Should writers try to change the world? Or should we just shut up and write? Lari Don

It’s Book Week Scotland this week, and like many Scottish-based authors, I’ve spent the whole week (and this weekend too) rushing around Scotland sharing stories and chatting about my books.

But I’ve done other things too. I spent one of my Book Week Scotland days travelling to the northeast of Scotland, to the town where I was brought up, to take part in the campaign to keep local libraries open. (Moray council have recently relented, very reluctantly, to keep my home town Dufftown library open, but are still planning to close four others. So I visited one of them too, a lovely wee library in Rothes, where I met 50 local school kids and we all talked about stories and how libraries help inspire us. The kids were all familiar with and passionate about their library, and were gutted at the proposed closure. Here’s the notice. It’s closing TODAY. But the campaign to save it and other libraries continues.)

So, I went up north, and I told stories to kids in libraries because that’s what I do in libraries, and I got my photo taken and was interviewed by the press. And I hope that was helpful.

And this week, I’ve also started investigating a rumour about a proposal to cut the number of secondary school librarians in the city I now live in. If it’s true, then I’ll be getting stuck into that next week…

But I’m not just political about books and libraries. I campaign for a Yes vote in the independence referendum next year. I put out leaflets and knock on doors, but I also take part in debates as “a writer”, like one on Scotland’s future at this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival.

So, should I? Should I try to change the world around me, should I get involved in politics, when I’m just a children’s writer?

Why should my opinions be any more important than anyone else’s? Why should what I think about Moray closing libraries be of any interest to anyone, given that I moved away more than 20 years ago? Why should my opinions on school librarians be any more important than those of any other local parent? Why would anyone pay any attention to my opinions on Scotland’s future, any more than any other person living here?

My job is to make things up and invent happy endings. Why should anyone trust anything I have to say about the real world?

The answer is that of course my opinions are not more important or valid than anyone else's. However it might be easier for me with my “writer” hat on, to express those opinions and get them heard.

And perhaps a deeper answer is that artists of all kinds are experienced at “what if”s and imagining outcomes and creative original thinking, so maybe on big political issues we can lift the debate out of shallow ‘what’s in it for me’ waters and give a wider vision to the debate.

But here’s another question I rarely ask myself, but I thought I’d ask you: does a writer trying to change the world annoy or offend readers?

Most people might think writers have a professional knowledge of the value of libraries, so might forgive writers for being passionate about libraries, even if they don’t agree with us. But on more contentious political issues, where readers, publishers, booksellers, teachers and parents might have their own very different views, does going public with our opinions damage us as writers? Does it undermine our books and our relationships with readers?

Should I just shut up?

Personally I think that writers can do a huge amount of good – look at the money raised last week by the amazing Authors for Philippines auction – and that if we care passionately about something and if we can help raise awareness and get a bit of media coverage to help out other people who care passionately too, then it probably is justified. But I still don’t think my opinions matter more than anyone else.

And bizarrely I’m careful not to be blatantly political in my books! I suspect the underlying feminism of my collection of heroine myths, Girls Goddesses and Giants, is fairly obvious, but despite the Scottish setting of all my adventure novels so far, I've never mentioned Scottish Independence in any of them. I wouldn’t feel right using my characters (and readers) like that, in an artificial way that wasn’t part of the story.

So what do other writers, and indeed readers, think? Should writers try to change the world, or should we stick to creating fictional worlds? And has anyone ever been put off a book by the writer’s political opinions?

I’m off now, to draft a letter about school librarians while on a bus to another Book Week Scotland event. Happy Book Week Scotland, whereever you are, and please support your local library! (See, I just can’t shut up…)

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 20 books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers.
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How do you make a book? Lari Don

When I visit schools, one of the questions I’m asked most often (usually by 6 year olds rather than 10 year olds) is ‘how do you make a book?’ They’re often very disappointed when they discover that I don’t make books. I just write the words. Someone else does the pictures, and someone else entirely makes the physical book with the actual pages that you turn. I can talk a little about the illustrator’s role, because I’ve chatted to illustrators, and responded to roughs and commented on layouts. But I always have to admit that I have no idea how a book is printed, how the book is actually made, because I’ve never met a printer or seen what they do.

I mentioned this gaping hole in my knowledge to my lovely publishers Floris Books, just once in passing (or perhaps I nagged, I’m not sure), and last week, they organised a trip to a printers and let me tag along so I could learn how a book is made. We went to Bell and Bain in Glasgow, which is the oldest book printer in Britain and the biggest book printer in Scotland, where Tony Campbell gave us a fascinating tour.

The first thing I noticed was the noise. I think of books as quiet things, though I probably shouldn’t because I make a lot of noise killing dragons and shouting ‘bottom!’ when I do book events, but writing and reading can be calm quiet activities.

However, printing is not quiet. The noise in the factory was overwhelming. When one of the printing presses started up right beside me, the hum and vibration was like an aeroplane taking off.

the inside of a printing press

And everything was so big! Books are usually little things you can hold in your hand. But all the machines which make books are great big industrial-sized metal giants.

Bell and Bain is a proper factory, which makes real things, in huge quantities. And for someone who loves books, Bell and Bain is a wonderfully optimistic place. 90 people are employed there and they have recently bought new printing presses (for figures which I won’t reveal but made me gasp.) It’s a thriving business, making books. 7 million books a year…

And here’s how it’s done.

First the digital file from the publishers is turned into a plate. A flimsy wobbly shiny sheet of metal is lasered, then developed with chemicals, so that it’s marked with an impression of the words and pictures the publisher wants printed on the paper. If you are printing black and white, you only need one plate; if you are printing colour, you need four plates (for all the different colours.)

