longer consider herself a novice - to try and sum up what I have learnt over the last three years of being part of the world of children's publishing.
1. First and foremost: other children's authors - whether well known, just published or still hopeful - are almost all lovely, warm, friendly and modest (and there are not many professions you'd be able to say that of.) Getting together with them, at festivals, conferences, retreats or book launches is a wonderfully affirming thing to do - and helps quite a lot with that feeling of being a bit of a fraud (
I AM a children's writer - because I am accepted by all those other lovely children's writers!!)
2. I have almost no control over whether my books do well or not - so I should just relax and maybe cross my fingers occasionally! Being open to opportunities like school visit invites or festivals is fun and part of getting to know the publishing business - tweeting and face booking have been similarly good for getting to know other writer friends. And sometimes opportunities have come from that. But none of it has turned my book into a best-seller, and I don't think there's any magic way of doing so!
3. If I don't want to become mad and bitter, I have to try not to compare my book sales/prize nominations and festival invites with others - and must remember NOT to check the Amazon ranking of my books more than once a week! There is a great deal of luck and randomness in this business and then there are the unfathomable whims of publishers, reviewers and the reading public (
Fifty Shades of Grey, anyone?). Generally (but not always: see aforementioned
Fifty Shades) it's Very Good Books that get attention and prizes - equally there are thousands of Very Good Books that don't, and which category mine end up in (even if they were to be considered Very Good!) is mostly down to serendipity.
Oh - and marketing spend.
Which brings me to no. 4.
4. Publishers put serious time, energy and money behind only a select few of the books they publish. These books are plastered all over websites, magazines, 'hot new trends' lists, twitter, reviews, front window billing at Waterstones and W.H. Smiths.
In the absence of this push, you are lucky if your book ends up in a select few Waterstones branches, or garners an online review from a kind blogger. This is no reflection on the quality of your book - I've met too many other brilliant people with fabulous books who can't get them noticed to think it's entirely a meritocracy. Publishers are scrabbling to find the next
Wimpy Kid or
Hunger Games, and even they don't know what will trigger that response. Often it's something they have all roundly rejected as too dire to waste ink on (cough,
Fifty Shades...) So they put money behind a few, and publish a hundred others in a kind of scattergun approach, in case any of them builds a following by chance. I've learned to treat having a book out as a bit like having bought a lottery ticket - whether it does well or not is as random as whether I win the jackpot or a £10 prize for three numbers.
5. So, finally, after a few years of trying to find the 'magic key' to making a go of this publishing lark, I've learned to just enjoy the moment: to hold my new book in my hands, and do a little jig at having pulled it off one more time. In the book I'm currently reading (
The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie) one of the characters is a Northman, hard, battle-scarred, always getting into more impossible fights. At the end of each one, he repeats, as a kind of mantra: 'Still alive, still alive...' I think I feel a bit like that about writing - 'Still there, still there...'
C.J. Busby writes funny fantasy adventures for ages 7 upwards. Her first book,
Frogspell, was a Richard and Judy Children's Book Cub choice for 2012. The series is published in Canada by Scholastic and the UK by Templar and has been translated into German and Turkish.
Deep Amber, the first of a new trilogy, was published in March 2014. The second instalment,
Dragon Amber, came out on 1st September.
"A rift-hopping romp with great charm, wit and pace" Frances Hardinge.
Nominated for the Stockton Book Award 2015.
www. cjbusby.co.uk@ceciliabusby
Over the summer I finished the first draft of my next French YA novel, which, in stark contrast to the ones before, is not grim and dark but comical and light. And while my first two YA books take place entirely in Paris - and in places I know very well, including my old high school - this one narrates a road trip between the city of Bourg-en-Bresse (just a few kilometres from South Burgundy) and Paris. I know Bourg-en-Bresse and Paris well, but not the places in the middle, through which my three heroines were cycling. And that's where Google Street View comes into play.
 |
| somewhere in France |
Using Google Maps and Google Street View to write books is something I've done for quite some time, and I'm sure that most writers do it, though I hadn't quite realised how weird it sounds to people who aren't writers. My mother told me the other day, quite astonished, that she'd heard a famous writer say on the radio that he'd used it for his own novel, which is entirely set in a place in the US that he's never been to. My own response was a blasé 'Well, yes, of course. What's surprising about that?' Google Street View in one tab, Wikipedia in another, the city/ village website in a third, and more tabs containing blog posts or articles on the places in question: normal set-up for any writing session, no?Surely that's a good enough alternative to an expensive flight for the non-New-York-Time-bestselling author...
