A Scattering of Authors

          I haven't posted a blog for a couple of weeks.

          Blame the summer.
          You have to rush out and soak up the sun when you can in Britain, so for part of that two weeks, I was away in Devon.
          Last week, I was in Oxfordshire for the 2013 Scattered Authors Society Conference.
          This has been held annually for over ten years now, in a beautiful medieval manor house, in a small English village.
   Scattered Authors from all over Britain gather there, from Monday to Thursday.

          It's a gab-fest, a chance to catch up with friends, an opportunity to learn new workshop techniques to take into school sessions, to pick the brains of other authors about editors and publishers, to drink Pimms in a sunny garden while swallows and swifts dive and soar - and, above all, to talk about writing with other people who really understand what you're talking about and why you love it.

               The gathered authors - nearly thirty of them - ate in the stone-floored undercroft. The food is excellent; the talk almost non-stop.

We met mostly in the lovely solar, with its great chimney-breast, its wooden beams and stone-framed windows. A small private chapel opens off it. Every session begins with a five minute read, where one of the writers reads aloud, usually from a book they're writing. Celia Rees says that every book she's read from at Charney has won a contract!
          Celia, Mary Hoffman and Penny Dolan combined their experience of travelling abroad as writers to give us some tips. Anticipate disaster! - that's their advice. And if it's for work, claim expenses against tax. The discussion afterwards brought up more experiences, and advice.

          Jenny Alexander gave us a wonderful workshop session, using the greater arcana from the tarot cards. She pointed out that these intriguing distillations of dream images can be used for meditation and to inspire stories and poems. Jenny is always inspirational.
          Katherine Roberts led a session bringing us up to date on e-publishing and her adventures in it. I chipped in where I could, with my own experience. Kath provided lots of advice, and emailed us all a list of the sites she'd mentioned, with links.
          Dianne Hofmeyr led a very enjoyable drawing workshop - but Di's triumph was the performance she gave of her book, The Bojabi Tree. She sang, she danced, she acted, and it was a joy - though Julia Jarman almost stole the show with an impromptu and funny impersonation of a tortoise.
          But, as ever, the most vital thing about the Scattered Authors Conference was being there, talking and laughing - there is always almost non-stop laughter at Charney.
          Here's one last toast to all the Scattered Authors - success! 

 

A Conversation With Gillian McClure

'Selkie' written and illustrated by Gillian McClure, published by Plaister Press

         
          This is the first in an occasional series of conversations with friends - many of whom will be writers, but not all.
           My first guest is the award-winning writer and illustrator, Gillian McClure, who I met when we gave a talk together at the Children's Writers' and Illustrators' Conference in September this year.

Susan Price

           Sue Price: I used to draw a great deal as a child and teenager, and was considered talented - but with me, writing took over, and I drew less and less. Obviously, with you, the two skills went more hand-in-hand. Can you even imagine a life without drawing?

Gillian McClure

Gillian McClure:  Writing nearly took over for me about ten years ago, when my agent wanted me to write little stories with black and white illustrations for the 7 plus age group because they were easier than picture books to get published.

          But I was half hearted. I loved colour and so I made a conscious decision not to move away from picture books however hard the going was. Now when I’m with writers I don’t feel wholly a writer and when I’m with illustrators I don’t feel wholly an illustrator. I only feel whole when putting text and image together in a picture book.

          Sue: So obviously, no, you can’t imagine not drawing and painting! I sometimes get really fed up with writing – it can be a slog at times – and I tell myself that if I had a change of earning a living some other way, I’d never write another word.

          I'm not sure it's true. I think, after about three weeks, at the longest, I’d start to get that looming, anxious, twitchy feeling – and I would have to write again. Ever experienced anything like that?

          Gillian: Oh yes, I crave a normal 9-5 job with weekends off, a salary and a pension – a normal life like everyone else. But like you an anxiety drives me on and I have to keep on entering that long dark tunnel with a chink of light at the end – the finished book.

         Sue: Could you tell us more about the process of making a picture-book?

          Gillian:   I start with an image or just a feeling in my head, then I attach a sentence or two to it – like an accompanying tune and then I grow this into the first draft of a story. I do this first draft on post-its – to keep the word count down and because I can stick them in a blank 32 page dummy book and move them about at the page turns.  This all helps get the rhythm  and pace of the story to work.

          Writing a picture book text is a bit like writing a poem because of the tight framework. The best texts are like a long single sentence flowing from page to page.

          The second draft occurs when I add the images; words can be cut back if the pictures are telling the same bit of the story. This is the stage I really enjoy, integrating word and image and getting the sentences to follow the movement of the pictures, as in this early rough from The Little White Sprite - 

 

- which ends up like this in the finished book.

 

           If I’m illustrating someone else’s story, it’s a bit like coming in on the process at the second draft stage but being unable to play around with the words. I can add something to them though  – a visual sup plot. Once I added a small dog to Mary Arrigan’s Mario’s Angels when there was no dog mentioned  in the text. Neither Mary nor the editor objected to the story having a gate crasher.

