Writing retreat - Writing and thinking

Last weekend just gone I went to a writing retreat in W Sussex. It was the annual SCBWI retreat. I always find it v productive and I did this time, as well as a lot of thinking about what I want to write for children. Over the weekend I wrote the first three chapters of the third in the Rainbow School series, which is Susie's story, and a short story for a competition and the prequel to Susie. I don't know how many words I wrote as I didn't count them, but I reckon it must be at least 3-4000. That was what I wrote. So what thinking did I do? Well, it was all about my fiction for children and the books about children with Asperger's. I mentioned what I was writing to my new friend, Anna (Hi, Anna) who I met at Waterloo station to go to the retreat and she suggested putting all this fiction under a brand. It got me thinking. Then over the weekend, I talked to a few people about what I was currently writing and planning and got loads of encouragement, and someone said that it was a good idea to help children learn about Asperger's and cope with their own diagnosis. This made me realise that what I am doing can be really good, both for children and me. I started thinking about all the other books I have planned, and thought, yes I can make the children autistic by remembering my own childhood and use those memories. As well as buying books about Asperger's for children and families and biographies (have planned to buy Chris Packham's book). So, I have decided that is what I am going to do, starting with the Rainbow School series. I will have one big name called The Asperkids books, which I will put on my website, and under that have the title of each series. I am looking forward to doing this, and maybe do talks about it, too.

The other encouragement I got was from YA author Melvin Burgess. I had a one-to-one with him and he had read the first two chapters of Billy, and he said he really liked Billy, felt for him and enjoyed the story. He gave me a suggestion to put at the end of the story which I will do.

So, watch this space...

My Writing Diary - so far

So what have I been writing and how far have I got? Here is my writing news:

I have now emailed the pocket novel to my editor to edit for me. The plan is that when I get it back, if there are changes to make in the first three chapters, I will do those first then email those with the synopsis to the My Weekly Pocket Novel editor. Then I will start on the rest of the ms.

The quirky short story went out to Take a Break's Fiction Feast. Meanwhile, I got a rejection for the story I sent them in December. This has now gone to another magazine.

I have finished the ghost story for the Writing Magazine short story competition. Seems I might have sent it to them for another competition a few years ago, but I am still going to send it and see what happens. It is all printed out, ready to fill in the form and cheque to put with it.

I have finally got round to writing the story I started at the Women's Weekly workshop last month. It is now over 600 words, so getting near to the count of 1000, which is what I want it to be.

I have finished the current draft of the mermaid story and am now highlighting verbs. Lots of smiling going on. Lol. I shall go through those and either change or cut them out. Then I shall highlight all repeated words such as 'and'. Then the final edit will be to read through it.

I have also emailed the first 2 chapters and synopsis to the organiser of the SCBWI retreat, for the one to one with Melvin Burgess. Yes, he of 'Junk' fame. Can't wait for that, as those books are close to my heart.

In my author client world, I met my client yesterday and he has given me a few changes, inc the title of the book to do, which I will work on tomorrow. I shall then post them to him to check, he will do that and post back to me, so I can email them to the illustrator.

So, that is what has been happening in my writing world. I mainly have 2 of my own projects on the go, and my author client's.

Writing diary - Week 4

I wasn't going to write this until next week but fellow womag writer, Jackie Sayle, wanted to know where it is. Here it is, a bit later than planned. I'm starting it from Sunday 24 January (where did that month go?)

Sunday - Worked on the pocket novel. It is now 45,680 words. Getting there.
Also worked on the Xmas story, and it went up to 1515 words. Was told that that is an awkward word count to have for womags so thought I'd cut it to 1200.

Monday - I booked and paid a deposit for the SCBWI writing retreat this year. Can't wait. I get so much writing done during that weekend. Plan to write short stories, start another children's ebook and maybe do some colouring and drawing.

Tuesday - Worked on Xmas story. Cut it down to 1298 words. Put it on the short story blog for comments.
Worked on pocket novel, word count up to 46,078. Feel like I can reach that 50K now.

Wednesday - Author client work day today. Read my client's picture book no 2. Words are simple enough for 5-7s. Emailed lists about plot and what it isn't, with exercise. If you wish to get these ideas and inspiration why not sign up to my newsletter at http://eepurl.com/bwuQav

Thursday - Must have worked on pocket novel and story but it's blank in my planner. I think that was the day I got to read the comments on my Xmas story and they were frank and honest. I am grateful for them, as a couple of them gave me ideas straight away on how to improve the story. It is now a ghost story not a magical one. Had been reading how to write ghost stories by Kathleen McGurl who used to write womag stories. Got an idea from that, too. Reading and analysing more Take a Break's Fiction Feast mag now. Feel that is the first mag I want to get accepted by, even if they are the one mag that keeps all copyright of your story.

