Why write YA? Author Julie Hearn explains why writing for young adults matters to her

Some years ago, I came across an amazing book. It was written for a younger readership but like many books in that genre it pulled no punches when dealing with challenging, even poignant issues. At the same time it was packed with wit, energy and a kind of magical sprightliness I found immensely appealing. The book was Follow Me Down and its author was Julie Hearn.

I met Julie herself years later: we were both teaching on Oxford University's International Creative Writing Summer School. It was a joy to make friends with a writer who was as much fun and as charged with imaginative energy as the book she'd written. I'm delighted that Julie will be teaching a day course on writing teen fiction as part of my autumn programme of Fictionfire events: she's a truly inspiring teacher with so much knowledge of the craft and the industry to impart. I've asked her over to Literascribe to describe how she came to write in the YA genre and why it matters to her. Over to Julie -

“Why did you start writing Young Adult fiction?”

I get asked this a lot.

Firstly, I was tired of writing for adults. Aged thirty, I was a journalist, writing a mother and baby column for The Daily Star. Aged forty I was at Oxford University, writing about maternal power and witch-hunts in Early Modern England, for a MSt in Women’s Studies. I  felt – and still feel – a wicked sense of satisfaction over that shift but, aged forty-one, the thought of writing more stuff requiring footnotes appealed about as much as the thought of writing more dross for the tabloids.

I needed another shift.

Secondly, the story idea that hooked me so completely that it got into my dreams seemed tailor-made for  the Young Adult market (for readers aged eleven to seventeen, or thereabouts) I had found it in the Bodleian Library’s collection of  printed ephemera: an eighteenth century handbill, about a young girl being shown as a “monster” at Bartholomew Fair.

The Changeling Child

To be seen next door to the Black Raven in West Smithfield, during the time of Bartholomew Fair, a living skeleton taken from a Turkish Vessel. This is a Fairy Child supposed to be born of Hungarian parents but changed in the nursing. Aged nine years or more, not exceeding a foot and a half high, the legs, thighs and arms so very small that they scarce exceed the bigness of a man's thumb and the face no bigger than the palm of one's hand and seems so grave and solid as if it were threescore years old. You may see the whole anatomy of its body by setting it against the sun. It never speaks. It has no teeth but is the most hungry creature in the world, eating more victuals than the stoutest man in England. Gives great satisfaction to all that ever did, or shall, behold it.

I wanted to give this Changeling Child the happy ending she surely did not have in real life. I wanted to address issues of abuse, and difference, and love and loyalty without cynicism or the rueful wisdom of an adult author addressing adult readers.

I camped out in the Bodleian, researching Bartholomew Fair and eighteenth- century London. I read about the surgeons at  St Bartholomew’s  Hospital who dissected corpses as often, and as cheerfully, as they might have cut up a chop for supper. I read about the grave robbers who supplied those corpses, charging extra for anything “unusual”. My young protagonist, I decided, was going to be a time traveller who would meet the Changeling Child and uncover a plot that could see her dead before her time, and under the knife of my hard-hearted dissectionist, Dr Flint.

Writing Follow Me Down was like sliding down a rainbow – a giddy, exhilarating swoop towards – what? I didn’t know. I didn’t wonder, much, about the publication process. It was enough, back then, to be making things up, with no worries about libel actions or plagiarism!

Follow Me Down went to auction. It was translated into French, Italian, German, Spanish and Japanese. It was shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award and nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal. It paid for my kitchen extension and a holiday in Antigua.

Julie Hearn

Best of all it sent me on a writing journey that has been challenging, rewarding and never, ever dull. I care about this kind of  writing. I care about my readers and, while mindful of what author Madeleine L’Engle said - “…the best children’s books ask questions, and make the reader ask questions. And every new question is going to disturb someone’s universe.” – I am careful about the way I frame a question for impressionable young minds.

I care about my characters.

“How old is the protagonist in Follow Me Down?” I was asked, a while ago, during a radio interview.

“Tom’s fifteen,” I replied. And then I realised: “No … sorry… he’s twelve. In the book, I mean. He’s fifteen  now.”