And the plate is huge, because the paper to be printed is huge. A rug-sized sheet of paper, which can fit 32 novel-sized pages on each side. I reckon that about a dozen 10 year olds could sit cross-legged on one sheet of Bell and Bain’s paper. (Yes, ok, doing so many author visits has given me a fairly odd way to judge area…)

a large sheet of paper, scale provided by the powerful hand of my editor Eleanor

So the plates are put in the printing press and the paper is fed though. We saw the biggest press opened up to be serviced. The innards look like the inside of my computer printer at home, but these are the right size for the house at the top of the beanstalk. The ink rollers are amazing, long thick shiny rollers covered in gleaming ink, which is poured over them from bucket-sized pots. I took pictures of all the rollers, but I liked the blood red roller best…

a shiny dripping blood red ink roller

The printing press prints both sides of the papers, that’s why it needs eight presses for colour. But it can do 15,000 sheets of paper an hour. And it's printing all day and all night, 7 days a week.

Bell and Bain have black and white presses too, and we are fairly sure we identified the exact press which printed some of my First Aid for Fairies novels, so I got my picture taken in front of it. (This was much more exciting than getting my picture taken in front of the Eiffel Tower!)

my tourist shot - Lari and the First Aid for Fairies printing press

This process is called litho printing (or at least that’s what I scribbled down) and we also saw smaller litho presses for printing covers on card rather than paper, and a terrifyingly fast inkjet digital printer which printed onto rolls of paper rather than sheets.

After the litho printing press has finished, you have all the pages of your book, but they would be easier to sit on than to read. So next the sheets are fed into a folding machine, which I thought was the most fascinating machine in the building. It’s a conveyor belt, but not a straight one: it has lots of corners, and every time the sheet of paper goes round a corner it’s folded, and somewhere in there it’s also cut and perforated, so by the time it reaches the end the rug-sized sheet of paper has become book-sized, with holes along the back. Though it’s probably not a complete book yet, this section or ‘sig’ will be a fraction of the book, perhaps a quarter or a tenth of a book depending how long the book is. The folding machine also has lines of big shiny ball bearings, which are apparently there to stop the paper flying off the belt at the corners, but made me want to play marbles on the factory floor…

the fabulous folding machine - look at those tempting marbles

Then the book is bound. The folded sigs are put in hoppers above the binding machine, dropped down and layered in the right order. Then the spine of the naked book is dipped in hot glue, the glue goes up into the perforations in the pages and the cover is clamped onto the gluey spine. The cover is then folded round the pages, the edges of the book are trimmed to make them neat and tidy, and the book comes out the other end all ready to read.

Ready to read and still warm. Books actually are hot off the press. Because the glue is hot, when you touch the spine of a very new book, it’s warm!

That glue is also rather wonderful - it arrives in pellets like little white seeds, then is heated until it melts, and is used as hot liquid glue.

cold dry glue, before it's melted

And that is how you make a book!

I must thank the lovely Floris team for arranging our trip, and all the staff of Bell and Bain for letting half a dozen publishers and one nosy writer get in their way all afternoon. I must also thank every child who has asked me how books are made, because their curiosity prompted me to find out more about printing.

I should stress that the above is just my tourist’s understanding of the printing process. I’ve probably missed a couple of steps and misunderstood most of the rest. (I certainly wouldn’t advise setting up a printing company using my description of the process as a guide.) But I hope my account of a trip to a printing press will give you some idea of the skill, effort and technology which goes into creating a physical book.

And next time a child asks me ‘how do you make a book?’ they’d better be ready for a very long and detailed answer. Or perhaps I’ll just give them a link to this blog…
 

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 20 books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 

Lari’s website 

Lari’s own blog

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Who Writes Your Books? Lari Don

Who writes your books? If you’re a children’s writer, does the child inside you write, or at least inspire, your books?

I always thought so. My first children’s books were adventures for 8–12 year olds, set in the Scottish landscape, inspired by myths and folklore. And I definitely write those novels for the child I was in the 70s and 80s, living a rural life surrounded by lots of books. A girl who climbed trees and perched on roofs, always with a book to read high up in the sun. I write the adventures I wished I’d gone on, I write about how I might have reacted if I’d found a centaur bleeding on my doorstep. So my novels are inspired by my childhood, and written by the bit of me that has never grown up and still hopes for adventure.

But that girl is not the person who inspires my picture books. I’ve realised recently that most of my picture books are inspired by my life as a parent. That doesn’t mean I write for adults rather than children. My picture book stories are definitely aimed at kids (though I always bear in mind the adults who may have to read a book 6 times in a row every night for weeks…) I write the stories for the kids, but the initial ideas come from me as a parent.

The Big Bottom Hunt was inspired by a day on the beach with my family. How To Make A Heron Happy was inspired by visits to our local park. Orange Juice Peas was a story I made up to tell my own kids, about chaotic teatimes. 

 And my most recent picture book, The Magic Word, is about the difficulty of persuading kids to write birthday thank you letters and one little girl’s magical attempts to speed the process up…

Beaches, parks, meal times and thank you letters are all familiar parts of the jigsaw of parenting, so these stories have bounced off my life as a parent. Though I’m certainly not claiming these books have anything profound to say about parenting (what a horrendous thought!) I just want to tell dramatic, surprising, funny stories.

And I’m not saying that I write these books as a parent – I’m sure I return to the joys of my small-child-hood for the details of the stories, like repeating rude words – “Is this your bottom?” - and making a mess of the kitchen, which happens regularly in my books. But I don’t remember enough about being a very small child for the full stories themselves to come from there. The ‘what if’s, the ‘I wonder’s, the questions which prompt the stories, those definitely come from my experience as a parent now.

I think I could and would have written most of my other books without being a parent, but I couldn’t have written these picture books if I wasn’t a mum.

Are other writers aware that different parts of their lives, past and present, inspire different elements of their writing?