Well, sure, most of us would always privilege going to the real-world places, and some writers would not dream of writing about a place they'd never visited. There are obvious issues of cultural sensitivity at stake - 'would I truly respect the place, understand it, if I've only seen it through a 360° camera strapped to a car?'. There's the temptation of information overload, at the risk of ending up sounding like Jules Verne. And of course there are issues about the fact that the material given is exclusively visual, sacrificing the characteristic noises and smells which give life and texture to a place. A lot of writers would thus probably say that Street View should preferably be used only for quick fact-checking after seeing a place IRL (In Real Life).
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| not the most inspiring portrayal of space |
But maybe there's something specific, and not necessarily inferior, to writing about spaces that you know only from Street View, in exactly the same way that doing a painting from a photograph is different, but not necessarily inferior, to painting from life.
Ideally, painters begin with life-drawing; and similarly, as writers, we would already have written about spaces that we know intimately: we've had, so to speak, considerable training in 'life-writing'. In the most restricted sense of 'write what you know', this is the first skill to master as a 'representer' of things, whether verbal or visual. But of course 'write what you know' is underscored by the problematic assumptions that 1) we 'know' things, 2) we 'can' write those things that 'we know' and 3) even if both of the above are true, it makes for good artistic 'representation'.
Enter Google Street View, which presents a relentlessly artificial, 2D, unknowable vision of space. Just as photographs flatten reality and necessarily restrict the painter's visual and sensory navigation of the object to be represented, writing from Street View means subjecting yourself to an already mediated, stiff and alienating representation of space. How could anyone possibly argue that can be a good thing?
Because, in both cases, it alerts the painter or the writer to the fact that the material cannot possibly provide a truthful kind of 'knowledge' about the object at all. Therefore it becomes not just desirable but absolutely imperative for something more to emerge - a stylisation, an appropriation of the object or the place. And this process comes from a source material so limited, so other, that you can't revert back to things you think you know.
In other words, you just can't ignore, when you're writing a place from Street View (or indeed any travel guide book, like Verne used to do), that your vision of it is absolutely untrue. You just know you don't know it enough to write authentically about it; therefore, the only way you can go is towards further imagining that place. You have to make these impersonal snapshots of roads and monuments somehow become part of an authentic-sounding world. What must it smell like, this little pond on the side of the road? What must it feel like, this avenue, in the summer?
This creative distance is necessary anyway to any writing about place, whether or not you've been there, lived there, or not at all. You might feel you know your house, your street, your city, but of course your vision of them will always already be mediated - by yourself. The troubling difference, with Street View, is that someone else (someone totally faceless, nameless and in fact quite uncannily threatening) has done the mediating for you, placing you by necessity in a position to notice your alienation from this place.
Writing place 'from Google Street View' is of course not the only way we should proceed - that would be an absurd claim - but it can be a very refreshing endeavour in its own right - and a welcome process of distance-taking from 'truthfulness' in writing.
_____________________________________
Clementine Beauvais's space is split between Britain and France. She writes books in French of all kinds and shapes for all ages, and in English humour/adventure series, the Sesame Seade mysteries, with Hodder, and the Holy-Moly Holiday series with Bloomsbury. She blogs here about children's literature and academia and is on Twitter @blueclementine.
In the past I’ve blogged about my pattern of ‘Writing with the Seasons’ on ABBA, and how it’s always worked for me, but over the last few years it’s all gone out of sync – not just the whole writing with the seasons thing, but my entire routine and writing process.
Various factors have contributed to this, which I won’t bore you with, but they have had a major impact. It’s not that I haven’t been writing, because I have, but not quite in the same way.
Reworking a manuscript is a very different kettle of fish to writing a new book.
With a new agent and fresh eyes on my work, I spent the first part of the year re-working a manuscript that is very close to my heart, and by the end of that process I was quite happy with the end result. I am now reworking a second manuscript, which I am finding much harder going. The voice of the main character eluded me for a long time, and I couldn’t understand why. It was only when I switched to the first person that things started to click and fall into place.