          Sue Price: I love the gate-crashing dog! And I loved your account of making a picture book. It confirmed what I've often suspected: that it's like writing a poem.

          Yet I think people often look down on picture books as 'just for children', which is shocking on so many levels.

          First, it's the disregard for the artistry in them, both in words and pictures - and then, I think of my cousin, who teaches languages and reading, and says that learning to read is like an iceberg: 90% is unseen.

          He says that a child who comes from a home where they've been involved in conversations, been told stories, and have been read stories, is years ahead of a child who hasn't had these experiences when it comes to learning to read. Because, he says, socialisation and social convention plays a huge part both in learning to read and being motivated to read. Take all that together, and there's hardly an art form worth more respect than a beautiful, engaging picture book.

          Gillian:What an interesting simile – learning to read being like an iceberg.  I do feel it’s a huge responsibility writing for children. And there needs to be consideration for the poor Mum and Dad who are made to read the same book night after night (in the families where there are bedtime stories). A picture book text has to sound good when read aloud, even when it's in graphic format like Zoe's Boat (below) making it a bit like a poem.

          SUE: A last question, then. What's your favourite of the picture books you've done? The one that comes closest to your ideal of text and pictures working together to make a beautiful whole?

          GILLIAN: I think I would say the new one, We’re Going to Build a Dam, to be published in March 2013.

          Here I’ve gone further than before to make the typeface part of the illustration as well as the text. For example, on a page where the dam breaks and there’s the word ‘CRACK!’ the typographical designer, Lisa Kirkham, actually makes the letters split apart.

          And where the text says ‘...a small stream rippling round a boulder’ the type does that movement in the illustration.

          The book, We’re Going to Build a Dam, will be published by Plaister Press, which Gillian McClure started.

The Little White Sprite by Gillian McClure

Zoe's Boat by Gillian McClure.

 

 

 

 

 

I Did It!

Friday 7th September 2012 

     I did it, I did it!
          Three years to the month since I started, I've finished Sterkarm 3 and sent it to my agent just one hour ago.
          Now what do I do?
          Whatever, it has to be do-able one-handed. The doc's anti-inflammatories have done wonders for all my other joints - I am bounding up stairs and hills with lightsome foot - but left the tendonitis in my right hand and arm untouched.  When I finished the Sterkarm book last night,  my right wrist was visibly swollen.
          Still, it's forced me to remember many tricks, such as:

Cntrl + C = Copy

Cntrl + V = Paste

Cntrl + X = Delete

Cntrl + S = Save

          A double click on a word selects it for copying or deletion.
          All these enabled me to do a lot left-handed - quite suitable for writing about the Sterkarms! - in one corner of the key-board.
          So I'm afraid that's all for this post - 
          But good wishes to all and any struggling with finishing a book! Be of good cheer! It does, eventually, end.

By Bitter Sterkarm...

          This will be a short post, as I have taken an oath.  By Oak and Ash, and Bitter Thorn, I will finish Sterkarm 3 and have it ready to send to my agent - or will have sent it - by September 1st.
          I know I said it was almost finished, but...
          I had to round up those loose hounds... Well, it turned out, they weren't as hard to round up as I'd feared.  But while I was looking for them, I found a lengthy passage that needed rewriting.  I'd brought in two minor characters to do something that - I suddenly saw - would be much better done by one of the more important characters.  But that means rewriting that scene and surrounding scenes...
          And the ending.  Endings, of course, are a beach.  I am feeling my way through this scene by my fingertips.  There are several characters.  The revelations of the scene must be made bit by bit - but every character must behave in character, and speak like themselves - and it all means going back and forth, rewriting, scrapping, moving lines about...  It's slow and head-nipping.
          And so much of my time is being taken up by other things - e-publishing my back-list, blogging, tweeting...  I could see it all going on for months.
          But I'm a member of an on-line writers' group called Flatcap. We 'meet up' on line most days, to report to each other on what we've managed to get done, and encourage each other.

The Ghost Wife

          I was grumbling on Flatcap about how it was all taking such an age, when another Flatcapper, the witty Joan Lennon, told me to take, myself, the same advice I would give to a novice writer in the same situation.

          Why don't you, Joan sagely asked, set yourself a deadline?
          Well, this is just what Flatcap is for.  So I am taking Joan's advice and setting myself a deadline.  September 1st - no later!

The Wolf Sisters by Susan Price

    I am also coming round to the idea of A Sterkarm Embrace as the title - though I may have to write in an explanation of what a Sterkarm embrace is.
          I have two more e-books out - Wolf Sisters and The Ghost Wife.  Another is pending, but it will just have to pend until the Sterkarms are done.

            Nor have I forgotten the Green Man.  I have got as far as buying a mask for a former, and cutting the side off a large cardboard box to make a working surface.  I've covered the cardboard in clingfilm, so the papier-mache (when I get to that stage) won't stick to it.  When I have finished the Sterkarms - by September 1st! - I will allow myself, as a reward, to have a go at the Green Man.  My brother suggests using cardboard tubes, like toilet roll and kitchen roll innards, to help with the curl of leaves.
          But, on with the Sterkarms...
And Blott, of course... 

