Conversation with Someone who Just Doesn't Get It by Sheena Wilkinson

So. You finished your book? [casual tone to hide true thought: About time: you have damn all else to do and how can a mere YA novel take that long?]

Yes. Well, there’ll be more edits when my editor sends it back to me – she says it’s not quite there yet [careless tone to pretend am totally fine with that] but for the moment, yes, all done.

So what happens now? Are you taking the summer off [not that you deserve it]?

No. I’ve started a new book.

What – already? So it must be a series? [God, they really do just churn them out.]

first book

No. It’s totally different.

How can you have another idea already? [Still, it’s only YA; isn’t it all the same book?]

Oh, I’ve had this story in my head since December. I’ve had an outline since March. The characters have been talking in my head for ages.

That’s a bit weird. [More than a bit.]

Not to me. That’s kind of what I do. You know, being a writer and all.

Ah – so you must have a really tight deadline? Is it one of those three-book-deal thingies? [impressed tone: maybe she is a real writer after all.]

I wish. No, I haven't got a contract. I'm writing it on spec.

second book 

What, you still have to do that, even when you’ve had a few books published and they’ve done OK? 

 I do. I shouldn’t imagine John Green does.

So you could take the summer off if you wanted? Nobody is actuallywaiting for this book? You’re just kind of – hoping? [oh dear; that's a bit sad.]

Well, I have a deadline for myself. I suppose the characters in the story after that would be a bit pissed off if I kept them waiting round for too long. 

That’s definitely weird.

Maybe. Now, I have to go and write this book. Have a good summer.

The Editing Cave Sheena Wilkinson

A cave.

That’s where I’ve been for the last month. That’s where this is coming from.

It’s dark in here, dank and drippy, and there’s a lot of tangled stuff around getting in the way, tripping me up and obscuring the cave mouth.

 A CAVE; NOT MY CAVE

 The trouble with the tangle of wrack and weed is, some of it’s valuable and some of it’s rubbish, and it’s not easy to know the difference. Babies. Bathwater. The best thing is when you take hold of a long slimy tangly horrible thing; you don’t know how you’re ever going to untangle it and turn it into a thing of beauty and usefulness. Then you examine it closely. Surely that’s a … yes, it is! It’s a Completely Unnecessary Scene! No need to try to turn this bit of sow’s ear into a silk purse. Just – DELETE. 

Did I mention it’s an Editing Cave?*

All I have to keep me company in here is a novel. It’s a novel that’s already taken longer than my novels usually take. It’s a novel that I submitted in January, thinking it was – well, I hesitate to say perfect; but I thought it was done. Because otherwise I wouldn’t have submitted it. My editor, The Wise One, said it needed another draft. I was disappointed. Gutted, really, because in my mind I’d moved on to other stories, other characters.

THE ACTUAL CAVE

Because of other commitments, and because she didn’t need it until the end of June (and, if I’m being honest, because I really couldn’t bear to look at it) I left the novel aside for three and a half months before I took it with me into the cave. I sat down prepared to be professional and detached. I don’t think I’m precious about my writing, but I’ll admit my attitude was more, well, they think it needs another draft and they’re the ones paying for it, so I’m just going to have to – I think suck it up an ugly expression, but that’s what I was thinking.

I didn’t expect to enjoy it. I didn't expect to think, Thank God for the chance to make this imperfect novel better. Thank God for the editing cave. 

The Wise One was right. The story was too complicated. It dragged in the middle – because I’d cut it from the original 105,000 words to 74,000 I thought it was tight as a drum, but now it’s at 67,000 I realise it was saggy. One of the narrators was wet. I’d thought her sensitive and realistic and a refreshing antidote to feisty. No, she just sounds like she’s 47, said The Wise (and Blunt) One. Another character was underused – I couldn’t big him up and lose words, so I killed him. Actually he was already dead: I just wiped him from history. Oh the power.

SOMETIMES I COULDN'T SEE THE WOOD FOR THE TREES. THOUGH THESE ARE THE ACTUAL TREES WHERE I WALK WHEN I LET MYSELF OUT OF THE CAVE. 

Cut cut cut. Change change change. 

I've just printed Draft 5. I know it's not done, but it's about a hundred times better than Draft 4. Next week I enter a deeper cave (The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig) for the final stretch. 

DRAFT 5 -- OF 6, I HOPE.

The cave mouth is getting a little wider; tiny shards of light are starting to find their way in. I think, if I keep going, there’ll be enough room for me to climb out through, after another week or so. With a much better novel.

