Writing For Il Duce

I have been teaching some classes in Writing For Children recently and one of the things I keep noticing is how many people bring a great deal of sentimentality about children along to the class. It’s one of the first things I try to get them to jettison.

Sentimentality is a very natural emotional response. I’m a sentimental man myself. For weeks after my younger daughter went off to university and the house was left empty by day except for me and my computer, I was to be found wandering from room to room, picking up random objects that belonged to her and staring at them with tear-filled eyes as though I had just received a telegram from the front line to say that she was missing in action.

And these days I am a figure of fun in the family for the way my grandchildren have me twisted around their little fingers. When he can’t get his own way, the older one performs a fake crying act that everyone else just laughs at but that somehow wins me over, even though I know perfectly well it’s phoney.

But my sentimentality is of absolutely no use to me as a writer because children’s literature is about the child’s experience; and that means not looking at your child characters but seeing the world through their eyes.

Children are not sentimental. What they are most concerned with is power. Entirely understandably, because they have none. They don’t wake up and think, ‘I wonder what I should do today.’ They get told they’re going to nursery or they’re being taken to the supermarket or (if they’re lucky) they’re going to the park. That’s why they spend so much time trying to subvert the adult agenda. If they’re being difficult it’s nearly always an attempt to wrest some sort of control from the grown-ups.

The stark truth is that however much you love them, there’s a little bit of Mussolini inside every child. So forget the sentimentality. You are writing for Il Duce. Just make sure it's good.

Whispering To A Boy Who Imagines He Is Clever

Once upon a time, if I were at a party, someone might say, ‘So what do you do for a living?’ and I would say, ‘I’m a writer.’ They would look very interested and say, ‘Really? What sort of thing do you write?’ to which I would reply. ‘Children’s books.’ Whereupon they would immediately look disappointed and change the subject.

This reaction changed completely after the success of J K Rowling. Nowadays everyone always wants to know everything about the business and, above all, how they can get published. I am constantly coming into contact with people who are consumed by the desire to be a successful children’s writer.

What surprises me is how few of these people have actually read any children’s books since their own childhood. I’ve taught courses on writing for children only to find that ninety per cent of the students, who have usually paid substantial fees to be there, have scarcely read anything except the first Harry Potter title and one or two of the Narnia series. So what is going on here?

It seems to me that people are seduced by the glamour that has somehow attached itself to children’s writing. This is laughable since if you were to be a fly on the wall at a meeting of children’s writers you would witness a singularly unglamorous bunch of people. For the most part we aren’t young or sexy or well-dressed. We are people with holes in our sweaters, people in need of a decent haircut.

So where does this illusion of glamour come from? I think it arises from two sources: firstly, there is the glitter of wealth; secondly there is the mystery of creative fulfilment.

The notion that writing children’s books might be a way to get rich quick is, as anyone who knows anything about publishing will tell you, entirely ridiculous. The truth is that only a very small proportion of children’s writers even make a living out of their work.

The promise of creative fulfilment is a more substantial attraction and it’s undeniable that fulfilment is to be found in practising any art from. But you have to ask yourself this question: why children’s books? If you’re not already reading them then possibly that’s an indication you’re not really interested in this field - and you won’t get fulfilment from trying to succeed at something that doesn’t interest you.

I am a children’s writer because childhood is the place where I reside most naturally. I watch as the youngest of my grandchildren begins to learn to crawl. I see her rocking back and forth on her hands and knees, practising the movements that will soon allow her to move across the room and I find myself propelled back into my own childhood, recalling the way the paving stones rolled away before me as I sat in the push-chair.

Or I do some drawing with my older grandchildren and out of the corner of my eye I see the tall, shadowy figure of a nun standing over me, regarding my clumsy efforts with disdain. I know what she thinks of me. She thinks that I am a boy and, a such, an entirely undesirable object. Worse than that, I am a vain, talkative boy who imagines he is clever and does not listen to what he is told. This understanding renders the drawing that had pleased me so much a moment ago, nothing but a worthless scribble.

I want to reassure that boy. I want to tell him that one day this woman’s disdain will not matter so much; but even as I stand beside him and whisper, I know that he cannot hear me.

For me, therefore, writing is not primarily about money or about creative fulfilment. It is a story being told to a child who no longer exists.

How Not To Become A Children's Author

I'm always getting asked to look at manuscripts by people who have written a story for children and are looking for advice before sending their work off to an agent. Unfortunately, a lot of people accompany their manuscripts with statements that drastically undermine their chances of being taken seriously by an editor. So in case anyone reading this has been thinking of submitting a manuscript professionally for the first time, here are three things it's really not worth saying if you want to become a children's writer.

First there's the Quality Time Delusion. This is when the author confidently states, that she/he has read this story to her/his own children and they absolutely loved it. Now on the face of it, this sounds like a ringing endorsement from the target audience. So how could it be anything but a good idea?