The interviewer gave me a look that said “Are you mad?”

When I tell that story to other YA writers they smile, and nod. They absolutely get it. They, too, have worked so hard to create characters “real” teenagers will recognise, and bond with, that should those characters knock at the door one day they would not turn a hair.

They, too have slid down a few rainbows in their time.

It is great, great fun.  

The Next Big Thing in Teen Fiction - Could You Be the One to Write It? 

Day course in Oxford, 19th November 2016

Are you keen to write or develop your fiction for teens or young adults? Julie Hearn, who has published seven acclaimed novels including Follow Me Down, The Merrybegot and Rowan the Strange, will help you develop your storytelling techniques, including crucial aspects such as openings, character and voice, plot and pace. You'll learn about the young adult genre and what's hot in the current market, maximising your chances of success with your submission. With discussion and writing exercises during the course, you'll leave with increased confidence, enhanced skills and the courage to make your pitch.

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The course runs from 9.45-5.00 and includes all refreshments and a delicious lunch.

For full details and how to book, visit www.fictionfire.co.uk/course-dates-&-details 

Other Fictionfire workshops are listed here and the next Simply Write Retreat is here.

Contact info@fictionfire.co.uk if you have any questions.

Winchester Writers' Festival 2016: Meg Rosoff and Magical Fierceness

Meg Rosoff giving the Keynote Speech
at Winchester Writers' Festival 2016

Rather unbelievably, it’s time for my annual follow-up post on the Winchester Writers’ Festival, where I gave a lecture on self-editing and a day course on building character. There was the usual buzz of creativity and connection as writers milled around, attending readings, talks, courses and one-to-ones with agents, editors and writers like myself.

What do writers talk about at events like this? Well, their writing, of course, their hopes and their struggles, their frustrations and their triumphs. All of this against the backdrop of the annual review of the State of Publishing. We listen to those in the know, those in the trade – but also those in the independent sphere. Both schools of publishing practice have learned to co-exist fairly amicably, really. Perfection doesn’t exist on either side: indie authors sometimes haven’t taken on board the need for professionalism in presentation and content. Trad publishers are often way behind the times in their view of the indie world. But, catching up has been done, on both sides.

Every year the Festival officially opens on Saturday with the Keynote Speech. This year featured Meg Rosoff, with a quirky Powerpoint sequence behind her, discussing the nature of ‘voice’. This it turns out, is your ‘DNA’ as a writer. It’s your individual personality in words. It takes some finding and developing. When found, it creates that state we all seek and sometimes achieve:  the zone, ‘writers’ magic’, the state where you tap into your true self and meaning, where inspiration and expression fuse.

The Stripe Auditorium

In case this all sounds a bit airy-fairy, let me assure you that Meg was sharp as a tack, cynical, acerbic and total fun. She introduced us to the wonderful German word Durchlässigkeit, which means ‘throughness’, for that sense of a perfect flow of energy between conscious and unconscious mind. The term comes from dressage, referring to the harmonius co-operation of rider and horse. She said that a wall exists between the conscious and the unconscious and it’s up to us to establish and encourage connections: ‘If there’s a wall, you won’t get resonance.’

Meg went on to stress that we need to access the ‘dreamy state’ by such practices as morning writing, when ‘the brain hasn’t closed the bridge’. She herself waits for her books to come to her and tell her what their meanings are, what their resonance is. This is a process you can encourage but not force: ‘Sometimes you need to wait for the brain to be ready.’ If you want to home in on what is important to you, storywise, she recommends you to consider the turning points of your life and what they meant to you.

Throughout her speech the audience responded with laughter and murmurs of agreement: she really spoke to us, part-reassuringly, part bracingly. It was clear that writing – which she came to at the age of 46 after a rocky career in advertising – was as frustrating and rewarding to her as it is to the rest of us. She described the months when the book won’t come, the glorious breakthroughs of meaning, the buzz of inspired productivity. She spoke to an audience resonating to her message.