But this is when I come to the writing with the season thing. I know my most productive time of year for writing is autumn and winter and spring. Not the summer. The summer has always been the most distracting time of year, firstly because of school holidays,(although my teen is now old enough to arrange his own distractions, which he happily does!) family holiday, the sunshine, the allotment, the tennis, the...you get the idea. Routine disappears and with it the word count plummets and the guilt rises. There are too many offers for a game of tennis, the swing seat and a good book are always beckoning, the weeds on the allotment need to be kept under control, and there way too many courgettes to give away and recipes to look up!
What’s the answer? Well, we all know that writers never fully switch off, that story ideas, scenes and characters are always percolating in the grey matter, and that a break from writing is good and necessary, and that a holiday is essential. That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t get the present re-write re-written, which has to be done before the end of summer. For my own peace of mind I need to be back in synch.
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| First crop of cherries for my two year old tree |
Without the external pressure of a looming deadline, and the self-imposed deadline not working as it does at other times of the year, it’s all about time management for the summer months for me now: allotting hours of the day, days of the week to the current re-write and fully committing to them, and if that means turning off the phone, the internet, and dare I say it, Facebook and Twitter and the rest of it, then so be it.
Well, that’s the plan...
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| Third time lucky garlic crop |
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| Four varieties of potatoes |
My websiteTwitter @savitakalhan
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.
A cave.
That’s where I’ve been for the last month. That’s where this is coming from.
It’s dark in here, dank and drippy, and there’s a lot of tangled stuff around getting in the way, tripping me up and obscuring the cave mouth. |
| A CAVE; NOT MY CAVE |
The trouble with the tangle of wrack and weed is, some of it’s valuable and some of it’s rubbish, and it’s not easy to know the difference. Babies. Bathwater. The best thing is when you take hold of a long slimy tangly horrible thing; you don’t know how you’re ever going to untangle it and turn it into a thing of beauty and usefulness. Then you examine it closely. Surely that’s a … yes, it is! It’s a Completely Unnecessary Scene! No need to try to turn this bit of sow’s ear into a silk purse. Just – DELETE.
Did I mention it’s an Editing Cave?*
All I have to keep me company in here is a novel. It’s a novel that’s already taken longer than my novels usually take. It’s a novel that I submitted in January, thinking it was – well, I hesitate to say perfect; but I thought it was done. Because otherwise I wouldn’t have submitted it. My editor, The Wise One, said it needed another draft. I was disappointed. Gutted, really, because in my mind I’d moved on to other stories, other characters. |
| THE ACTUAL CAVE |
Because of other commitments, and because she didn’t need it until the end of June (and, if I’m being honest, because I really couldn’t bear to look at it) I left the novel aside for three and a half months before I took it with me into the cave. I sat down prepared to be professional and detached. I don’t think I’m precious about my writing, but I’ll admit my attitude was more, well, they think it needs another draft and they’re the ones paying for it, so I’m just going to have to – I think suck it up an ugly expression, but that’s what I was thinking.
I didn’t expect to enjoy it. I didn't expect to think, Thank God for the chance to make this imperfect novel better. Thank God for the editing cave.
The Wise One was right. The story was too complicated. It dragged in the middle – because I’d cut it from the original 105,000 words to 74,000 I thought it was tight as a drum, but now it’s at 67,000 I realise it was saggy. One of the narrators was wet. I’d thought her sensitive and realistic and a refreshing antidote to feisty. No, she just sounds like she’s 47, said The Wise (and Blunt) One. Another character was underused – I couldn’t big him up and lose words, so I killed him. Actually he was already dead: I just wiped him from history. Oh the power.
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| SOMETIMES I COULDN'T SEE THE WOOD FOR THE TREES. THOUGH THESE ARE THE ACTUAL TREES WHERE I WALK WHEN I LET MYSELF OUT OF THE CAVE. |
Cut cut cut. Change change change.
I've just printed Draft 5. I know it's not done, but it's about a hundred times better than Draft 4. Next week I enter a deeper cave (The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig) for the final stretch.
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| DRAFT 5 -- OF 6, I HOPE. |
The cave mouth is getting a little wider; tiny shards of light are starting to find their way in. I think, if I keep going, there’ll be enough room for me to climb out through, after another week or so. With a much better novel.
* Thanks to Lee Weatherly, who talked about the writing cave in her own blog in January.
I've been thinking a lot recently about how I write, and reading some of the many blogs and books about how other people write. I find it fascinating to see how many different ways there are to get those ideas from inside our heads onto the page.
