0 How do you say 'Alaspooryorick' in French? - Clementine Beauvais

One of the questions you always get when you write in two languages is whether you're 'going to translate your own books'. This is a very flattering question, as it implies that (1) everyone uncontroversially wants your books from the other country, and (2) you're de facto blessed with perfect translation skills.

Of course, (1) is painfully wrong: the UK has so far never wanted any of my French books, which are too everything and not enough anything, but I suspect are also by default unattractive because they don't come with world rights. And (2) highlights the eternal plight of professional translators, whom no one believes when they say that their skills set goes beyond just 'being fluent' in two languages.

I'm fascinated with translation and have been for a long time: in my young days as a Harry Potter fan, I would work hard to understand the translation choices of Jean-François Ménard, who changed in the French version a great quantity of names invented by Rowling. Hogwarts became Poudlard ('hog lice'), a funny and meaningful find that is also cleverly English-sounding to a French ear. 

'Tom Marvolo Riddle', who needed to work as an anagram, became 'Tom Elvis Jedusor'. Though it is a little bit hilarious, in retrospect, that Voldemort is called 'Elvis', the name's connotations weren't that strong for me as a child, and I very much admire the lovely 'Jedusor', which evokes a 'jeu du sort', a twist of fate. And 'sort' is also a magic spell... Can we say 'Jedusor' is actually better than 'Riddle'? I think so.

but the Hallows turned 'Relics'. Good choice?

Until now, paths hadn't crossed between my French books and my English series, but for the first time, this year, one of my British series is getting translated into French. I'm not translating it, for reason (2), but the French publisher, Hachette, is aware of my secret Gallic roots, so I'm allowed to okay the translations of the place and character names.

It's been quite a funny and interesting process. The Royal Babysitters series, illustrated by Becka Moor, are set in a magical and nonsensical world, but which in many ways corresponds closely to the 'real' world. Many of the place names - Francia, Daneland, Britland, etc - are relatively easy to translate into French (Francie, Danelandie, Brittonie). But what of the Independent Republic of Slough? Having a French city name there would make no sense, since it all happens in Britland. The translator decided to invent an imaginary city name.

We didn't have to change it to 'Les babysitters républicaines'

Similarly, the two heroines are called Holly and Anna Burnbright, which the translator first translated as 'Brillante' (Bright), but we felt after discussing it that the allusion to a poem should be kept. We're still working on it, but the suggestions involve cutting up bits of famous French nursery rhymes or fables. Not quite the same, yet faithful.

Alaspooryorick or Oroméoroméo?

'King Alaspooryorick', the villain, is a tricky one to translate. On the one hand, recognising the reference doesn't matter very much (if at all), but we might as well keep it; and it has to sound funny, which 'Alaspooryorick' or its French equivalent 'Hélaspauvreyorick' doesn't (at all). He could have been King 'Tobeornottobe' (roi Etrounepazettre), but again, it's not very funny. The translator came up with 'Oroméoroméo', which sounds very funny and is also a Shakespeare reference, arguably more famous to a French ear.

Of course, the reference is no longer to Hamlet, so the King being from 'Daneland' and having a special mermaid called Ophelia is no longer relevant. Does it matter? Frankly, not at all. 'Le roi Oroméoroméo' is just perfect for the role.

And what of the title? 'Les babysitters royales' would have sounded flat. We're going for an inversion of adjective and noun, 'Les royales babysitters', a rarer construction in French but which by the very fact of the inversion calls to mind the English language.

The Royal Babysitters is not by any stretch of the imagination a difficult book, but it's full of those little details that can make translation tricky - as many children's books are. Translators can't get away with footnotes in translations of children's books. And they have to be clever and good at languages, but they also have to be 'good at' children's literature.

Most often we don't notice the translation work, because it's well done, and because we might not speak the two languages in question, or simply because we don't stop to wonder what something or someone was called in the original language...

Toby Alone in the original French

I'd be curious to hear your stories of what got lost or found in the translations of your books, if you're able to read some of them, or if you've even contributed to them.


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Clementine Beauvais writes in French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia.

