The Garden For The Blind

I have had no less than five emails in the last two days from different commercial organisations to inform me that ‘the most anticipated book of the year’ is now available for purchase. They’re talking, of course, about Dan Brown’s Inferno.

Now, as a matter of fact, I would rather gnaw off my own arm than read one of Dan Brown’s books. There’s more than one reason for this. For a start, having grown up a Catholic, been educated by Jesuits, and known people in Opus Dei, I find the premises of his works utterly ludicrous. For another, his prose continually strikes me as clunky as this piece in the Telegraph illustrates

But the man shifts product! It cannot be denied. He sells more books in five minutes than I will sell in my lifetime. So is this just sour grapes on my part? Maybe, but I think there’s to it than that. It reminds me of a time when I was very young and my mother took me to a nearby park in which there was a garden for the blind. As we were walking through this garden I told my mother that I couldn't understand the point of it because the blind wouldn't be able to see the flowers. My mother laughed. 'The point is all the lovely smells,' she said.

I didn't reply because I couldn't smell anything at all. As I eventually came to understand some years later, I have almost no sense of smell. (Indeed, I once woke up to find my duvet on fire but it wasn't the smell that had woken me up; it was thirst.)

I think I'm missing some sense when I read, also, and probably when I write whereas Dan Brown has that sense in spades. So when I try to read something like The Da Vinci Code I only get an overwhelming feeling of frustration because I can't smell the part of it that's likeable. I can only smell the bit that's terrible. I'm always trying to smell the bit that's likeable. I know it's there but I can never catch even the faintest whiff.

Writing For Il Duce

I have been teaching some classes in Writing For Children recently and one of the things I keep noticing is how many people bring a great deal of sentimentality about children along to the class. It’s one of the first things I try to get them to jettison.

Sentimentality is a very natural emotional response. I’m a sentimental man myself. For weeks after my younger daughter went off to university and the house was left empty by day except for me and my computer, I was to be found wandering from room to room, picking up random objects that belonged to her and staring at them with tear-filled eyes as though I had just received a telegram from the front line to say that she was missing in action.

And these days I am a figure of fun in the family for the way my grandchildren have me twisted around their little fingers. When he can’t get his own way, the older one performs a fake crying act that everyone else just laughs at but that somehow wins me over, even though I know perfectly well it’s phoney.

But my sentimentality is of absolutely no use to me as a writer because children’s literature is about the child’s experience; and that means not looking at your child characters but seeing the world through their eyes.

Children are not sentimental. What they are most concerned with is power. Entirely understandably, because they have none. They don’t wake up and think, ‘I wonder what I should do today.’ They get told they’re going to nursery or they’re being taken to the supermarket or (if they’re lucky) they’re going to the park. That’s why they spend so much time trying to subvert the adult agenda. If they’re being difficult it’s nearly always an attempt to wrest some sort of control from the grown-ups.

The stark truth is that however much you love them, there’s a little bit of Mussolini inside every child. So forget the sentimentality. You are writing for Il Duce. Just make sure it's good.

Whispering To A Boy Who Imagines He Is Clever

Once upon a time, if I were at a party, someone might say, ‘So what do you do for a living?’ and I would say, ‘I’m a writer.’ They would look very interested and say, ‘Really? What sort of thing do you write?’ to which I would reply. ‘Children’s books.’ Whereupon they would immediately look disappointed and change the subject.

This reaction changed completely after the success of J K Rowling. Nowadays everyone always wants to know everything about the business and, above all, how they can get published. I am constantly coming into contact with people who are consumed by the desire to be a successful children’s writer.

What surprises me is how few of these people have actually read any children’s books since their own childhood. I’ve taught courses on writing for children only to find that ninety per cent of the students, who have usually paid substantial fees to be there, have scarcely read anything except the first Harry Potter title and one or two of the Narnia series. So what is going on here?

