Let's have a little chat about formatting shall we?

Please notice the formatting
This is a random page selected for the
extraordinary book The Polar Bear Explorer's Club
by Alex Bell

I spend a lot of my time looking at manuscripts, whether it is submissions by students or aspiring writers. What amazes me time and time again is how few of them bother to format it properly. I really don't understand it because it means when they do have to submit it to an agent they will have to spend hours and hours re-formatting it. It must be so frustrating and it is all time they could save by making a few changes right at the beginning. If people could just get into the habit of when starting a document immediately set it out as if it was a book automatically.

Have a look at the photo opposite. This is a random page taken from The Polar Bear Explorer's Club, an excellent book, which just happened to be by my side. Have you noticed, the paragraphs are indented. There are no line breaks between paragraphs unless for a specific reason. Also, there are wide margins to make allowances for binding but when editing it is for editors to make comments! All easy and simple things to do - you'd think wouldn't you...

How wrong you could be and how rarely I see it like that.

Before you come back at me and say that Word's default is to automatically put an extra line in when you press return. I know, but you can override that by going to 'Paragraph' at the top and clicking on the box 'Don't add extra line'.

Irritatingly but blogger won't allow me to use tabs so I can't illustrate using this blog to show what it should look like - gotta love technology. However, you want your manuscript to look as much like a book as you can. It also makes it easier for your editor to read. It gives a sense of what it looks like and how the white space works. People often forget about the white space but it can be just as important.

HOWEVER, also before you say it to me I know a book is single line spaced. YOUR manuscript should not be. It MUST be double line spaced, again so it is easy for us, as editors and for you when you are self-editing.

Oh I feel so much better for having got that off my chest. Happy writing peeps ;-)

Found this song during a student's exercise last week. It is called 'Would you be so kind?'

Creativity - where do your ideas come from?

Where do your ideas come from Ness?

Where do your ideas come from? As writers, this is a question we are so often asked and, I am sure if you had a group of writers together they would all come up with many different answers. We all have our own ways to feed our creativity ensuring that those ideas keep flowing.

For example, Flight came about because I am passionate about the Second World War as both my parents were part of it and I was brought up listening to their stories. Plus I asked a question, I wanted to know what happened to the Spanish Riding School during the Second World War. I asked Google and some wonderful snippets of information came up including details of Operation Cowboy. The seed of a story began to grow and grow. It soon formed into the story that is now Flight.

I believe this is from National Geographic

For me, a lot of ideas come from questions like that, or from pictures such as the image on the left, which was the one that inspired my PhD novel, Ham and Jam. Ideas might also come from past events in my life or memories. While a previous novel Disjointed was based on something I was interested in at that time - cannabis psychosis. Working on that inspired my PhD.

All of these things are reliant on one thing and that is being curious. A writer must want to know about the world they live in. As Csikszentmihalyi suggests 'sustaining high levels of curiosity is the starting point of creativity.' Being curious therefore leads to increased creativity enabling you to write more.

I have a notebook where I write down all my ideas as they come to me so that when I have finished a manuscript I can look at this book to see what I am going to work on next. This is because ideas don't wait for you to finish a book. They can come along at the most inconvenient moments so it is important to have somewhere to store them.

I like to feed my curiosity and creativity by doing different things and occasionally challenging myself. Listening to music, going to the theatre and art exhibitions. Watching people, reading newspapers and watching the news - you'd be surprised how that can trigger ideas. Going for walks where you just allow the brain to just wander as you do. Often when I do this, ideas float to the surface. This is all about looking after you as a writer and nurturing yourself and your creativity. Giving those ideas the freedom to grow. This is an important part of pre-writing. Make sure you remember to include some activities that are going to feed your creativity.

PS the puppy above is the latest member to join our family and belongs to my son and his partner. Welcome Beaumont (named after my mother's dog who was a huge part of my children's lives as they grew up). There is such a story there too...

I love this song so much and it seemed a perfect opportunity to share it: Limerance's Shine On 

All change - writerly decisions!

I have made a momentous decision this week and I wanted to share, so here's a short blog post.

Quick drum roll...

 I have put Trafficking aside for the moment to write a new story!

Trafficking was part of my PhD but it is virtually unrecognisable as that story now. I am not giving up on it but my new story is time sensitive so I need to focus on that for the moment.  This is all with the blessing of IC, thank goodness. I am not sure I would have had the courage otherwise.

In a way it was a tough decision because I had been working on Trafficking in various forms for four years but in another way there was a huge sense of relief. The new story is something totally different and will take me into a new area of writing. It is very exciting.