Detail: How do you say 'Alaspooryorick' in French? - Clementine Beauvais

0 Book Fair Nightmares - Clémentine Beauvais

The Paris Book Fair has just ended and, on the French closed Facebook group for authors that I'm a part of, there's been some nostalgic recollections of cult moments from book fairs.

By 'cult moments', I mean those moments when you'd really like to... not be at the book fair.

Because, of course, book-signing is HUGE FUN, especially the French way (2 days on end, for 3 to 5 hours at a time with a lunch break)... You know that time when you're behind your table and you've been signing for hours and your hand hurts like hell? No? Me neither. 

A Book Fair

Here are the 'classics', that everyone's had to endure:

- 'Hi!'
[You, hopeful]: 'Hi!'
'Where's the toilet?'

- 'Hi!'
[You, still hopeful]: 'Hi!'
'Do you know if [famous author] is coming?'

- 'Can you sign this book for my son?'
'I can't, it's not mine, it's Harry Potter.'
'Oh, it doesn't matter, just sign it, will you?'
(alternative version: 'Oh, don't worry, J.K. Rowling will never know!')

- 'Can you draw a little something?'
'I can't, I'm a writer.'
'Can't you try?'

Book fairs are stressful and awkward. You're there with your piles of books, and people drift by, and conspicuously avoid looking at you in the eye when they pick up your book and decide that they DEFINITELY do NOT want it. Or, that they do NOT want their child to have it.

'Put that down!!! Can't you tell it's a girls' book?'

I could have killed that woman, but I only had books and books make terrible weapons.

Sometimes they say, 'I'll have a look around and come back'.
--> HA no you won't.

Sometimes you manage to talk to them a bit and try to handsell your own book (epitome of cringe):

'So it's about three teenage girls, it's a road trip but kind of a maturity tale too [dammit, in which pocket of my brain did I put my elevator pitch?]'
The Parent: 'Hmm. Do you have something a bit like Cherub? My daughter only reads things like Cherub. Do you have a saga? Your books aren't very big. She only likes big books.'

Life is just great right then.

Oh and that:

'NOOOOO I don't want the lady to sign the book!!!' 'But my darling, it's the only reason we bought it!'

There's also those book fairs when you're sitting next to Big Name Author so you kind of become the crowd control person for their line. Don't push! Sir, you're skipping the queue. It's that way. Yes, he's here until ten past. No, he's run out of that picturebook, but there's this one too, which is great too.  Wait, why am I promoting his picturebooks? He hasn't even talked to me!

ZOMG Big Name Author is talking to me!
'Hey, Capucine... Clémence... Célestine... whatever your name is, do you have another Sharpie?'

Then there's the times when you're sitting next to a sleazeball of an author in mid-life crisis who spends most of the very empty afternoon giving outfit suggestions.

'You see, Clementine, this morning I was looking at girls in the harbour and I realised I really like nude back tops. Wouldn't you wear a nude back top?'

How many more hours of this again?

The kids who want you to sign their school diary. Their pencil-cases. Their hands. A Post-it note. Because they are 100% cute, you do it, dying a little bit inside. 'Don't you want to buy the book?' you ask feebly. So feebly that they don't hear you at all and go spend their book voucher on a Frozen book of stickers.

'things we sign'

That woman who stared at me for ten seconds. Ten seconds is a long time to be stared at. And then:
'How old are you?'
(With 'tu', not 'vous'. T'as quel âge, toi? Written language can't convey the disdain.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But then there's...

Those book fairs which are right by Lake Geneva or the Atlantic ocean.

Those book fairs when kids come back to meet you because they've read the books and studied them in class and you went to their school for a visit.

bonus point if their face is actually an emoticon

 

 

 

 

 

Authors you meet and who are NOT huge sleazeballs and who make these long afternoons and mornings seem very short.

Insa Sané

Zad et Didier

And who are talented illustrators, and play the ukulele, and are actually Keith Richards.

François Place

Nathalie Tual

Keith Richards. Maybe.

