Claire Hennessy's Blog, page 39

The real meaning of holidays … chocolate.

Is it hypocritical to have abandoned one's Catholicism yet still be very much in favour of Easter Eggs, and if so, is it more or less hypocritical than Easter being a certain time of year simply to try to lure ye olde pagans in? Things to ponder.

Anyway. In the spirit of Easter Eggs, let me talk about chocolate.

Creme Eggs

'I can't eat them, they're too sweet,' is what grown-ups are supposed to say about things this sugary and delicious. I don't want to talk about how many of these I'm capable of eating in a day – it's embarrassing – but oh they are beautiful. They must be the correct size, though – Creme Egg bars or mini-Creme Eggs are just tragic.

Caramel bars

Whether it's Cadbury or Galaxy you're going for, caramel bars are the way to go. Cadbury's caramel bars are firmer, Galaxy's are more liquid, and of course you've got the different tastes of the chocolate as well. Both glorious in their own way. Caramel Freddos from Cadbury's are also the way to go for those seeking the liquidy caramel of the Galaxy but the Cadbury's chocolate – or if you like your chocolate frog-shaped.

After Eights

Mint and dark chocolate, and so thin and gorgeous, the crinkle of the dark chocolate and the sliver of mint fondant… yum. And it's always after eight o'clock… even if that does mean 8am.

70%+ cocoa bars

I used to be a Bourneville junkie, but now it tastes far too sickly-sweet. If there's dark chocolate to be had, it should be high-cocoa and bitter. Have heard delightful rumours about antioxidants and one small square a day being good for your health, so that's always a plus.

M&Ms

Oh, M&Ms. Better than Smarties – milk chocolate from Mars is infinitely superior to that from Nestle – and coming in so many colours. For an added bonus, there are peanut M&Ms – but never the crispy ones. Never.

Mars Ice-Cream

Mars ice-cream bars are far better than Mars bars, because they've merged the tedious nougat bit with the ice-cream, giving it a denser, chewier texture than ice-creams usually do, but still sufficiently light and summery. Plus it benefits from being based on a chocolate bar – much as I love Feasts, for example, the quality of the chocolate is always disappointing.

Chocolate mousse

Is there a better breakfast dessert than chocolate mousse? I think not. Some may say chocolate cake, but they are wrong.

And now an important question: chocolate biscuits, a way of incorporating chocolate into your day, guilt-free, or a waste of perfectly good chocolate?

After The Idea

This post is partially inspired by a discussion with Alison Wells over on good ol' twitter about ideas. And it is partially inspired by that question that writers often get asked: "Where do you get your ideas from?"

Ideas are easy. No, really. Really. Or rather: basic ideas are easy. Free floating ideas are easy. They're everywhere. Sometimes you have to learn to recognize them, but once you do that – ideas are easy.

It's developing the ideas, and selecting the right ideas to write about, and then actually writing about them, that's tricky.

I used to just jump in. Get an idea, start writing. Chapter 1. Leap right into Chapter 1. You accumulate a lot of first chapters that way. Second chapters and beyond – not so much. The idea's not strong enough. There's just not enough there to keep you going – and look, there's another new shiny idea, all tempting and glossy and untainted by your attempts to tie it down to the page! Let's run with that, instead!

The new idea is almost always going to be more attractive. You haven't been disappointed by the way in which your technicolour imagined version fails to appear, instead turning into a mess of words which may or may not be any good. It's full of potential. (And as Dylan Moran advises, you're better off leaving your potential alone – "it's like your bank balance, you know – you always have a lot less than you think.")

The new idea gets you energized, and fills you with hope. It gets you started. But then you have to keep going. Especially for a longer short story or for a novel – the kind of thing you can't write a first draft of in one sitting – you need something else.

You need, actually, a number of different ideas. Because a book isn't just about one idea, the hook that often gets put on the back cover or in a tagline on the front. It's a tangle of a whole bunch of ideas – things that matter to you, things that you care about, things that you're willing to write about and keep writing about for months at a time.

One of my very favouritest books in the world is Emma Donoghue's Hood. It has so much in it that just works, that just slots together in interesting and true ways. That's the end product. The raw material involved ideas for two separate novels, which were then fused together with the most interesting, engaging aspects left in. I love that idea – it's an example I use often in creative writing classes, talking about the thinking-time before you leap into the writing-stage. The planning stages, the outlining stages – whatever you want to call it. People have different attitudes towards how much they outline, and whether they know exactly what's going to happen in their story or leave some or all of it up to chance, but whatever way you work, I think there's room for note-making. Some way of keeping track of all of these ideas you have, without starting to actually write them in full. Some way of holding on to the snippets and fragments, so that when you commit to a new project, there's not just one thing to keep you going, but several things that will keep you hooked.

