Liz Kessler – In praise of writing courses

To celebrate the publication of North of Nowhere, Liz Kessler has stopped off on her blog tour to tell us precisely what she thinks budding writers can and should do. She was part of the panel event at MMU in June, and I thought it’d be good to hear more of what Liz has to say on the subject. Because she has been there.

“I’ve often heard people say that you can’t teach someone to write. Write creatively, that is. I think we’d all agree that you can teach people, literally, how to write. It’s done every day in schools across the land.

But when it comes to degrees and MAs and residential weekends and night schools and all the other many ways that people attend courses on creative writing, some people argue that this you can’t teach. We’re writers or we’re not, and if we’re not then we can’t be taught how to be something that’s about our own innate creativity. (Or lack thereof.)

I think that there is perhaps a teeny tiny bit of truth in this. I don’t believe, for example, that any amount of attending art courses would ever turn me into Picasso. I regularly play ‘Draw Something’ on my iPhone and have never got beyond stick men. I have attempted to draw mermaids for fans of my Emily Windsnap books and the pictures – at best – resemble a character out of Casper the Ghost.

However, I could probably (possibly) be taught a few tricks and techniques that could enable me to develop my drawings a bit, and perhaps learn enough to be able to enjoy sitting by the sea painting the scene in front of me for an afternoon.

And if I did have some talent but had never been given the opportunity to develop this, I could be taught an awful lot more, and could possibly go quite a long way with my art. Maybe even get it to a point where I could make some money from it.

All of this is the same with writing. I have taught many writing courses where I have seen people who don’t realise they are talented develop and grow as writers. Finding their voice and their style and gaining confidence as they listen to feedback from their peers and teachers. This is an absolute joy for me, and something I love to do. And I’ve been on both sides of this situation.

It was a writing course that helped start my own writing career. I had left a teaching job to take on a more temporary and part time contract so I could focus on writing. At the same time, I enrolled on an MA in Novel Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. (Just down the road from the Witch’s own abode.) This course was instrumental in helping me learn how to become a writer. I think that I already had some skills and I certainly had a passion – but the course helped me hone all of this.

The workshops, in particular, really focused my mind and helped me to develop my craft. Knowing that you have to produce 5,000 words for an audience who (in your mind) are ready to hungrily tear it to pieces really helps you to produce the best work you can. Having to do this every other week gave me a discipline and respect for deadlines. And listening to what people (fellow students and teachers) said about my work helped me to learn how to deal with criticism. All of it helped to take me from being someone who liked writing but didn’t know exactly where I wanted to go with it or what I wanted to do with it, to someone who considered myself to be a writer first and foremost and to commit myself to writing books, honing my skills and getting published.

So I would like to thank the MMU for this opportunity, and also thank all the people who put their time, effort, hard work and considerable amount of talent and expertise into running courses like this. You guys change lives.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe that these things are for everyone. And I don’t believe that everyone ‘has a book in them,’ a phrase that some people bandy about without really thinking about it. Why are you choosing my profession as the one that anyone can do? Have you ever thought how crazy (and mildly insulting) that sounds? Why not say that everyone has a brain surgeon in them, or everyone has an Olympic marathon race in them? Because it’s nonsense, that’s why. Same applies to writing books! Not everyone can do it – but a lot of people who believe they can’t but would love to try, might just manage it, given the right support and a lot of hard work.

So for those who have an interest in writing, a passion, and, yes, an inkling of a seedling of a possibility of some sort of talent – go for it. Try it out. It might be an MA like the one I did, or a week’s residential course with someone like the Arvon Foundation (or even with me if I ever get round to setting up the St Ives-based writing holidays that I plan to one day!) Or it might even just be getting a group of friends who love writing to meet up regularly to support each other. Being part of a group like this where you are focused on the writing and getting some sort of encouragement to go forward with it is one of the best things you can do.

Oh, and if you happen to have a writing fan in your life who is aged between eight and thirteen, then check out the writing competition that Orion and the Guardian Children’s Books are running to coincide with my new book, North of Nowhere. You never know, it could be the start of their writing career.”

If I said that this has given me hope, you will – erroneously – believe I’m thinking of me. I’m not. I’m thinking ahead to the books I’ll get to read one day, because someone enrolled at MMU, or similar.

Go on!

North of Nowhere

It doesn’t make any difference that I am way past Liz Kessler’s intended reading age group. She still catches me every time, and her latest time travel novel was no different. I raced through it, despite knowing it couldn’t end well for everyone.

I mean, it can’t, can it? If you really can travel in time – and of course you can – someone will get stuck or jump forward or something. And if they do, they won’t be where they first belonged.

Mia’s grandad vanishes into thin air, and because her grandma is devastated, she has to accompany her mum to go and visit, to see if they can help.