And people who bring you pastries or coffee purely out of sympathy GOD I LOVE THESE PEOPLE THANK YOU 

There's always an 'end-of-summer-camp' atmosphere when book fairs are over. We say goodbye, thank you for the good times, I still owe you a drink, really nice to have met you, finally, really nice to see you again, looking forward to when that book you were telling me about comes out. See you soon at another book fair, maybe! No doubt. But probably in a year or two. You'll have had that baby by then... yes, hopefully! Will the next book fair be as disastrous? I never want to do another book fair. Will the next book fair be as amazing? I don't want to go home! How many books did you sell? ... Ha, me neither.

It's exhausting, hilarious, terrifying and nightmarish. The next one for me is in less than two weeks' time. Can't wait.

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Clementine Beauvais writes in French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia.

Detail: Book Fair Nightmares - Clémentine Beauvais

0 Debut Author: Ten Questions You Will Get Asked - Clementine Beauvais

(Confession: this is an adaptation of an old blog post on my own blog, but I'm v v v busy this month sorry so I prefered to do this rather than dash off a sloppy new post (and also, almost no one read it the first time around anyway). )

Hello, debut author! Congratulations on the book deal! While you’re busy getting Vistaprint to produce acceptable promotional bookmarks, finding ways of getting better known on the Internet (don’t worry, no one actually has any idea how to), practicing answering ‘so what do you do?’ with ‘well, I’m a writer’, and fervently noting down what every single author, agent and editor blog says about what you should be doing or else, here’s my little contribution to your constant migraine: the 10 questions you will get asked by everyone, from complete randomers to your grandmother, within your first year of publication.
Oh you will have fun. Here we go.

10. ‘But like, how many, I mean like not exactly, but more or less, how many books have you sold, like, approximately?’

This question can occur at any time, including the day after publication. And you cannot be vague: even if the questioner is otherwise incapable of adding three and four without frantically reaching for a calculator, s/he wants numbers. Not sure why; but it is absolutely vital. Saying ‘Oh, it’s going well, I think’ will only drag you into a labyrinth of subdefinitions of the adverb ‘well’ associated to specific numerical values.
The assumption, you see, is that part of the induction ceremony into the Great Publishing Sect consists of implanting a magical chip in your brain which permanently connects you to every single online and brick-and-mortar bookshop in the whole world. Every time they sell one of your books, a little ringtone goes off in your skull. You can personalise this ringtone (I have the first few chords of Supermassive Black Hole). The latest version synchronises with your iPhone and compiles the data into easily understandable statistics.
How to get out of this tricky situation without having to reveal (that you have no idea about) the latest figures? The only solution is to say, with an expression of disdainful detachment which you shall practice in front of your mirror, ‘Not enough to pay for your Frappucino, you cheapskate.’

9. ‘Why aren’t you on an intergalactic promotional book tour?’

O friend, I share your perplexity. I too wish I were wanted from Johannesburg to Santa Monica by armies of fans with bellies and chests tattoed with my (probably misspelt) name. Unfortunately, this isn’t normally what happens to the debut author. Unless you are Pippa Middleton (in which case, please leave a comment explaining why Pilates doesn’t do to my body what it does to yours), you are relatively low on the list of people whom your otherwise lovely publisher would like to send on a first-class trip around the world. You might be invited to a few book fairs, bookshops and schools, but it will probably be Melbourne, East Anglia rather than its more glamorous Australian equivalent (unless you are from the suburbs of the latter).
The relentless questioner will not take this for an answer. Instead, offer the following explanation: ‘Because I would have missed the chance to be with you today.’ Then bat your eyelids.

8. ‘When will you be on the Oprah Winfrey show?’

(I don’t know if that thing still exists, by the way.) Your persecutor is here hunting for a Claim to Fame to disclose at the watercooler on Monday when Amanda of the green miniskirt is passing by. ‘I know a girl who knows *person on TV*’ is indeed guaranteed to saturate the ambient air with pheromones. They will not be happy to hear that you have given an interview to the work experience boy at the local newspaper. It will not satisfy them to know that people have blogged about your book. They want names. And yet, blogs are the best way for books to get known and promoted, as they are more influential than magazines and papers. But your questioner will not believe this.
Your best bet is to mention offhandedly that ‘Richard and Judy’ liked the book a lot, and you’re hoping she’ll do something with it. No one needs to know that Judy is your aunt’s dog-walker, and Richard the dog.

7. ‘So I went to Waterstones the other day and your book wasn’t there. That means it’s out of print or what?’

