Sophia Bennett's Blog, page 7

Blog tour

As I’ve just mentioned on the website, the banner for my UK blog tour for You Don’t Know Me has just arrived …….. and it’s AWESOME.

With big thanks to Laura and Tina at Chicken House, and thanks too to all the UK YA bloggers who’ve agreed to host me, here are the tour dates, starting next week:

Yay! Reaching the end of the shelf

Today is a big, BIG day.

Yes, it’s the day of the London marathon, and it all passed off smoothly and the word ‘marathon’ doesn’t bring a lump to your throat so much any more (which is a good thing, because I’m doing the Moonwalk in about 3 weeks and that’s a marathon too). But that’s not why it’s a big day for me.

I completed something, but instead of being 26.4 miles it was about four feet. And instead of taking 3 to 4 hours, it took about 5 years. Even so …. *proud face*

I started writing Threads in May of 2008, so almost exactly 5 years ago. It was eventually published (which looking back was extremely quick, but felt like aeons at the time) in September 2009. And so the shelf began. It’s the place next to where I sit in the shed, and it holds one copy of each version of each book, in each of the different languages and editions (ie paperback vs hardback, not sure what the technical term for that is yet), and the CDs, in the order in which they were published, starting with the four different-colour editions of Threads.

And today …. as I added the French paperback of Threads, the Polish paperback of The Look and the UK paperback of You Don’t Know me, I finally reached THE END OF THE SHELF. So I now have exactly one shelf of books published (thanks in VERY large measure to the efforts of Barry Cunningham and Elinor Bagenal at Chicken House), and it feels very good.

Here it is:

Big thanks to Hachette, and Chicken House Germany, and Piemme, and Maeva, and Cappelendamm, and Intrinseca and Egmont and Scholastic USA and so many other dedicated publishers all over the place for making it happen.

You may notice a certain colour theme emerging. By the time it got to You Don’t Know Me, I was begging for no more pink. Raspberrry pink happens to be my favourite colour, personally, but sometimes it can be seen as a shorthand for ‘girly and fluffy’ in the book and toy trade, and I don’t want my books to be dismissed as fluffy if I can avoid it. I really like the turquoise of the new book, echoing a certain dalliance with the colour during my Beads Boys & Bangles phase, and I hope to keep heading in that direction.

The new book looks good, by the way. Rachel Hickman and Steve Wells at Chicken House have done a fabulous job with it and I felt a bit mean, tucking it away on the shelf when it deserves to have those turquoise page edges stroked on a continual basis.

So what now?

New book, new shelf, and the joy of writing, for as long as I can make it happen.

What must Jacqueline Wilson’s bookshelves look like?

And JK Rowling’s?

Ha!

Hitting balls over the net

I was having a lovely chat with Francesca Simon last night (writer of the Horrid Henry stories, in case you don’t already know), and teasing her about word counts. I am in absolute awe of Francesca’s ability to write lively, compelling stories that children love in only a few thousand words. What I hadn’t fully realised was that there are four stories in every Horrid Henry book, and each story is just 1500 to 2000 words long. That’s a chapter for me. That’s how long it takes me to establish a scene and a couple of characters, and to make one thing happen. By the time I’m writing Chapter 2, Francesca’s done and dusted and Henry’s moving on to his next adventure. Amazing.

Francesca says it comes naturally. It’s not as if the characters aren’t vivid, and the stories aren’t complex, as an army of happy child readers will attest. What she dispenses with (BIG TIP here, if you’re trying to write fiction for young children to read by themselves) is description. She does it all through great dialogue and the odd detail. I teased her by saying that I’m almost certain to cut the last 10,000 words I’ve just written. (Count ‘em – 10,000) – that’s 5 Horrid Henry’s-worth that probably won’t even see the light of day). I had to write them, to work out the scenes I had in my head, but they’ll probably end up being distilled into a few key sentences in earlier chapters. I think Francesca thinks I’m mad. Or possibly not doing it right. Either of which may be true.

So far, I’m 50,000 words into the latest story and I’m only half way through. I don’t say this proudly. I read an article somewhere saying that many of our favourite books (Holes by Louis Sachar being the one I remember, and possibly Starlight by Jerry Spinelli) are only 40,000 words long – and that’s the ideal I aspire to. Threads was about 55,000, but 80,000 is usually where I end up these days. Still a lot shorter than Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but longer than Flowers for Mrs Harris by Paul Gallico, which is one of my almost-perfect books.