Lari Don is the award-winning author of almost 20 books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. Some of her books contain the word “bottom” 
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The power of (long, silly) words - Lari Don

I’ve just moved house. I'm sure any other writers who work from home and have suffered through a house move will agree that it can be extraordinarily disruptive. But I’m not going to moan at you. Instead I’m going to be cheerful about the power of words and the loveliness of librarians.

I had to send a lot of emails over the summer apologising in advance (or even worse, after the fact) for being inefficient, hard to contact and easily confused, all of them using the explanation / excuse that I was in the midst of moving house.

I had a variety of responses. A frequent response was: “Oh, how exciting!” (Em, no. Not exciting. Tiring, expensive, irritating, destructive of any creative impulse …)

But my favourite response was from the lovely librarian who said she completely understood that I would be hard to pin down for a few weeks, and that I might not be sending the most coherent emails for a while, because (and I quote her email):

                 “…moving house is superbusystressmonkey!” 

I laughed out loud at her word, and I nodded, and I printed the phrase out, and I stuck it to my wall (both walls actually, old study and new study) and her word MADE ME FEEL BETTER.

‘Superbusystressmonkey’ is the perfect word for the feeling of moving house. It acknowledges the chaos, but punctures it with humour. It recognises the panicked lack of control, but by trapping that panic in a word, it gives you back a little bit of control.

A superbusystressmonkey climbing a wall of boxes

It may have been a throwaway line from a supportive person, but that word ‘superbusystressmonkey’ actually made the whole house move easier for me, because I had a word for it, a word which made me smile. 

Which made me realise just how important words are. The right words. Words that acknowledge something difficult, that allow you to articulate how you feel, and therefore give you a feeling of control over the problem.

Words can make you feel better.

I don’t know (though I suppose I could ask) whether the lovely librarian made up ‘superbusystressmonkey’ on the spot, or whether she (like any good librarian) knew exactly where to find the right word when she needed it. But it was a new word to me, and I’m sure I will find it very useful in the future.

Now I’m almost settled, I can take ‘superbusystressmonkey’ off my wall, and put up a calmer and more creative new word instead. ‘Superfocusseddeadlinetiger’ perhaps?


Lari Don is the award-winning author of almost twenty books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. And she hopes never to move house again!

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Heroines are not just for girls! Lari Don

I’m very wary of being a “girls’ writer”. I am a girl, or I used to be, and both my own children are girls. But I don’t write for girls. I write for readers. I write for readers like me who enjoy adventure, tension, riddles, magic, defeating monsters and solving problems. Some of those readers are girls, some of those readers are boys.

However, I’ve always been a bit concerned that so many kids’ books have a boy as the protagonist and a girl as the clever sidekick. So the main characters in all my novels so far have been girls (usually with a male sidekick, though not always a human male sidekick) and as far as I can tell, from emails and signing queues at book festivals, boys enjoy my novels just as much as girls.

But now I’ve done something a bit risky, for someone who doesn’t write for girls. I’ve written a book of heroine tales.

Most of my fiction is inspired by old myths and legends (that’s where my familiarity with magic and my long list of monsters who need defeated come from) and I love telling old stories too. I especially love telling Greek and Viking myths. But most of the best known monster-defeating myths are about boys and men. About heroes. And if girls appear in those stories at all, they’re not even the sidekicks. They’re usually the prizes.

“And the man who rids of us of this dragon will win half my kingdom and my daughter’s hand in marriage.”  

I don’t like giving girls away like sweeties. So one day, I changed a Viking dragon myth.

Standing up in front of a class of 10 year olds, I let the dragon eat every single one of the princes and warriors, and encouraged the princess to kill the dragon herself then refuse to marry anyone. It went down very well with the audience and I enjoyed it at the time, but I felt absolutely rotten afterwards. I felt like I’d ripped the heart out of the story.

So if I wasn’t prepared to alter stories quite so radically, either I had to tell all these hero myths without any balancing heroine myths, or I had find some authentic heroines. So that’s what I did. Once I started looking, I found dozens of them: Inanna the Sumerian goddess, Durga the Hindu goddess, the ballad of Li Chi, Tokoyo the pearl diver, unnamed girls in folktales from all over the world. All defeating monsters or solving problems. None of them waiting for some bloke to rescue them.

I started telling these heroine stories. And kids loved them just as much as they loved Theseus and the Minotaur, or Assiepattle and the Meester Stoorworm. Boys loved the heroine stories, just as much as girls had loved the hero ones.

To be honest, I doubt any of the kids were counting the number of boys and girls in the stories. It was probably only me who was worrying about the cumulative effect of the imbalance of heroes vs heroines.

And now comes the risky bit. I’ve just put my favourite heroine tales into a book. But it’s not a book for girls. No, it is not. It is a book for anyone who enjoys adventure and quests and magic and defeating monsters.

So I was delighted when, at my first public event with Girls, Goddesses and Giants earlier this month, several boys turned up, and they enjoyed my retelling of a goddess defeating a demon just as much as anyone else. And they bought the book. One 11 year old boy read most of it on the way home on the bus.

So boys can enjoy books about heroines too. (Whew!)

I’d be interested to know other writers’ and readers’ opinions on whether there are too few strong girls in the well-known old stories which inspire so much of our contemporary culture, whether that imbalance is a problem (for boys as well as girls), and if so, how we address it.

And in the meantime, I’ll keep looking out for more authentic heroine stories. But I still don’t write books just for girls…

nb - I’m away from my computer for a few days (scheduling posts ahead of time is a great thing!) but I'll respond to any comments as soon as I’m back online.

Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than a dozen books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 

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Lari's book of heroine stories, Girls, Goddesses and Giants, was published earlier this month by A&C Black. 

 

Teenagers aren’t scary – Lari Don

I spend a lot of time in primary schools, chatting to upper primary age children about adventures and monsters, heroines and heroes, myths and legends, and my Fabled Beast Chronicles. As a writer and storyteller I get on well with 10 year olds - we seem to enjoy the same kinds of stories.