Yep, it’s only been a year but people hated it so forcefully that the publisher discontinued it, burnt all the stock and issued a public apology.
Your questioner is here betraying their vision of bookshops as a land of magic with unlimited storage space, very much like Mary Poppins’s bag. It would be very cruel to shatter their lovely dream with dull considerations of the fact that the number of books currently in print divided by the available squared metres in your average bookshop results in an imaginary number which spontaneously creates dangerous amounts of antimatter if it is written down or spoken.
What you want the person to do here is to order the book: that way, the bookshop will know that it’s wanted (and order more) and you will have sold another copy. But you don’t want them to know that your book isn’t still the number one favourite darling of said bookshop. So the only way is to say, ‘Oh dear, tell me about it. Every time they restock the shelves, they’re empty again within the next half hour. I would recommend ordering it; only way to make sure you can have it.’ Win.

6. ‘When’s the next one coming out?’

That one’s easy if you’ve got a multiple book deal, because it’s written in your contract. If not, it is a very stressful question, because of the existential vertigo it triggers in your insecure psyche. You are not allowed to take this as an opportunity to confess that you are terrified that your editor might not like the next one and stop loving you and that as a result your agent will slap you in the face and worst of all that the people who once ‘Liked’ your Facebook page will ‘Unlike’ it. This is not an acceptable response. You are not on a psychoanalyst’s sofa. This is war.
The perfect answer is a lie: ‘November 7th, 2016′. Repeat this to everyone who asks. Tell everyone who doesn’t ask. Write it on your blog. That way, there’ll be so much pressure to do it that you’ll actually write that second book. No choice.

5. ‘Do you Google your name everyday to see what people are saying about you?’

No need. I’ve installed a piece of software on my iPhone connected to the aforementioned chip in my brain and whenever my name appears in any corner of the world wide web another special ringtone reverberates through my skull (Lensky’s aria in Eugene Onegin).
People seem to assume that finding reviews of your books is always the most wonderful experience. And of course it is when they’re good, and of course there are (many) writers who get completely obsessive-compulsive with looking up reviews. But not me. If you do start looking for them, there’s always that horribly stressful feeling that you just don’t know what you’re going to end up finding.
It’s as if you could google your kid’s name and find reviews of the dear child. Of course, a lot of the time it’s all going to be ‘Sharon’s adorable little boy is a charming example of toddlerhood with perfectly rosy cheeks under an avalanche of cherubic curls’. But once in a while you’ll get the occasional ‘Scrawny-looking and relatively indistinguishable from a tiny piglet, Billy suffers from a worrying lack of vocabulary for an eighteen-month-old’. Maybe that would make you think twice before asking the world what it thinks of your progeny.
Your questioner will not agree with that, of course, so just evasively mention that you don’t need to because your mum and dad do it for you and select which ones they tell you about, haha! (and tragically it’s probably true, too.)

4. ‘Why don’t you translate your own books into French/ Chinese/ Martian to sell them abroad?’

(This isn’t a question asked to the chronically monolingual: lucky, lazy you!). This one primarily betrays a forgivable lack of knowledge of how the publishing industry works on an international level (clue: not like that).
But the more worrying (and frankly annoying) assumption is that any bilingual person can translate anything, including their own prose. What is the point, quel est le point, I ask you, of studying translation? Absolutely none. Bilingual people are naturally endowed with the gift of translation; fact. Any Jean-Pierre Dawson born of an English dad and a French mum can write with equal velocity and Booker/Goncourt-winning quality in both languages.Therefore, they can translate their own work, of course, since they wrote it to start with. The assumption is strengthened, of course, when you do write in both languages.
The only appeasing answer you can bring to this question is, ‘If I’m asked to, I might.’ But you might not. Because nothing, of course, guarantees that you are the best translator of your own words.

3. ‘Did you choose the illustrator/ the title/ the layout/ the cover/ the chapter headings font/ the ISBN/ etc?’

