Writer's block or something else?

 Now that I am back to writing short children's fiction again, I got thinking about the book I was trying to rewrite last year and got stuck on half way through. Was it writer's block or something else? I had plotted it out chapter by chapter but still got stuck. I decided to leave it and concentrate on another book I was writing because of my health issues back then. After reading lots of children's books (for research) I have come to the conclusion it wasn't writer's block that stopped me but maybe I had made the plot too long and complicated. I was adding different things to it about eating healthily and what food intolerances can do along with magic but maybe now I just need to think of simpler things to put in it. I will go back to working on that story again but probably not this year, maybe next year. I want to concentrate on the new series I am writing now, which I am enjoying doing. 

So, if you are getting stuck with your wip, then have a think about it? Is the plot too long? Too complicated? If you find it complicated, so will the reader. Can you make it simpler? I am going to try when I get back to it.

In the meantime, have fun writing whatever you are on.

Turning a negative into a positive

Over the last weekend I finally published my new children's fiction book 'Billy and the Sparkling Socks' to Createspace. There were a few problems I had to sort out in the process, from discovering they don't accept 2-page spreads to cover problems, but I got there. But when I looked at what it would now look like according to their fixed PDF version, it didn't come out as I really wanted. How? I have small illustrations at the start and end of each chapter, and a few of the end ones appeared on separate pages. I tried to fix it by working it out but soon realised that it had to be like that. I wasn't happy with that as it wasn't ideal looking to me. But then I got thinking...the extra blank pages and space would be ideal for children if they wanted to draw their own socks or rainbows in the book, although the book is mainly for reading not drawing in. It has given me an idea for the rest of the series.

Cover reveal, I hope. Here is a link to the cover for Billy on Createspace. (Hope it works).

https://tsw.createspace.com/title/6528252

I really like it, and I hope children do too.

It is the first in a number of series of children's books about children with Asperger's and autism who find magic that teaches them how to be more confident and communicative.

Boring Billy - the inspiration

I thought as a way of promoting my new children's series The Rainbow School it would be good to post about the inspiration behind the stories. In Boring Billy, Billy likes literacy and making up stories but he can't tell them so they sound exciting enough. The inspiration behind this one is me, when I was at primary school. I loved English, as it was called back then, and I liked making up stories. I remember in secondary school that I used to get high marks for my writing in English, and the highest mark you could get was an A+. If you got three then you got a star.

I remember in one English lesson at primary school we had to write a story. Can't remember if it had to be on a theme or not. I wrote a true story about how I was coming down the stairs at home, heard a noise and thought it was a ghost or something scary. So I went faster, ending slipping down the stairs on my back, hurting myself. Turned out the noise was a pigeon. LOL. Wasn't funny at the time, but can laugh about it now. Anyway, my teacher liked my story enough to want me to read it out to the class. I said no, being shy with Asperger's (not that I knew it was that at the time). My teacher read it out herself in the end.

So, my liking for writing stories is what inspired me to write Billy and his love of literacy and making up stories. Because of his strange school socks taking him to a magical world where he sees himself as a confident storyteller, Billy turns into a great and funny storyteller himself, making his class laugh as he acts out his stories.

What inspiration is there behind your books?

Me, Asperger's and primary school

Following on from my last post about a workshop on group dynamics, I thought I would write about what the group I was in at primary school was like. I told the interview group in the workshop this, and I think I might include this in a memoir as part of my Asperkids series of books. Here goes:

At primary school I was very quiet. I went round with two other girls, whom I shall called J and K. One was white, the other black. The white girl I felt was the leader of the two. When I was with them, they wanted me to do things with them, their way, and it included some not nice things. Wanting to be friends with them I went along and did them. When I was on my own, I used to either be on my own and do other things such as dance or play recorder, or play with the younger children. Looking back now, I don't think they liked me doing things on my own without them, so they made me stop going do barn dancing, which I liked, and stopped me playing recorder, which again I liked and was good at. (I remember playing the theme tune to Match of the Day).

I only saw the white girl only once or twice after we left primary school as she went to another secondary school as me, but the black girl went to the same secondary school but was in another group.

The above incidences I still remember all these years later, and I will put them in my children's series 'The Rainbow School' as things to happen to the main characters but something good will come out of it for them.

So, there you have one group dynamic I belonged to. Because of my Asperger's, I just tagged along with others, wanting to be friends with them.