A single idea can't carry you through a whole book. You need to flesh it out, to add more layers, more stuff, more things-you-want-to-write-about or scenes-you-can-see-clearly. So it helps to have several already scribbled down, things you can knit together in something that excites you and energizes you enough to keep going after Chapter 1.

It's also a way of grounding the new-shiny-fabulous aspect that often gets you started, if you can tie it into something you've had rolling around at the back of your mind for ages. You need to write about the things that excite you but also the things that continue to fascinate you – love, death, work/life balance, friendship, finding meaning, first times, challenges, betrayal, fish-out-of-water scenarios, fairytales, whatever they are.

I scribble or type my ideas and fragments. I'm usually close to a computer, or to my Giant Handbag that contains, among many other things, a purple notebook which is pretty but just about battered enough for me not to feel as though every thought captured in it has to be perfect or worthwhile. And I like to have the words there right from the beginning. Other people save different things – words too, because that's what writing is, after all, but also playlists, or photos, or drawings, or newspaper clippings. Things that ground their idea and carry a little bit of it in them. Things that you can return to when you're actually writing to remind yourself of what it was that drew you in and made you want to write about these people, that situation, this world.

Some people jump straight in. But I've found that for me, the best way to avoid stalling after Chapter 1 is to make sure there's more in the fragments, in the ideas-mess, than just an initial single flash of inspiration.

Summer camp junkie

For the parental units out there, here are some of the ways to offload your offspring in a creative way this summer:

Song and Writing summer camp: a delicious blend of song writing and creative writing, with a sprinkling of music, drama and performance, and a cherry on top.



CTYI summer programme: a range of academic programmes for smartypantses to take in between falling in and out of love with fellow students a couple of hundred times.

Inkwell4Kids, Camp Rathdown: digital fun but also writing madness! Rumour has it that a fictional character will be teaching small children there, which is an added bonus.

My To-Read list…

So many books. So very many. Not too many, mind you, but many.

There are the ones that have been on the To-Read list for ages (looking at you, Ulysses), then others that are brand new, all shiny and glossy and tempting. There are ones that were once shiny and glossy and tempting and then disappeared under newer, shinier, glossier tomes. There are the ones that have been started and then put aside in favour of lighter, funnier books, the ones that I intend to finish someday.

How do you decide what to read next? It's not a science – not a matter of examining which has been waiting the longest or calculating which most deserves moving from the To-Read list into the Travelling-in-the-Handbag selection. It's a complicated art, asssessing not just what you're in the mood for but what you're likely to stay in the mood for. What excites you most? What do you want to be reading right now? But also, what'll you be doing as you read? Eating or travelling or waiting for people? Or will you have a quiet space and a stretch of time and room for reflection? Hardback or paperback, novel or short story collection or poetry, fiction or non-fiction, contemporary or classic?

And then there's the inevitable craving of the new release from a favourite author, even though you know you've loads to read already. The discovery of something unexpected and gorgeous in a bookshop. The recommendation from a trusted friend. So much on the To-read list, so little time.

How do you decide?

Book-post!

Jodi Picoult – Sing You Home

I absolutely devoured this book, because apparently Jodi Picoult books are sort of like my crack cocaine. Sing You Home is a trademark Picoult novel in that it focuses on an Issue, offers up differing perspectives, and makes things messier and tougher with a court case of some kind. This time Picoult is looking at same-sex marriage, rights of the unborn, and the religious right – what makes up a family, and who gets to decide? The story is told through the eyes of Zoe, a music therapist who's suffered two miscarriages and a stillbirth; Max, her husband, surf lover, and recovering alcoholic who leaves Zoe after their infertility crisis gets to be too much; and Vanessa, a school counsellor who first works with Zoe, then becomes her wife. There are viable frozen zygotes left from Zoe and Max's IVF treatment – when Zoe and Vanessa want to use these to start a family, Max needs to give his consent. Unfortunately, he's found Jesus in the meantime… It was great to see a novel dealing with same-sex partners, especially as it's something that tends not to turn up in her work all that often. I'd love to see it continue to be a recurring theme, because although this veers from cliche in many ways, it does – like so many books – ultimately have characters labelling themselves as either gay or straight with no middle ground, which is frustrating. There's a lot going on here, and I'd love to have seen more of some of the other characters, particularly Lucy and Liddy – Picoult's books generally have five/six viewpoint characters and dealing with just three felt a little odd. The end felt a little rushed, but I wonder how much of the feeling of needing more comes from not listening to the accompanying CD while reading. (I tried, but I got impatient and just kept reading.) Despite this, though, it is a pageturner – completely compulsive reading particularly for JP fans.