I came away struck in particular by one thing she’d mentioned: early in her career she’d written a pony book, which was no good, she claimed, but which got her an agent. Her agent said, ‘There are no rules. Write as fiercely as you can and I’ll find someone who will read it.’ I loved the idea of fierce writing – and the idea of a champion who would fight for that writing to be read.

During my one-to-one appointments

A couple of hours later I was meeting writers for one-to-ones in a room full of agents and editors, all listening to pitches, all responding to dreams and aspirations in a world that is commercially hard-headed and has always had to be. Yet I know that in that room, a writer or two will have fired up an agent or an editor with enthusiasm and months down the line we’ll hear of the book deal and the dream fulfilled.

Keep crossing that bridge into your inner life and self. Keep writing fiercely. Keep trusting that out there is the agent or editor or reader who will look at your work and ‘get’ it and champion it.

Finally - shout outs to my lovely friends at Winchester: Judith Heneghan, Sara Gangai, Barbara Large, Adrienne Dines, David Simpkin, Judy Waite, Nik Charrett, David Evans - and also to Imogen Cooper, Beverley Birch, Jenny Savill, Eden Sharp and Andrew Weale for fascinating conversations.

After the Festival Dinner

Conference Director Judith Heneghan at the Festival Dinner

With Adrienne Dines

Moonstruck: Meeting Buzz Aldrin

I’m sitting in the gallery of the Sheldonian Theatre, one of the most beautiful if not one of the most comfortable venues in Oxford. Looking down across the packed floor, I see a tanned face and a white beard through the glass of a side door. Moments later, in he comes, wearing a beige blouson jacket with embroidered badges on it. He waves like a king and air-punches like a prize-fighter as he makes his way through the applauding crowd.

He’s Buzz Aldrin.

His sassy, witty ‘Mission Director’ Christina Korb conducts the interview, trying to keep him on the straight and narrow, but even she has trouble managing the blurted reminiscences and anecdotes. The man is bursting with things to tell us. He’s opinionated, forceful, waving be-ringed hands, boasting about the Omega watch he wore on the outside of his spacesuit because it’s kinda hard to see the time otherwise.

I read Andrew Smith’s fascinating book Moondust: In Search of the Men who Fell to Earth several years ago, struck by the poignant reason for its composition. At that time, only nine men were alive who had walked on the surface of the moon, so he set about interviewing them while he could.

Well, there’s fewer than nine now. That is why several hundred people have queued in the chill rain outside and will later queue for the best part of an hour to get their books signed. I’m one of them. For a moment, we’re in contact with history, with what now seems a lost idealistic era. I grew up with the sense that space held all potential. I’d read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian and Venusian series, and Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke and Ray Bradbury. The stars, the planets and the dear old moon itself held out dreams of human aspiration, adventure and fulfilment.

So we lap up the bombast and the showboating, enjoy the clearly oft-repeated wisecracks, the whole display of it, because although this man is 86 now he is more alive than most we’ll ever meet and this man walked on the moon! He wears a T-shirt saying ‘Get your ass to Mars’ and is passionate about sending humans there, saying that a human can do in a week what took Spirit and Rover five years. He describes his spacewalk, saying he ‘wanted to putt putt putt around like George Clooney in Gravity.’ He’s contemptuous of the Russians – yes, they put Sputnik up there but ‘if you put up a dumb satellite you don’t give it a parade and everybody loves a parade!’ What’s more, they put a dog in orbit and left it there – ‘at least we brought our monkey back.’ He expresses regret at the loss of Neil Armstrong and talks of his family and the kind of destiny he’d felt – his mother was called Marion Moon and his father knew the Wright brothers – yup, it was all meant.

The door of the Sheldonian open with a view
 of the Bodleian's Divinity Schools behind

When I eventually reach the head of the queue and he signs my copy of No Dream is Too High, I burble something about looking up at the moon from a Scottish garden when I was a little girl, amazed to think he was up there. ‘My mother came from Edinboro …’ he smiles and I pass on, past the selfie-taking crowd. Outside the Sheldonian I wish the clouds would part and I could see the old man’s stamping ground.

