0 Happy Birthday to Me

Before I was a writer I only had one birthday a year. Now, like the Queen, I have several. And, princess-like, I’m making this blog post All About Me. How very selfish.

But it’s my birthday! If I can’t be a brat then…

Happy birthday, Still Falling!

Two birthdays actually. One is my book birthday. Still Falling, the most infuriating, difficult, elusive book I’ve ever tried to write, and also, I think, my best so far, is Out. In the world. Doing its thing. Being reviewed and that. It feels like a huge deal. Well, a book birthday always is, but this is my first YA title since Grounded in 2012, so it feels like quite an event. 

I’m writing this bang in the middle of my two book launches. Birthday parties, if you like.  Belfast (yesterday) was the home fixture, with my auntie Iris came, and former colleagues, and the lovely American lady who taught me at a novel editing class in 2001 and whom I haven’t seen since, and lots and lots of friends. The Belfast launch is always a bit emotional because you don’t know who’ll turn up but you know they’ll be someone with a personal connection. Tomorrow is the Dublin launch and it’ll be very different – publisher, agent, children’s book people. Lots of friends too (I hope) but very much recent book friends. Sometimes people wonder if it’s worth having launches – I think it is. It’s a celebration of hard work. The one book I didn’t launch properly I always feel I’ve been a bit mean to.

I'm sorry, Too Many Ponies 

But that’s not my only birthday. It’s my ABBA birthday too. A year ago today, I wrote my first ABBA post, ‘On Not Being Able To Say No’ – all about that tension between needing time to write and not wanting to refuse opportunities to make money. (Sadly, in my case, I’m still working on the writing itself bringing in more than pocket money.) I thought it would be interesting (possibly only for me, I admit) to see how things have changed in that year.

I’m still solvent, and still have no intention of returning to teaching. Last week I hid from the madness of World Book Week (which nearly killed me last year) at Arvon, where I tutored a wonderful group of eleven year olds with the equally wonderful Malachy Doyle. (And, to be vulgar about it, earned more than I would have in tearing round hither and yon like last year.) I’ve learned to pace myself better with school visits, and set a strict limit on my commitments for October (Children’s Book Fest in Ireland) which meant I finished the month on my feet and relatively sane.

Thank you, again, Arvon

I’ve written stuff too. As well as Still Falling, I have a YA novel with my agent, hopefully going on submission soon; a MG novel at acquisition stage (fingers crossed), and have just signed a contract for a historical MG with my Irish publisher. Taking Flight has been optioned by a film company. It’ll probably never be made, but I’m enjoying being able to say it. I’m going to be a Royal Literary Fund Fellow next year, which will cut out two writing days from my week but will also give me a decent income. Oh yeah, I think I remember what that was…

As for the not being able to say no? Well, I have turned down a few gigs recently because I needed the time for writing. I needed the time for writing because, when my Irish publisher asked in February if I could produce a short historical novel involving research by the end of April (yes, gentle reader, this April) I said confidently, ‘Yes, of course!’ It will be out in September. So far I have written 1200 words.

I know. When will I ever learn? I said yes because it was a challenge. I said yes because I was flattered at their faith in me. I said yes because I love writing historical even if I’d never previously wanted to write about the Easter Rising of 1916.

Mostly I said yes, because I couldn’t resist the chance to have two book birthdays in one year.

Detail: Happy Birthday to Me

0 My first post - by Anne Booth

My First Post for an Awfully Big Blog Adventure

Hello! I can’t quite believe this is happening. It seems only yesterday when I was on an Arvon ‘Writing for Children’ course with Linda Strachan and Cathy MacPhail, but in fact it was back in 2010 - four and a half years ago.

Linda and Cathy can be seen discussing it here:

http://awfullyblogadventure.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/arvon-writing-course-linda-strachan-and.html

I was on that week. It was wonderful. It was great to learn from Linda and Cathy, and to hear the work of the other writers and to write some things myself. I knew already that I loved children’s books - I had an M.A. in Children’s Literature, had been a bookseller, and had four children of my own ranging from 13 to 10. However, the love I felt for children’s books, combined with the awe I felt for those who wrote them, meant that I hadn’t dared to think I could write any of my own stuff. It was ‘having a go’ that week, and the encouragement and detailed feedback Linda and Cathy gave us all, that gave me confidence. I felt at home in that world, where it was normal to discuss pirates and monsters, for example, and see events through children’s eyes! I remember Linda talking about the Scattered Authors’ Society and am so amazed and happy that I am a member now myself.

There were many wonderful writers on that week, and on another subsequent week run the next year by Joyce and Polly Dunbar at Lumb Bank. I hope that all of us get published eventually. My own breakthrough came in 2013, when Nosy Crow Publishers accepted my picture book text, which is now ‘The Fairiest Fairy’, due to be published in June this year.

http://nosycrow.com/books/the-fairiest-fairy  I am overwhelmed by the loveliness of Rosalind Beardshaw’s illustrations!