The new story is partly based on a real event, hence the time sensitive comment, plus it just lends itself to being made into a wonderful story. I am managing to combine two of my passions too. You are looking at one happy writer here. It will give me a great escape from the pressure of writing and researching an academic book that I have been commissioned to write, which you will no doubt hear more about on here as this is a good place to explore ideas. (A brilliant nugget of information handed to me by a friend and then reinforced by a blog post by Mark Carrigan)

Sometimes as writers you have to make these decisions. You have to have to walk away for the time being and try something new. Who knows what it might turn into when I go back to it. Writing is all about making the write [sic] decisions, whether it is about the big story or the specific word, they all have to be considered. For all you writers out there, good luck with your writerly decisions and trust your gut instinct. It is invariably right!

Today is a beautiful day at the start of an enormous week for all of us in my family. And this is a perfect song by India Arie

Stories are never ending

One of the happiest days of my life!

It is a year ago since this photo was taken. Again it has been an amazing year. I have two jobs now that I didn't expect to have then. I am involved in a fantastic project which I also knew nothing about then - there will be more information about this in the next few weeks. I had my first independent article published. I have had a chapter in a book on teaching creative writing published. Plus I have given papers and I worked on collaborative paper/chapter with a great friend and colleague from the other side of the world - Skype is a wonderful thing. I have a book proposal in and I have been asked to write a chapter for a book with a colleague. On the creative side my novel is being read  by an editor - what more could anyone want. All potentially mind blowing experiences, particularly if they all come about. At the time of my graduation I wasn't sure anything could beat that feeling but life is pretty good, if exhausting these days.

Yesterday I bought the little man in the picture his first shoes. He seems to be growing up so quickly.  His idea of bliss is to sit and take every one of his books off the bookshelf so they all surround him. He then spends hours 'reading' each and every one of them. (there are a lot and those are just the ones downstairs). Some are old traditional ones, others are brand new and innovative, all are respected and loved by him. One of his all time favourites at the moment is Old MacDonald Had a Farm. My daughter and I would love to know why because the actual illustrations are not the best I've seen. It intrigues us. Perhaps it is in part because he loves the actions we all do when we read it to him. The most important point is he loves books - what more could a grandmother ask for.

I believe I have said this before, but as children's writers we are lucky, there is a perceived ever growing market for us. At the moment people still love giving books to children. They love the tangible feel of a book. I am also aware as I watch my grandson work my phone and my daughter's tablet that the current generation will probably get as much out of ebooks as they do 'traditional' books. Is this really a problem as long as they are reading and we (children's writers) are writing these stories? Does it matter what media it comes in? Not really I suppose but I confess I do love a good book to hold in my hand - showing my age I imagine. I will just keep writing my stories and not worry about what format they will be produced in. Having said that I do sometimes look at my stories and think, would this make a film? Does anyone else do that?

I was reading a bit of Al Alvarez's The Writer's Voice and this one phrase struck home: '...prose is never quite finished.' (London: Bloomsbury, 2006 p.44) How true is that? For me it goes along with the idea, which I know I have mentioned before, of Blanchot who suggest that the writer leaves questions on the page for the reader to pick up.  Thinking of both these ideas seemed to highlight that a story is never ours alone, it belongs to everyone. Every reader will interpret it differently, influenced by their own cultural space and experience. In the same way, and we tried this in class the other day, if we gave every one the same sentence to start with or sat them in the same place and asked them to write about it, every story would be different. (And it was, some brilliant pieces came out of the exercise) That is what is glorious about creativity. We all have different stories to tell even if we start in the same place.

A TED talk worth listening too is by Chimamanda Adichie and the danger of the single story.

Cathy Cassidy put this up the other day and I feel it is quite appropriate. It is Elvis Costello's 'Everyday I write the book'

Honing your writing craft is never easy!

Coming out of the shadow

A good friend recently sent me a message saying how much she had loved my most recent blog post, in particular, the voice I used, which I was very flattered by. My aim had only been to share my practices. Combine this with the knowledge that an article I submitted to a journal has been accepted (more info when I can link you to it) made me start to think. Those of you who are regular readers know that I have been concerned about stepping out of the shadow of my PhD. It is so daunting. Doing a PhD is like having a hug, you feel protected. Once it is done, it is time to be a grown up! It is tough even if you have the support that I do. It is scary. Well, I think I am finally doing it and I wanted to share. I have interest in my creative piece and a lot more confidence in my critical voice. Neither of which has come easily. I have had to work really hard at it. But isn't that what makes it worth while?

As far as I am concerned, and even with a PhD in creative writing, I am still honing my craft. I am a writer but not a complacent one I hope. I know I still have lots of learn. I lecture in creative writing but I wouldn't consider that I can teach writing. What I think I do is give my students guidance and the tools with which which to hone their own writing. They get the space and time to to try out different voices. But it all comes down to practise, the more you do it, the better you will get. You could say that it is no different to a painter or a musician. Watch the clip below which is Shin Suzuma, the brother of another great friend of mine. He is 22 and an extraordinary pianist but he puts in hours and hours of practice every day. See, you don't get anywhere without putting in hard graft and that is the same with writing, I believe. It is not easy and don't let anyone tell you it is. Or rather, the first draft might be but then comes the rewrites....