12 Gifts of Christmas - For Writers

           By Ruth Symes / Megan Rix

There are so many lovely gifts for writers out there, from extremely cheap to lavishly expensive. We must be the easiest people to buy for! Here’s my top 12 Christmas list:

1. Journals and notebooks and paper: You can never have too many or too much, in my opinion, (recycled paper best if poss). A4 books for getting down to some serious writing. Smaller notebooks for stuffing in a handbag or pocket, along with a pen, for when inspiration strikes!

When walking on the beach this spring I even found a waterproof notebook that you could use in the rain or in the bath.

2. Yearly Planner Wall-chart: I love being able to put a daily sticker (occasionally two) on my yearly wall-chart to mark off each 1000 words written. The best part is coming to the end year of the year and having a wall-chart covered in them - very satisfying.

3. Timer: If I’m needing help to get motivated I put a timer on for an hour and tell myself I can’t have another coffee or lunch etc until the hour is up. A friend of mine used to tie herself to her chair so she couldn’t stop until her designated time was over. I think tying yourself up is too extreme - but a timer is good to have. 

4. Books to read: Reading for pleasure and reading for research. Books you like and ones you don’t. When I was thinking of writing my memoir ‘The Puppy that came for Christmas’ my non-fiction agent told me to read as many animal memoirs as I could. I must have read over 20 before I put pen to paper.

All that reading must have helped because it made the Sunday Times Non-Fiction Bestseller List last year.

5. Mobile phone: With email on it, so the writer never misses a precious publisher or agent’s email while out walking the dogs.

6. Incense sticks: These help me focus when I’m not in a writer-ly frame of mind. I also find them very good for getting me in a mystical, magical mood for when I’m writing the Bella Donna books.

7. Smart Pen: I love writing by hand and although this pen is expensive, along with the special notebooks it needs, it lets my scribbled handwriting be converted into print - it also lets you write anywhere as you just plug it into the computer once you’ve finished – and voila you have text - just remember to turn it on! (I forgot to do this when we were on holiday and came back with tons of handwriting that couldn’t be converted into print - v. annoying.)

8. Dragon Dictate:  For when the poor writer’s hands are too tired from typing and mouse manoeuvring. Seriously though, RSI should not be taken lying down - if a writer starts getting twinges of pain in  their hands they should try to vary the way they write.

9. Pens and pencils: Must haves! You can never have too many pens because you can never find one when you need one.

10. Diary: To record all those things that can be turned into a story or go in a memoir one day.

11.Subscriptions to Writing Magazines: How To ones and Book Review ones. I loved getting this one from America last week: ‘So you've made your list. You've checked it twice, but if "The Puppy That Came for Christmas" isn't on it, you need to check again.’ Thanks Terri Schlichenmeyer.

12. Writers holidays/retreats/courses: A luxury, I know,  but it’s very important for a writer to be rejuvenated every now and again - to keep them going for the next year or two!

 Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and Power to your Pen in 2012!  xxx

More details of my holiday gift ideas can be found on my website www.ruthsymes.com or www.meganrix.com

Having A Diverse Career - Ruth Symes / Megan Rix

 I didn’t plan to have a diverse career. I just wanted to write – and be a writer with enough cash to go travelling when I wanted and to have the freedom to write anywhere in the world.

The turning point was probably when I was teaching children with special needs in Singapore and sold my house back in England – for the first time in my life I had enough money to be able to survive for a year or two without working. So I had that talk with myself about what would you do if you only had a year left to live – what would you feel sad about never having done if you never did it – and what I wanted to do was write.

More than 10 years later and 18 children’s books published – and countless more unpublished ones written, the latest, out last month is called ‘Witchling’ and it’s the third in a series about a girl called Bella Donna.

One adult memoir written under the pseudonym of Megan Rix – I thought I’d keep a secret but was so happy with it once it was written I must have told just about everyone about it – there’s a second in the pipeline...

