Category Archives: That writing thing

May 23 2013

CBI conference recap: the shiny bits

The Children’s Books Ireland conference took place last weekend. Basically it involved much tea and geeking out over kids’ books with some of my favouritest writerly and bookish people ever, so that was quite nice. Some of the shiny bits:

  • Sarah Ardizzone talked about translation, noting the length of time it can take for books to appear in translation but also how it can change reading patterns dramatically if there are translated works of major stories (e.g. Harry Potter). She also addressed the benefits of using translation exercises in schools, almost as a way into creative writing.
  • Hervé Tullet was quite mad and French and had played The Big Bad Wolf in the previous session. I admit to swooning. His books are really innovative and engaging – they leave room for readers to add their own stuff. Definitely worth checking them out for pre-school/early school types.
  • Was really interested by John Boyne, who was interviewed by the ever-magnificent Robert Dunbar. He spoke about his writing process – writing one book for kids, then one for adults, although he tends to think more in terms of the character age than intended audience. (Though he did note all his kids’ books were third person, while adult ones in first.) The idea for the next book comes in the late, tidying-up days of the previous one; he couldn’t jump between projects. In terms of his training, he didn’t find English (at TCD) useful at all, but his seven years at Waterstones as a bookseller made up his “real books education”. He also found the Creative Writing MA at East Anglia incredibly useful – noted it wasn’t so much about the work you did as your reading of other people’s stuff, learning to read in a totally different way and analyse it sentence by sentence.
  • There was a very cool comics panel with Sarah McIntyre, Rory McConville, and Alan Nolan, where the idea of comics going beyond just the funny stuff and superheroes, talking about comics and graphic novels being a format rather than a genre.
  • Confession: I almost skipped Alex T. Smith’s session because he writes for 5-8-year-olds and I was sure I’d be bored. Ha. He puts innuendo in his books, and also talked warmly about his grandfather and the influence he had on him and his writing. Then there was drawing. It was all rather lovely.
  • Sarah Crossan kicked off Sunday and offered up some very honest insights about her writing process. She noted that some of her own issues from childhood slipped into her debut, The Weight of Water, but that she hadn’t been aware of that, and also noted that she didn’t think good art can be therapy. Kasienka’s strength was something she would have liked at that time in her life, though. Her plotting/outlining stuff was really interesting – there were fancy slides! – and the amount of work, thought, care, time, and energy she puts into her novels was very evident.
  • The Edge of the Page session had numerous speakers in 5-minute bursts talking about Irish authors/illustrators they hoped wouldn’t be forgotten. My main memory of this one is Gráinne’s crush on Eddie Lenihan.
  • Owing to flight issues, the next panel was something completely different – Deirdre Sullivan and Sheena Wilkinson interviewed by their lovely editor, Elaina O’Neill. The issue of rebellious characters came up – Sheena noted that they were more interesting (in the case of her Declan), and Deirdre spoke about how Primrose’s rebellion comes out of sadness, as is often the case with teenagers. There was a lot of talk about gatekeepers – what you can leave in and how it has to be handled, how often having something without making it The Main Problem can be tricky.
  • Jon Klassen was utterly adorable and brilliant. He took the audience through a number of his projects, including bits from his animation work, and then the different picture books. Favourite thing said: “We’re not promising the universe is on your side. ‘Cause it’s not, a lot of the time.” Also about how problem-solving is a creative skills, and how working with your limitations and then figuring out ways around them is actually very useful.

For other conference recaps…
Sarah McIntyre talks about the Saturday
Helen Bradshaw talks about parts of Sunday
Inis recaps Saturday and Sunday

May 14 2013

Writing Imaginary Books for Generic Teenagers

The post below was originally written for and published at the Writing4All.ie guest blog in 2010. It’s since vanished from the internets, so I thought I’d repost here. I think most of it is still relevant…

“So would you ever think about writing, you know, a real book?” Writers for young audiences hear this a lot – slightly less so since the success of Harry Potter, Twilight et al, though even these tend to be ‘excused’ away in the best tradition of dismissing anything readable. (“They’re fun! I mean, they’re not Great Literature or anything…”) I’ve had nine books for pre-teens and teenagers published but apparently these are on another plane of existence altogether – they’re imaginary books, perhaps. Real books are for adults. Writing for young people is the ‘easy way out’.

I find it bewildering any time I hear this, usually with phrases like ‘ah, sure children will read anything’ or ‘teenagers are reading this rubbish’ tagged on. I heard two middle-aged men discussing the Twilight phenomenon on the radio recently, talking about ‘teenagers’ as though they were all of one mind, all with low expectations and no critical faculties whatsoever. Well, sure, that’s middle-aged men for you. Ah, but hold on now . . .