Aidan Chambers – Dance on my Grave

When Chambers is good, he's very very good. Dance on my Grave is good. Told from the point of view of Hal (sixteen, troubled) and the social worker assigned to him to figure out why he was dancing on a boy's grave and disturbing the peace. I'm not entirely convinced how plausible it is that proceedings would be brought against someone for this kind of thing, but nevertheless it's a nice hook for the story, which is about obsession and love and lust and identity and all those other good things. Chambers takes his characters seriously, and they are detailed, nuanced and complicated – faced with genuinely confronting the world in all its horrors. This also wins bonus points for having characters in a same-sex relationship without it being All About Being Gay, which works well. Published in 1982 – a nice reminder that YA has been interesting for several decades, not just recently.

Geraldine Meade – Flick

I'd been waiting for this one for a while. Universe, do you know how much Irish YA fiction needs more LGBT characters? Do you? This – the story of Felicity Costello, known to friends as Flick – goes a long way towards remedying that. Flick is sixteen, into girls but won't admit it fully to herself, and a brief encounter with her brother's girlfriend doesn't help matters. There's an awful lot going on here – rape, depression, sexual identity – and at times I would have loved Meade to let Flick linger a little longer on these things. (It was cut down quite significantly from the first draft so that may have something to do with it – it's easy to see how many of the issues dealt with could be over-written, but a little more space would have been nice.) Still, though – it wins many many points for going beyond a simple coming-out story, instead focusing on attraction and complications. Looking forward to the sequel.

Denise Deegan – And By The Way

Let me confess: I was both worried and excited about this one. I adore Denise Deegan's adult books, and the setting for her new YA series – a South Dublin school for the 'Kids Of', offspring of rock stars and diplomats and other wealthy high-profile types – seemed like it might lend itself to a little too much glitz 'n' glamour. Briefly put: it doesn't. The narrator, Alex, is the daughter of a rock star, but the thrills and dangers associated with this are simply another part of her life, handled realistically. Alex is grieving after her mother's death and her father's distance from the situation – but when she experiences love for the first time, it's an opportunity to let herself be happy again – or another opportunity to be hurt. Along the way there are friendship stresses and tensions, work experience, and school concerns – all blended together in a compelling mix of dramatic realism. It's fast-paced without being frivolous – and Alex's voice and priorities are absolutely spot-on. Very much enjoyed reading it and am eagerly anticipating the next novel in the series, And For Your Information, out later this year.

Abby McDonald – Boys, Bears, and a Serious Pair of Hiking Boots

Jenna is seventeen, a Green Teen spending her summer in the Canadian wilderness while her parents spend the summer apart (something she's trying not to think about). Cute boys, a bitchy roommate, a best friend gone to extremes, adventure sports, and environmental issues help make up this fun and thought-provoking read from Abby McDonald – worth reading.

Sophie Kinsella – Can You Keep A Secret?

A very quick, very funny read. That being said, it's possibly best not to read it on a plane – it begins with the narrator spilling her guts to an absolute stranger on a plane in horrendous turbulence, convinced she's about to die. When she survives, she discovers he's the head of the corporation she works for, at a very junior level, and he's keeping an eye on the London offices for the time being. I love the way SK writes about workplace difficulties and relationship woes – and the way that you never quite know how things are going to turn out. Adored this.

Do what works for you

A couple of weeks ago I put together a piece for writing.ie about reasons for taking a writing class.

I'm always cautious of advising people that they absolutely-positively need to take a class. Put simply, you don't. At all. But it might help.

Do what works for you. For some people, a class gets them writing, gets them writing better, keeps them motivated, keeps them improving. For other people, it might be going to talks by their favourite writers, or following writers and writing-advice folk on Twitter. It might be reading books about writing, or following an agent's blog. It might be reading good books, the kind that inspire them to write something just as good; it might be reading terrible books, the kind that push them into writing something better. It might be listening to music or going for a walk or meditating or doing the dishes. It might be sitting in a coffee shop and eavesdropping on conversations or finding the quietest place you can and shutting out the world.