Niet. Nein. No. Non. … [I've run out of other languages]
This will not satisfy your well-intentioned questioner. ‘What!?! but it’s YOUR book!?! How come?!?’. They will think your editor is Really Mean. Then they will think you’re a Loser who only had Bad Ideas. Then they will laugh at you in secret. It will be the beginning of the end of your social respectability.
The problem here is that once again the writer is envisaged as a prodigy multitasker who must by definition know everything about what a book is. ‘Of course I chose the exact paper texture I wanted, 68.9g/mm and ivory-off-white with a tinge of cerulean’. The editor is just the person who makes the money. S/he has no experience and no right to interfere in the great creator’s vision of the work.
The truth is that making a book, for the editor, is about n-ego-tiating the author’s ego with the actual reality of the fact that the book has to sell and that their vision of a full-colour picture of a Murakami sculpture with the elliptic title ‘Albeit Capricious’ will not be the most efficient way of reaching out to the average Waterstones customer. And they will very probably be right.
You don’t want your questioner to ruin your professional life and career by spreading rumours about how powerless you are, of course, so the only acceptable answer is, ‘Oh of course I had a say’. And to be fair, you probably did.

2. ‘Which authors are you friends with now?’

This assumes that other authors are by necessity your best friends forever, just like all accountants flock together and all academics only have friends who are academics.
Ok, that last one may actually be true.
The fact is of course that there are many authors you are now friends with because they’re actually nice and others that you can’t stand because they’re terrible people, just like any other group. You are not automatically on the same wavelength as someone who writes in the same genre. It is also possible that you are not the kind of person who can bear the disproportionately huge ego of other writers on top of your own equally impressive self-confidence, especially as everyone is tragically plagued with crushing moments of doubt.
But the myth about birds of a feather must be maintained, so name all the writers that you’ve met, from the loveliest to the most unpleasant, and with a generous smile, tell your questioner that ‘They’re all amazing, what can I say? We’re like a big family.’
NB: Some people will also labour under the opposite delusion: that you are by necessity extremely jealous of all the other authors. This is a probable sign that they are themselves dangerous, envious, frustrated psychopaths will little experience of peaceful relationships. Cut all friendship ties immediately.

1. ‘Yeah ok so you write children’s books, right, but when are you going to write, like, real literature?’
When the rest of the world starts to understand that children’s literature is real literature.

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Clementine Beauvais writes in French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia.

Detail: Debut Author: Ten Questions You Will Get Asked - Clementine Beauvais

0 Child Poets - Clementine Beauvais

‘The ink was in the baby, he was bound to write a tale

So he wrote the first of stories with his little fingernail’

Nathalia Crane was nine years old when, in 1924, she wrote ‘The First Story’ and many other poems, published in a collection called The Janitor’s Boy. She was one of many child poets in the 1920s, which saw a spate of precocious poetry and prose in the UK and the US. In the 19th century already, a cult of poetic precocity in children had erupted with the rediscovered works of Marjory (/Marjorie) Fleming, a little Scottish girl who wrote everyday from the age of six and conveniently died before she was nine, in 1811 - embodying forever the vision of glorious, pure and doomed childhood genius for the Victorians (this is a great article on the subject). 

a rather haunting sketch of Marjorie Fleming by (?)Isa Keith

I’m currently looking at those works by child poets and at the adult discourse which developed around them, and it’s fascinating to see the extent to which such works were simply not allowed to be on their own: they were relentlessly explained, explored, excused, by the adults who read, published and critiqued them (another great article).

We get, of course, the usual amount of ‘how cute they are!’, and the associated Romantic claims that they were ‘close to nature’, ‘close to God’, ‘close to universal truth’. Not coincidentally, references to classics of children’s literature recur when critics analyse those poems: they talk of Alice in Wonderland and Rudyard Kipling, and James Matthew Barrie prefaced a novel by nine-year-old Daisy Ashford. This was around the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of children’s literature, at a time when children and childhood already had cult status; the verbal abilities of the precocious poets gave hope that their word might be interpreted, and ‘teach’ adults about the beyondness to which childhood supposedly had access.

But those poets were also thought of as dramatically unstructured and lacking technical skill. In 1926, an academic reviews ‘some child poets’ and gives Marjorie Fleming the kind of review anyone would cringe to see written about oneself:

‘An affectionate little soul, with a real joy in nature, and a strangely precocious taste for books, she found her surroundings prosy, though her heart expressed itself in bursts of pitifully inadequate song.’