I remember another night, years ago, when I looked at the moon and it gave me an idea for a story of ‘something strange, spectacular and out of this world’ that grew into a children’s book, Hinterland, still not published though it made it to the shortlist of a significant prize in 2013. I remember the magic of writing that story, of describing grey dust and a terraced crater like an amphitheatre and ‘hanging like a jewel against the dense black void, with fat blue oceans and swirling white clouds’, our planet. And I think to myself, I need to rediscover what that story meant to me, and maybe, just maybe, roll it out onto the launchpad once more and send it into the ether myself.

So thank you, Buzz.

And thank you, Blackwell’s Oxford (best bookshop in the world), for hosting this event!

Further reading:

Buzz Aldrin: No Dream is too High – Life Lessons from a Man who Walked on the Moon

www.buzzaldrin.com

Andrew Smith: Moondust: In Search of the Men who Fell to Earth

Andrew Chaikin: A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts

Raindrops really, but these white globes
lend a suitably otherworldly tone to this picture of the Sheldonian!

Writing the spirit of character and place: Ann Kelley guests at Fictionfire by the Sea

Ann Kelley

I’m delighted that award winning novelist Ann Kelley is going to join us during my Fictionfire by the Sea Writers’ Workshop and Retreat in less than two weeks. I first met Ann a few years ago, during one of my visits to St Ives and she kindly invited me to her gorgeous clifftop home overlooking Porthkidney sands and the Hayle estuary. It’s a stunning location, though not without its hazards – up there Ann has survived floods, a landslide, a lightning strike and part of their roof blowing away!

Ann is the sort of person who’s naturally gifted both with empathy and with an incredible sensitivity to location. Her house was full of quirky, unusual and beautifully presented objects and artworks. She’s a photographer and poet as well as a novelist, and this can be seen in her eye for composition and selection, for lyrical celebration, for economy, for precise and lovely images.

‘If you lie down and put your ear to the beach, you can hear the surf booming through the sand.’ (The Burying Beetle)

A view like this is worth a landslide or a lightning strike!

She has written three books of poetry and runs poetry workshops. She gave me a copy of The Poetry Remedy and I found it both moving and helpful in a recent period of stress and grief. She’s also written YA fiction – her latest novel, Last Days in Eden, was published in July and her previous teen books are Runners, Koh Tabu and Lost Girls.

However, for me, it’s all about the Gussie books: the series of stories tracing the experiences of a young girl suffering from incipient heart failure – this was inspired by Ann’s own son Nathan, who sadly died after a heart-lung transplant but who seems to have been a most extraordinary person. Gussie is an equally striking character. Her situation is grievous but her spirit is never bowed. She is a creature, quite simply, of joy. She’s cheeky, rebellious, imaginative, often solitary, eccentric. She celebrates life – and this is where Ann’s talent comes into play for she shows us what I suppose we would call ‘mindfulness’ in action. Gussie, aware that her illness may limit her lifespan, doesn’t intend to waste a second. She notices everything from the tiniest insects through to the undercurrents in the adult relationships around her. She’s endlessly curious, not always tactful, but always lovable. You root for her from start to finish. When she gets the chance of an operation with the potential to save her life, you’re willing it all to go smoothly.

When I read the Gussie books, I found her character compelling of course – but I was also seduced by the mesmerising descriptions of location and the fine detail of the natural history in them. In an interview, Ann described the books as ‘a hymn of praise to this place’ – to St Ives and its environs. And I tell you this, these novels get better every time you go back to them!

I hope you’ll join us at Fictionfire by the Sea, from 17^th to 19^th October, for our workshops, for quiet time to write and to hear Ann give a reading and answer our questions about her aims and practices as a writer.

Ann’s website is www.annkelley.co.uk

The Gussie series of novels: The Burying Beetle, shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award; The Bower Bird, winner of the Costa Children’s Book of the Year 2007; Inchworm and A Snail’s Broken Shell.