Do what helps you write. Do what helps you write more. Do what helps you write better. Do what works for you.

On kidlit criticism

"It seems to me that it is perfectly possible to judge books for children by non-literary standards. It is legitimate to consider the social or moral or psychological or educational impact of a book; to consider how many children, and what kind of children, will like it. But it is dangerous to do this and call it criticism."

– John Rowe Townsend, A Sense of Story (1971)

It's not quite Hogwarts but it'll do…

I teach Imaginative Writing regularly over at CTYI, and developed the Novel Writing course for the summer programme (write a group novel in two days! Sure why not?), but occasionally I'm asked to teach on some of their other English-y related courses. This last term I've been having plenty of fun with The World of Harry Potter – eight weeks devoted to the HP series (both books and movies). We've Sorted students, developed our own rules of magic, designed new mythical creatures, as well as looking at the books – why is the series so successful? What genres is it combining? What are the limits of magic? What are the unique twists on mythical creatures in the series? What's been left out of the movie adaptations and why?

It's been a brilliant course to develop and teach and be enthusiastic about – the kids are all really into it (any given day there will be a decent selection of wands in the classsroom) and it really is a rich series to draw on – so much to explore and think about. (And the plotting. I am in awe of the plotting – the amount of stuff that's set up several books in advance and/or is used in later books is just fabulous.) And we had a special guest last week – Evanna Lynch, who plays Luna Lovegood in the fifth, sixth and seventh movies, came to talk to the class last Saturday. She was absolutely lovely – the kids had plenty of great questions to ask her and she provided some fascinating answers for them.

I talked to a couple of the journalists on Saturday and they were surprised at a) how much the kids knew about the books and b) the fact that a couple of them were writing their own books. (They're aged between 8-12). I kind of shrugged – yeah, of course they do, of course they are. We did mythical creatures and several of them knew loads about that, too – and some of them had very astute answers to why societies might want to believe in certain creatures. I'm fairly blasé about the kind of energy and insight you get from these classes at this stage.

Instead of making cheesy remarks about this being its own kind of magic, because honestly I just couldn't live with myself if I did, I'm going to link to a great piece here on the presumed snobbery of gifted education. Because as much fun as the classes are, they're also doing something – ensuring high ability, exceptionally able, gifted, whatever-label-you-want-to-use kids learn how to learn.

In schools, it's not enough to assume that because Little Jane or Little Bob knows the material or how to do a certain kind of sum that they're fine and can be left to their own devices, if what the majority of the students are getting out of the class is not just the that information but also skills. Things stop 'just clicking' as you go up through the education system. Information and concepts become more complex. There's a mismatch between developing learning strategies/skills and mastering of certain material for many high-ability students – and it's something that most teachers don't even consider.

So, yes, I've had a blast developing the course. Because when the kids know the books, you can move straight onto dissecting them and using them to spark off other projects – not just talking about what's in the books but why, why, why. Let's go deeper, let's go beyond the obvious. The ser ies holds up to this kind of scrutiny – good books do – and hopefully what the kids are leaving with isn't just 'what happens in the books?' but 'how and why do good stories work?' or 'how are magical worlds conveyed convincingly?' or 'is Slytherin really a good idea?' or something – some way of thinking about these things that they hadn't really experienced before. And they're things that are difficult to do in mixed-ability, school-type groups where the obvious needs to be taught and grasped before anything else can happen.

It's not curing cancer or saving the rain forests, true. But it's education. And it matters.

Book-post!

Anne Fine – The Road of Bones

Nifty book set in a vague version of Soviet Russia – very fable-like in some ways (reminded me of John Boyne's stuff for kids) but with an appropriately dark edge to it.

Neil Gaiman – Stardust

I haven't read nearly enough Neil Gaiman. This one is a sort-of pastiche of Victorian fairytales, and very fun, particularly when it alludes to the goings-on that we don't see. The world of Faerie is a dark place where transformations and manipulations and trickery and treachery abound, but also where heroes can do the right thing. I liked this one a lot, even though I've been advised by Those In The Know that it's not his best work.