... a children’s play professionally performed, radio scripts, pre-school TV writing for channel 4’s The Hoobs, being on TV as the children’s book writing coach on Richard and Judy, feature film script commissioned, two short films made and it’d still be what I wanted to do if I only had a year left. Oh and I did spend quite a lot of that time travelling the world as well – for a few years I had two summers - one in England and one in New Zealand. And house-sitting in LA and San Francisco turned out to be a perfect way to save money and get a book finished whilst on the way to becoming a RFA (Rich Famous Author).

Ok – so why’s do I truly think it’s a good idea to have a diverse career – well there’s a few reasons – not in any particular order of importance. First, cold hard cash, for me I wanted to support myself as a full time professional writer. Now maybe, you’ll get lucky and write one books that pays you squillions – which’ll be great and congratulations - you wont need to have a diverse career if you don’t want to. But I still think it’d be a good idea to have one.

 I like the variety of working with different publishers and on different types of books. I also find the contrast between writing for the media and writing books enables me to do more and better of both. I like writing for TV because TV  people always want things urgently and it’s exciting. The set for The Hoobs was this amazing alternative universe with a bus on set and amazing flowers on the roof and the puppet people were crazily lovely.

 I like trying out different styles of writing and going on courses – I’ve done children’s writing courses and also a short children’s illustrating course, adult novel course, film and TV courses, comedy writing courses – all sorts - I think it keeps you fresh to keep learning and also different writing styles feed into each other.

The honest to goodness main thing I feel is it’s your life we’re talking about and you should SO be doing whatever writing work you feel drawn to and passionate about and have fun doing and stuff the money side of it.  

PS Something that’s really good fun to do while on the way to becoming a RFA, teaches you a tiny bit about filming, and gives you lots of time to write between the odd camera bit is being an extra. I was with the Casting Collective (just put it in google) for a couple of years and got to work on films like Harry Potter, Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, Golden Compass, Stormbreaker, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, to name a few. This is also helpful for when unhelpful people ask you if you’re a RFA yet - usually in a smug fashion. Even the smuggest of individuals seems to be totally overawed that you’ve been in a film and actually stood next to someone really rich and famous!

Ruth's website can be found at www.ruthsymes.com. Megan Rix's website is www.meganrix.com

School Dinners - Ruth Symes / Megan Rix

 The other day three of us were talking about our favourite primary school puddings and butterscotch tart was right at the top, along with pink custard and jelly and ice cream. 

We'd all gone up for seconds on butterscotch tart days although other aspects of our school dinner-times weren't quite so enjoyable. My poor husband was made to stand on a chair in the middle of the dining hall when he refused to eat his peas. My sister-in-law (actually this is disgusting) refused to eat her fish one day and when she lined up for her dinner the next day she was told to leave the queue and go and sit at her class table. When she did she was served up the fish from the day before, now dried and congealed, on the same plate, and told to eat it. She's still not sure if she'd been singled out because she was the only black child in the school. But thank goodness she didn't eat it and end up getting really sick.

In my own school dinner horror story I'm not quite as blameless as the other two, and it's possible that the dinner ladies were right not to admire the creative salt mountain I'd poured over my vividly green peas in the hope of disguising them. I too was told to sit there and eat them up, I too, did not.

As adults the three of us laughed about those long ago days but none of us had even once thought of telling our parents what had happened at the time. I hope nowadays no one's ever forced to eat congealed meals at school or humiliated in front of everyone and if they were they'd tell someone who'd stop it.

But I know children don't always think that they can speak out or be listened to if they do and that worries me.

Amazingly butterscotch tart is still being served in schools today and currently enjoyed by my six-year-old niece. 

I made it the favourite pudding of witchling Bella Donna in my Bella Donna books. The fifth in the series 'Witch Camp', has just been published and sees Bella heading off to camp and feeling homesick. 

I can remember going off to camp myself at about her age, not a wild magical camp of course, although the Isle of Wight can be very exciting. I didn't like being away from home and phoned my lovely step-grandfather to tell him so (we didn't have a phone in our own house). 