The wonderful thing about primary age kids is their open joyful enthusiasm about their own imaginations.

So a roomful of 10 year olds, or 9 year olds, or 8 year olds (or 4 year olds, when I’m reading one of my picture books) is not scary for me. Not even if there are several hundred of them in a large school hall. That’s my natural environment, as an on-the-road author.

However, a room full of teenagers? That’s scary, isn’t it? It’s certainly not my natural environment, or not until recently.

Because I published a teen novel this year, the YA thriller Mind Blind, and this month, I took Mind Blind on tour, chatting to widely varying numbers of teenagers in secondary school libraries, English classrooms and school canteens.

And I thought this would be completely different from talking to readers in primary schools.

I really did expect teenagers in large groups to be scary. More critical perhaps, less open. Taller than me, certainly. Wearing more makeup and fancier shoes than me…

And I’ve certainly discovered that secondary school events are very different from primary events, but not for the reasons I expected.

So long as I make it clear I’m not trying to teach them anything, that I’m just there to share my passion for ‘what happens next’, and once I’ve shown that I’m not concerned about rules or exams, that I’m prepared to admit mistakes and make a bit of an idiot of myself at the front of the room, then the secondary pupils are usually very open and enthusiastic about sharing their own thoughts, ideas and questions. Just like the primary school pupils.

One striking difference from primary events is that as young writers grow, as they read and write more, they begin to develop a good working knowledge of their own writing style and opinions, which makes for fascinating discussions about different and equally valid ways of planning / not planning stories, what makes a satisfying ending, and how to treat characters and readers.

But the main difference I’ve found between primary and secondary events is the timetable! I usually spend an hour or more with primary children. I can usually see them from the start of the school day until playtime or from the end of playtime until lunchtime, or a nice long chat after lunchtime. Primary teachers can be delightfully flexible, and are usually very keen for me to have as long as possible with their pupils.

But in secondary schools the timetable is the boss. I may be told that I can see the pupils for period 3, which is 10.48 to 11.36 exactly, and that the class will have to go to their teacher to register first, so that might really be 10.54 to 11.36, and that they have to be packed and ready to leave when the bell goes, so that’s more likely to be from 10.54 to 11.32…

So I don’t get nearly as long as I’d like. I can’t just blether on, I have to be more organised, more focused, and get to the meat of what I want to do faster. But once I have got my head round the much shorter session time, then it’s fine. Because really, wherever I am, I’m just chatting to people about stories, whatever age those people are.

So now that I’ve accepted my subservience to the tyranny of the timetable, I’ve realised that teenagers aren’t that scary at all. Not even 170 of them in an echoey old school canteen. They are equally as imaginative and enthusiastic and full of adventure as primary pupils. They may just need a little extra encouragement to step out of the confines of the timetable themselves and let their imaginations fly free.

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 22 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. Lari’s website 
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The not-writing bits of a writer’s day - Lari Don

I love writing, but I can’t do it for long.

I do it in quick bursts (30 or 40 minutes is usually enough) then I need a break, partly to recover emotionally from the fight or chase or argument I’ve just written, partly to get up from the chair and keyboard to give my body a change of posture, and partly to give my brain time to consider solutions to the questions and problems that particular burst of writing has thrown up.

So on the rare and wonderful days when I have all day to write, I don’t spend all day writing. I do a variety of things to take a break, at least once an hour. And over the years, I’ve discovered things which REALLY don’t work as breaks from writing:

Logging on to my email or twitter or facebook or even lovely blogs like this, because I get involved in conversations then feel rude if I break them off to get back to writing, and anyway it doesn’t give me a break from the screen and keyboard.

Reading a novel, because if the novel is any good, 10 minutes isn’t enough, and I risk getting sucked into that world, forgetting the time, forgetting the book I’m trying to write…

Doing a bit of housework, which usually annoys me more than it relaxes or inspires me, so I do as little housework as possible (this is a life rule, not just a writing day one!)

So this month, I made a new resolution (why make them in January? October can be a new start too) and I’m trying to find other things to give me a quick mental and physical break, then send me back into the story refreshed and possibly even inspired. And so far, these have worked:

 

Reading poetry, short stories or collections of art and photos. Much less likely to suck me in than a novel, and also a chance to widen my reading. So I’ve started a shelf of books specifically chosen for glancing at for 10 minutes (and yes, that is a book of Joan Lennon’s poetry…)

Stitching or sewing something. I’ve dug out a cushion cover I started to design decades ago, and now I’m working on it in very small sections. Working with wool is so different from working with words, that it seems like the perfect break.

Baking bread or cooking. It’s not housework, but it still makes me feel domestically useful, and kneading bread is particularly satisfying.

Going for a run. This is the best way to clear my head, and to deal with the dangers of a sitting down job. But it only works once a day, and only when I can be bothered! 

Sight reading a few of my daughter’s scales / exercises / pieces on the piano. (Not particularly well, but with a bit of verve!)

I’m sure if did all of these (run, bake, sew, play music, read poetry…) in one day, I’d probably not write any words of my own at all. But having all of those options certainly beats hanging socks between chapters…

Lari Donis the award-winning author of 22 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 

Lari’s website 

Lari’s own blog

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The strange things children’s writers do – Lari Don

Yesterday, I helped dress a dragon in a car park.

The dragonmobile, at Pirniehall Primary in Edinburgh

But it’s not the strangest thing I’ve done as a children’s writer.

I've recce'd a castle, going in undercover as a tourist, to discover the best way to steal their most famous artefact.

I've interviewed a vet about how to heal a fairy’s dislocated wing, and a boat builder about how to fit a centaur on a rowing boat.

I've lost half a dozen journalists in a maze. (I guided them out again eventually. Most of them.)