Lauren Oliver – Delirium

I'd been looking forward to this one for ages – Lauren Oliver taking on a dystopia? Fabulous! It didn't disappoint – like Before I Fall, the fantastical elements are grounded in the very authentic and thoughtful relationships between the characters. In many dystopias, it's love – the power of love, the appeal of love – that helps protagonists see the flaws in their society, and (particularly in YA) gives them the strength to rebel. The society portrayed here takes it one step further – love is seen as a disease, something dangerous to be cured. (This makes a lot of sense, actually.) How and why this began isn't something that's explained in enough detail (though as this is the first book in a trilogy, we may see more explanation in later books), but how the world is now, and the genuine beliefs that its inhabitants have, are conveyed wonderfully. Looking forward to the next instalments of the trilogy, without feeling as though the first book needs them in order to make sense – it's nicely done.

Jonathan Kebbe – Noodle Head

Really funny, poignant, thought-provoking book on incarceration, juvenile deliquency, and medication – described as a 'junior One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'. Marcus is a cool dude – so cool that he's found himself in the Dovedale institution in order to be reformed, a process which consists mostly of hard labour and drugging up the inmates. The story moves along quickly and even though the ending is an upbeat one it's not entirely cheerful. The possible benefits of medication are touched on a little too briefly, though the book does generally avoid an all-out attack on prescription drugs. Worth reading.

Sheena Wilkinson – Taking Flight

This wins many, many bonus points for being a) a Belfast book that is not about the Troubles and b) a dual-viewpoint book where the two opposite-sex characters don't get together (they're cousins). Declan is a tough guy who finds himself drawn into his cousin 'Princess' Vicky's world – including her horse, Flight – after his mother ends up in hospital. Tensions ensue, and the characters are genuinely horrible to each other at times. The often troubling backstory isn't sensationalised, and it's a great piece of dramatic realism.

David Levithan – The Lover's Dictionary

Levithan's first adult book is told via dictionary entries – attempted definitions of significant words which explains the history of a relationship. It's frustratingly short in some ways, and at the same time this works for what it's trying to do. We're not getting a direct chronology, more like a series of telling snippets, and while that works in a lot of ways it may raise more questions than it answers. Nevertheless it's definitely worth reading, especially if you're a fan of his YA stuff.

Siobhan Dowd – A Swift Pure Cry

Cheerful, uplifting… no, wait. Grim tale of a girl who gets pregnant in a small Irish village in the 1980s, is benevolently ignored by the community, gives birth to a stillborn baby, and is then accused of murdering her own child when another body is found. Even though it's based on true events it felt a little far-fetched, particularly how things turned out, and Shell's mix of naivety and knowingness didn't quite work for me. Also, unless a character has psychic powers, I am sceptical of them just 'knowing' things. It is a good book, a moving book, but I suppose like so many others, when it's been hyped up and deemed extraordinary it's difficult not to be disappointed when it's not quite as wow-worthy as expected.

Stephenie Meyer – Twilight

Vampire baseball. I have no words.

It's not just about the time.

So. We find the time or make the time to write. It is possible.

But. Here's the thing, and here's why it's tricky: you also need quality time to write.

What quality time is for one person might not be the same for another. If you're writing a little bit every day, you know where the story is going, and you're thinking about it regularly, then you may well be able to slip into writing-mode very easily – so that when you have fifteen minutes, you write for those fifteen minutes. Even better if you can grab fifteen minutes immediately after a thinking-session – e.g. thinking about your story as you walk to work, then grab fifteen minutes before you have to start your working day.

If you're not doing this, then you need to factor in refamiliarising yourself with your work. When you've been away from a project, particularly a longer one, your return to it needs to factor in looking at it again. Possibly despairing. Possibly wondering why on earth you started writing this in the first place. Give it time. Let the thinking and musing start up again, at the back of your brain, and have a notebook nearby. This can be why having an entire day to write is often not as productive as having even half an hour each day over the course of a week. Sometimes it's the only way people can find the time – but do factor in getting back into the swing of things.

Factor in the fact that you'll need quality time to write. Accept and genuinely believe that thirty minutes of quality writing time, whether you're actually writing, is better than four hours of intending to write and staring out the window and eating biscuits and checking your email. Quality time is about having the headspace to write – if you have thirty minutes and need to spend ten minutes making a to-do list so that you really have those twenty minutes, so that you're not spending half an hour half-thinking about everything else you need to do, then go for it. Factor in whatever it is you need to do to make the most of your writing time.

It's a lot easier to find the time to write when you're using the time you do have in the most efficient way possible.

You know. Most of the time.