Some writers who plan their books seem to make detailed outlines, lists, high points and subplots, working out where problems might appear and try to resolve them, even before they write a word. I have tried this approach but each time I try it I find that I seem to get bogged down and quite frankly bored with the idea, however enthusiastic I was about it before I began.
I recently started my own personal challenge to write 2000 words a day, usually first thing in the morning before 9.30am, and when I read Miriam Halahmy's post a few days ago on her editing process I was interested in a book she mentioned by Rachel Aaron. In Rachel's book she mentions that she is a planner and talks about her process for writing more words in a day (2,000 to 10,000). Her planning is incredibly detailed and I can see logically how this would enable you to write a lot more and quickly because you always know what you re going to be writing about. It is a detailed road map. It obviously works, not just for Rachel but also a number of writers I know who do plot their books in great detail before they start.
But not only is this the complete opposite to the way I work, it sounds like something that would (for me) take all the pleasure out of writing. I get such a buzz out of a new idea, even if I have no idea where it is going. I might have an image in my mind, that I have seen or imagined, and something about it will have triggered my interest and sparked an idea.  |
| Is it a log or a creature from the swamp? |
It could be an animal or a person in a particular situation that sets my imagination off.I often have no idea where the story will go, or what exactly it is and I need to start writing to find out. Something about sitting at the keyboard, or putting pen to paper seems to bring the story out so that I can examine it and see what shape it is going to take.
Usually once I get the first idea down and I begin to explore it, I find that I need to know more about the main character. At that point I will often write in the character's voice letting them have a bit of a rant, which may or may not end up in the story. But crucially it lets me understand what is important to them and what problem or several problems the character is facing.
Now and then I will start to write something and it does not become a complete story, so I save it and leave it to one side if that happens, because nothing is ever wasted.  |
| Wandering in the forest of imagination |
The story I am writing at the moment includes two of these short pieces that I wrote at different times, years apart. I'd been juggling several ideas in my head that were gradually coming together and as I started to write they coalesced into an idea for a novel. When I started writing it I realised that something I had written long ago was exactly what I wanted to begin a strand of the story, quite separate from the main storyline. It was soon after that I remembered the other completely unrelated piece, and it too feels right as another element that will build on the first ideas I had.
I am having a huge amount of fun writing this, that is not to say there aren't times I am fighting with the story, trying to wrestle it into place. I have a vague idea of where it is going to end up and what is going to happen close to the end of the book, but no more than that.
Recently, in view of trying to write more each and every day, and after reading about all those plotters and planners out there, I tried to plot out the story and lost two days struggling to get my head around laying out the whole story. In the end I gave up, I am fairly sure my brain is not wired that way, because I could not dig out a single idea beyond what I had already written.
I went back to one of the story strands where I was desperate to find out what was going to happen next and started writing. The following day I went to another part of the story and continued that bit. I discovered one thing. If I wasn't interested enough in writing what happened next then the chances were it was not right and would not be interesting for anyone else, so it needed to be cut or rewritten.
I have decided that planning and plotting are fine, if that is how it works for you, but it is not for me. It drains all the joy out of writing and while the way I write may not seem the most logical way to do it, for some reason it works and best of all I can't wait to get back to it.
I don't think I am the only person who doesn't like plotting but I would be interested to hear about your method of getting the words on the page. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
Her latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me
Linda is Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh
website: www.lindastrachan.com
blog: Bookwords
By:
Emma Barnes,
on 5/16/2014
Blog:
An Awfully Big Blog Adventure
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I’ve just come back from a visit to Santa Barbara. It was wonderful to revisit old haunts – the Daily Grind coffee shop, Chaucer Books – and to spend time watching the dolphins and pelicans from Arroyo Burro beach, smell the roses near the Mission, and most of all, bask in California sunshine after a long, cold, Yorkshire winter.
It also made me think about the relationship between writing and place.
It was while I was in Santa Barbara I got a message saying that my book Wolfie had won a Fantastic Book Award (voted for by children across Lancashire). This seemed fitting, as it was actually while I was staying in Santa Barbara, five years ago, that I wrote Wolfie. And that made me think how odd it was that a book about wolves and deep winter woods (so atmospherically brought to life in Emma Chichester Clark’s illustrations) should have been created in such a completely different environment.