He told me just what I needed to hear: 'I'll come right now if you want me to but why don't you give it another two days and if you still want to come home then I promise I'll drive down from London and come over on the ferry and bring you home.' I never had a moment's doubt that he would do exactly what he said and once I'd spoken to him I started to feel much better and lasted to the end of the camp.

In 'Witch Camp' Bella Donna has to face everyone else's nightmare creations chasing her. So she's a bit too busy to have time to feel homesick for long! 

Anyone else remember butterscotch tart? And what on earth did they put in those peas to make them such an un-natural colour?

Ruth Symes' website is ruthsymes.com. She also writes as Megan Rix.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye-eee.... Megan Rix / Ruth Symes

How time has flown. I've just looked back at my blog posts and see I started way back in November 2011 and here we are 3 years later and my last post for now.

I've just finished my latest book tour as Megan Rix. This time it was for my book 'The Hero Pup' and we got to have guide dogs and hearing dogs and medical alert dogs, as well as my own two, Traffy and Bella, coming along to different sessions. It was fantastic! My favourite tour so far :) Back in 2011 I hadn't done any week long book tours and now I have 5 under my belt. I'd also never done a ppt presentation but now when we turn up at a school and they're having problems setting it up I'm (don't want to jinx it) so will just say usually able to sort it out. And requests to speak to 700 children plus staff at once - a breeze - done it twice now.

This year has been amazing. Two children's book
of the year award wins - one for 'Victory Dogs' at

lovely Stockton-on-Tees and one for 'The Bomber Dog' at beautiful Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury even provided a dog to come out on stage with me - not a german shepherd like Grey in Bomber Dog but a lively ball loving spaniel who works as a bomb sniffing dog.

Dogs are so wonderful and I never tire of telling children all the brilliant things they can do as well as showing pictures of the things my two get up to. Fortunately I have lots of pictures and the one where Bella as a tiny pup is trying to bury a sock always goes down well. As does the fox poo one :)

I've been so proud of Traffy coming into our local school with me to listen to children read. She's been such a hit and is always ready with a wag of her tail as a new child coos over her. Her special reading mat with letters on it was a true find and the children who've read to her have shown improvements even more than the school had hoped for.

The school was also the first one to hear a very early first chapter of 'Cornflake the Dragon' my new Secret Animal Society series that I'm writing as Ruth Symes. The Ruth Symes books tend to be for slightly younger children than the Megan Rix ones and I love getting letters from readers and pictures of the toys that have been made of the characters. I especially treasured an email I got recently about 'Dancing Harriet' and how the book was being used at a school in India to help teach tolerance and inclusion.

I'm going to miss not writing for ABBA for a while (other than hopefully an occasional guest post) but I've just got a bit too overworked what with running two careers as Ruth Symes and Megan Rix and so it's best to step out rather than find blogging a chore rather than a pleasure. But I'll still be reading it and looking forward to catching up with what's happening  :)

PS Just found out 'A Soldier's Friend' is one of the nominated books for 2015's Carnegie medal - yahoo! Good luck to everyone with books in it xx

PPS Thanks so much to Carol Christie for saying her son got switched back on to reading by The Bomber Dog I hadn't seen the comment at the end of my Dog Days posts until I looked back at the old posts I'd done yesterday. That's what it's all about :)


www.ruthsymes.com and www.secretanimalsociety.com and www.meganrix.com

Writer's Guilt…. Or Have I Done Enough? by Megan Rix / Ruth Symes

What I love most about writing, and thought I would love most even before I was published, is the freedom it gives you. Freedom to write when you want and where you want, about what you want and how you want to.

For a few years I probably averaged a 1,000 published words a year (this was when I used to spend 6 months in the UK and 6 months travelling round the world). Now my average is more like 1,000 words a day. (I try not to work weekends unless I’m really behind on a deadline or so desperate to tell a story that it just can’t wait. I’m writing this on Saturday though - so I probably write more often at weekends than not.) If I've written a 1,000 words in a day I stick a sticker on my annual wall chart. I like seeing the stickers build up only... only there never seems to be enough. Not every day’s got a sticker and I want to write more. I always think I could do more, if I was more focused more, more disciplined yaddah yaddah yaddah.