Friday - Worked on pocket novel and finished that draft. Hurrah. Now comes to 47,111 words. Still have a few thousand to go, so have decided to create scenes where the heroine chats to her work colleage about her new boyfriend and the romance.

Saturday - Worked on another writing exercise for the ebook I plan to publish later this year. These ones were for children's authors and I enjoyed writing them, that I have now decided to focus on writing for children as my main area of writing from this year. That will be the next post on here.

So that is my writing week just gone. Next time I will post about my diary in a couple of weeks as I plan to do it fortnightly from now on.

SCBWI Writing Retreat - What I wrote

The weekend of Friday 8 May I went on a writing retreat at Dunford House in W Sussex, which was organised by SCBWI. It was the third or fourth time I've been there. I enjoy it there because it 's so peaceful that I get lots of writing done. Here is what I got up to over that weekend.

It started for me on the Friday evening when I had a one-to-one with author Sally Nicholls. She had read the first two chapters of Charlie and gave me her feedback. The main point she said was to make Charlie more interesting so the readers would want to read more about him and not think, so what about him. Within half an hour of this feedback, I got ideas. One of which relates to what happens to him throughout the book. It so happened that in one of Sally's workshops she said to think about what you already have for your character if you get stuck.

Saturday morning I started my fifth and final YA fantasy (my Guardian Angels series), which I am calling at the moment 'The Fire Angels'. That time I wrote 960 words. In the afternoon I began revisions on Charlie. I was planning to start a third book in my Asperkids series, but after the feedback from Sally I changed my mind. Also that afternoon, I wrote out an outline for my author service to do personally and an on-line, and sketched some angels. Sketched is the loose term for them. I put speech bubbles with them to make them resonate with my website HopewithJulie.

There were workshops by Sally and an agent, but I shall put what I learnt in another post. I didn't go to the talks by the agent and the editor.

Sunday - I wrote more of my Angel ebook, this time it was 1085 words. I also wrote more revisions to Charlie, and I wrote a short story (773 words), which I shall start expanding later this week. It is aimed at Yours.

Monday - there was time in the morning before we all said goodbye to do more writing if we wished. I did wish as I was caught up in what I was writing for my Angel ebook. So I wrote more of that. It came out to be over 600 words.

Next post will be all that I learnt from Sally.

SCBWI Masterclass on School Visits

Last Saturday I went to Charing Cross for the workshop on School Visits by Jane Clarke. This is going to be a summary of what I learnt because I can't give away all of Jane's secrets. So here we go.

First it was the business side of visits.
Jane gave us handouts of sheets that showed what correspondence to schools were like, and what invoices should be like.
Get your promotional tools together. Have a pack to give to libraries and groups.
Jane makes her own bookmarks.
She ran free school workshops until she was felt confident and competent enough to do them for money.
She mentioned to belong to a few websites that specialise in school visits, such as Contact an Author.
You do need insurance for visits, esp if you are visiting little ones, in case you accidentally hit a child. But you don't need CRB for one-off visits. If you are a regular visitor, then the school will get it for you.
Do what is comfortable for you. Be yourself.
Take blue-tak.
Enthuse the children to write and draw. Get them to have ideas.
Be nice.
Have a back-up workshop in case they have already done a similar subject to yours.

We had lunch. I had burger and chips (no bun).

Then it was more about the visits and sharing our ideas.
Put props on floor.
I shared my idea of what I do for my mermaid workshop for 9-12 year olds (Year 5&6). Jane later told me that she liked my idea.
We asked questions. I asked about indie authors. Jane said to just ask, esp if local. I also asked about special needs. Jane said that she has come across special needs children. They are guided by their teaching assistants. To ask the teacher to represent pupil if they want to talk.

So, what did I learn? Basically, I feel that I need to work more with children in libraries before I think about wanting to visit schools. I got a couple of ideas for mermaid workshops I could try out at different libraries. Oh, and to get a promo pack in place for libraries and other groups.