It seems to me that people are seduced by the glamour that has somehow attached itself to children’s writing. This is laughable since if you were to be a fly on the wall at a meeting of children’s writers you would witness a singularly unglamorous bunch of people. For the most part we aren’t young or sexy or well-dressed. We are people with holes in our sweaters, people in need of a decent haircut.

So where does this illusion of glamour come from? I think it arises from two sources: firstly, there is the glitter of wealth; secondly there is the mystery of creative fulfilment.

The notion that writing children’s books might be a way to get rich quick is, as anyone who knows anything about publishing will tell you, entirely ridiculous. The truth is that only a very small proportion of children’s writers even make a living out of their work.

The promise of creative fulfilment is a more substantial attraction and it’s undeniable that fulfilment is to be found in practising any art from. But you have to ask yourself this question: why children’s books? If you’re not already reading them then possibly that’s an indication you’re not really interested in this field - and you won’t get fulfilment from trying to succeed at something that doesn’t interest you.

I am a children’s writer because childhood is the place where I reside most naturally. I watch as the youngest of my grandchildren begins to learn to crawl. I see her rocking back and forth on her hands and knees, practising the movements that will soon allow her to move across the room and I find myself propelled back into my own childhood, recalling the way the paving stones rolled away before me as I sat in the push-chair.

Or I do some drawing with my older grandchildren and out of the corner of my eye I see the tall, shadowy figure of a nun standing over me, regarding my clumsy efforts with disdain. I know what she thinks of me. She thinks that I am a boy and, a such, an entirely undesirable object. Worse than that, I am a vain, talkative boy who imagines he is clever and does not listen to what he is told. This understanding renders the drawing that had pleased me so much a moment ago, nothing but a worthless scribble.

I want to reassure that boy. I want to tell him that one day this woman’s disdain will not matter so much; but even as I stand beside him and whisper, I know that he cannot hear me.

For me, therefore, writing is not primarily about money or about creative fulfilment. It is a story being told to a child who no longer exists.

Waiting For The Roar

Looking after my grandchildren is sharpening my understanding of story structure. The current craze around here is Hide And Seek. It works best when I hide and they seek because they’re terrible at hiding. Another adult has to help them find a hiding place but they can’t stay put in it for longer than a few seconds.

So most of the time they seek and I stand behind the door or crouch behind a chair. (I don't have to hide very well - they're not much good at seeking either.) Then I suddenly spring out and roar like a lion. This is the bit they love best. They know the roar is coming, they know I’ll be the one roaring but it still scares them silly.

It seems to me that the same principle is at work in that dependable genre of fiction, the thriller. It's just Hide And Seek for adults without actually having to get out of your seat. I’ve just finished reading Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson and it’s as fine an example of spine-tingling story-telling as you could look for. The architecture of the plot depends on that old literary chestnut, amnesia. In this case a trauma has left the protagonist unable to form long term memories. So she wakes up every morning with no idea who the man in bed next to her is and has to learn her life story anew each day. But it’s more complicated than that, of course, because the life story she is being told is neither complete nor accurate.

It’s a terrific piece of writing, all the more impressive because it’s a debut. It always cheers me up when someone writes a novel that is beautifully crafted. It reminds me that stories are meant to be enjoyed not endured. I’m not saying I learnt anything new about myself from reading it, or about other people for that matter. It taught be nothing at all about the meaning of life. But it did keep me awake until the small hours desperate to find out what would happen next, waiting for the villain to spring from his hiding place and roar.

Stop Thief!

The other day somebody asked me to look at his manuscript. But when I agreed, he got anxious about showing it to me, worrying that I might steal his work. I was insulted, of course, because it's as if he'd invited me into his house and then asked, as I stood on the threshold, 'You won't steal anything, will you? However, I wasn't particularly surprised. It happens a lot.

I don't know any author who writes for money. I don't mean that we don't all like getting paid. I'm as good at spending money as the next man or woman and I'm always pleased to see royalties being deposited in my bank account. Nevertheless, I don't do it for the money. I write because I'm compelled to, and that's true of every author I know.