I call it writer's guilt but really an average of a 1,000 words a day is good.... isn't it? I’ve won two children’s books of the year this year (Stockton and Shrewsbury) and will have had 3 novels out this year in 10 days time.

'The Hero Pup' is written under my Megan Rix pseudonym and being published by Puffin. It follows an assistance dog puppy from his birth until his graduation as a fully-fledged Helper Dog. Anyone who knows me knows how close this book is to my heart and I'm very much looking forward to working with guide dogs, medical alert dogs and PAT dogs on the book tour.

But not only do I have ‘The Hero Pup’ coming out under my Megan Rix pseudonym on the 1st of October I also have the first in a new series of books about the Secret Animal Society coming out under my Ruth Symes name. 'Cornflake the Dragon' is being published by Piccadilly. It’s about a school lizard that turns into a dragon when it’s taken home for the holidays.

How many words do other writers write each day? I don't know. They probably all do much more or maybe they do less but every word they write is pure gold.

And what about the thinking time? You've got to have thinking time, or I have. I like to mull over the story for a month or so these days. Not forcing it to come. Just researching and thinking about characters until I know, absolutely KNOW it's the story I want to tell. I don’t get a sticker for thinking but it’s just as valuable.

Then it comes to the talks at schools and festivals – meeting your target audience. In the past year I've spoken at 16 schools and 5 festivals - an average of little over one a mouth. Is it enough? It feels like the right amount for me but I know of other writers who do lots more. Should I be doing lots more? I don’t know.

And that's what comes with having a career where you choose so much for yourself. There's so many choices that it's hard to know if you've made the right one. But better to make the mistake yourself than be living someone else’s mistake. Maybe there shouldn't be writer's guilt or writer's goals maybe we should just have the aim of improving every day.

Chris Rock (excuse the swearing) has a very funny sketch about the difference between a job or a career His main point, and I agree with him, is if it's a career there's never enough time for all you want to do to advance it but if it’s a job there is always far too much time and you can’t wait for it to be over. Writing is definitely a career and I wouldn't have it any other way :)


My website's are: www.meganrix.com and www.ruthsymes.com.

Animals in War - Megan Rix / Ruth Symes

I'm busy researching my next book about animals set during WW1 and working out locations and timelines. But back in June I was asked by the Guardian to list my Top 10 animal war heroes, not just from WW1, as part of the promotion for my story set during 1914 about a cat and a dog who get sent to the front called 'A Soldier's Friend'.  Of course animals don't choose to go to war or be heroes but their stories are none the less inspiring and poignant and show us how to be heroes. Researching them was so fascinating and their stories so moving and needing to be told that I share it here: 

Top 10 Animal War Heroes by Megan Rix

There are so many animals that deserve a mention that it’s impossible to list them all here but I’ve tried to shout out for as many as I can. No animal chooses to go to war but their selfless acts of unconscious heroism show us how to be true heroes:

l. The dogs:

Sergeant Stubby was just one of 20,000 dogs serving Britain and her allies in WW1. Messenger dogs, mercy dogs, guard dogs and mascots did their bit for King and Country. Stubby even warned of impending gas attacks. Dogs were the first domesticated animal and have been used in battle throughout history. The Roman Army had whole companies of dogs wearing spiked collars around their neck and ankles.

2. The Pigeons:

Pigeons have been used as message carriers for over 5,000 years. Their vital messages saved the lives of thousands in WWI and WW2. Cher Ami was given the Croix de Guerre for her heroic message delivery that saved many soldiers’ lives, despite being shot at and terribly injured.

3. The Horses:

Humans began to domesticate horses in Central Asia around 4000 BC and they've been used in warfare for most of recorded history. They are prey animals and so their first reaction to threat is to startle and flee. Despite this, against their natural instincts, they’ve raced into countless battles, carrying their riders. Over 8 million died in WW1.