However, for every 10,000 words that make it into the final book, I’ve probably written between three and ten times as many. That’s certainly true of You Don’t Know Me. We were talking with Meike Ziervogel, who’s just published a novella about Mrs Goebbels (the one who killed herself and her 6 children at the end of the war), called Magda, and who outdid me in the teasing-Francesca stakes by admitting she wrote 70,000 words she knew she’d never publish about a woman carrying a plastic bag, because she wanted to know what was in the bag. And it made it into a sentence in one of the books. Meike and I have a similar approach – imagine, write, learn, cut, edit. One day I’d really love to do it Francesca’s way, though, and have 2000 words transcribe the perfect gem of a story onto the page.

I haven’t just been sitting around talking to writers, though, or writing possibly-uncecessary chapters in the shed. At the moment I’m in training (I use the word loosely) for the London Moon Walk for Breast Cancer, which is on May 11th. I’m going to be walking a marathon, so on Saturday I did 8 miles, wiggling my way from home in Wandsworth down to the Thames and along it from West to East, as it wound its way through the city.

I ended up at the Tate Modern, where I met up with my husband and the 6 year-old and we saw the Lichtenstein exhibition together. It was good. I’d give it a 7 out of 10 (compared with the mind-blowing 10 out of 10s I’d give to the Damien Hirst – a real surprise, that one: I was expecting to be pretty disappointed – and the Cy Twombly a few years ago). When Lichtenstein was quoting other artists, such as his version of Monet’s Rouen cathedrals, he was brilliant and I just wanted to wrench the canvases off the wall and take them home. (To my large warehouse apartment overlooking the river, where they’d look fab and which I unfortunately haven’t got.) However, a lot of the time, he seemed to be doing the same-old, same-old for his clients, and we were less than convinced. Actually, the best picture of all was the view of St Paul’s from the cafe, where we had a delicious plate of fish and chips to end the day.

Alex and I preferred the Bowie exhibition at the V&A. What a genius. Alex didn’t even like Bowie that much (unlike me – I’m one of those 1980s Fame and Fasion he-can-do-no-wrong types), but even he loved to see the song lyrics, carefully transcribed in slightly rubbish handwriting onto exercise books to take into the studio, and the many costumes – some so small I don’t think I could have squeezed into them: the man is tiny – and the inspiration he took from the Moon landings, Little Richard, advances in technology for accessing the subconscious through lyric-mangling (check out the Verbaliser) and so much more.

We’d give the exhibition an 8 out of 10, I’d say. Bowie himself gets a 10, but the audio was a bit too ambitious. Your headphones are supposed to play you snippets automatically, depending on where you’re standing, but sometimes they wouldn’t move on, and sometimes they simply didn’t work. Also, Heroes is brilliant, but in the latter half that’s all we could hear, and we could have done with a bit of variety. He wrote other stuff, guys.

How fabulous to be Bowie right now, and to have done minimal work on launching the new album, only to have the whole world clamour to get their hands on it. I’m definitely at the other end of the spectrum: writing away at something only Alex has seen, and not knowing if anyone will like it, or want it, or buy it. It’s like hitting tennis balls over the net, over and over, for days and weeks on end, and never getting anything back.

Then, hopefully, a publisher likes the book, and buys it, and publishes it, and gets it out there, and people discover it, and you find out if it was all worthwhile. That’s what’s about to happen to You Dont’ Know Me, which comes out on 2nd May. As for this new one … watch this space.

Might take a while, though. I still have a lot of words to cut. And a lot more to write.

 

Jessie J

As Jessie J showed yesterday for Comic Relief, having your head shaved can be a liberating experience, and a beautiful one.

Go Jessie. Brave girl.

When I was writing The Look, I knew the head shaving scene in the middle would be the scene that everything depended on. It was important to get it right. I worried about writing it, but in the end it flowed. And instead of being sad and nostalgic, as I’d expected, it turned out to be uplifting and empowering.

Our heads are beautiful things. Losing your hair is not the end of everything. Thanks, Jessie, for raising money for some great causes. And showing us that a bare head can be a cause for happiness.

Win free books!

This seems to be giveaway week for my books, and that’s fine by me!

For readers in the US, there are giveaways of The Look running on Good Books and Good Wine and Rather Be Reading. Both these US bloggers have been so kind and supportive since they read the book, and I’m really grateful to them. It’s like someone welcoming you into their home. Their big, enormous home, with 50 states and 300 million people. Thank you, Allison and Estelle.

For readers in the UK, there’s a giveaway of signed copies of the 3 Threads books from Shout magazine. Only open till tomorrow afternoon! (I haven’t signed the books yet, but no doubt they’ll come my way soon. Maybe I’ll get to sign them with the winners’ names in, which I always like.)

Free stuff. Lovely. And it’s only a click away …

Planning and researching your novel

This is a picture of my mood board as it currently stands. It includes press articles that have inspired me (about tutors of the super-rich), a picture of Diane Athill (inspiration for the next book), pictures of potential characters cut out of magazines, and pictures that were done by Year 7s at a school I visited a couple of years ago, and which are keeping me in the zone for my current main characters.

