History - Sally Nicholls

One of the things I love about being a children's author is the freedom. While adult authors moan about how they're stuck writing science fiction, or chick lit, or historical fiction, even though they've had this great idea for a book about Napoleon's aunt, I have – to date – written a realistic novel, a fantasy novel and a historical novel, and am in the middle of something completely different again.

One of the things I hate about being a children's author is the freedom. I get carried away with all these brilliant ideas - “Let's write a book about the green man!” “Let's write a book about the Black Death!”, my brilliantly accommodating editor gets all excited, and it's not until I'm about 10,000 words in that I realise I don't know anything about how to write fantasy novels. Or medieval England.



Writing a historical novel is hard. It's hard because I don't really read non-fiction (or didn't – I've read a lot of it now). It's hard because the things you want to know – like, if the pig lives in the corner of your room, and you have to take him out to the swineherd in the morning, how do you get him out of the door? - aren't generally covered in textbooks on medieval English life.

It's hard because much as I would like my characters to be talking medieval English, I've read Chaucer and I can't see it catching on for ten-year-olds. But then, if I'm translating their words, how modern should the translation be? Somewhere between, “Yeah, cool,” and “I'faith, I would it were so,” probably. I hate faux-historical writing, but I can't help worrying that my main character sounds like a modern teenager dumped in 1349.

I'm working through edits at the moment, and they're full of comments from my editor - “The pigs wandering around York are unlikely to be wild.” “Why don't they just drink the river water?” My instinct is to write a shirty note back. “Actually, wild pigs were a huge problem in medieval cities,” but this would be missing the point. If an educated adult is starting to disbelieve my book, it doesn't matter how historically accurate it is. It has to be historically accurate and believable. And get all those pesky bits of important information across. Without info-dumping.

Sigh. I think I'll go and make another cup of tea …

Sally Nicholls is the multi-award-winning author of Ways to Live Forever and Season of Secrets. He latest novel – All Fall Down – is out in March.

Who Would You Be? by Keren David

It’s unusual to be completely thrown by a question from the audience, but a teenager in the audience at my most recent event managed to do just that.

The event was the Hay Festival, my fellow panellists were Sally Nicholls and Anne Cassidy and the question was this: ‘If you could be any other writer, who would you be?’

‘Homer,’ said Sally, for his wonderful stories and use of language.  ‘J K Rowling,’ said Anne, ‘just think of the money.’

I mumbled something about Shakespeare, but it wasn’t really true, and over the last few weeks I’ve been wondering which writer I should have picked. Anne Tyler, whose novel ‘The Accidental Tourist’ is written so beautifully that I have line-envy on every page? Antonia Forest, because then I’d know more about the Marlows, possibly my favourite family in children’s fiction? Hilary McKay for creating the Casson family, who run the Marlows a close second? Lauren Child, because I’d love to have her visual imagination? Jodie Picoult or Joanna Trollope, because I feel I could do what they do, but then I wouldn’t have to do it and I’d have all their royalties.

No. The answer, I realised was simple. I write because I like to create my own stories. I don’t want to write other people’s books or plays, even if they are more lucrative than mine, win more awards, are better written. I don’t want to be another writer, is what I should have said. I just want to work on being an even better version of me.

How about you? Is there an author you’d like to be? 

What You Learn on a Writing Weekend with the SAS - Liz Kessler

I am writing this blog from a train, having spent the weekend locked away in a hotel with forty wonderful children’s authors (all members of the Scattered Authors' Society, otherwise known as the 'other' SAS). And I have to say, it was a very lovely hotel to be locked away in, surrounded by trees and lakes and snowdrops.

OK, we weren’t actually locked away. We were all there by choice. And while I'm clearing up inaccuracies, I'm not in fact simply 'getting the train home'. I'm getting a...

• Taxi to the station;
• Train to London;
• Tube across London;
• Train to the airport;
• Flight to Newquay (not because I’m a posh jet setter who normally gets around via aeroplane, but because train lines in and out of Cornwall are currently out of action due to the recent storms);
• Lift home in a car.

I’m not saying all this in an attempt to impress anyone with my mammoth journey, but to show how much trouble I am willing to go to in order to spend a weekend with not only some of the finest children’s authors in the country, but some of the loveliest people to boot. (I don’t think I’ve ever used the expression ‘to boot’ before. I like it.)

In other words, it was a wonderful weekend.

As writers generally work at home on their own, you can perhaps imagine how we feel about getting together like this. It’s a bit like a group of work colleagues who have LOADS to talk about, but only get to hang out around the water cooler three times a year.

It’s not just a whole load of fun; you also learn things. So, here are ten things I learned this time.

1. Writers’ fortunes go up and down so much that we really shouldn’t worry too much when times are tough – or get complacent when they’re good. It’s probably all gonna look different when you come back and see everyone again next year.

2. The Scattered Authors’ Society will always support you in the former of those times and cheer for you in the latter.

3. Most children’s authors seem to have black swimming costumes.

4. Tim Collins is extremely good at coping with being surrounded by forty women (and is also very clever and very funny).

5. Anne Rooney is totally amazing at putting together huge amounts of interesting information and producing a fascinating PowerPoint presentation in the time it takes other people to sleep, have breakfast and brush their teeth.

6. Sally Nicholls will always be the winner if you get into a game of ‘How many people have you killed off in a single novel?’ (Unless you know anyone who has killed more than 45% of Europe.)

7. Malorie Blackman is, basically, wonderful.

8. If you get ten SAS members sitting in a bar at an event like this, you are quite likely to discover that you have 156 years' experience of the publishing industry around the table.

9. My A Level in Maths wasn’t all for nothing, as I managed to correctly work out the above without the use of a calculator.

10. When you’re running late with your blog post and haven’t got any ideas of your own, someone else will usually have a good one you can nick/share. Thanks Abie! 

(Please head over to Abie Longstaff’s sister blog today!)

MASSIVE thanks to the wonderful duo, Mary Hoffman and Anne Rooney, for working so hard to put together such a fab weekend. Hope to see lots of you around the water cooler again soon.

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