‘It’s exciting to be here when there’s a strong wind blowing. The rooks look like broken umbrellas or black tattered cloaks, thrown away and tumbled by the gusts. The gale shaves the tops off the waves and sends the spray flying back into the sea.’ (The Burying Beetle)

Come and hear Ann – join us at Fictionfire by the Sea Writers’ Workshop and Retreat 17^th to 19^th October, in a beautiful artists’ studio by the sea in St Ives. Workshops will focus on how to stay true to your writing dreams and how to evoke the spirit of place – but there will be lots of time as well for you to simply write! Full details and how to book are at www.fictionfire.co.uk/page28.htm

Don’t forget my October to December programme of Focus Workshops in Oxford starts this Saturday (11^th October)! Details at www.fictionfire.co.uk/page26.htm

Magical Books at the Bodleian Library Oxford

Mr Tumnus and friend, perhaps,
in front of the Bodleian and the Radcliffe Camera, Oxford

In Oxford, the Bodleian Library's free exhibition until 27th October features modern children's fantasy writers and the books and manuscripts which inspired and influenced them. This post is the article I wrote for the newsletter of Writers in Oxford - we were allowed a preview of some of the exhibits back in March. I urge you to visit if you're in Oxford this summer, especially if you're a fan of Tolkien, Lewis or Philip Pullman! (I wish I had some more images but I haven't been able to track down the shots I took that day and exhibition images on the Bodleian's website are protected by copyright!)

MAGICAL MANUSCRIPTS: A PREVIEW FOR WiO MEMBERS, 20^th March 2013

Spring 2013. Freezing. The White Witch rules. On Twitter, someone pleads ‘People of Oxford, stop eating the Turkish Delight!’ Twelve Writers in Oxford members gather in Narnian temperatures at the Radcliffe Science Library. Adjusting to the tropical conditions inside, we’re conducted down to a small room, lit harshly, where we’re privileged to view a choice selection of Magical Manuscripts, which will form part of an exhibition at the Bodleian from May 23rd.

On display are original works by fantasy writers J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Alan Garner alongside texts which inspired them. ‘Marvels of the East’, from the 12^th century, illustrates fabulous beasts and a perky-looking man with his face looking out from in his chest. Then there’s a 15^th century necromantic manuscript, full of spells, conjurations and ‘experimental true experiences of angels’; an early 17^th century miscellany with instructions on ‘how to see by thy self in a cristall stone’, with circular charms to help you avoid death by sword and poison, sealed with ‘Abracalabra’; and a gorgeous picture of jousting knights in ‘The Romance of Gyron le Courtois’ from the late 15^th century.

It’s fascinating how the modern writers drew on this sort of material. We see a notebook where C.S. Lewis wrote about Digory Kirke’s boyhood: how neat his writing was, how uncorrected. The three pages of Alan Garner’s The Owl Service, by contrast, are exuberant, with spikily graceful writing and many scorings-out, yet precisely dated to the 20^th March 1965. Garner, we’re told, drew on Arthurian myth and consulted the Rawlinson necromantic manuscript mentioned above.

Finally, Tolkien. I was lucky enough, many years ago, to read the manuscript of The Lord of the Rings at Marquette University in America, so I was familiar with his process of composition, feeling his way from ‘Hobbit Mark II’ to a richer epic tale, and his habit of drawing pictures to bring his imagined world into focus. The exhibition includes Tolkien’s mock-ups of pages from The Book of Mazarbul, carefully distressed with pipe-smoke, their edges burnt like the manuscript of Beowulf. A sketch of Shelob’s lair sits beside the script in pencil overlaid with ink, describing that episode.

Everyone is struck by Tolkien’s watercolours, executed in poster paint in the 1930s, some of them familiar from published editions, but here more vibrant, a blend of the naïve and the intricately precise. Bilbo bowing before the red-gold dragon on his hoard of treasure, Rivendell in spring green with tiers of flowing water and blossomy branches, rather like a Japanese painting, and best of all, an eagle among the mountain peaks, looking out over cloud, snow and ice-blue sky. A picture like a breath of the North Wind blowing – the very wind that is still blowing when we leave the library. The White Witch hasn’t given up her rule yet.