For the most part, we don’t make sweeping generalisations about age groups unless they’re the very young or the very old, and even with the elderly we all know many who defy the stereotype, making it more of a caricature than anything else. But with teenagers – ah, sure they’re debauched and idiotic and self-absorbed and lazy and irresponsible and stupid. It’s their hormones or it’s the school system or it’s Society. And they read rubbish. And we should be grateful they’re reading anything at all (unless it’s dangerous, because they’re too stupid to know the difference between fact and fiction, and if you put sex or drugs into a book they will almost certainly fling the book aside and go find one or the other to experience immediately).

It’s easy to fall into the generalised-teenager trap. Occasionally I find myself doing it, and then I stop. Stop and think. I think about me as a teenager, as my friends as teenagers. I think about what’s changed since then, and what hasn’t. I think about summer camps and school-year workshops I facilitate where teenage participants say and write smart and funny and wacky things. I see them be silly and obsessive and intense. I see them be self-conscious about certain things and gorgeously unself-conscious about others. Most of all I see them be different in some ways and similar in others, the way that a group of adults of a similar age might be. They can be obnoxious or kind, organised or chaotic, enthusiastic or bored. They can be anything.

It’s what we need to remember when commenting about books for teenagers, but also when writing them. The Generic Teenage Protagonist based on a handful of clichés thrown together simply won’t do. The Generic Teenage Novel doesn’t exist – apart from the age range of the central characters, teenage fiction spans almost all the genres that ‘real’ fiction covers (erotica excluded). Teenagers are not a separate species who through some accident of nature all share identical reading habits and critical faculties. And if as a writer you find yourself pondering the fact that some of them do seem to resemble mindless zombies, it’s a good idea to look around the office or the neighbourhood and ponder how well any particular age group looks when its least enchanting specimens are held up for scrutiny.

Apr 5 2013

Some things about short stories

Last night I went to What’s The Story? at the Mill Theatre in Dundrum, an event focusing on short fiction. Katy Hayes, current Writer-in-Residence for Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown county, chaired; guests were Martina Devlin, Declan Meade, and Éilís Ni Dhuibhne.

Some points of interest (there were many, and I rather diligently had a little notebook out to scribble down the wisdom):

  • Martina spoke about family stories, and hearing them in long car journeys as a child, but also that “families are highly selective about the stories they pass on”. The short story she read from was based on a real-life family incident, and she’s also delved into the family history for her novel Ship of Dreams. The issue of the creativity involved in this, even though working from real life events, came up later; the fact that there’s selecting and arranging and choosing the whole way through the writing.
  • Martina also noted that objects served as “a shortcut to memory” for her; having certain objects in front of her when writing was useful in terms of evoking a place or time.
  • Declan spoke about selecting stories as an editor, and approaching the submissions pile not necessarily expecting any specific things apart from “stories which deserve to be read”. In the opening paragraphs/pages you’re looking at a piece seeing what the writer is trying to do, and then seeing if they actually achieve this. In terms of picking what goes in, it’s mostly a yes or no; the maybe pile is really “a polite no” and a sense that you might want something else from this writer but not that particular piece.
  • Éilís spoke about judging short story competitions and the importance of having a very strong first page. It has to be striking, and most especially have an “imaginative use of language” alongside all the story, characterisation, content stuff.
  • Questions raised about the short story as a form – for many writers it’s a warm-up of sorts, the first thing they write. It’s manageable, and you can see the other side of it, as Katy noted in her introduction. But for others it’s what they keep writing their whole lives. Éilís suggested that most fiction writers, even if they write both novels and short stories, are more naturally suited to one or the other.
Feb 11 2013

Social media yadda yadda

Last week I facilitated a workshop for writers starting out, and there were questions at one stage about the importance of Being Active On Social Media, and one of the things that came up was the super-self-promoters on things like Twitter. “Stop following those people!” was my advice there. But there was still the worry of needing to do all these things in order to be a ‘better bet’ as a writer.

I also came across this piece from Gillian ‘Gone Girl’ Flynn’s agent talking about social media. My favourite quote from this, re: whether it’s worth investing in social media marketing and digital promotion:

…it is not always the author’s investment. There has certainly been a lot of social media chatter ABOUT Gillian’s books, although it’s true that for the most part she was not out there participating in or generating the conversation.

I love twitter, as some of you may have noticed. But I don’t think of it as a ‘self-promotion tool’ at all. It’s like going to a nice big coffee shop and yapping to people, and getting to know some of the regulars who sit near you a bit better. Sometimes you might invite people you know from somewhere else to come join you, and there’s a fair few people there you’ll see outside the coffee shop, or invite to a party.