Actually, what you're really saying when you make this assertion is that your child enjoyed the extra attention they got from being part of mummy's or daddy's project. They liked having their opinions taken seriously. They got caught up in their parent's dream about becoming an author and it excited them. The truth is that your child's enthusiasm is no guarantee of anything except that you spent some quality time with them and they liked it.

Next there's the Children Of All Ages Blunder. In this one the author glibly asserts that the story is intended for all children from the age of six to sixty, or some similarly hackneyed phrase.

Frankly, this is a stupid thing to say. A five year old lives in a different world to an eight year old, a ten year old lives in a different world to a thirteen year old. The idea that your story might work for all of them is an admission firstly that you don't know anything about the market for children's books, which is highly segmented, and secondly that you don't know much about children.

Finally there's the hoary old chestnut of the Friend Who's Done Some Illustrations to go with the story. Take it from me, unless your friend is an experienced professional illustrator of children's books, never include his or her drawings with your manuscript.

This is because even though authors see writing as an art, to publishers it's a business and, like every business, it involves an element of risk. An unknown author represents a risk to a publisher. An unknown author combined with an unknown illustrator doubles that risk.

So don't even include that art-work on the grounds that you think it will give the editor an idea of the kind of book you have in mind. The only idea it will give them is that they should put your manuscript on the rejection pile right away.

The Reading Experience

I've been reading a lot of books with my grandson over the Christmas period and I can't help noticing how all the genres we are so familiar with in contemporary literature are already there right from the start of the reading experience.

Take those lift-the-flap books that infants are so fond of, with their titles like 'Where's Maisy?' or 'Who Took The Cookie From The Cookie Jar?'. These are so clearly the primitive ancestors of the crime novels that fill the best-seller lists.

There's the same motivation for the reader - the pleasure of watching a mystery unravel, and the same comforting predictability about the conclusion. The hero will always appear from behind the last flap and smilingly wrap up the story.

There are character driven books where the focus is simply on presenting an individual, or a set of characters, to the reader. In one of my grandson's current favourites called 'Let's Say Hello To The Snowy Animals', the reader is introduced to a set of animals who live in cold climates, each of whom has his or her own particular set of signature traits, and then we say goodbye to them again. End of story.

Then there are issues-based books, like the hugely successful Charlie and Lola stories, which focus on the tricky problems that cast their shadow over those early years, like a child's reluctance to try new foods, or to go to sleep, or share toys with other children.

Perhaps there is no real difference between books for children and books for adults. Perhaps there are just books and readers.

For a writer like me this is all very reassuring. Next time I get a bad review I can remind myself that all those sophisticated readers discussing the latest titles in book clubs or on campuses, on blogs or in magazines, are only grown-up babies after all.

The Magical Detectives and the Forbidden Spell

My latest book, The Magical Detectives and the Forbidden Spell is published today.

Advice To Aspiring Children's Authors (3) Second Hand Love

I’m no hunk; nor was I ever. I’m perfectly well aware of that. Nevertheless, I’ve had my admirers over the years and I remember each and every one of them with gratitude, even though some of those relationships were somewhat tarnished.

Like the young woman - let’s call her Lucy - who gave me a tape (the fact that this was in the days of cassettes tells you how long ago it was) which she said she’d recorded specially for me because the singer put it much better than she ever could. As I listened to Paul Brady gently crooning,

Right now I only want to be with you
Till the morning dew comes falling.
I want to take you to the island
And trace your footprints in the sand,
And in the evening when the sun goes down
We'll make love to the sound of the ocean.

I was greatly flattered. Until a few days later when her flatmate, a deeply embittered woman, and one who made little attempt to conceal her contempt for men in general and me in particular, informed me that Lucy had actually made that tape for her previous boyfriend. Too late to stop him dumping her though, she added, with a certain degree of satisfaction.

After that it was all downhill for Lucy and me.

It seems to me that some people try to do the same thing with manuscripts. They start out writing something for adults, or perhaps with no very clear idea of the audience at all. It doesn’t quite work out so they think that with a certain amount of judicious tinkering they might be able to recycle it as a novel for children, or maybe for young adults.

I suppose it might work sometimes, just like it might have worked between Lucy and me if there hadn’t been fifty other things wrong with the relationship. However, you are much more likely to succeed as a writer for young people if you like young people; you enjoy talking to them; you take pleasure in reading children’s and young adults’ fiction, so much so that you read a hell of a lot of it; you have significant experience of working with children, or looking after them; and you make a clear choice that this is the work that you want to do.

If, on the other hand, you’re fiddling about trying to write a play for the radio, a collection of short stories, a novel that might win the Booker, and a whole load of poetry; and at the same time you have a slightly mangled idea that you think might just possibly make a children’s novel with a bit of work, my advice is forget it. Nobody is interested in second hand love.

Advice To Aspiring Children's Authors: (1) The Morris Minor Trap

One of the mistakes aspiring children’s authors sometimes make is that they try to write books like the ones they read and loved when they were children. But publishing, like everything else, is affected by cultural changes and in the course of one person’s lifetime those changes can be very considerable.