I've told Celtic legends on an iron age hillfort, fairytales in an inner city woodland, and Viking myths in a cave.

And all of these things have been an integral part of my job as a children’s writer. Because writing is not just sitting at a keyboard and tapping out chapters.

The research (chatting to vets about fairy injuries and sneaking about castles) is often as much fun as the writing. And the promotion (dragon dressing and outdoor storytelling) is almost as important as the sitting at my desk imagining.

I suspect that as a children’s writer, you have to be just as imaginative in your research methods and your promotion ideas as you do in your cliffhangers and your characterisations.

But I can’t take credit for the dragon in the carpark. I did create a shiny friendly blue dragon, as one of the main characters in my Fabled Beast series. However, I had moved onto creating other characters in other stories, when my publishers decided to give the Fabled Beasts Chronicles new covers, and announced that they were going to promote the covers with a dragonflight tour.

Then the very talented marketing executive at Floris Books designed a dragon costume for her own car. And she’ll be spending most of the next fortnight driving me round beautiful bits of Scotland and the north of England (yesterday Edinburgh, today Perth, then Aberdeenshire and Penrith, as we get more confident and stretch our wings!) in a car which we dress up as a dragon in the carpark of various primary schools, then invite the children out to ooh and aah at our shiny blue dragon and her shimmering flames, before I go inside to chat with the pupils about cliff-hangers and quests.

So, this week, I’ve already learnt how to put a dragon’s jaws on at speed. And I’ve discovered that if the engine hasn’t cooled down yet, those flames coming down from the bonnet are actually warm!

Very brave Forthview Primary pupils sitting on dragon's flames!

So, yes, I do strange things. But I have fun! And I hope that my enjoyment comes across in my books, and in my author events.

I don’t think the adventures I create would be nearly as interesting without the odd conversations I have while I’m researching them, or the weird things I do to promote them.

So – what do you think? Should I just be sensible and stay indoors writing? Or is a little bit of weird now and then an effective way to make books, reading and writing more exciting for children?
 

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 22 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 

Lari’s website 

Lari’s own blog

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REVISITING AND RE-VISIONING A MANUSCRIPT – Dianne Hofmeyr

More than two years ago I finished the first draft of my 9th novel and handed three chapters over to my agent. She hated it. Picked holes in just about every paragraph. Didn’t think my characters were convincing. Thought some of my research was suspect. And generally couldn’t find anything good to say about it. I put up all sorts of arguments for it being a first draft etc etc but after she had torn it apart, the thought of fixing it was just too daunting. So the story was buried.

I knew it was a good idea and once I could stand back from all the criticism, I felt there was a kernel there that still needed to be told. But I was far too demoralized to dig deep and find the right way of telling it. After a couple of years of being involved with picture books, I recently took it out again. My son, who has had some success with an 'about to be published' first novel and a film deal, asked the burning question: what is the story about?

I rambled on and on. I was floundering.

There was the problem! I had no idea. I couldn’t be succinct enough to say what my story was about. So if I couldn’t sell my story to my agent, or even my own son, how was I going to whet the appetite of an editor or more importantly readers out there?

Anyone who listens to a premise, must be able to see the entire book unfolding in his mind. A premise has few words but must hit hard. It has to be emotionally intriguing. It has to mean something to the person hearing the idea for the first time. But it's not just a tool to use to sell a story to an editor, it's for the writer to keep crystalised in his head as he works. The little nugget from which all else springs. Nicola Morgan has written reams about writing premises but I had somehow fallen into the lazy trap of thinking because I write organically (pantster???), my premise could be equally organic.

Wrong! Basically a premise needs a compelling hero, a compelling bad guy and a compelling need or goal we as humans can identify with. Put this in a single sentence or at the most two and make it compelling enough to capture a stranger’s attention and to keep the writer focused on the kernel of the story.

What is the story about? My son’s question drew me up sharp. I couldn’t tell him in a few succinct sentences. But the moment I began to formulate and define the premise, like magic, the conflicts were brought more sharply into focus, my protagonist gained stature and I could make the bad guy just a bit more out of reach of my hero’s ability to defeat him.

So writing a good premise is a great step in the right direction. Ask yourself is this story about someone:
I can identify with
I can learn from
I have a compelling reason to follow
I believe deserves to win
Has weaknesses that are overcome in the end (the hero's arc)
Has stakes that are primal and ring true?

Now as I’m picking up on my story again, I’m visualizing a short and hugely dramatic first image and then I’m going into the beats of the story like they do in film-scripts. What is the right way to pace this story? I’m even writing out index cards and am putting them up on a cork-board. And having read Lari Don’s recent blogpost on ABBA where she writes: I know that I’m just discovering the story, not finding the perfect way of telling it first time around. And I know that it takes a lot of work to make that original mess of scribbled ideas into a book, I’ve realized that keeping track of the beats in a story is far easier if you’ve already written the first draft. Heaven forbid I would ever have to work out the beats in a story I hadn’t drafted first.

Now after the premise and that riveting first image and the initial set-up of time, place and characters, what is the catalyst? The moment of no turning back? Crossing the threshold? The door of no return? Should I go? Dare I go? I’m talking about me… not my hero! And for those of you who recognise some of the above – yes, I have read Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat and yes I think both he, my son and my agent have hopefully saved my manuscript.

And finally as an aside, I don’t believe my research is suspect – my notebooks are full of distracting and time-wasting detail that help me 'play' and doodle my way through the story. 

www.diannehofmeyr.com

twitter: @dihofmeyr

Dianne Hofmeyr's most recent picture book Zeraffa Giraffa published by Frances Lincoln, is illustrated by Jane Ray and has been translated into 6 languages other than English. Her previous picture book The Name of the Tree is Bojabi, also published by Frances Lincoln and illustrated by Piet Grobler, was nominated for the 2014 Kate Greenaway.