It seems to be that time. I’m 10,000 words into the new book, and took time off during half term to go and visit Rye, where I’ve set the opening scene, and Winchelsea, just down the coast, which has some fabulous crusader tombs that I was interested in (very Da Vinci Code), and also, as it happens, Spike Milligan’s grave in the churchyard, but he won’t be making it into the book. I don’t think.

So I’m researching, and it’s fun. Meanwhile, I’ve just written a piece about it for the Writers’ Forum. I think it might be out in April, but it was basically about my research for The Look. I’ve been asked about it by some students on a writing course. And I’ve been corresponding with a reader/blogger who’s writing her own novel this year (which sounds great), and wanted some tips.

Here’s what I wrote for Beverley. Every writer’s process is different, as are ever editor’s and genre’s requirements. But if you’re looking for some ideas, this might be a start.

I really enjoy the research process. It’s one of the joys of writing, but it’s important not to let it overwhelm the story. There can be a real danger that the book becomes a series of research notes, joined together, when it should be all about character and motivation. For this reason, nowadays I tend to do detailed research only once the story is well underway and the characters are developed. That way, the story stays in charge. It can of course mean making major changes to the text later – when you discover you’ve got something wrong (as I did in Rye just now – easily fixed), or you find out something so fascinating it takes the story in a new direction. But good writing is rewriting, so I don’t mind making changes if I have to.

As for the research itself, the internet is great of course. I find YouTube particularly useful – you learn so much about sound, and background detail, from a good video. I also love stumbling across weird recherché academic papers on stuff – but maybe that’s just me. But for the kind of thing I do, talking to people is  best. And it’s amazing how whatever you’re researching, you find you know someone who knows someone who can help. Especially if you include Twitter friends. Again, I like to have the story well underway before I talk to them, so I can ask them fairly precise questions. Other things inevitably come out of our conversation, and I incorporate them as I can. And location: nothing beats going to a location and immersing yourself in it. (See above. Sadly, the latter part of the book is set on an island in the Mediterranean but budget constraints mean that will just have to come from memory, more YouTube and my imagination.)

Publishers and markets vary for how accurate you have to be. If you’re writing fantasy, of course it’s your world and you can say what you like, as long as you’re internally consistent. If it’s contemporary, some editors will be very relaxed, as long as it sounds plausible. Others less so. I had a US copy editor who checked that my train from Mumbai to Agra set off at the right time of day. She actually checked the Indian train timetable. (Luckily, I had too.)

Now for outlining. Everyone is different, so do what works for you. I have some successful writer friends who get an idea and just get going with it. I must say, they’re in the minority. However, some really successful writers say that you should let your characters lead you. Personally, I’m more at the other end of the scale. I love it when my characters do unexpected things within a scene, but I want to know where I’m heading with the story. I’ve written too many 5000 word beginnings that end up running out of steam. I want a plot that I know makes sense, and characters with interesting arcs. I want an idea of the pace of the book, so I write an outline that’s generally about 40 paragraphs long (one para for every 1-2 chapters). I don’t follow it to the letter, and I change it – sometimes quite radically – as I go along. But it’s there to guide me.

I also get a piece of blank A4 paper and draw my plot like a chart, with boxes for main events, and arrows to other boxes. I don’t necessarily use it so much later, but it really helps me think!

My editor now gives us all a blank spreadsheet to fill in, going down scene by scene and saying for each one location, characters, motivation, main theme, minor themes etc. It looks very hairy! I did it a couple of times and didn’t use the results, but found it very handy to help with my thinking process. It showed up a couple of places in the plot where it wasn’t really going to work.

I have my mood board, where I stick up pieces from newspapers and magazines that have helped inspired the story, to remind me, and pictures of people who look like the characters. When my publisher comes to do the cover, she usually asks to see the mood board these days.

Last year was terrible for most of my writer friends and me. Hard to say exactly why – it just was. We struggled, and were disheartened, and were late, and often seriously wondered if we’d finish at all – but we all did, eventually. What some of us learned was that for the first draft, you just have to keep going and get it out there. Don’t expect it to be perfect. It’s not what the finished book is going to be like. It’s your first go at the story, and it may change because you’ll learn as you go along, but it’s important to finish it. After that, things get easier. A little tip I was given at a low moment was to try and write 1000 words a day (which is much less than I usually try and write). 1000 words isn’t so much. You can do it in an hour or two. But over 70 or 80 days … you’ve got a book! So if it’s getting tricky, just stick to 1000 words a day and keep it moving. The amazingness will come in the rewrite later.

Good luck, Beverley! I hope this helps, and I’ll be rooting for you.

