Sophia Bennett's Blog, page 8

You write – competitions

I’ve been meaning to start a new competition one of these days – to celebrate the new year by getting you guys to write a story. Or at least, the start of a story. It’s still a plan, but in the meantime, here are two (count ‘em – two!) writing competitions by COOL PEOPLE, with COOL PRIZES that are really worth entering.

The first is by Liz Kessler, who’s an author I really like. I managed to get an advance copy of A Year Without Autumn, her last book, and I loved it. It has a very clever time travel element to it, some lovely characters and an aspect of the plot which will probably save lots of lives of readers and their friends and family. Literally. Really. It’s a life-saving book. And her new novel, North of Nowhere, is out next week.

The competition is run by the Guardian and you can find it here. You have to be 8-13, and you can win a digital camera and £100 worth of books for your school.

The second competition is one I’m enormously fond of. It’s the annual 500 Words competition, run by Radio 2, in association with the Hay Festival and the Telegraph. (What is it with national newspapers and cool writing competitions? I wonder if The Times runs one too. Oh yeah, it does …)

I like this comp for so many reasons. First of all, I was in Hay about three years ago when a flash Rolls Royce drove by and I was assured that Chris Evans, the Radio 2 DJ, was inside. He was visiting Hay for the first time and nobody knew what he would think of it.

Well, he loved it, just like I did. He loved it so much that he launched this competition for young writers, advertising it on his show, and last year it got over 30,000 entries. So go Chris. Woo! (The winners get their stories read out by celebs like David Walliams at Hay on Wye in the summer. But more than that, the shortlisted people will know their stories have been read by the likes of Jacqueline Wilson, Malorie Blackman, Frank Cotterell Boyce, Charlie Higson and Richard Hammond, who’s chairing the judges this year. How cool is that?)

I also like it because it’s 500 words, and that’s a fabulous number of words for a story. Difficult to squeeze it all in there, but wonderful if you can. Try it. You’ll see.

And finally, I like it because it’s for young writers, like Liz’s. As before, you have to be 13 or under (although there’s no lower age limit for this one).

So go on. Have a go. And if you’re too old for these ones, see what other competitions are out there. You never know what might happen.

After all, I entered a writing competition, and look where it got me.

Finding their spark

So why do I write what I do? Why books for girls from about 10 to 16? (Although I have to say my 90+ year-old great aunt is very nice about them.) Why do I feel as though what young teens are going through right now is so important, and that if I can have the privilege of helping, I want to try?

I came across an article in The Sunday Times last week that helped explain some of it. It was called ‘Raising girls right’ and if you’ve got access to The Times, you can read it here. It was by Steve Biddulph, based on his book ‘Raising Girls’, which is out this week. There was one section that seemed to sum it up, called ‘Help them find their spark’. Here’s an extract:

Help them find their spark

Between the ages of 10 and 14, a girl’s job is to get her roots down deep into who she is. The question is, how? Peter Benson, one of the world’s leading experts on adolescence, discovered that children and young teenagers almost always have something inside them that, if supported, gives them joy, motivation and direction. That thing is their spark.

The key to your daughter finding herself and beginning really to blossom as a person, at age 10 to 14 (or younger), might be as simple as this. Ask her: “What do you really love to do?”

Benson said there were three kinds of spark:

1 A skill or talent — for instance, to draw, write, be athletic, dance or make music.

2 A commitment — for example, to protect the natural world, to work for social justice.

3 A quality of character — a part of their personality, such as empathy, being the one who others go to talk to. Or courage — being the one who speaks up or takes the lead to get something fixed.

And reading this, I thought Wow – there you have my books, my characters, their epiphanies, what makes me dance round the house with glee when I think I’ve got it right.

It felt at first as though Benson was describing Threads. Crow has the talent for drawing, Edie has the commitment to social justice, Nonie and Jenny have strong personalities and Nonie in particular discovers, to her amazement, that she’s loyal, reliable, competent and organised. She can get things done. All the girls pool their passions and resources, work together and take charge. They make things happen and take some responsibility for the world around them. It gives them a huge, well-deserved sense of satisfaction and they’re on the way to growing up. They’ve found their spark.