Fighting the Green Man

Canterbury Cathedral's Green Man

          I was going to write this week about how busy I was last week with various business trips - but now that they're all done, I can't find any enthusiasm for blogging about them.

          Instead I’m going to write about an idea that has unexpectedly taken over my mind.  It keeps nudging in when it isn’t wanted, and won’t go away.

          I woke up one morning a couple of weeks ago, thinking about it.  You ought to  make, it said, a Green Man face out of papier-mache.

          But why would I want to?  While having nothing  against Green Men, I don’t want one.  I didn’t know I wanted to make one.

          But the idea won’t go away.  When I’m trying to concentrate on other things – like writing a blog, or finishing the Sterkarm book  – it sidles in.  You could use, it says, one of those cheap plastic face masks as a former… Where did that come from?  I hardly even knew those masks existed  - though there they are, on Amazon, 99p

          I dismiss the whole notion.  It’s a waste of time.  But it won’t go away – The leaves could be different colours, it says, as I wake on another morning.  As if the year was turning: some bright green and spring-like, others yellow and red.  There could be berries.

          But I don’t want to make it!  It would take a long time, it would be messy – and what would I do with it, even if I finished it?  It would be big, and heavy and utterly useless.  I couldn’t sell it: I wouldn’t even want it myself.

          But still the idea won’t go away.  Try, it whispers.  See if you could do it.  You’d have to look at different leaves – it’d be interesting, something different.  Go on…

Norwich Green Man

          My aunt laughed when I told her.  The Prices are all the same, she said.  They just want to be making something.  Don’t care about it when it’s made – they only want to make it.  Your grandfather, she said, when he worked at the brickyard, used to make animal figures out of clay and fire them along with the bricks –  and then would give them away. He wasn’t interested in them when they were done; he just wanted to see if he could make them.  Look at your brothers, she said, always drawing, painting, modelling, carving... Can't help themselves.

           But where do these ideas come from?  Why are they so insistent and hard to dismiss?  Why are they there waiting when you wake up?  Why a Green Man, of all things?

          So that’s where I am at the moment – trying to finish the Sterkarm book that might make me some money, trying to publish my backlist as ebooks, and trying to fight off a Green Man…

          I also blog over at Do Authors Dream of Electric Books?

          And if you love books, and have an e-reader, you might like to rummage through this goodie-bags of books.

Head Mangling with the Sterkarms

Always a cheerie chappie

          Orwell said writing a book was like enduring a long drawn out bout of illness.

          When I first read that, as teenager, I didn’t believe it.  I thought, ‘What an old moan. He’s earning a living by writing instead of in a factory, and all he can do is grumble about it.’

          Now, much older, I realise what a true word the man wrote: and I’ve been learning how true all over again.  Somehow, you always forget.

          I’ve slogged for three years on this Sterkarm book, just working out a plot, and I’ve finally figured out – I think – how it’s to end.

          And I kidded myself that I was now on the downward slope.  One final rewrite , to knock it all into shape, right?

          Right?

          Wrong.

          I’ve been rewriting this past week, with two windows open on the computer – one for the slog version, and one for the new and, I hope, final version.  Copying and pasting from one to the other, and re-ordering, rewriting, changing, improving…

          And it’s been even more head-nipping than before.

          With almost every sentence I’m having to jump back to earlier chapters or pages, because, I find, I’ve thrown in something crucial on the fly, promising myself that I’d sort it out later.  Well, the later is now.  I have to go back and work out where it should have been introduced and, when I’ve found the place, I have to do the work of finding the words to actually blend whatever it is in, without it seeming too obvious.

          Or I realise that I’d forgotten all about an important character – who should be in this scene – but isn’t.  Who would have important and interesting things to say – if I go back and work him or her into the scene – which may mean going back a considerable way to establish their presence.  And then I have to find the words for those interesting and important things they would say, and the right tone – in fact, work out what they’re feeling at that moment.

          Or I find a character in a scene who really isn’t necessary and has to be written out… and the scene patched up around the hole they’ve left.

          I’d forgotten how much thought and concentration – and referring to research notes - this all takes.

         And this is saying nothing about the moving around of whole scenes, the writing of new ones, the new decisions on where chapters should start and end, and the rewriting required to make those changes work.

          Head-nipping?  It’s head-mangling.

          It makes me think of my old headmaster (a maths graduate), who infuriated my art-teacher by telling him that ‘art requires no intelligent thought.’  I am certain my headmaster had never tried to write a novel.

          It’s given me a fervent love of Word’s navigation pane (called document map in earlier versions) which makes it possible for me to skip about, from heading to heading, in seconds, instead of spending an age scrolling backwards and forwards, or opening and closing lots of files before finding the bit I want.

          In fact, I find myself giving thanks again for computers in general.  If I’d had to do all this with paper and pen, or with an old typewriter and loose paper, I would have tipped myself into an empty paper box and had myself buried by now.

          Blott is particuarly relevant this week, as it seems authors are being plagued by a specialist species of internet troll, as Kathleen Jones tells us here, at Authors Electric.