Publishing deleted scenes – risky, cringeworthy, helpful? Lari Don

Publishers want lots of ‘stuff’ from authors now. Not just the book, but lots of other stuff. Content, it’s called, for online things.

One of the bits of content I’ve given my publishers recently is a file of deleted scenes, from my new(ish) teen thriller Mind Blind.

It wasn’t hard for me to find half a dozen deleted scenes, because I delete lots from my manuscripts as I rewrite and redraft. It’s not unusual for me to reduce the length of a book by 20,000 words or more between first draft and final publication. Which sounds very inefficient – wouldn’t I be better just writing shorter books in the first place?

But I’m not a planner and plotter. I discover the story as I write, as I follow the characters on their journey, and that means diversions and doubling back. I never deliberately write anything that I know is irrelevant at the time, every word helps me find out about the characters, their reactions to problems and my own feelings about the story. But once I reach the end and get a sense of the main thrust of the story, it’s usually clear that I've regularly wandered off the narrative path, and that some scenes are now unnecessary. They may have been necessary to get me to the end, but they’re not necessary to get the reader to the end. So I'm ruthless in slashing them out. I reckon that if you can slice out a scene without it seriously affecting the rest of the story, it probably wasn’t that important.

And in a thriller like MindBlind, where it’s very important to keep the pace up and the pages turning, I also removed scenes or parts of scenes because they slowed the story down too much. (Here’s an example of one.)

And sometimes I cut a scene, not because it’s slowing the story down or because it’s an unnecessary diversion, but because I come up with a stronger idea once I know the story and characters better. However, the original scene is still part of the way I got to know the character, so it’s part of my history with them. Here’s an example of that – it’s the first scene I ever wrote about Ciaran Bain, the hero (anti-hero) of the book. It’s not in the book, but it’s still the place I first met him!

Of course, it’s misleading to suggest that all this slashing and slicing is my idea. Quite a lot of it is, but some of it is in response to gentle prompts from my wonderful editor.

a mountain of many Mind Blind manuscripts

So, I have no problem removing large chunks of my first draft or even my fourteenth draft, because as I’m writing, I know that I’m just discovering the story, not finding the perfect way of telling it first time around. And I know that it takes a lot of work to make that original mess of scribbled ideas into a book.

But having taken all this stuff out, why on earth would I want to show it to anyone? These deleted scenes have often been removed quite early in the process, so they’re not that polished (why would I polish them, once I’ve deleted them?) So it does feel quite weird and slightly uncomfortable, revealing these unfinished bits of my creative process to the public gaze.

Even if these are scenes that I took out for plot or pace reasons, rather than pieces of writing I don’t like, they are still parts of the story that didn’t make it into the book. So is it a bit of a risk to show less than perfect examples of your writing to the world? And why on earth do it?

The first reason is the pragmatic one of feeding the voracious social media monster. (This is not a particularly good reason.)

But I wonder if a much better reason is that realising how much an author cuts from their early drafts can be useful, especially for young writers. It’s a very practical way to show that published writers don’t get it right all the time, that our first drafts are just the start of the process and that we have to work at them, slash at them, perhaps radically change them, to get them into shape. Deleted scenes are perhaps the online version of showing manuscripts covered in lots of scribbles and scorings out to groups of kids at author visits. ‘Look, I don’t get it right first time, so you don’t have to either. Just write, and see what happens!’

So, while I was wincing and cringing this week as yet another deleted scene appeared on Tumblr, I wondered:
How much do other writers delete?
Are other writers happy to let the world see the bits they sliced out?
And do readers learn anything about the writing process from deleted scenes?

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 21 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 

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Rereading for the wrong reasons? Lari Don

One of the most wonderful but most troubling things about being a writer is that books become work.

Not just writing books, but reading them too.

This can be wonderful, when I tell myself that wasting (spending, investing) a whole day reading a novel that I’m desperate to finish, is in fact legitimate work. But it can also be troubling, when I realise that something I used to love is now something I HAVE TO DO.

This changes my relationship with books. Having to read books, having to think about and talk about books, not because I want to, not because that’s the book I want to spend time with, but because I’ve committed myself to an event or an article or a blog post which makes reading that particular book right now a necessity.

I live in Edinburgh, and I’m doing various events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival next month, mostly in the children’s and schools programme. But I’m also leading a reading workshop on Diana Wynne Jones, a writer whose books inspired me as a child, whose books still inspire me now, whose books I love to read.

But this summer, I have HAD to read them. I have had to reread the ones I am committed to discussing. (Books that, to be fair, I suggested and wanted to discuss, but even so…)

And suddenly I found myself resisting rereading them. I love rereading my favourite books. Mostly because I enjoy them, and am happy to reenter their worlds. And partly because, especially with books by Diana Wynne Jones, Neil Gaiman and others who are inspired by tales of old magic, I recognise more references every time I read them. But that’s when I choose to reread. When a book calls to me and says, come on over here and visit me again…

This summer, there’s been a pile of DWJ books on my study floor, which I knew I had to reread, but which I kept stepping round. Even though The Power of Three is my favourite ever children’s book, and Howl’s Moving Castle is in the top five, and Fire And Hemlock radically changed my relationship with my favourite Scottish fairy tale, and Chrestmanci is the most perfect wizardly wizard ever created… I’ve been resisting. Because I felt that I had to read them, that it was my job, that it was homework.

a small fraction of the DWJ pile!

And this has made me consider how, to some extent, every book I read is work. That everything I read leaves something behind, like a wave on a beach, which changes and inspires and shapes everything I will subsequently write. That I learn from every book, whether I love it or not. That the reader I am creates the writer I am.