He goes on to expose Marjorie Fleming’s ‘limitations’ by indicating that she often invents words to make up for a lack of rime (heaven forbid!) and:

‘Another shift which she found useful was the introduction of a purely irrelevant line:

At supper when his brother sat

I have not got a rhyme for that.’

Purely irrelevant indeed. Thankfully, George Shelton Hubbell reassures us that young Shelley was also a ‘juvenile blunderer’ in matters of poetry.

A strong concern of much of the general audience at the time was whether the children were actually writing those poems, or if adults were sneakily doing so. A passionate correspondence developed in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in 1919, concerning little Hilda Conkling, who dictated poems to her mother:

‘Dear Poetry: Could you not give your readers more explicit information as to just how those poems of Hilda Conkling’s are done: To what extent does her mother select, rearrange and give form? Is it all actually improvised as given?… What a delightful little genius!… (E. Sapir.)’

‘I do not change words in Hilda’s poems,’ replied her mother, ‘nor alter her word-order; I write down the lines as rhythm dictates. She has made many poems which I have had to lose because I could not be certain of accurate transcription.’

The ‘accurate transcription’ of childly thoughts, the ‘authenticity’ of the child’s poetry needed to be ascertained at all costs, to the extent that Nathalia Crane, perhaps the most controversial of all child poets, was asked to produce a poem in the same room as a journalist. 

Nathalia Crane was quite unique in that her poetry got published in a newspaper without the editor’s knowledge that it was a child’s. The editor, Edmund Leamy, wrote an afterword to her collection, in 1924, in which he talked about his astonishment when he discovered the ‘imposture’:

My surprise is excusable. So many times I had received “poems” from youngsters who were careful to give their ages in addition to their names; so often I had received visits from doting parents or relatives requesting publication of verses by their children or sisters or cousins that I never dreamed any child would ever submit any work from his or her pen without adding the words “Aged — years”. But little Nathalia was the exception — and there was nothing in her poems that I received to indicate her age. The poems bought were accepted on their merits and on their merits alone.

‘On their merits alone’, with no ‘child-loving’ bias (to quote Kincaid’s famous study); this was, therefore, proper poetry. Yet it made adults feel relentlessly uncomfortable. Her poetry was more structured, more sexualised and more aware of the constraints of the adult world than other child poets, and adults didn’t know how to tackle it. Louis Untermeyer, in 1936, prefacing Crane’s new collection ‘Swear by the night’ (she was 22 by then), talks about the uncanny feeling he had when the poet was a little girl: 

‘She was ten and a half years old and she puzzled me. She puzzled me as a person even before she puzzled me as a poet. … There was even then a queerness about her, an almost too pronounced childishness coupled with a curious vocabulary.’

The blending of categories is always troublesome, the difficulty to draw lines between adulthood and childhood always a problem. Adults then, but still now, find it difficult to make sense of moments when the presence to the world of children is felt literally, fully, rather than wrapped in layers of symbols.

Nathalia Crane died in 1998 and I’ll leave you with one of her early poems, because it’s fair, after contributing myself to obscuring the works of those child poets with my own, to let her have the last words. I think the work might still be under copyright, so I'll only put the first stanza here; click to redirect to her collection on the Internet Archive.

LOVE

Now Marjory is seven years

And I am nine and more

We went a-strolling after cream

Into a Flatbush store. ...

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Clementine Beauvais writes in French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia.

Detail: Child Poets - Clementine Beauvais

0 A Tale of Two Activities - Clémentine Beauvais

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...

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Clementine Beauvais writes children's books in French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia and is on Twitter @blueclementine.

Detail: A Tale of Two Activities - Clémentine Beauvais

0 Memories of then, and writing now - Clémentine Beauvais

Today, three stories, followed by a few thoughts...

Story 1. The hole.

In my parents’ building in Paris, where I spent most of my childhood, there’s a hole in the wall near the ground - a hole big enough for a child to crawl through, and as a child I would always do so instead of using the door. Most of the time I’d already wriggled through the hole before my parents had found their keys - and I’d open the glass door from the inside, extremely dusty but very conscious of my power.