If I were to examine my compulsion more closely, I could point to a whole series of drivers located almost exclusively in my childhood. I could say that I write to make sense of who I have become and how that happened, and that this is true even when my stories appear to have nothing whatsoever to do with me.

I could add that I'm fifty nine years old, I look after my grandchildren two days a week, and the other five days are a furious scramble to fit everything else in; but the older I get, the more urgent the need to unravel the tangled ball of string that is my inner world.

That's why I'm not interested in stealing anyone else's narratives. I have my own obsessions. If I don't write them down they keep me awake at night. In fact, they keep me awake at night even when I do write them down. So there's no need to chase after me crying, "Stop thief!" My pockets are empty. It's my head that's full.

Image http://www.nwkniterati.com

Happy Endings

The Tug At My Finger

I have been in Ireland for a week, in North West Leitrim to be precise, in the house my father built on the land on which he grew up. It's a modern house standing on a hill and on a clear day commanding a view of three counties but it is dominated by the fallen stones of the old house further down the hill and the memories that they hold.

The leaves were turning and everywhere the countryside was coloured gold and umber. As usual at this time of year, flocks of fieldfares wheeled across the sky in search of berries, settling here and there on tall fir trees and chattering noisily among themselves before suddenly erupting again in ragged solidarity.

I spent much of my time watching the clouds marching across the sky in innumerable variations of grey tinged with cream, rose and purple. However, all the while I could feel a tug at the index finger of my right hand. Normally I spend two days a week looking after my grandchildren and it is this finger that the middle child takes hold of whenever he wants something. 'Come!' he commands with all the confidence of eighteen months. And I follow him to the toy chest or to the kitchen cupboard where the biscuits are kept.

I was supposed to be on holiday this week but instead I simply felt bereft. I kept imagining what my grandchildren might be doing. Would they wonder where I was this week? Or would they, in my absence, forget my existence entirely?

Outside the land was very wet. Trees dripped. Leaves clogged and mashed underfoot. The sound of running water was everywhere. I thought about the generations of people who had struggled to make a living from this boggy, stony ground and how unbelievably easy my life would seem to them by comparison. I doubt whether they would recognise anything I do as work.

But they would recognise the tug at my finger.

photo: Kenneth Allen

How Not To Become A Children's Author

I'm always getting asked to look at manuscripts by people who have written a story for children and are looking for advice before sending their work off to an agent. Unfortunately, a lot of people accompany their manuscripts with statements that drastically undermine their chances of being taken seriously by an editor. So in case anyone reading this has been thinking of submitting a manuscript professionally for the first time, here are three things it's really not worth saying if you want to become a children's writer.

First there's the Quality Time Delusion. This is when the author confidently states, that she/he has read this story to her/his own children and they absolutely loved it. Now on the face of it, this sounds like a ringing endorsement from the target audience. So how could it be anything but a good idea?

Actually, what you're really saying when you make this assertion is that your child enjoyed the extra attention they got from being part of mummy's or daddy's project. They liked having their opinions taken seriously. They got caught up in their parent's dream about becoming an author and it excited them. The truth is that your child's enthusiasm is no guarantee of anything except that you spent some quality time with them and they liked it.

Next there's the Children Of All Ages Blunder. In this one the author glibly asserts that the story is intended for all children from the age of six to sixty, or some similarly hackneyed phrase.

Frankly, this is a stupid thing to say. A five year old lives in a different world to an eight year old, a ten year old lives in a different world to a thirteen year old. The idea that your story might work for all of them is an admission firstly that you don't know anything about the market for children's books, which is highly segmented, and secondly that you don't know much about children.

Finally there's the hoary old chestnut of the Friend Who's Done Some Illustrations to go with the story. Take it from me, unless your friend is an experienced professional illustrator of children's books, never include his or her drawings with your manuscript.

This is because even though authors see writing as an art, to publishers it's a business and, like every business, it involves an element of risk. An unknown author represents a risk to a publisher. An unknown author combined with an unknown illustrator doubles that risk.