* Thanks to Lee Weatherly, who talked about the writing cave in her own blog in January. 

Past Perfect Sheena Wilkinson

I have a secret other career.

Though I’m most known – insofar as I’m known at all – as a writer of contemporary YA, I have since 2006 (four years before my first novel was published) been writing, and publishing, short stories for adults, mostly historical, almost all about World War One or its aftermath. 

Now I’m having the chance to combine my two great writing passions – realistic YA and historical fiction – as I have a story included in Walker’s forthcoming anthology The Great War (pub. 3 July 2014). All the stories are inspired by actual artefacts, and my story, ‘Each Slow Dusk’, is inspired by a collection of 1914-19 school magazines, from the school where I taught for nineteen years. I curated an exhibition based on these magazines in 2004, so in a way this story has been ten years in the making.

school magazines from WW1 

 I fictionalised details of the school’s war effort, foregrounding the experience (often overlooked in war literature) of a schoolgirl, sixteen-year-old Edith, whose dreams of higher education are shattered when she has to leave school to care for her older brother, invalided out of the army with rheumatism. It’s very like the rest of my World War 1 stories, apart from the fact that the main character and the intended readership are younger.

Historical fiction always produces tension between wanting to evoke the period so that it comes alive for the reader, but not recreating it so systematically that it lapses into pastiche. The story must work as modern fiction, so it has to feel fresh, especially to a teen reader, who is likely to baulk at anything that feels worthy or schooly. This was a big challenge for me: there are no battles, no gore; the story takes place in a single day in a Belfast suburb. How could I make duty and quiet desperation interesting to a modern teenager?

music from the period

Unlike the intended readership, who are likely to have a prolonged period of young adulthood, the teenage characters in ‘Each Slow Dusk’ are children at school one minute and adults the next – not only leading men into battle, but, in Edith’s case, taking an adult caring role. Notions of duty are much more pronounced than they would be today, and Edith seems both older and younger than a modern sixteen year old.  How could I make her voice and choices accessible to a modern teen reader without compromising the sensibilities of the 1917 narrator?

In trying to evoke the Zeitgeist of 1917 I was scrupulous, but not heavy-handed, about period detail, and about ensuring these details are used only when it is natural to do so – when it would be equally natural to mention them in a story set in modern times, rather than have them come blazing signs shouting Period Detail. Being a geek, getting every detail exactly right matters to me, but accuracy isn’t always enough. In ‘Each Slow Dusk’ Edith and her friend Maud pass notes in class, and in one note they use the @ symbol – Meet you @ break. I spent some time checking that this sign was in common usage in 1917, and was pleased to find that it was. I liked the fact that it looks so modern, and hoped it would be one of the many small details to help bring 1917 alive for my reader. My editor agreed – but in the end the @ sign had to go. Why? Because, although I and my editor knew it was correct, it was flagged up at the copy-editing and proofing stages as looking anachronistic. And it only takes one little detail to break the reader’s trust in you. On the night before we went to print, @ was replaced by at.

I once started to read a novel set in the thirties, where the characters’ sexual attitudes were anachronistically modern. When they gathered round a television to watch the coronation of George VI, I flung the book away in disgust, saying ‘Wrong coronation! Can’t even get that right!’ Later I discovered that it was technically possible, if highly unusual, to have watched the 1937 coronation on television, but by getting the tone wrong in other areas, the writer had compromised my trust. Once that compact between writer and reader is broken, all the accurate period detail in the world will not restore it.

the first in Wilson's excellent Victorian series 

I’ve been thinking a lot about historical fiction recently. I’ve just finished Bring Up the Bodies, where Mantel established that trust so confidently that she could have told me anything about the 1530s and I’d have believed her. Last month I blogged about temporarily abandoning an academic paper in favour of a week’s uninterrupted first-draft scribbling: that paper was a chapter about Jacqueline Wilson’s Victorian novels for a forthcoming Casebook study of Wilson. It’s now finished and submitted, and the whole process was invaluable to me, even though it kept me away from my real work for weeks on end. I loved the Hetty Feather books, and thought Wilson dealt deftly with all the tensions I’ve noted above. This week I’m coming back to the present, for a big edit of my next novel. Set in 2014. I hope I get the details right.

The Arvon Habit by Sheena Wilkinson

I’ve got a serious Arvon addiction. Over the last seven years I’ve averaged a course a year, as student, accompanying teacher, and latterly tutor. I just can’t keep away.

