Joe Craig's Blog, page 5

A Writer's Research

Here's an interview that rather grandly talks about my "research techniques". I wasn't aware of having any techniques, really, just some "things that I do". The people at Writers' Forum Magazine were kind enough to show an interest and here's a picture of the resulting interview...





I enjoy interviews. I might resurrect my popular series, "Answers to Somebody Else's Interview Questions". For now, I hope you enjoy my thoughts on how I research the Jimmy Coates books.



And if you're very ob...

"If you put me in charge of the country..."

A journalist called Carlotta Eden has interview me for her website. I didn't expect her to type up all my verbal tics and rambling gibberish, but she did and I think the world is richer for it.



Read the full interview here:



http://themaninmybrain.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/interview-joe-craig-author-of-jimmy.html

Story Shapes

There's a particular poster I've seen on classroom walls around the world. It's not always exactly the same, but it shows the same thing: the shape of a story.



Usually, the poster shows some kind of roller-coaster. And that roller-coaster always follows the same shape. It looks a bit like this:









This is a terrible shape for a story.



I said this at a lovely school I visited recently and once I explained why, within a few minutes the teachers removed the poster. Impressive. If you ha...

"Synonyms for said?!" he said...

There's a great twitter account that provides resources to help primary school teachers with creative writing lessons. One of their latest tweets caught my eye. You'll find it here: https://twitter.com/tesPrimary/status/287946810478174209 but if you can't be bothered to click through that's OK, it's a link to a teaching resource called...



"Synonyms for 'said'"



I've seen this kind of thing in classrooms all over the world. Otherwise brilliant teachers go crazy when kids use the wor...

Letter to Year 4

I've been hanging out on twitter (where all the worst people waste all their best time) and a teacher (Mr Walker) asked whether I could write an email to his Year 4 class. So I did. Here's what I wrote:






HELLO MR
WALKER’S YEAR FOUR CLASS.






Hi.






I’m a writer.
But I wasn’t always a writer. At school I was a bit of a muppet, then I became a
university student (which I was OK at if you include all the fun stuff), then I
became a musician (which is what I’d always wanted to be, apart fro...

Monkey Wearing Glasses

I don't know how you found my blog. Were you searching for 'bald baby monkey'? Somebody was. And somebody else found this blog by searching for 'typed monkey'.



I don't even know what a typed monkey is. An old-fashioned version of a word processor monkey?



And if that were that, then, as they say, that would be that. But it's not.



Because more than one person - in fact SEVERAL PEOPLE - found this blog by searching for 'monkey wearing glasses'.



I can't help feeling I've let my readers down....

The Chinese Massage

I've discovered that my bravery extends exactly as far as my ignorance. If I have no idea what a thing is, I will probably be up for it. This is why I must say to you here and now: if you're ever offered a Chinese Massage... woah mamma, that hurts. A small Chinese man called John has delved into my very soul with just his thumbs and plucked out my innocence.



First was the pain. I've never been good with pain. And through the pain was the wonder that any human man could have thumbs so strong....

Questions From China

I am still in China.



So far this week, the students at the International School of Beijing have been mind-blowingly brilliant. In particular, their questions have impressed me. Here are a few highlights, none of which had any context and all of which came from students in Grades 4, 5 or 6:



- Do you like Victorian justice?

- What do you think of the phrase "demonic frenzy"?

- Do you use hair gel?

- What's the tallest you've ever been?

- What happens when shampoo explodes?

- Have you ever flo...

All the Cheese in China, with added jetlag

It's about 5.20am in China. I know this because I'm in a Beijing hotel room, snacking on my usual 5.20am cheese.



It's a very nice comté I had in my bag for the plane journey over here. Didn't finish the comté on the plane because I also had a packet of Parma ham and some figs.



Now I'm wondering whether I really do have cheese at 5.20 every morning. Everything is a little foggy. It feels right. Yes, cheese now feels very right.



But it also feels right to go to bed. Strange. And then agai...

New 'Joe Craig Facebook' Thingy Address, Like, Thing

Just a quick announcement so we can all keep things tidy and ticketyboo.



My facebook fanpage has a new address. I am no longer at the old one, but at the far more lovely and streamlined:



https://www.facebook.com/joecraiguk




The content is exactly the same. It's the same page. Nothing has changed. It's like the same house but I've pinned a prettier number to the front door. With blu-tak.