This is particularly true of anything to do with children. The whole idea of childhood has been radically overhauled since I was a boy. And a good thing too, in my opinion. The version of childhood that I lived through had some serious design-faults of the seen-and-not-heard variety. Not to mention the physical violence variety. However, that’s another story.

Publishing is also susceptible to minor fluctuations, trends and fads. Children’s publishing in particular is affected by developments in education. If the educational sector suddenly gets in a panic about boys’ achievement and starts looking around for resources to throw at the problem, for example, then books targeted more specifically at boys start appearing in the marketplace. If a celebrity decides they like a certain kind of book, or a certain kind of author, then books of that kind or by that kind of author start appearing prominently in bookshop windows.

You can’t hope to second-guess all this, of course, but you can try not to get hopelessly left behind. Consider the analogy of the Morris Minor.

When I was a child I would go on holiday to Ireland every Summer and my Auntie Bella used to meet me at Sligo station in hers. It was a solidly-built car and it suited my Auntie Bella down to the ground. But then Auntie Bella seldom got out of second gear. An electric window would probably have given her a heart attack.

Now imagine if I were to take it into my head that I could design a new automobile and I went to an automobile manufacturer with the blueprint of the Morris Minor and offered them my services as a designer. Do you think they would snap me up and offer me large sums of money? Probably not.

So if you’re trying to be a children’s writer, it’s a good idea to avoid the Morris Minor trap and the way to do it is to read lots and lots of the latest children’s books. Not the classics. They have their place, of course. They defined the genre. But to gain an understanding of the cutting edge of contemporary children’s books, there’s nothing like reading some.

A Tin Of Sharply Pointed Teeth

The other day I woke up from a dream remembering only that I had just asked my wife to hand me a tin of sharply-pointed teeth. I don’t know what I intended to use them for but I can think of plenty of good uses in the real world.

One use I’m tempted to put them to is to snarl at aspiring children’s authors who ask me to give them my opinion on their manuscripts and then get extremely abusive when I venture to suggest that some things might need changing. But I realise that snarling back never does any good. So I’ll leave the tin unopened for now.

Instead, I thought I would use my blog to mention a few things that those trying to write for young people might like to bear in mind. So, for what it’s worth, here is a little wisdom distilled from years spent trying - sometimes successfully, sometimes not - to help other people get published.

Firstly, there is a fundamental difference between writing for children and writing about children. So make sure the protagonist is the child, the point of view from which the story is told is the child’s, the emotional journey is the child’s and the dénouement is the child’s. Write from inside the protagonist. Don’t look at him or her; look out at the world from his or her eyes.

Secondly, never talk down to the reader. This sounds obvious yet so many first-time writers instinctively adopt a didactic tone, filling the reader in on background information that he or she could easily work out for themselves, or telling the reader what to think of the characters.

Finally – and this goes for writing for adults just as much as writing for children - don’t start your novel unless you’re absolutely certain about the premise. I say this because bad writing with a good premise is fixable. It may be painful but it’s probably going to be worth the journey. Good writing with a bad premise, however, is irredeemable: it’s like wallpapering a cave.

Dancing at your daughter's party

As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, I work with a lot of writers whose ambition is to write for young people. In doing so, I see the same misconceptions occuring over and over again. So I thought I’d take this opportunity to highlight one of the absolute classics. I call it dancing at your daughter’s party.

The way this mistake manifests itself is that the author makes the adult characters much more interesting than the child characters. Now why on earth would someone who supposedly wants to be a children’s author do this? The answer is simple: they’re really writing about themselves. The story is only masquerading as a children’s book. Actually it’s nothing more than an enactment of the author’s fantasy of recognition.

I’ve read stories about parents with wonderful secrets that are gradually discovered by their children, whose function in the story is mostly to draw back the curtain on their parents’ hidden abilities and gasp with wonder. I’ve seen novels, apparently about a child whose mother has tragically died, but which turn out to be all about how his or her father bravely copes with the loss of his wife and then fortuitously finds himself another woman. I’ve read about magical dads, gifted mums, eccentric uncles, even wonderfully enlightened and (I shudder to say) sexy teachers.

Frankly, it’s embarrassing. So let’s get this straight. If you’re writing a children’s book, then the central emotional journey should be the child’s. Obviously, as with any general rule, there can be exceptions to this. Animals are child-substitutes. So are magical, or fairy-tale creatures, like hobbits. And there are a few (but only a few) examples of books about adults that were specifically written for children. On the whole, however, it’s a golden rule that a children’s book should be about children.

Of course adults will almost certainly have to appear in the stories and when they do so, they should be properly rounded characters with histories that stretch back beyond the beginning of the book and futures that extend beyond its climax. But they shouldn’t be the stars of the show and the child characters should not exist just to facilitate their narrative. Otherwise you’re like a dad at a Christmas party dancing in front of his teenage children and their friends. And believe me, that’s not cool.