In principle, I like the idea of NaNoWriMo – the National Novel Writing Month, where aspiring writers are encouraged to spend the entire month of November writing a 50,000-word novel. The achievement you feel when you complete a novel is a wondrous thing, and anything that helps people achieve this goal can’t really be praised… Read More
writing
A story in three acts
Earlier this week, I submitted Tales of the Ancient Rabbits to the agent who showed the most interest and provided the most feedback for The Chimney Rabbit, and posted off the manuscript to Chicken House to enter their children’s fiction competition. Now it’s mostly a waiting game – agents can take anything from a day… Read More
When done is not done
John Donne, the 17th century metaphysical poet, wrote in his poem A Hymn to God the Father: When thou hast done, thou hast not done, For I have more. In the poem he’s talking about the amount of flaws and sins he possesses – much like one of my manuscripts. When you’re writing a book,… Read More
EMILIA. I will be hang’d, if some eternal villain, Some busy and insinuating rogue, Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office, Have not devis’d this slander; I’ll be hang’d else. IAGO. Fie, there is no such man; it is impossible. Othello, Act IV, Scene 2 Last night we went to the Leicester showing of… Read More
Self-publishing without the actual publishing
On Tuesday this week, I completed the first draft of book zero of my Chimney Rabbit series – the prequel story, Tales of the Ancient Rabbits. This is my third completed novel, but the first to be restricted to what seems to be the standard Middle Grade length – it clocks in at just a… Read More
When inspiration strikes
When I plan out a novel, I plan in broad strokes. Before I start writing, I usually know where the story starts, where it ends, who the characters are, and all of the major incidents or locations along the way. There are some exceptions – when I was writing The Chimney Rabbit, the whole sequence… Read More
Talking animals
It should come as no surprise that I write a lot about talking animals – after all, the titles of my first three books are The Chimney Rabbit, The Chimney Rabbit and the Underground Mice, and Tales of the Ancient Rabbits. There’s a great tradition in children’s literature of talking, anthropomorphic animals – think of… Read More
String length addendum
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the length of children’s fiction, and about the mixed messages that I’ve received, with some agents giving quite gnomic advice, and other places providing hard and fast word counts. In the past week I received a rejection from an agent, and one of the reasons she cited (along… Read More
Back in the saddle
So this week I started to write my next book – working title, Tales of the Ancient Rabbits, a sort of stand-alone prequel to The Chimney Rabbit, set in the same world, but in a different country and with a different set of main characters. I had pondered whether my next project should have been… Read More
How long is a piece of string?
One thing I’ve found very difficult to work out when writing for children is this: How long should a children’s book be? For the purpose of this post I’m referring to books for what our American cousins call “Middle Grade” or MG, which usually translates into the 8-12 age group (sometimes 8-11 or 9-12). There’s… Read More