There are great discussions and some mundane ones too, and while you do hear about people’s work and stuff that they have going on, it’s still weird and inappropriate if a stranger who’s just walked in comes up to you and starts shouting in your face ‘buy my book buy my book buy my book!’ That’s a world away from someone you’ve chatting to, whose face is familiar, going, ‘oh, I’ve something new out now’ or (even more effectively) someone you know recommending you something that’s just out.

(Along similar lines, it is weird when you’re discussing something political and a stranger comes up and shouts ‘you’re wrong and going to hell’ – there’s a big gap between open debate and being hostile to people you’ve never spoken to before in your life.)

I think social networks are pretty darn cool at least some of the time, and facilitate both new and old friendships and connections, but they’re too unfocused and messy and human to be The Best Book/Self Promotion Tool Ever. And that’s kind of a good thing. I see people get stressed out about ‘keeping up with’ all these things, like it’s about putting on a suit and going to work. It’s not. You probably want to brush your hair before going to the coffee shop, yeah, and it’s best not to stumble in drunk or in your pyjamas, but it’s okay if you’re not there all the time and it’s even okay if you decide it’s just not for you at all. There are other places out there. Really.

Jan 14 2013

Based on a true story (ish)

Captain-von-Trapp Oh, Captain Von Trapp. Look at you with your whistle and your stern authoritarian ways, your children who just need love and music and a singing nun! And later you will also need a secret crafty plan to escape from the Nazis. Oh the drama!

Over the Christmas period, with ‘Do-Re-Mi’ and ‘Sixteen Going On Seventeen’ and ‘Something Good’ echoing in my head as The Sound of Music turned up on various channels, I went a-looking at the historical accuracy, or rather inaccuracy, of the film. I’d always had a vague sense that it had probably been amped up a little bit from the tale of the Von Trapp Family Singers, but I hadn’t quite realised:

  • Maria didn’t really love the Captain!
  • They went into singing for cash!
  • You can’t get to Switzerland that way!

Next thing you’ll be telling me Christopher Plummer has sometimes said rather grouchy things about his role in the fi – oh, wait.

The thing is, even very cool stories need things tightened up and twisted and improved for the purposes of story. It works better if the Captain is super-strict rather than just a normal father, if he’s rich and distant instead of struggling financially; it works better if Maria connects with all the children rather than just one; it works better if they’re just married at the time of the Anschluss; it works better if they perform a rousing super-Austrian song in front of an audience and then sneakily escape over the mountains rather than hop on a train in broad daylight.

When you’re creating a story, even if it’s based on real-life stuff, you need to think about what works better instead of what really happened. If the story of a singing ‘n’ dancing family, with an almost-nun as the maternal figure, emigrating to America to avoid the Nazi regime, needs some tweaking, it is probably safe to say most real-life events might benefit from that ‘artistic license’ thing.

Jan 5 2013

High Stakes

Something I was pondering recently was the idea of ‘high stakes’ in books I have been reading – the ‘oh also the WORLD is at risk!’ element that can be thrown into certain books, particularly if there are sequels planned, in stories where there is already a personal quest of sorts going on.

I won’t mention any specific titles, because I think it is a very much your-mileage-may-vary situation, but at times I did feel as though this extra ‘aha, this is BIG!’ dimension felt superfluous. Because so much of story is the character and high stakes for them – rather than the world or the community or whatever it might be. And that’s what I’m most interested in – what many of us care most about, I think.

I mentioned this to Flatmate Of Joy, who said, ‘ah, yes, but what about Buffy?’

Well. Indeed. Which I had been musing upon. And I thought about ‘Becoming’, which I tend not to rewatch too often because oh good grief any time David Boreanaz attempts an Irish accent is painful, but we don’t actually care that the world’s ending. We care that Buffy has to send her boyfriend to hell in order to save it.

‘Becoming’ aired in 1998, which is making me feel a little ancient here, but apart from some dodgy special-effects for the hell-vortex, it holds up well. It’s BIG, it’s the world being potentially sucked into a hell-dimension, but that’s all just to facilitate buckletloads of emotional torment for the heroine. Cue the Sarah McLachlan.

The BIG stuff still needs to matter to the characters. It’s not going to be important to the reader or the viewer just because it’s the world – or, at least, it’s not going to have the same emotional impact. And yet because it’s BIG, it doesn’t work to introduce it and then let it play second or third fiddle to everything already established.

It’s a tricky thing to handle and honestly, it’s something I’ve mostly stayed away from – I’m not an action/thriller type gal. But I’d love to know your own favourite ‘character saves the world for personal reasons’ moments from books/movies/TV/comics etc – do tell.

Also, as an apology for using ‘high stakes’ as a title for a blog post about vampire slaying, have a picture of Spike reading the newspaper.

Spike_becoming_part_one