In The Look, Ted finds photography, and the ability to stand up for herself, and realises that she’s a key part of her sister’s survival. In my new book, the girls find … well they find more creative talents, more inner strength and different hidden abilities they didn’t know they had. They start out as potential victims in a world that wants to exploit them, and they end up on top of it, having the time of their lives. Well, some of them do, anyway.

Did I find my spark as a teenager? Well, a bit. I wish my spark had been fashion design, or film writing, modern dance or working for the Times. They were all things I considered, tried and didn’t get as far at as I’d have liked. But some form of writing was there. I knew I had a knack for language and I was certainly encouraged. It was enough to keep me going through those tough teenage years.

My characters do better, because the books I write, though firmly set in the real world, are fairy tales. They are what I imagine to be my and my readers’ best selves. If you were a self-conscious teenage girl, and you were put in this difficult situation, what would you do? How could you possibly emerge victorious? What does it take to succeed at being you?

And the answer isn’t a boy. Boys are lovely, they really are. I like them very much. Finding the right person to share your first intimacies with is pretty fabulous if you can do it. But the thing is, if you can’t – and lots of us can’t, or didn’t – you’re still you. You can still be a success. You can still find your spark. In fact, if you find it, you’re much more likely to make all the other things, like boys and great jobs and interesting life experiences happen. But the spark is in you.

According to Steve Biddulph’s article, “Benson believes our job is to confirm and strengthen our child’s spark, to blow on it and help ignite it.”

And that, in a nutshell, is why I write.

Happy New Year!

Hmm 13, huh?

I gather Taylor Swift is thrilled. It’s her lucky number, apparently. She loved it when Times Square was full of 13s on New Year’s Eve. (Do we believe the whole her and Harry thing, by the way? I want to, but if this is what Taylor looks like when she’s madly in love, what does she look like when she’s at a business meeting? Still waiting to be convinced.)

Anyway, this is not about Tay-Ry, or Har-Lor, or whatever they are these days. This is about the new year – 2013 – which I approached with trepidation after what was not my most favourite year of all time (the rain, the recession, friends’ sad stories, my own troubles writing the new book, the rain …). Would things get worse? Would 13 live up to its reputation? But so far, a whole week in (nearly), this year is turning out to be Good.

First of all, the fireworks on the Thames. They were epic. Awesome. A wonderful reminder of the Olympics (2012 wasn’t all bad), and a great start. Then the first edit of the troublesome book. The idea for ‘You Don’t Know Me’ came to me out of the blue in January last year. What if a group of girls were on a reality TV show and they were asked to drop one of them for … reasons they didn’t fully understand. What if they actually did it? What if there was a huge public backlash, with the internet turning on them, the way the internet does these days? What would happen then?

I thought it would be easy to write. I pitched it to the people at Chicken House and they loved it. I was struggling with the idea I was supposed to be working on for them, so I switched to this. Reader, it took 8 months to get a first draft, and 8 months is a long time, when you expected it to be 3. Then the second draft. Still really, really hard. The characters and situations fought me all the way. Then, finally, I got it to the stage where it was almost ready to be sent to my editor Imogen, but not quite. I sent it anyway. Otherwise, it was never going to get finished, and deadlines were looming.

That was in December, less than a month ago. 2012 was tough. Aware of the tight deadlines, Imogen got to work on it straight away, sending it back to me in sections. I’d planned to take the children’s Christmas holidays off, so I could do things with them, but kindly emails from Imogen reminded me that we really needed to get moving, so I had to get into gear very quickly after that lovely New Year’s Eve.

And suddenly, without warning, things started to flow. Within a week, I was nearly half way through the edit, and the first half of the book was the hard part. Sections which had seemed nigh-on impossible came together with ease. Characters fleshed themselves out. Scenes and images that refused to fit before suddenly fell into place. I looked forward to writing, rather than dreading it. And I still fitted trips to The Hobbit and Windsor Castle. The children weren’t entirely neglected.