4. The Donkeys:

From Simpson and his donkey at Gallipoli to Jimmy ‘The Sergeant’, born at The Battle of the Somme, donkeys have saved soldiers lives and given their own. More suited to green fields than battlefields, donkeys have been to War for as long as horses have.

5. The Camels:

1915 saw the formation of the Camel Brigade, but camels have been used in battle since the Roman Empire. A bonus was that the smell of the camels spooked the enemies’ horses.

6. The Elephants:

Hannibal was one of the first to use them in battle and they've been used ever since.

WWI saw Lizzie the elephant helping out at Tommy Ward's factory and being a star goalkeeper in a match against a neighbouring team. Some elephants were sent to the battlefields but more took up the heavy lifting slack in towns and in the countryside when the horses were shipped to the Front.

7. Cats:

Morale boosters and rat catchers. Trench life was a little more bearable thanks to the moggies at the Front.

8. Tortoises:

The tortoises that were brought back from Gallipoli, like Ali Pasha and Blake, will be commemorated next year. But tortoises were used as mascots before WW1. Timothy, who turned out to be a female, served as ship's mascot in the Crimean War and Jonathan, a giant tortoise, is pictured with prisoners in the Boer War.

9. Dolphins:

Military trained dolphins are able to find underwater mines and rescue lost naval swimmers. Their training is similar to how military dogs are trained, and for a dog or a dolphin mine detection is simply a game rather than a matter of life and death.

10. Baboons:

Jackie the baboon was the mascot of the 3^rd SA Infantry in WW1. The baboon drew rations, marched and drilled, and went to the nightmare of Delville Wood and Passchendaele. He was injured whilst desperately trying to build a wall of stones around himself as protection from the flying shrapnel. Jackie’s leg was amputated but he got to go home at the end of the War. Millions of humans and other animals didn’t.

*****

While I was doing my research I came across the sad fact that poor Anne the circus elephant rescued from cruelty in a circus a few years ago and moved to Longleat is now expected to live out her days alone there as it's been decided it would be better for her to be a solitary elephant despite elephants being one of the most social family orientated species. It makes me feel sick especially when you see the wonderful reunion of elephants that have been rescued, most of them old and having suffered abuse like Anne, at the Tennesse sanctuary on You Tube 

Ruth Symes's website

Megan Rix's website

Megan's book 'The Victory Dogs' is the 2014 Stockton-on-Tees Children's Book of the Year. Her book 'The Bomber Dog' has won the 2014 Shrewsbury Children's Book Award.

Me-Cramp by Ruth Symes

 My husband's been doing a lot of website and photography work recently and watching a lot of You Tube videos - especially about different photographic techniques. But one of the videos I walked in on and caught part of really surprised me:

      

'That sounds exactly like writer's block!' l said.

The speaker was talking about problems that photographers face and questions they’re burdened by.

Will it be good enough?

Am I good enough?

Am I secretly kidding myself that I’m good enough?

Is everyone else’s work better than mine?

Are they more talented than me?

Will my photos (writing) be original/creative/stylish/professional enough?

Will other people (Mum, Dad, teachers friends someone who was a bit critical once and I’ve never forgotten about it - ad infinitum) like my work? And really I suppose – will they like me?

Have I got it right, not just right, exactly exactly...perfectly completely utterly right.

They called it Me-Cramp but I think of it as the Photographer's Writer's Block. And I expect there’s the same thing for every creative job – Artist’s Anxiety, Dancer’s Dilema, Actor’s stage fright…(Although I like the Me-Cramp term best as it says exactly what it is and is so spot on.)

As well as the Me-Cramp talk there were lots of discussions about the importance of putting heart and passion in your work. Being true to yourself  owning it.

But the Me-Cramp question asked loudly and boldly or in a tiny weeny voice always seemed to be the same:

'Am I good enough?'

And the answer is: 'Of course you are.' J

Ruth Symes also writes as Megan Rix winner of Stockton-on-Tees children's book of the year 2014 and Shrewsbury Bookfest 2014.