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| cover: Emma Chichester Clark |
I remember the process well. I’d walk my daughter to preschool – passing rows of jacaranda trees, an open air swimming pool and banks of creeping rosemary. Then I’d go home and open my laptop and plunge into a world where a wolf appears in an ordinary British neighbourhood, and takes the heroine into a snow-filled world of adventure. Maybe it was the contrast itself that got my imagination going? I was certainly driven: tapping away intently, working against the clock until pick-up time.  |
| illustration: Emma Chichester Clark |
Of course many writers are inspired by their particular environment and its familiarity. But I wonder how often writers are inspired to write about a setting precisely because it isn’t there? Quite often, I suspect. In some cases, this might be tinged with homesickness, or nostalgia for a place and time lost.
Certainly, one of the most evocative children’s books that I know, in terms of creating a setting, is Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising – part of the famous fantasy series of the same title. This book is set in rural Berkshire near Windsor, and Will’s house, the village, the manor and the surrounding landscape are brilliantly portrayed: so real, so immediate, but also echoing with the years of history that lie behind. When Will sets out into the woods he may meet a Smith from centuries past, or a tramp who has travelled through time, or the mythical Herne the Hunter: somehow the place can contain them all. This capturing of landscape is also a feature of Cooper’s other books – the mountains of Wales in The Grey King, and a Cornish village in Greenwitch.
These books capture perfectly a British place and time (and I say time because I suspect the “present day” Berkshire that Cooper portrays has probably now been lost as totally as her Medieval or Dark Age versions, under the pressures of modern development). Yet they were written when Cooper was far from her original home, living on the East Coast of the US. In interviews, she has described how she was cross country skiing (a thoroughly un-British activity) when the idea of The Dark Is Rising came to her.
I’m certainly grateful for my time in California. Towards the end of my stay I also went to the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference, which was stimulating in a different way. And I enjoyed happy hours running on the beach. But mainly those months were a warm, calm, interlude: a bubble in which I managed to write a book.
Maybe one cold, winteryYorkshire morning I will sit down and find myself writing a tale of sunshine, sand and dolphins…
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Emma's new book,
Wild Thing, about the naughtiest little sister ever (and her bottom-biting ways), is out now from Scholastic. It is the first of a series for readers 8+.
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman
"Charming modern version of My Naughty Little Sister" Armadillo Mag
Wolfie is published by Strident.
Sometimes a Girl’s Best Friend is…a Wolf. Winner of 2014 Fantastic Book Award
"A real cracker of a book"
Armadillo "Funny, clever and satisfying...thoroughly recommended"
Books for Keeps"This delightful story is an ideal mix of love and loyalty, stirred together with a little magic and fantasy"
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I’ve got a serious Arvon addiction. Over the last seven years I’ve averaged a course a year, as student, accompanying teacher, and latterly tutor. I just can’t keep away.
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| Lumb Bank -- where it all started for this Arvon junkie |
Like thousands of others, I value the beautiful old houses which feel so homely, the bookish environment, the magical way the week gallops and yet feels long and special. I have made lasting friendships at Arvon, and had the privilege of working with amazing writers such as Lee Weatherly, Celia Rees, Linda Newbery and Malorie Blackman.
I spend a lot of time and earn a good part of my living facilitating the creativity of others, in workshops and residencies in schools or colleges. In general I love it. Nineteen years teaching secondary English and watching in horror as the curriculum allows less and less for the creativity of learners and teachers has made me especially value working with teenagers who have somehow managed to hold onto their love for writing.
Since 2011 I have run a network of sixth form writers from schools across Belfast. Last month I took this group on their second Arvon residential. |
| Totleigh Barton |
Arvon, the national writing charity, has played a crucial role in my career. In 2007, with ambitions, a half-finished first draft and not much else, I attended a course on YA with Malorie Blackman and Lee Weatherly at Lumb Bank. It was my first proper contact with real writers, and I could hardly believe that these published, award-winning goddesses would deign to read my words, comment on them and, even more amazingly, tell me that at least some of the words weren’t that bad. Lee, indeed, was kind enough to keep in touch and give me feedback on the finished novel, which became Taking Flight. She’s now a good writing pal, and, in a neat full-circle which would be far too cheesy in a novel, has twice tutored my sixth formers at Arvon.