I learned a lot last year. I learned that writing professionally involves doing it when you can’t do it, struggling through when your brain is telling you you’re hopeless, that it’s not working, that you’re wasting your time. It involves writing anyway – somehow getting words onto the page. I’m proud of what I did last year, even though it took me so long, and my poor long-suffering husband had to put up with so many days of me telling him it wasn’t working. Reader, I wrote a book, in the face of a lack of confidence, and now I’m turning it into the story I always wanted to tell.

I learned in the last few days what many writers and dramatists already know – that your first draft can sometimes be a voyage of discovery. It’s a living, breathing, process, an argument, an imperfect sketch, adapting as it goes, a map. It is not what I like to imagine writing to be, which is simply the telling of the story in my head, like a straightforward dictation.

I love the story that Sophie Kinsella tells, of one reader saying to her ‘How can you only write one book a year? Would it help speed things up if I typed for you as you went along?’ I laughed when I heard it, because I knew writing wasn’t like that – and yet I still felt it should be. Now I will be less demanding of my first draft: get it down, get it out there. Accept that it’s not perfect. By the time it’s done, it will tell you what kind of book it wants to be. Writing is re-writing. That’s how it goes.

The confidence thing is interesting. In order to write at all – in a market where over 100,000 books are published each year – you need huge, overweening belief in your own ability. And yet, in order to write well you need a certain humility, the ability to accept the right criticism, the willingness to work on your weak points. Finding the balance is like walking a tightrope and quite often we wobble and fall off.

Anyway, for the first week of 2013, I’m back on it. The edit’s going OK. The deadline looks reachable, just. (If I make it, look out for the new book in May.) The next book is neatly lined up behind, 10,000 words already in the bag, ready to go. The stock market has just gone over 6000, which means much of the irrational despair of the financial markets has been replaced by an equally irrational optimism, which I much prefer. Assad may soon fall in Syria, and it’s always nice to imagine that he won’t be replaced by local dictators, or gang warfare. Across India, people – men and women alike – are standing up for women’s rights. The rainfall turned out to be record-breaking, which means it may not be so bad this year. Some of those friends whose problems were so weighty last year already have good news to share.

New year, new start. Happy 2013! I hope, I sincerely hope, it’s good for us all.

Take Five

RIP Dave Brubeck. You were a fabulous jazz musician and composer. Take Five, by your quartet, is one of my quintessential favourite jazz pieces. Every time I hear it, it makes me want to wear a black poloneck and serious glasses, live on the Left Bank in Paris (not that you did – you were Californian, but you were still cool in a French intellectual way) and talk about Sartre. I still don’t really understand the time signature. But it sounds amazing.

Anyway, five. Five. It’s a big number.

There is something about having written five books. My new one, You Don’t Know Me, is currently being edited by the wonderful Imogen Cooper at Chicken House, and is due to come out in May (as long as I can do the rewrites in time).

Five.

New look

My husband is about to launch a new blog, so we’ve been experimenting with themes. I found this one and I think it makes my blog look more intriguing. Any thoughts? I’d love to know if you prefer the new way, or the old way, or something different altogether …

How long does it take to write a book?

Every month, on the 21st, I write a blog post for GirlsHeartBooks. Today it’s all about how long it takes to write that book …

 

The next big thing Part 2 (CJ Skuse)

When I did my last next big thing post, one of the writers I tagged to write about her work in progress was CJ Ckuse, who’s a fellow writer of mine at Chicken House.

CJ has done a post about her fascinating WIP (It’s about dead bodies. In bits. Being used to make the perfect boyfriend. Woo!) but she doesn’t yet have a website of her very own, so I’ve offered to host it for her.

Take it away, CJ …

 

What is the title of your next book?

Dead Romantic

 

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Several places really. One was me walking to work one day and passing a graveyard and the phrase ‘teen grave robbers’ just leapt into my brain and clung on until I threw it a rope and forced it into a story. And then I started to think about these two teenagers who build the perfect boyfriend using corpses; a female take on the John Hughes movie ‘Weird Science,’ which was one of my favourite movies as a kid. The writers who got there first with the idea of corpse reanimation though were of course Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stephenson and H.P. Lovecraft. I’m merely piggy backing on their ideas and having a bloody good laugh as I do it.