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Writing for educational and non-fiction publishers

On Tuesday night I went to Piccadilly Circus to the SCBWI Professional Series talk about writing for educational and non-fiction publishers. It is an area I hadn't really thought about approaching but things do change as you will read from this blog. I met Anita and David in Costa Coffee for a bite to eat before the talk. Thankfully they found the right place, despite me giving the wrong coffee name to them on FB. Oops. I did get right where it was - opposite the church. Anyway, here is what I learnt.

The panel was made up of Anita Loughrey who writes educational fiction and non-fiction and Louie Stowell who works and writes for Usborne.

For authors who are starting out in this area, do sent an email/letter to publishers you are interested in writing for, saying you are available for their type of work. Do research the publishers first, though, so you can get a feel for what they write and a feel for their tone of writing. Anita said that now is the best time to get into educational publishing because there is a new curriculum and teachers are still getting used to it. You can download it by Googling it. If you are still not sure how to proceed, Anita suggested asking a teacher for help in writing the book.

Louie writes for Fiction Express. She has written interactive stories for Years 3-4 and Years 5-6. Years 3-4 are 1000 words a chapter, and 5-6 2000 a chapter. It is very quick and you have to interact on a blog with the children, and when they choose the ending of one chapter you only have a couple of days to write the next one. She also writes for Box of Frogs and mentioned Me Books, like Choose Your Adventure books. She said that when you write for these publishers, you have to have your idea thought out as much as possible, know the title, format of it and the name of the illustrator you wish to work with.

For picture books, you have to be v specific. You have to have illustrator notes on each spread. You should find out the background of the publisher and what interests them.

For non-fiction - it is best if you know lots on the subject you want to write about. Anita has written for Discovery Books and got a flat fee. She also mentioned a forum with lots of info called Nibweb. it is best to look at educational publishers who are free to being pitched. Anita mentioned Walker Books, QED and Hopscotch.  Look at publishers lists and find a gap, then pitch. Keep an eye on what will happen in a few years to come eg events and celebrations.

You can write to charities with your CV and ask if they want writers for books for their purpose. Get your name out there. Find charities who have the money, though. Write less than you need to. Look at who and what you know.

There was questions at the end and one question by someone else got me thinking about this area of writing. She asked about publishers who were interested in writing about special needs and mentioned Asperger's Syndrome. Louie mentioned a name and said that if we came to her at the end, she'd give us her card and if we emailed her she'd send us details. This is what I did, because I got excited and decided I wanted to write about AS and other things I know about. So, yesterday morning I emailed Louie. She got back to me and wrote that she will get in touch with her contact, and ask her to contact me. So I am an excited bunny. I feel that this is one way to get published traditionally, and especially if it's about something I know about and can feel make a difference to children. We shall wait and see....

Making a living as a writer

On Wednesday evening I went to a talk by Jane Clarke and Lorna Ferguson about making a living as a writer for children. I suppose some of this can be said for writing for adults too.

Money - Jane gets most of her income from school visits, and Lorna gets hers from teaching English.

Opportunities - Jane has an agent. It was her agent who sent her the outline for the Dinosaur Cove series, and as Jane loves dinosaurs she said yes. She tried for it and got through to the second round. As she is someone who does what edits she's told to do, she did that and got through. You can register your interest with Working Partners, whom she works with for the Dinosaur series, and Hothouse. She said that her word limit for writing for other people is 10,000. For Early Readers you must have an agent, as they come with a secrecy code.
Lorna - With her consultancy Fictionfire, she said that in theory it works but not in practice, esp if she has lots of courses to do. She has written in the middle of the night. She has fallen asleep watching the news, then wakes up and gets a second wind to write. Sets targets of words.

Making Money - How long before made money? Jane said 5 years = 8 books before she went full-time. It was working part-time in a library before that.
Lorna gave us some statistics from the Society of Authors in 2007. Then advances were no more than £5000 and in instalments in 3 parts. And then you have to earn those out. Hardback = 10% paperback = 5%. ALCS reported that median income was £4000. The top 10% of authors got more than 10% and the bottom 10% got less than 10%. (Made me think - I want to stick to being an indie author). Lorna also said that she wants to write as most do fro the freedom to write more. Said be realistic. Her main income comes from Fictionfire.

Need support - Jane said hard to answer as her husband died 11 years ago but left her life insurance so she could pay the mortgage. Lorna said she does get support from her husband as he believes in her and is behind Fictionfire. He's the first person to read her work.

I think I will continue this post tomorrow. So see you then.