So don't even include that art-work on the grounds that you think it will give the editor an idea of the kind of book you have in mind. The only idea it will give them is that they should put your manuscript on the rejection pile right away.

The Fallacy Of The Dedicated Agent

I have been up since three o'clock this morning looking after my very excited and slightly apprehensive grandson while his mother went, with her husband, to the hospital to have a baby. Consequently this blog post may not be my finest piece of prose. However, it is with immense pleasure that I can announce to the world the birth of my third grand child, and my first grand daughter. I know that medical experts will tell you that new born babies can't smile but I swear she smiled at me.

Now it is six thirty in the evening and in a little while a builder is going to knock at my door and I will have to talk coherently to him about the work that we want done on our house. Also, I see from my emails, which I've only just had a chance to glance at, that my Mexican publisher has been experiencing problems making payments to my account. Oh, and a portfolio of work has arrived from one of the students at the summer school I have been teaching for the last couple of months.

All of this perfectly illustrates one of the points I was trying to get across at that summer school. It's a publishing myth that I have called the fallacy of the dedicated agent and it goes like this: the publishing world is full of agents who are constantly on the lookout for exciting new manuscripts by promising new writers.

In fact, agents, being human beings with complicated lives, have a great many other things on their minds. They may be worrying about whether their daughter's labour will go well, or they may be rejoicing that it has. They may be trying to remember the key points they need to make clear to their builder, or they may be trying to get hold of their bank to find out why their money isn't appearing in their account. They may simply be wondering whether there is anything even vaguely edible in their kitchen that they might somehow be able to conjure into a meal tonight.

Whatever it is that is filling those agents' heads, it probably leaves very little space for all those manuscripts that keep arriving in their postbags. That is why, if you want to get their attention, you had better be good. You had better be very bloody good indeed.

Because if you're not then they are just going to sit at their desk with a silly expression on their face, gazing at a photo of their newest grandchild, thinking over and over again, 'Isn't she beautiful!'

Flash Cards and Fondling - How To Do Setting

I have been working on setting with my students. It's something that some of them have trouble with, particularly when the setting is a part of the contemporary built environment. Somehow if the story is taking place somewhere we're not used to, like an ancient forest, then it's easy; but if it's a shopping mall people assume there's no need for any description.

Some years ago I wanted to write a scene in which two teenagers were having their first date. The girl was epileptic and as a consequence her parents were over-protective. She hadn't told them about this date and she was worried that she might be seen by someone she knew. She was also worried about what the boy would think of her, worried that she wouldn't know what to say to him, worried that if he found out she was epileptic he would be horrified, and worried that she might have a seizure right there in the café.

So there was plenty to focus on. Nevertheless, when I read the scene through it seemed insubstantial. I realised that there was hardly any setting. I'd based the venue on the Haagen Dazs café in London's Leicester Square. So I decided to make a special trip there, for research purposes you understand, not just to pig out on ice cream.

The place was crowded when I arrived and I took the only free seat. To my left was a very smartly dressed young Asian couple and they were snogging. Actually, snogging is not a strong enough word for what they were doing. Utterly oblivious to their surroundings, they were practically eating each other.

On my right, were two young Arab women wearing burkahs. One of them had a shoe box full of home-made flash cards with Arabic words written on them. One by one she was taking the cards out of the box and showing them to her companion who was frowning earnestly as she struggled to pronounce them correctly.

In the twenty minutes I was there a whole procession of characters came in off the street - glowering Goths, noisy tourists, harassed looking parents with over-excited children, even a couple of police officers with a weakness for whipped cream and macadamia nuts.

When I went home and rewrote the scene I put in everything I had seen and this time, of course, there was far too much detail. I had to strip a lot of it out at the next draft but I kept the Asian snoggers and the two young Arab women because they were a gift and because I could never have made them up.

So that's what I've been trying to tell my students. Setting isn't just architecture; it's everything that's going on around your characters.