 

What genre does your book fall under?

YA black comedy fiction for sick minds, I would say.

 

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

The same actors who I imagined playing them initially when I started writing them really. Camille and Damian are pretty much Pandora and Cook from Skins (S3/4) (Lisa Backwell and Jack O’Connell), Damian’s best mate Louis is Josh Hutcherson and Zoe is Frances Bean Cobain.

 

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Two teenage girls attempt to build the perfect boyfriend using dead body parts.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Neither, it’ll just be published by The Chicken House, as my previous two books were.

 

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

All memories of that first draft have had to be electronically lasered from my spotless mind as they were too traumatic to recall, but I would hazard a guess at six months. That’s usually the amount of time it takes me to get my scribbles together and do my research which, this time around, included leaving a raw pork chop in the garage for two weeks to see what a dead body smelled like. And take it from me, it smells RANK!

 

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I have absolutely no idea who else writes like me. I have a sick, sick, sick sense of humour. I’m not proud of myself.

 

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Having high expectations of guys, having high expectations of friends, wanting to know what a pork chop would smell like if I left it in the garage for two weeks.

 

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I think it’ll teach you a lot about what not to do when looking for love, when choosing your friends, or when trying to secretly transport severed limbs around the British countryside.

The next big thing

I was tagged to be a part of this meme by the totally lovely Keris Stainton, whose own version appeared last Wednesday. (It’s a Wednesday thing.) It’s an opportunity to talk about a work in progress – which is what’s been distracting me from blogging recently, sorry. So here’s a little bit about what I’m writing at the moment …

What is the titl e of your next book?

A bit of an exclusive, this, but we recently agreed on the title of this book – and it will be ‘You Don’t Know Me’.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

It’s about four girls in a girl band who enter an online talent show, and what happens when they’re encouraged to drop their most talented singer, who happens to be ‘not just large but large‘. What follows involves cyber bullying, but not in the way you might think. I guess it’s pretty clear where the idea came from: I spend a lot of time online and watch too much TV. I also have teenagers who are practically surgically attached to their phones.

What genre does your book fall under?

YA contemporary. It’s taken me four years of writing to know that ‘YA contemporary’ is a thing – but it is, and I’m currently writing in it.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?                      

At the moment they’re too embedded in my imagination for me to picture real actors playing them. But one of them has more than a hint of Adele.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

One mistake … A million haters.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Funnily enough, neither. I don’t currently have an agent, but I have a great relationship with my publisher at Chicken House, Barry Cunningham. He kind of bought the idea before I officially offered it to him. Very nice man, Barry.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

About six months of hard work, after a couple of months of not really being able to get into it. Sometimes, you just have to believe in the idea and keep going.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I haven’t read any quite like it – which doesn’t mean to say they’re not out there. One of the writers I admire, and have in mind when I’m writing the characters, is Ally Carter, who writes the Gallagher Girls spy series. Not that you’d necessarily guess when you read the stories side by side.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

We’re constantly surrounded by talent shows, online bullying problems and body image issues. They just all came together in one story for me. (People may think the story was partly inspired by Little Mix, but actually, it wasn’t – I didn’t really watch that particular series of X Factor. However, a lot of the issues are there.)

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Sasha, the narrator, does a mean impression of Kate Bush singing ‘Wuthering Heights’. The girls’ good luck phrase is ‘seminal leotards’. It features not one, but two iPhones, and a video of some of the girls being chased by Star Wars Lego Clone Troopers. I mean, how could it not be interesting?

My five (actually three) writers for next Wednesday are:

Rachel Ward

CJ Skuse

Sarah Webb

Thanks, guys, for agreeing to do this. Look out for them on their blogs next week!

All the fun of the book fair

The Edinburgh International Book Fair started on Saturday. While the Royal Mile was packed with people on stilts, jugglers and Hamlet in mime (I’m making that last bit up, but it could have happened …), not too far away in Charlotte Square, a lot of booky people were gathering in tents to talk about … books.