I know quotes are boring but I absolutely loved this paragraph from chapter one: ‘I’d like to ruthlessly destroy your life by taking you to the middle of nowhere, where you’ll die a slow death from boredom, loneliness and a general lack of anything that makes life worth living’ as said by Mia’s mum. Except she didn’t actually put it as wittily as that, but I wish she had. It would make this parent-talking-to-child business so much more fun, as well as true to life.

Right, let’s get on with this destroying of Mia’s life. They don’t even have a mobile signal in this hole of a fishing village. But Mia goes out, and she meets someone she wants for a friend, and then she meets someone else who is friendly. But nothing is quite as it seems.

There is a boat that is there some of the time, and at other times disappears inexplicably. Now, you and I know that this is typical of time travel, but it takes Mia some time to work out.

After which she has to get a grasp on what’s what and how she can resolve the situation. If she can. Who will stay and who will have to go?

I can’t see how any young reader can resist North of Nowhere.

Dogs

Neil Gaiman’s dog has died. I would have treated this as private, had he not blogged about it so beautifully, thereby making it public. But it makes sense. If you talk about your beloved dog when it’s fine, you need to warn us when things are no longer so fine, or we will put our foot in it.

One thing I often use to illustrate the beauty of blogging, is getting to know the dogs of so many authors. Not necessarily in person, although that has happened a lot more than I had bargained for when I set out six years ago.

But even the dogs I’ve never met, I somehow feel I know well. I’m not an animal person, but if I were I’d be a dog person. I suppose it goes with being a writer, that you can express things well, and that goes for making your dog come alive in other people’s minds.

Except, there comes the day when the dog isn’t there anymore. I have made more than one author cry when asking about their dead dog, and I never meant to! Neil Gaiman won’t be avoiding all such questions, but he will miss many of them now. Even I, who is not a regular reader of his journal, feel I’ve heard a lot about his ‘white wolf.’

Some put their dogs in their books, like Poppy the pirate dog, who Liz Kessler belongs to.

How can we not love them?

Publication day, or the liquid ebook

Most months you have one or two dates when all the new books emerge into the world. Usually the Monday and/or Thursday at the start of the month. And then you have November and December when not so much happens. It all happened back in October, in good time for Christmas. The poor reviewer is lulled into a false sense of security, believing they have finally caught up with The Pile. And then the January books start rolling in.

This January we seem to have several publication days, starting today. Which is a lovely beginning for the new reading year, albeit rather early, because we haven’t yet surfaced from the Christmas excesses.

I promised to remind you about Eleanor Updale’s new novel, The Last Minute, out today. Consider yourselves reminded of what must be one of the most interesting books in 2013. You have survived the recent Christmas shopping. Now see who survives in Eleanor’s story.

I woke up in the night, wondering how to blog about it a second time. Worked out what to do, and slept some more, obligingly dreaming a whole blog post. I do this a lot; dreaming about books and authors. I wonder why?

So, what follows is my Orson Welles style book launch dream. It features liquid ebooks. You don’t know what they are? Neither do I.

“Eleanor is about to launch The Last Minute, sharing the day with Liz Kessler, whose new book North of Nowhere is out in two week’s time. These January ladies had an event organised at the end of the platform in my usual underground railway system, at the Wolverhampton end. It either happened on the platform, or in the two old railway coaches parked there.

They poured their books from petrol cans, into smaller bottles, asking me to carry them further along the platform. Unfortunately, the bottles had holes in them, so there was ‘no book’ left when I got there. It’s hard to have a book launch with no book to sell, or sign. We panicked  a bit.

With nothing to display on the white, temporary shelves, I was unsure what to take photographs of. I had my photographer there, but I was in charge of the camera, which seized up and wouldn’t work. The launch was at 13.30, but since the guests were school children who couldn’t come until school had finished for the day, we had some time to think about our bookless options. I considered stealing books from Waterstones, since they had organised this – very expensive – event, which was such a failure.

Anyway, no one came, which is just as well, when your books have literally run out in the sand (or in this case, the platform).

Later on we were given some nifty little survival kits for going on boats (Liz’s book is about boats), but which I felt would also work well for the people in Eleanor’s bomb blast.”

And there you have it. The ultimate, shared book event (and proof that the witch is nothing, if not crazy). Just take care as you pour your ebooks.

The Gaiman effect

WordPress sent me their cheery stats for 2012. There really does not seem to be much one can do about Neil Gaiman. His fans create havoc when they land here, and very welcome havoc it is too.

At least the post about Neil – and Chris Riddell, actually – was written during 2012. As WordPress pointed out, some of my most popular ones are oldies, which means my writing has staying power. Apparently. They suggest I should write more about these topics. Which, apart from Mr Gaiman, seem to have been me (cough), Terry Pratchett, the Barrowmans and Cats with Asperger Syndrome.