Lumb Bank -- where it all started for this Arvon junkie

Like thousands of others, I value the beautiful old houses which feel so homely, the bookish environment, the magical way the week gallops and yet feels long and special. I have made lasting friendships at Arvon, and had the privilege of working with amazing writers such as Lee Weatherly, Celia Rees, Linda Newbery and Malorie Blackman.

I spend a lot of time and earn a good part of my living facilitating the creativity of others, in workshops and residencies in schools or colleges. In general I love it. Nineteen years teaching secondary English and watching in horror as the curriculum allows less and less for the creativity of learners and teachers has made me especially value working with teenagers who have somehow managed to hold onto their love for writing.

Since 2011 I have run a network of sixth form writers from schools across Belfast.  Last month I took this group on their second Arvon residential.

Totleigh Barton

Arvon, the national writing charity, has played a crucial role in my career. In 2007, with ambitions, a half-finished first draft and not much else, I attended a course on YA with Malorie Blackman and Lee Weatherly at Lumb Bank.  It was my first proper contact with real writers, and I could hardly believe that these published, award-winning goddesses would deign to read my words, comment on them and, even more amazingly, tell me that at least some of the words weren’t that bad. Lee, indeed, was kind enough to keep in touch and give me feedback on the finished novel, which became Taking Flight. She’s now a good writing pal, and, in a neat full-circle which would be far too cheesy in a novel, has twice tutored my sixth formers at Arvon.

But though I adore Arvon, and genuinely enjoy seeing its magic work on the students, for once I felt I wasn’t really up for it last month. Having been an Arvon tutor myself for the first time in December, I worried that I’d find it hard to go back to the role of accompanying adult and workshop participant. OK, maybe I’m a slight control freak. Besides, I had looming Deadlines – those fancy professional things I used to long for. Specifically an academic chapter about Jacqueline Wilson, and my forthcoming novel to sort out after an editorial meeting involved five minutes of my editors telling me what they liked and 55 minutes telling me what they hated (I can’t plug it here because one of the things they hated was the title). I just hadn’t time for Arvon unless I Used It Wisely.

The Arvon day is very structured, with workshops in the morning and readings in the evenings. Being in loco parentis, I and my colleague Maureen, a poet and teacher, had certain responsibilities but even so, we had free time in the afternoons to do our own work. And boy, I had plenty of it to do.

Would it be the academic writing, or the novel editing? Both were (and still are) pressing. Neither appealed. Arvon, for me, is an environment for experimentation, for being at the exciting start of something, for letting things happen. Shortly before I went, my agent, after listening with her usual patience to me witter on about a new idea – for the novel-after-next, said Write me an outline. (Possibly to shut me up.) OK, I thought, I’ll schedule that for July. In the meantime, I have to do the things I’m contracted to do. Because I’m professionaland serious.

Then I got to Totleigh Barton on a kind March day, with my lovely sixth formers, all at the exciting start of everything.

view from Lumb Bank

Our tutors were the lovely Lee and the equally lovely Yemisi Blake, and as always on a course for young writers, there was a mix of poetry and prose. Mornings were spent in workshops, and like many teachers I love being able to sit back and be taught by a talented tutor. Then came the first afternoon. The students were on their lawful pursuits, writing or having individual tutorials. I wasn’t on cooking duty. I had from two until seven to sit in my quiet little room and Get Things Done.

Poetry Library at Totleigh

I opened the Jacqueline Wilson file. Hmm. I opened and swiftly closed the forthcoming novel file. If there is a season for everything, then the season for both these projects was – not yet. Not here.  I was surrounded by spring, and young people. I looked out at the daffodils and the coming-to-life kitchen garden and decided that this was no place for academic writing and certainly not for intensive editing.

I couldn’t possibly work on the novel-after-next, could I?

That first afternoon I did about 1200 words. And the same the next day. It felt illicit and fun and exciting – something writing hasn’t been recently.  Perhaps because of this the narrator’s voice came to me easily, cheekily; sparkier and more original than he’d seemed in my neat planning notebook.  About 200 words in I realised something surprising  about him which I’d not known before and which will make the book much better.

Arvon came to an end; it always does. I wasn’t one syllable further on with the academic chapter or the edit. But you know what? I am now. It will be fine.

And more importantly, I’ve remembered what I love about making up stories in the first place. Being surprised. I’m sensible and professional and have Deadlines, so I’m not allowed to open that file I started at Arvon. Yet.  But when the time comes, I’m ready. Being a bit of a control freak, I have the date marked in my diary.

Thanks Arvon. Again. 

Note the open gate