(Oh, and if you’d like an insight into the other end of the process – once the manuscript is nearly ready – you might like to read an old post of mine: What is line editing exactly? This is the one that gets the most views. It never gets any easier …)

Home and away

Today, The Look is on day 4 of its US blog tour, and I’m talking to the lovely Molli at Once Upon a Prologue. This time, it’s all about my favourite London places, which include the shoe shop that sells ACTUAL DOLLS INSIDE SHOES (check out the blog – there’s a picture) and the best ice cream parlour in London. Believe me. I know of what I speak.

Meanwhile, my copies of the US edition, as you know if you’ve been reading this blog recently, arrived in a nice cardboard box from America not too long ago, and today I performed one of my favourite rituals: adding the latest edition to my bookshelf. It now looks like this, and the shelf is nearly full. I had to remove 2 Harry Potters to make space for this one. WOO!

This is not my doing, I must add. I’ve still only written the 5 books, and one of those isn’t out yet. This is all the work of the truly wonderful Elinor Bagenal at Chicken House, who persuades lots of people in other countries to buy the books, and Rachel Hickman, who persuades people like Tammy and Mizz magazine to make special editions in the UK. They all add up and make me look much more prolific than I actually am. This can only be a good thing.

But spines are only half the story. The covers are fab too, so I took another picture:

I’m so grateful that so many people have put so much effort into making my stories available to girls (and boys, and some grown-ups) around the world. When your main job is to sit in the shed and make stuff up, what happens next is a pretty amazing thing.

Blog tour

Already it’s Day 3 of the US blog tour for The Look. I’m so enjoying this – making new blogging friends and seeing what they think of Ted and Ava.

Today I’m on Rather Be Reading, talking about literary sisters. They also have a review of The Look. Thanks, Estelle!

Yesterday, I did an interview for the lovely Aneeqah on My Not So Real Life.

Day 1 was an exclusive extract on Supernatural Snark. It was great to share Tina di Gaggia with new readers in America. Must do that again sometime!

Dutch Day (featuring Chickens)

There is something wonderful about having Barry Cunningham as your publisher. He used to dress up as a puffin (for Puffin) and travel around with Roald Dahl, talking to children about what they loved to read. Now you never quite know what he’ll think of next.

Today was Dutch Day. Barry has set up a relationship with a Dutch publishing company (The Look is coming out in Dutch in the early summer), and a selection of Dutch (and Belgian) booksellers came to Somerset to meet a selection of Chicken House authors and do a lot of chicken-related activities.

Click to view slideshow.

It was mad. It was wonderful. We got to hold the actual, real live chicken. It laid an egg, but luckily not while I was holding it. (I was worried it would – it seemed that way inclined.) The Dutch (and Belgians) were all, as we expected, fantastic. We got to play with Barry’s Wurlitzer (he has a Wurlitzer) and do readings in strange places in Barry’s house.

In the garden is the real chicken house that gave the name to the company that gave you … Threads and The Look and a bunch of other books you may have read.

At the end is a picture of St Catherine’s Hill in Frome, around the corner from the Chicken House office, where I popped in to talk typeset pages with Esther. It’s one of my favourite shopping streets – full of vintage shops, flower shops and bead shops. As if someone had known I was going to come and quickly laid on all my favourite stuff.

All in all, a good day. How can an author not be pleased when her book is arranged around a pink chicken? This author was pleased.

Books books books!

So a man knocks on the door and he’s carrying a big cardboard box. And just for once, the cardboard box is not full of internet shopping for Alex, but full of heavy things for me. And it is from Scholastic. And they are books. My books.

I love this bit.

The Look comes out in the US at the end of the week. I haven’t seen the copy since I sent the last round of changes in last summer, so it’s extra exciting to see how it looks as an actual, bound and typeset book. From the outside at least, it looks like this:

Now to see what it looks like inside …

And to sit back and wait for the reviews. They’ve just started to come in online from the US. Always very scary, as American reviewers know exactly what they want from a YA book, and they’re not afraid of saying so if they don’t get it.

As long as the reviews are accurate, I don’t mind that at all. So far, they’ve been pretty kind. There is one person who absolutely hates a character called Silas. She was kept up at night thinking how much she hated him. Which is odd, because I don’t have a character called Silas in the book. I’m not entirely sure who she was thinking of. But she was fine about everything else.

Mostly I’m just grateful that people take the time to talk about the book. It’s fabulous to have such a big blogging community, and so many ways to find out if a particular book is going to be the kind of thing you’re going to enjoy, or not. The one everyone’s talking about at the moment is The Madman’s Daughter, by Megan Shepherd. It’s based on The Island of Doctor Moreau, by HG Wells, and it looks amazing. Fabulous heronie. I may just have to check it out, once I’ve finished stroking my glossy new American covers …