Sort of a varied selection, then?

You came here from 162 countries, and Twitter sent you. Or Eoin Colfer, or John Barrowman. But funnily enough you were mostly interested in me (again), Oliver Jeffers, Liz Kessler, Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Faraday.

Stats are weird, but then, so am I.

Here’s to 2013 when I will not be taking things quite as easy as I ought to. You can see how the W – for witch – wobbles above the fireworks. Tired already.

Cruising for mermaids

For anyone who ever wondered about the gruelling research authors go through, just for us, to write the perfect book, here is Liz Kessler to tell you about the tough life on board the Hurtigruten ship, travelling to the place where day never ends. And I’m only looking green because I’m feeling seasick. 

“I have always wanted to see the Northern Lights. It’s just one of those things that everyone wants to do. More recently, I started to develop another ambition. I wanted to set one of my Emily Windsnap books in the arctic circle. So when I was thinking about Emily’s fifth adventure, I decided very early on that it was going to feature something to do with arctic mermaids, and I was fairly convinced that the northern lights would feature.

The only problem was that my schedule for writing the book ran from early spring to early winter. And the northern lights are only really visible in the middle of winter.  For each book I write, I really like to visit the setting – or something as close to the setting as I can get.

At around this time, a friend started telling me about summer in Norway. How the sun never sets, and how magical it is. An idea started forming in my mind. Perhaps the midnight sun was a better backdrop for my story than the northern lights. As is often the way with writing a story that knows its own mind, once this new thought was in my head, the plot began to unfold more smoothly. Within weeks, I had booked what would turn out to be the best research trip of my life. (Even better than the one when I went to Bermuda to research book two – but that’s another story.) An eleven day trip on the Hurtigruten ship that travels around the northern coast of Norway.

Now, I know I’m a writer and words are my business, but it’s hard to put into words how amazing that trip was. I have never seen such beauty, such stillness and magic as I saw at 1, 2, 3 am on a ship sailing silently through snaking fjords against the light of the midnight sun. The ship was amazing, the route was stunning and the scenery was utterly inspiring. My notebook was rarely out of my hands. One day we passed a collection of rocks shaped like a cathedral. That went in the book. Another day, we went on an eagle-spotting trip. That went in the book. Another day, the captain went out of his way to show us a mountain with a hole right through the centre. Oh boy, did that go in the book! And the midnight concert at the arctic cathedral? Er, yeah, that went in the book for sure!

One of my favourite things about being a writer is getting inspiration from real places and then building on this with my imagination to create something completely fictional. This setting, and this book, gave me the opportunity to do that to a greater extent than I had ever done before. At one point in Emily Windsnap and the Land of the Midnight Sun, Emily says, ‘If we actually had been here for a holiday, I imagine it would have been the trip of a lifetime.’ Yes, Emily, it would have. It was.

Liz Kessler

PS If you like these pics and would like to see more – and hear some music from the midnight concert, you can do that here… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gck__wQieh0&feature=plcp“

Emily Windsnap and the Land of the Midnight Sun

Mermaid goes Norse. I sometimes feel just a little embarrassed admitting to reading mermaid books. But why shouldn’t I read them, when they are both exciting and well written?

When Liz Kessler read an excerpt from her fifth book about Emily Windsnap at the Manchester Children’s Book Festival in the summer, she cunningly picked quite a good bit in the middle and, even more cunningly, she stopped at a really exciting moment. And then she asked me if I’d already had my copy, singling me out in front of all those people.

I hadn’t, but that was soon remedied. Not that I got to the book first. That honour belongs to Daughter who, despite being overage, remains faithful to her early favourite.

Neptune needs assistance, and Emily Windsnap is just the half-mermaid to step in to help. She has a boyfriend these days, and he also proves useful. As does best friend Shona.

It’s quite clear from the start that there is double crossing somewhere. But is it the obvious one, or do we have a case of more devious triple crossing on our hands? Perhaps Emily is simply overwrought and is imagining things?

Whatever it is, she and her friends (and foes) find themselves in the land of the midnight sun. And what a beautiful and deadly place that turns out to be!

Becoming a little retrospective about mcbf 2012

At the safe distance of nearly a week, I feel almost ready to re-visit mcbf. How about the rest of you? I guess that even James Draper might have finished sleeping by now.

There are things I didn’t do, apart from author events I just had no stamina to attend. I didn’t make it to Cornerhouse for a screening of The Witches. And it would have been so very suitable too. (Swedish witch, and all that.)

I still have the war books exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North in mind, and will do until it ends.

James had a hard eleven days of it. At one point I thought he would have to finish the festival wearing espadrilles, when his pointy shoes gave up the ghost. And was it tired eyes that caused the spectacles to emerge one day?