But I also know that if I am conscious of what I’m learning from a book, then I haven’t truly lost myself in it. And the books that I just thoroughly enjoy, that I don’t read as a writer, that I just read as a wide-eyed reader, desperate to find out what happens next (and not noticing how the writer is making me care) those are the books I love the most. Probably those are the books that influence me most. And certainly those are the books I happily and enthusiastically reread.

And so. I took a deep breath. I started with Dogsbody, and The Ogre Downstairs, and Howl and those castles. And I have had the most glorious weekend rereading Diana Wynne Jones. To be honest, most of the time, I forgot why I was rereading them (workshop, what workshop?) and just lost myself in the wonderful magical world of her imagination.

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 21 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. Lari’s website 
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The real Summer Reading Challenge? Lari Don

Exactly a week ago, I was privileged to launch the Tesco Bank Summer Reading Challenge Scotland (I needed to take a deep breath every time I said that!) in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. In case the title doesn’t make it clear, it’s the libraries’ Summer Reading Challenge, in Scotland, sponsored by Tesco Bank. I was also privileged to also launch the local Summer Reading Challenge in Dundee two days later.

Launching the Tesco Bank Summer Reading Challenge Scotland

This year’s theme is Mythical Maze. And there couldn’t be a better theme for me – I write collections of myths and legends, I write contemporary adventures inspired by old myths, and one of my books even has a Maze in the title.

So that’s probably why I was asked to launch this year’s theme and challenge in Scotland. (And yes, I know it seems a bit early to all of you south of the border, but we grab summer earlier up here in Scotland, so the schools are already out and the libraries are already challenging kids to read books during the holidays.)

The launches were all positive and smiley. I met kids who had done previous challenges and were keen to do it again (which was great) and I met kids who had never done it before but were keen to give it a go it this year (which was even better.) So I had hoped to post a really cheerful blog for you all about summer and reading, with these wonderful illustrations by Sarah MacIntyre.

With lovely librarian Ruth in Dundee, and a dragon behind us.

But when I posted pictures of me with posters and books and dragons and kids online last week, someone who had been involved in a campaign that I supported to keep their local library open, a campaign that sadly failed, contacted me to say, this is lovely, Lari, but what about the kids who don’t have a local library any more? 

And I didn’t have an answer. Sad face emoticons don’t really do it.

The Summer Reading Challenge brightens up and invigorates libraries all over the country and allows them to run fun family-focussed events. The different themes every year make reading relevant and exciting to lots of different children. Kids get involved, families get involved, authors get involved. It’s a brilliant scheme. Well done the Reading Agency for organising it, and Tesco Bank for supporting it in Scotland. But it can’t reach every child, because not every child has access to a library.

And perhaps that’s the real challenge for all of us.

I had intended to write a really cheerful summery sunny post for all you Awfully Big Blog fans, but the shadow over it is that even the best things we do with books can’t and don’t reach everyone. Not until we make sure every single child has access to a library.

So clearly my challenge is to get away from that dragon breathing down my neck and take up my sword again on the subject of library closures.

In the meantime, have a fun summer, losing yourself in mazes and finding new myths!

(Lari is now away polishing her sword…)

Lari Don is an occasional library campaigner, and also the award-winning author of 21 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers.
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Giving worthwhile advice, or being a bit of a fraud? Lari Don

I love writing. I love talking about writing. I love writing about writing.

So when people ask me questions about writing, I will blether away happily about how I write, why I write, where my ideas come from, what my writing process is, and how I edit. Whether I’m talking to 500 pupils in a theatre, or 15 kids at a workshop, or 1 child in a signing queue I also ask about how they write, how they feel about writing, what they enjoy about writing …

I also try to remember to give the usual health warning: there are lots of ways to write, I can only talk about how I write, don’t assume I know everything. Over time I’m gathering examples of writers who work differently from me, so I try to give glimpses of their methods too. I’ve recently discovered that the lovely Roy Gill, who is also published by KelpiesTeen, writes at the other end of the pantsters / plotter spectrum from me, so we are able to chat to kids together about our different methods and how we wrote Mind Blind (my one) and Werewolf Parallel (his one), which is a lovely way to show that there really is no one way to write.

So, talking about writing, to other passionate young or old writers – that’s fine. Because I’m a writer. I know (a bit) about writing. 

But I don’t know a THING about publishing!

Yesterday an aspiring writer (an adult, not a child) came up to me after an author event to ask for advice about getting published. This is a question I am fielding more and more often. Yet it’s not something I know anything about at all! I am published, yes, but I still don’t entirely know how it happened. Unlike my close personal relationship with my own writing process, every time I get a book published it seems like a bit of a miracle which I only had a small hand in, and the elements of success and failure seem to be completely different with every book. So I only know how I got published and even then, I’m not really sure how it works! (That’s why I have an agent, so I don’t have to know more about publishing…)

Therefore I don’t feel even remotely qualified to give advice on getting published! I tend to witter on about writing the best book you can, and persevering, and the market changing all the time, and finding an agent being the best thing I ever did. But I feel like a complete fraud.

So, apologies to the chap I waffled at yesterday.

And what do other writers do when asked for publishing advice? Do you waffle, or do you have any really useful to say (and if so, can I borrow it?)

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 21 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 

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I’m not a poet, and I already know it - Lari Don

This month, I’ve taken part in NaPoWriMo14: National Poetry Writing Month 2014. I’ve faithfully written a piece of poetry every day, though I haven’t actually gone public with any of it. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to inflict any on you here either.)

Why did I want to do NaPoWriMo? I’m a far-too-busy prose writer, with deadlines to meet and children to look after (when I remember), so why take on another creative responsibility?

Because I thought challenging myself to try something new as a writer would be interesting, and possibly even useful.

I already knew I wasn’t a poet. I was put off poetry at school (yes, just like everyone else) so I don’t read poetry very often, and I never attempt to write it. I do write riddles, because my Fabled Beasts adventure series contains lots of magical creatures and characters who use riddles as clues, tools or weapons, but I think of riddles as verbal puzzles than poetry.