As time went by, I somehow stopped crawling through the hole. 

One day, when I got home from school, I realised I’d forgotten my keys. No problem, I thought, I can just go through the hole. But of course when I tried I couldn’t - it was too narrow for my shoulders.

It didn’t make me sad. But for some time afterwards, when I thought about it, I confusedly wondered - was it really because I’d grown too big for it that I couldn’t go through the hole anymore, or was it because I’d stopped going through the hole that I’d grown too big for it?

Story 2. The spatula.

As a child I was constantly, voraciously hungry. I would actually dream that I was eating roast chicken with cream, or Nutella crêpes or cheese. Only pride would prevent me from crying if I had any reason to believe that another child, or indeed adult, had been given more food than me. I couldn’t focus on anything if there was a vending machine in sight, especially if it sold Kinder Bueno, my favourite chocolate bar and an absolute torture, as I was always divided between the desire to eat each chunk in one go and the temptation to open them up like little boxes and lick the cream inside.

I had a friend whose mum made excellent cakes every day. I often stayed with them on holiday, and my friend and I would prowl like vulture around the kitchen table as her mum finished scraping the dough out of the mixing bowl and into the cake dish with a spoon. Then we’d fight furiously over the remnants of dough in the bowl, with fingers, tongues and chins.

One day, her mum bought a silicon spatula. I’d never seen a silicon spatula before. 

We watched in horror as the ruthlessly efficient implement left barely a trail of cake dough in the mixing bowl. Every day after that, we swallowed back tears, and I clearly remember my head spinning with frustrated desire, as increasingly spotless mixing bowls ended up in the sink to be washed. We prayed and implored my friend’s mum to leave us at least a tiny bit, but she was under the impression that it was less useful to us raw than baked. 

We devised the perfect crime: we pushed the spatula all the way to the bottom of the cutlery drawer and it fell behind it, and behind the freezer beneath the drawer, with a satisfying CLACK, joining dozens of lost spoons, scissors and other expatriates from the overfilled drawer.

For the next few days the wooden spoon returned and with it the minutes of bowl-licking. Then they bought another spatula.

Story 3. The castle.

My mother was pregnant with my sister; I was five and a half years old. We had an absolutely tiny flat in Paris and my parents were looking for a less absolutely tiny flat. I knew how much they wanted to spend on it, and I ‘helped’ by looking at ads in the windows of estate agencies.

Suddenly I spotted an ad for a castle, a castle, for sale at a much lower price than the one my parents were ready to put into the new flat. It had turrets, an immense garden, a forest.

I listened, without understanding, as my mother explained that they didn’t want a castle, because they wanted to live in Paris. I pointed out that the ad said that it was only half and hour from Paris. My mother laughed and said no, Clementine, listen, we’re not buying a castle. We’re buying a flat in Paris.

I remember thinking, distinctly and with real alarm, feeling that this realisation would have an enormous impact on my future life: my parents are mad. I live with people who are mad.

***

I have three silicon spatulas now, and when I finally get a permanent job I will likely buy a small house or a flat. Not a castle.

It was ‘us’ children versus ‘them’ adults once upon a time, and now it’s the opposite. They’re really not like us, are they? I’m just not that hungry anymore. Sure, the memory of that hunger prevents me from getting too annoyed at them when they steal bits of mozzarella from the salads before they get to the table (arrghh!!!), or when they fly into a tantrum for an ice cream. 

And I think it’s amazing that I once wanted a castle. Amazingly mad.

Don't you think? 

It would be possible to write children's stories from all those intense memories, and to write them as if we truly believed that castles should indeed be bought and that cakes should preferably be eaten raw. But would it be true? Would it be honest? We don't... do that anymore. 

Would they be our stories now, these nostalgic recollections?

How do we write for children, having changed so much? 

Do we want to sound, when we write, like we're imagining that we can still go through the hole? That would leave our whole bodies behind, and what made them grow...

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Clémentine Beauvais writes books in both French and English. The former are of all kinds and shapes for all ages, and the latter humour and adventure stories with Hodder and Bloomsbury. She blogs here about children's literature and academia and is on Twitter @blueclementine.  

Detail: Memories of then, and writing now - Clémentine Beauvais