Kaye did all right, wearing some lovely outfits and still seeming to feel up to starting to plan mcbf 2014.

There were others who did a wonderful job as well. Claudia travelled all over Manchester, and Kevin smiled in the face of exhaustion whenever I met him. Duncan was elegant in his suit until the bitter end, and Iris continued with her bright spottiness. Anyone else I’ve omitted mentioning will just have to forgive a confused old festival-witch.

I’ll leave you with some more photos, chosen with no plan or reason whatsoever.

Samantha van Leer and Jodi Picoult spill the beans

You’ll be surprised to find that the Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer interview is here already. (I do have a bad track record…) There are some really nice photos of the two ladies, and they admit to not always having seen eye to eye. Jodi might have started out thinking she’d be boss, but reality proved different.

Sammy’s fondness for Liz Kessler’s books gets a mention, and Mr van Leer got a brief grilling, to see if there was anything he could add to the writing partnership between the ladies of the house. He could.

I thought that Sammy might have expected only bad things about writing, with a mother who goes off to type all day long, but apparently the only thing she was aware of was how glamourous it all was. Until she tried it herself.

And if you want to read Between the Lines (and why wouldn’t you?), go carefully. There are vague spoilers in the interview. So perhaps half close your eyes?

‘Go well into your Saturday’

I am borrowing the above quote from Jackie Kay. It’s what she wished us when we left her, after a very enjoyable poetry session. This lovely Glasgow poet taught us (well, not me, obviously) what a Sassenach is, and she was excellent on audience participation. Jackie read us a selection of poems, interspersed with chatty comments about all sorts of things from the perception of Count Dracula in China to her son’s conversations with the bath plug hole.

We began the mcbf fun day with Curtis Jobling, who managed to fill the large lecture theatre with some very young fans. They were vocal as well, leaving poor Curtis shouting down his (working) microphone. It was only Raa Raa the noisy lion who temporarily silenced his audience, some of whom started to remove the decorations even as he spoke, mere inches away. (James was dreadfully alarmed by this, and wondered what happened to him being the one in charge of older people.)

After he had read from several of his picture books, Curtis gave us a lesson in drawing, and I have to say I did a pretty passable Bob the Builder. Curtis told the same Scarecrow with a parsnip nose joke as I’ve heard before, and it’s still funny.

Post-lunch (actually, for us diehards it was more a case of munching our sandwiches as quietly as possible during the author talks) it was Liz Kessler’s turn, and she was a little taken aback by the number of cameras pointing at her from all corners of the lecture theatre.

Liz got out her bag with ready made questions for the children to ask her, and they still had energy for some of their own, including what the best thing about the book festival is (her immediate reply was being able to stay at the Midland Hotel). Her more considered answer is that mcbf doesn’t just ask people to come to them, but they go out to meet people were they are. This garnered the question whether ‘she just said that’ to sound good… They are growing up, those children!

Having overcome her airhostess dream, Liz now glues her careful plot plans before writing, and if she needs to remove a giant, then she will. The next time-travel novel is North of Nowhere, and her next book to be published will be the fifth Emily Windsnap, from which she read us a taster, shark and all.

Then Curtis was back with a talk for teenagers about his Wereworld books. That didn’t stop him from showing us his animated Curious Cow who repeatedly finds new ways to kill itself in 30 seconds. He drew us a werewolf, before reading from the first book, in this series of four books, which has now grown to six.

I did my best to dismantle the decorations in the theatre as Steve Cole started the last talk for the day. Talk. Well, I suppose he did talk a lot. He also jumped and waved and shouted and made faces and anything else you can think of. But no chonster, much to the photographer’s disappointment. Personally I quite liked his Werecumber, which proceeded to bite him.

Like the boy he is, Steve said bad things about vegetables and fruit, and discussed ‘dinonauts’ and terrible sailors and poo-fish. According to his wife there is nothing remarkable about him. I don’t know how she can say that, because Steve knows about binocular-owning potatoes, and he wears (or so I understand) gold lycra shorts.

Steve is writing a new standalone book – his first – and he is running late. His fastest Cows In Action book took him three and a half days to write, but usually he writes an Astrosaurs book in three weeks. No need to worry about the future of his characters, however, since his audience told him about some sequels they are writing for him. ‘We are all authors.’

Then this fun day was over. We hung around to chat to Steve a little, and he did that very nice thing; gave me my very own dedicated book, signed and everything.

Because it was a very full fun day we never had time for the Animal Stew readings or the smoothies or even the zombie workshop (???). Or most of the rest of everything we could have done had the day been longer. On the whole it’s good it wasn’t because there wasn’t much left of poor James as it was. The photographer and I hobbled up Oxford Road to catch our train home. But we’ll be back for more, once we’ve recovered.

(Photos Helen Giles)