And NaPoWriMo14 has certainly confirmed that I’m not a poet.

I did enjoy writing the poems, I did manage at least one a day, and it was fascinating discovering that the subjects I wanted to consider in poetic form were very different from the subjects I’m drawn to examine in fiction. (Observation rather than question, emotion rather than thought, location rather than journey.)

However, the most important thing I discovered is that I don’t like rhyming.

I can find rhymes easily enough, but I don’t like them. I don’t feel fulfilled or satisfied by writing one line which rhymes with another line.

But I tried very hard to rhyme a few of my poems this month, and while doing that I discovered why I don’t like rhyming. I want to pick the absolutely right word for the job, the word which most precisely and vividly tells the story. I don’t want to pick a word just because it ends with useful letters and sounds.

I don’t feel like I’m telling the truth when I rhyme.

None of this means I can’t admire and enjoy rhyming verse written by someone as skilled as Alan Ahlberg or Julia Donaldson. But when I try to rhyme myself, it comes out as either forced or flippant.

So this month of poetry has taught me more about what kind of writer I am. I am a writer who cares about the meaning of the words much more than the sound, and as I already knew I was a writer who cares more about plot and ‘what happens next’ than any other aspect of a novel, that makes sense. Perhaps that explicit realisation will allow me to be more analytical about my editing decisions in the future.

This sudden discovery (well, month-long discovery) about my relationship with words reminds me of the night I discovered that I’m not a stand-up comedian. I already knew that too, but I was invited to take part in a project linking storytellers and stand-ups, and I do love a challenge. So when I was telling a story in a comedy club, with lights in my eyes, unable to see the audience, only able to hear them when they laughed (which they did, occasionally!) I realised that I’m not primarily interested in the moments of humour in a story. I’m not interested in the laughs. I’m interested in the moments which make an audience or reader gasp or sit forward or hold their breath. I’m interested in the moments of drama.

So I had to stand up in a comedy club to realise what is important to me in a story.

And I had to spend a month writing poetry to realise what is important to me in a word.

Perhaps that’s the main value of trying out new ways of writing or performing: it allows you to discover more about the core of what you do best.

Did anyone else try NaPoWriMo14? And if so, what did you discover?

Lari Don is the award-winning author of 21 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 

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SHHHH! I’m writing - Lari Don

“Miss Molly had a dolly who was sick sick sick…”

Many writers create playlists of the music which inspires them to write (my publishers revealed the playlist for my own recent teen novel earlier this month) but I doubt that the nursery rhyme Miss Molly Had A Dolly is on many novel playlists.

However, a couple of weeks ago, I was in an Edinburgh library, grabbing half an hour to write while one of my children was at a music lesson, when I realised I was in the library for exactly the same half hour as the local Book Bugs rhyme time session.

So I wrote most of a scene about treachery and betrayal in a library filled with the noise of nursery rhymes and bouncing songs.

And it didn’t distract me at all. It was very noisy, but it was pleasant noise, noise which made me smile whenever I surfaced briefly from my fictional world to listen to boats being rowed or bus wheels going round, and it didn’t prevent me writing.

Which made me consider what does and doesn’t distract me.

I spend a lot of time visiting schools and book festivals etc, so I do a lot of writing in trains, staffrooms, libraries and cafes. And I get a lot of serious focussed work done in those places. I can ignore teachers talking about unruly pupils and difficult families (they must assume that anyone typing on a keyboard can’t hear them…), I can ignore waiters dropping glasses and drunken hen parties at the other end of the carriage.

I can write efficiently in the midst of any amount of noise. Provided it’s nothing to do with me.

Because the one place I absolutely must have peace and quiet for writing is my own house. At home, the slightest creak of a child getting up unexpectedly early in the morning can knock me right out of my imagination (who is that? is she ok? do I have to make breakfast already? oops, I’ve forgotten what I was about to type…) Whereas in a library, a dozen adults singing Miss Molly Had A Dolly to a dozen children who are not my children, is just background noise.

At home any loud noises or even quiet sounds (is anything more distracting than someone making an effort to tiptoe past your study door?) feel like they are my responsibility, so they pull me out of my imagination. But outside the house, the toddlers treating dollies or the waiters clattering or the teachers gossiping are nothing to do with me, so I can stay happily in my own wee writing world.

In order to write at home, I prefer everyone else to be away at work or school, or soundly asleep. Anywhere else, I can write with any level of volume at all, so long as the noise is not my responsibility. And usually, however cheerful the singing or fascinating the gossip, the real world isn’t nearly as compelling as the story I’m creating…

Indeed I often find the outside world inspiring. Unlike some writers, I don’t tend to get ideas from other people’s conversations (so those teachers can keep gossiping…) but I do watch people: how they dress, how they walk, how they act with each other.

I watch the landscape too, from moving trains. And I change what I’m writing if I see something more interesting through the train window.

A couple of years ago I was writing a scene set in a playpark, when the train taking me up the east coast of Scotland passed the bright flags of a golf course. Suddenly a golf course seemed like a much more interesting place to set the hunt, chase and fight. So now Mind Blind, my new teen thriller, has a couple of chapters set on a golf course (though no-one plays a round of golf, it’s all sprinting and martial arts) and those chapters would have been very different if I’d written them sitting at home.

I’m now wondering whether I should write all my books out of the house, where I’m less easy to distract and more easily inspired. That strategy would cost a lot in train tickets and herbal teas though! So probably I should just keep getting up early and staying up late, to write in my nice quiet study…

I’m also wondering if I could test this 'nothing distracts me' theory, and try to write in the middle of a rock concert, a soft play area, or a thunderstorm. Does anyone want to challenge me to write in loud and potentially distracting locations?


Lari Don is the award-winning author of 21 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers.
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