But though I adore Arvon, and genuinely enjoy seeing its magic work on the students, for once I felt I wasn’t really up for it last month. Having been an Arvon tutor myself for the first time in December, I worried that I’d find it hard to go back to the role of accompanying adult and workshop participant. OK, maybe I’m a slight control freak. Besides, I had looming Deadlines – those fancy professional things I used to long for. Specifically an academic chapter about Jacqueline Wilson, and my forthcoming novel to sort out after an editorial meeting involved five minutes of my editors telling me what they liked and 55 minutes telling me what they hated (I can’t plug it here because one of the things they hated was the title). I just hadn’t time for Arvon unless I Used It Wisely.
The Arvon day is very structured, with workshops in the morning and readings in the evenings. Being in loco parentis, I and my colleague Maureen, a poet and teacher, had certain responsibilities but even so, we had free time in the afternoons to do our own work. And boy, I had plenty of it to do.
Would it be the academic writing, or the novel editing? Both were (and still are) pressing. Neither appealed. Arvon, for me, is an environment for experimentation, for being at the exciting start of something, for letting things happen. Shortly before I went, my agent, after listening with her usual patience to me witter on about a new idea – for the novel-after-next, said Write me an outline. (Possibly to shut me up.) OK, I thought, I’ll schedule that for July. In the meantime, I have to do the things I’m contracted to do. Because I’m professionaland serious.
Then I got to Totleigh Barton on a kind March day, with my lovely sixth formers, all at the exciting start of everything. |
| view from Lumb Bank |
Our tutors were the lovely Lee and the equally lovely Yemisi Blake, and as always on a course for young writers, there was a mix of poetry and prose. Mornings were spent in workshops, and like many teachers I love being able to sit back and be taught by a talented tutor. Then came the first afternoon. The students were on their lawful pursuits, writing or having individual tutorials. I wasn’t on cooking duty. I had from two until seven to sit in my quiet little room and Get Things Done. |
| Poetry Library at Totleigh |
I opened the Jacqueline Wilson file. Hmm. I opened and swiftly closed the forthcoming novel file. If there is a season for everything, then the season for both these projects was – not yet. Not here. I was surrounded by spring, and young people. I looked out at the daffodils and the coming-to-life kitchen garden and decided that this was no place for academic writing and certainly not for intensive editing.
I couldn’t possibly work on the novel-after-next, could I?
That first afternoon I did about 1200 words. And the same the next day. It felt illicit and fun and exciting – something writing hasn’t been recently. Perhaps because of this the narrator’s voice came to me easily, cheekily; sparkier and more original than he’d seemed in my neat planning notebook. About 200 words in I realised something surprising about him which I’d not known before and which will make the book much better.
Arvon came to an end; it always does. I wasn’t one syllable further on with the academic chapter or the edit. But you know what? I am now. It will be fine.
And more importantly, I’ve remembered what I love about making up stories in the first place. Being surprised. I’m sensible and professional and have Deadlines, so I’m not allowed to open that file I started at Arvon. Yet. But when the time comes, I’m ready. Being a bit of a control freak, I have the date marked in my diary.
Thanks Arvon. Again.  |
| Note the open gate |
"Yes, but do you love your characters?'
It was my mother asking the question, over breakfast . I’d returned home for a weekend, just before my first book came out. I’m not very sharp at answering direct questions over breakfast, so I think I mumbled something into my boiled egg about “I mean I like some of them, if that’s what you mean…”
But I don’t think it was.
Now my second novel has just come out, and I’m starting a third, her question has made me reflect on a broader point about writing.
Of course I love my characters. It would be much harder to write if I didn’t. I love the heroes, I love the villains. I love the characters that are a pleasure to write, the characters that take more work. I even love the characters that ultimately don’t quite cut it on the published page and the total failures lying lifeless and rejected in my draft folder.
The reason I have to is that, whilst I’ve brought in elements of observation from remembered encounters with real life characters, friends and strangers, real and fictional, every character I write is – in the end – only as revealing or engaging to a reader as I can make them. They are all, ultimately, nebulous and circulating thoughts deep in my subconscious given bones and clothes made of type.
So if I don’t lovethem, I don’t love my work. And whilst I’m sure this view will change and evolve the more I write, I’m find myself more and more convinced that loving your work – is the only true motivator to sitting down in front of the screen each day. Especially when you’re under pressure. Or not feeling remotely inspired. Or hungover.
And by that, I don’t mean a narcissistic self-absorption – although of course, a degree of that is almost impossible to avoid when you sit alone in front of a computer for hours with only Twitter and your thoughts for company. I am also trying to avoid queasy self-help territory.