I took my son Freddie again, because while I’m an enthusiastic reader, he’s a VORACIOUS reader, and he enjoys the whole thing even more than I do. This year, he got books signed by Philip Reeve and Andy Mulligan and, just as we were leaving, we got to have a little chat with Andy Stanton. I also got to witness the ineffable sight of Julia Donaldson (The Gruffalo) signing next to AC Grayling (The Good Book). And I had a fan photo (I was the fan) taken next to AC Grayling. It’s that kind of festival.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I wore The Shoes.

I’d been invited to do a ‘Catwalk to Jumble Sales’ thing with Sarra Manning, the author of the very wonderful Adorkable. Although we’ve both done this kind of thing before, we were a bit nervous. Would we pick the right readings? Would it pelt with rain? Would the fact that Cathy Cassidy was talking in the tent next door (a much bigger one) mean that nobody would come and see us?

I took lots of pictures. Here’s how the weekend unfolded …

The Olympic Park had Games Makers. Waverley Station in Edinburgh had an enormous, icing-covered chocolate cookie. Worked for me.

Charlotte Square, where it all happens. In the sunshine. Nobody could quite believe the sun was actually shining, but it really was.

My favourite booky deckchair.

The audience for Jacqueline Wilson’s talk the day before. She had a slightly bigger tent than us …

She was quite brilliant. I was a fan before, and I’m still a fan now. If she wasn’t already a Dame, I’d be arguing that she should be.

Edinburgh from my hotel room. Posh hotel room. Posh view. Happy writer.

We’d bought loads of books. Needless to say.

Back at the festival. You know you’ve made it as a writer when you get your own, dedicated loo.

It went fine! Sarra and I both really enjoyed ourselves, anyway. There were lots of fab readers in the audience, lots of questions, lots of encouragement from us both to go out, experiment and take on the world (and to read How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran in the process). We both brought outfits to show – including the actual dress that Sarra describes at the beginning of Adorkable. And afterwards, we got to meet the girls – and librarians – from the truly wonderful Glitz Lit programme to get girls reading in South West Edinburgh. It’s inspirational, and I’ll be telling everyone about it. And not only because it includes Sarra’s book and two of mine.

This was Katie’s bag. Katie didn’t have a book for us to sign, so we signed her bag. This is my signature next to Derek Landy’s from last year. Wooooooooooo! The illustration is Derek’s version of Harry Potter, apparently. (Actually, it looks more like Derek to me.)

So, all in all, it was good. Very good. Big thank you to Janet and Hannah and Lorna (who chaired our event) and everyone else who looked after us and made us welcome. Thank you, Edinburgh! I hope I’ll be seeing you again.

 

Girl Outside – Competition winners

In July, the competition was to design a book cover. And as always, you made it really tough for me. There were so many great entries. The prizes were a signed copy of The Look, and a copy of Adorkable, by Sarra Manning, who’s talking with me at the Edinburgh Festival next Sunday.

It took me ages to decide, but in the end, the winner of The Look was Amber, from The Mile Long Bookshelf. I love the colours in this picture, and the suggestion of adventure, and the truly great strapline. Straplines are really hard to do (as I know from bitter experience), so I was very impressed with this one. Congratulations, Amber!

The winner of Adorkable was Hannah Bowstead. I loved the simple graphics of this cover, and the style reminded me a bit of one of my favourites – A Necklace of Raindrops, by Joan Aiken, illustrated by the amazing Jan Pienkowski. Plus, the boots. Loving the boots. Well done, Hannah.

And finally, an honourable mention goes to Sara Coggin, whose blog, Box of Things, is also worth a look for its beautiful photographs. This drawing captures the spirit of my other books, I think. Loving the handbag, and the bowtie, and the fact that her head is missing. Intriguing! I’ll be sending Sara a signed postcard.

Thank you to all of you who entered. It was great fun to judge, and I hope you enjoyed it too. I’ll be putting these entries up on the Threadsthebook website, so look out for them there.