2013 is also the year when my lovely agent,  Anne Clark , took me on. This transformed my life! It led to my novel ‘Girl with a White Dog’ being published by Catnip in March 2014, and me writing ‘Lucy’s Secret Reindeer’ for O.U.P. , published in October 2014. Now, in 2015, ‘Dog Ears’ will be published in April for Catnip, ‘The Fairiest Fairy’ (Nosy Crow) in June, and ‘Lucy’s Magic Snowglobe’ (O.U.P.) probably in October. There should be another Nosy Crow picture book for Christmas too, but perhaps that’s for 2016.

Next month I will be 50! This time last year I had no books published, and suddenly, by the end of this year I will have had 5, maybe 6! It feels like when you are waiting at a bus stop for ages, (in my case = years!) and then suddenly all the buses come at once!

So my message to anyone out there reading this, who loves reading children’s books so much that they do not not feel worthy to write them is - go on - have a go. It’s never too late. Sign up for a course with people as inspiring, encouraging and enthusiastic as Linda and Cathy, Joyce or Polly. Follow writers and  illustrators and agents and publishers you like on Twitter - I have had such lovely conversations with fellow enthusiasts - and found out about so many wonderful children’s books there. It was because of Twitter that, without an agent at that time, I submitted to the new publisher Nosy Crow in the first place. It is because of Twitter that I learnt that a new agent, Anne Clark, was looking for clients. There are THOUSANDS of amazing children’s books out there waiting to be discovered on all sorts of subjects, by all sorts of authors, for all different age groups, but there’s always room for more!  There’s a world of loveliness to enjoy as a reader AND as a writer, and if you’d like to combine the two - GO FOR IT! It’s the best job in the world!

And if you are an experienced writer like Linda or Cathy, please think about being a tutor. That course changed my life.

Anne Booth www.bridgeanneartandwriting.wordpress.com @Bridgeanne on twitter

Detail: My first post - by Anne Booth

0 Back to the Classroom -- NOT about school visits

It was 2011. I was a full-time teacher with one novel published and prize-winning, and another due the following year. I had just signed up for an Arvon YA course with Celia Rees and Linda Newbery, and I was so excited that I shared the information with an acquaintance who was an aspiring writer. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t like that, being told what to do. I would never go to something like that.’ She remains unpublished. (And by the way, the course was amazing, and many of us are still friends, with several now published or well on the way.)

all will be revealed...

This isn’t a contribution to the Can Writing be Taught debate: it’s my experience as both learner and teacher that talent can’t be influenced by a teacher or mentor or contact with others, but that many elements of craft and language-awareness can.

I love learning. I was a swot at school and I worked and played hard at university (four degrees at two universities). When writing became a big part of my life, it was natural to me to seek out places where I could learn about that too.

Back in 2001, I signed up for a course called Novel Writing at the local FE college. I had, then, a very rough unfinished first draft of an unpublishable novel, whose progress was erratic because back in those days I used to write ‘when I felt like it’ or ‘when I was inspired’. (Shrieks of silent mirth.) The very first thing the tutor gave us was an exercise in the correct use of the semi-colon. I had a PhD in English and to be honest, I was a bit offended. Surely, I thought, people on a novel writing course don’t need basic punctuation lessons? (OK, more shrieks of silent mirth: I was young and naïve.)

Despite the bad beginning, the course was useful, if for no other reason than that it gave me an incentive to make weekly progress, and introduced me to the importance of giving and receiving feedback. Now, when I meet and mentor aspiring writers I always encourage them to seek out something similar, and I often feel annoyed at their (not infrequent) reluctance. Don’t they know how lucky they are, I fume, to have access to so many courses? I give them Arvon brochures and tell them honestly how my first Arvon course taught me more about writing than a subsequent M.A. in Creative Writing.

Recently I was interviewed as part of an initiative of the NI Arts Council to identify areas of need for arts professionals, and the main thing I could think of was the need for professional development for published writers. There are plenty of courses and mentoring opportunities for aspiring and emerging writers, but anything beyond that tends to be generated by writers themselves, often informally. Of course there must be writers who feel they don’t need professional development, and good luck to them, but I’m sure there are many like me, with a few successful books under our books but no idea how things will work out in the future, who would love to be able to keep on learning. After all, professional ballet dancers take daily classes; athletes train. Yes, of course I learn on my own. Every book I read – and write –  teaches me something. But there is something magical about being in a class, with a wise guide, and other learners to share experiences with.

Books are wonderful, but sometimes you need people. I’m teaching myself the guitar: I’ve always sung but this is my first attempt at learning to accompany myself. I have a reasonable ear, so I wince and try again when it sounds horrible, and I have made progress. After six weeks, when I could play a song all the way through at normal speed without embarrassing gaps while I fumbled for the next chord, I let my stepfather (a brilliant guitarist) hear me. My chord changes were grand, he assured me – but my strumming was wrong. I had been so focussed on the more difficult thing that I hadn’t realised how badly I was doing something equally important. If he hadn’t shown me, I would never have known – even with a lifetime of watching other people play. Even with a good Teach Yourself Guitar book. Sometimes you need people.

sometimes you need people 

That’s why I was so thrilled when, last week, Arvon announced a course especially for its own tutors. I signed up immediately and, given that it’s in January, I’m just praying not to be snowed in, so that I can go and be a student again.

Detail: Back to the Classroom -- NOT about school visits