What I mean is that I’m learning to authentically love my work for itself, and not because of its subjective value for others. Love it when it's easy, love it when you think you will never ever finish writing this book.
I want my books to be published and read. I want readers to enjoy them and critics to acclaim them. I want the ideas in them to provoke debate. Staying in print, on library shelves, hopefully inspiring or entertaining lots of young readers – of course those things matter deeply.
But I've realized that ultimately I need to love my characters - the work of creating them - as writing is the means to an end, that goes beyond all that.
Continued publication in some form permits me – just - a daily existence where I have the freedom and time to work out what I think about the world. To read and read till the shelves collapse. To go for a walk in the park when I want. To occasionally, just very occasionally, entirely escape from this world and lose myself completely in a fictional one of my own making.
So yes, Mum – I do love my characters. Because they allow me to do all that.
Piers Torday
www.pierstorday.co.uk
“Miss Molly had a dolly who was sick sick sick…”
Many writers create playlists of the music which inspires them to write (my publishers revealed the playlist for my own recent teen novel earlier this month) but I doubt that the nursery rhyme Miss Molly Had A Dolly is on many novel playlists.
However, a couple of weeks ago, I was in an Edinburgh library, grabbing half an hour to write while one of my children was at a music lesson, when I realised I was in the library for exactly the same half hour as the local Book Bugs rhyme time session.
So I wrote most of a scene about treachery and betrayal in a library filled with the noise of nursery rhymes and bouncing songs.
And it didn’t distract me
at all. It was very noisy, but it was pleasant noise, noise which made me smile whenever I surfaced briefly from my fictional world to listen to boats being rowed or bus wheels going round, and it didn’t prevent me writing.
Which made me consider what does and doesn’t distract me.
I spend a lot of time visiting schools and book festivals etc, so I do a lot of writing in trains, staffrooms, libraries and cafes. And I get a lot of serious focussed work done in those places. I can ignore teachers talking about unruly pupils and difficult families (they must assume that anyone typing on a keyboard can’t hear them…), I can ignore waiters dropping glasses and drunken hen parties at the other end of the carriage.
I can write efficiently in the midst of any amount of noise. Provided it’s nothing to do with me.
Because the one place I absolutely must have peace and quiet for writing is my own house. At home, the slightest creak of a child getting up unexpectedly early in the morning can knock me right out of my imagination (who is that? is she ok? do I have to make breakfast already? oops, I’ve forgotten what I was about to type…) Whereas in a library, a dozen adults singing Miss Molly Had A Dolly to a dozen children
who are not my children, is just background noise.
At home any loud noises or even quiet sounds (is anything more distracting than someone making an effort to tiptoe past your study door?) feel like they are my responsibility, so they pull me out of my imagination. But outside the house, the toddlers treating dollies or the waiters clattering or the teachers gossiping are nothing to do with me, so I can stay happily in my own wee writing world.
In order to write at home, I prefer everyone else to be away at work or school, or soundly asleep. Anywhere else, I can write with any level of volume at all, so long as the noise is not my responsibility. And usually, however cheerful the singing or fascinating the gossip, the real world isn’t nearly as compelling as the story I’m creating…
Indeed I often find the outside world inspiring. Unlike some writers, I don’t tend to get ideas from other people’s conversations (so those teachers can keep gossiping…) but I do watch people: how they dress, how they walk, how they act with each other.
I watch the landscape too, from moving trains. And I change what I’m writing if I see something more interesting through the train window.
A couple of years ago I was writing a scene set in a playpark, when the train taking me up the east coast of Scotland passed the bright flags of a golf course. Suddenly a golf course seemed like a much more interesting place to set the hunt, chase and fight. So now
Mind Blind, my new teen thriller, has a couple of chapters set on a golf course (though no-one plays a round of golf, it’s all sprinting and martial arts) and those chapters would have been very different if I’d written them sitting at home.
I’m now wondering whether I should write all my books out of the house, where I’m less easy to distract and more easily inspired. That strategy would cost a lot in train tickets and herbal teas though! So probably I should just keep getting up early and staying up late, to write in my nice quiet study…
I’m also wondering if I could test this 'nothing distracts me' theory, and try to write in the middle of a rock concert, a soft play area, or a thunderstorm. Does anyone want to challenge me to write in loud and potentially distracting locations?
Lari Don is the award-winning author of 21 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers.
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