Here's the link to the exhibition: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/whats-on/online/magical-books

And here's the link to my blogpost about an earlier exhibition, Shelley's Ghost: http://literascribe.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/shelleys-not-so-blithe-spirit.html

In other news: well, there's no news, as yet, about the Macmillan Write Now Prize - I'm on the shortlist of four and I think the announcement of the winner is due at the end of the month, but can't guarantee it. On tenterhooks!

I've just taught a summer school held by the university at Exeter College - the college both Tolkien and Pullman attended. I was teaching in the Morris Room - so really, there's no getting away from literary connections in this city!

My novel The Chase is available on Kindle, Kobo, and as a paperback. I'm currently working on an anthology of short stories and a historical novel, set in the 19th century. 

In the next few days I'll be announcing Fictionfire workshops and an exciting day course for the autumn/winter season!

My novel Hinterland is shortlisted for Pan Macmillan's Write Now Prize!

I'm delighted to announce that my unpublished children's novel Hinterland has now reached the shortlist of four for Macmillan's Write Now Prize! I couldn't be more pleased, especially since the shortlisting has come from the votes of independent booksellers, who each chose their top two from the longlist of eight.  To have the validation of those who work in the trade and who know what children's reading tastes are makes the shortlisting all the more special. Now, of course, we shortlistees have to wait for the winner to be picked, chosen by Macmillan's publishing panel. So good luck to my fellow shortlisted writers Daniel Whelan, Martin Stewart and Clare Sandling!

Here's the opening of Hinterland, along with
another Cornish location-shot.

Chapter 1

The old man stands outside a house on a busy street. It's an ordinary terraced house on an ordinary street, where people are revving up for the business of the day. Shortly there will be the surge of traffic as the school-run reaches its peak.

The old man gazes at the house: one of the upstairs windows is slightly open and he can hear raised voices drifting out.

The boy.

The girl.

The time is nearly right.

He turns away, smiling.

Pan Macmillan's Write Now Prize: my novel Hinterland is longlisted

I'm immensely proud and delighted that my unpublished children's novel Hinterland has made it to the eight-strong longlist for Macmillan's Write Now Prize. This process began when I submitted the synopsis and first three chapters back in December. In January, the full novel was called in, and a few weeks later I was notified that I'd made the longlist. I couldn't make this public for quite a while (argh!) but now the competition is heading into its next stage. Independent bookshops and their customers will get the chance to view the longlisted books via extracts and summaries - and they're the ones who'll vote for shortlist of four, whereupon a panel will choose the winner. The winner's book will be published in hardback and available exclusively to independent bookshops initially. I think this is a brilliant idea and hope that as many indie bookshops as possible will sign up - and that you, the customers, will join in with the process!

The other stories in the longlist are briefly summarised on the competition website: they sound dauntingly witty, adventurous and intriguing! I think it'll be a challenge to make the shortlist, but it goes without saying that I'd be ecstatic if it happened!

Here's a brief synopsis of Hinterland, along with a photo of a very significant location far to the west ... Hope you enjoy it!

'I hope you die!' yells Kick Delaney at his sister Olivia. Minutes later she's knocked down by a car. From then on, she's his 'zombie sister'. When the family moves to Cornwall, he discovers Olivia's zombie state is a defence against the Soulbroker, who's seized part of her soul and wants the rest to sell to the Anhungert, voracious entities of the Hinterland, the realm behind our own.

Kick fights to save Olivia, with the help of Argentail, the moon-dragon avatar of a long-dead Cornish mage. Ultimately, Kick must pursue the Soulbroker into the Hinterland itself. And it's there that a shattering choice awaits him.

Finally,  a reminder that my next Fictionfire courses are on the 18th and 19th of May (less than two weeks to go!). If you want to learn how to plot and pace your story, or how to craft a submission, go to my website to find out more and make your booking. Bookings must be made by midnight on 16th May. Also, if you've tried to ring or text me, my phone hasn't been receiving messages for a couple of weeks. I've changed phone and network so contact me again from the 8th, when the new network should kick in.