How I am Writing My New Books Every Minute Even When I'm Not • by Natascha Biebow

Writing is something I do. But most of the time, I am not writing.

 

While I am supposed to be writing, but really I am not writing, I am:

 

- Juggling: if you have work, family, volunteer commitments, and life in general like me, chances are you are also juggling. This is useful for writing because it means you are living. And living is what is at the heart of writing. So, I make lists, do the school run, hoover the house, check in on my mum, keep wishing dinner will cook itself, help run SCBWI-BI to pay it forward to other writers and illustrators, edit books, and breathe . . .  because one day these experiences will be in my books.

 

- Reading Other People’s Writing (Books): each day, I indulge in a bit of R-E-A-D-I-N-G. Very often, this is not a children’s book, but if you pay attention while you are reading, you can glean quite a few useful things while you are not writing: inspiration how to write good (or bad) dialogue, techniques for storytelling, ideas for formats, insights into the competition, an awareness of the marketplace. If it’s a book that hooks, or a funny book, or an artfully written one, you can bask in good language like a shark basking in the sun and dream of one day writing a book like that too.

Some books I've been reading

 

And picture books and nonfiction research

- Walking the Dog: this is an excellent way to pound out plot problems and other writing niggles. Plus observing people in the park means you might get the odd ideas for characters. Importantly, it makes you go out so you are not entirely a hermit in front of a computer staring at a blank screen or typing wondering where this book is going . . . You might even find out what is actually going on in the world and meet a person. And it's exercise so it helps you stay fit. (NB: If you don’t have a dog, you can walk yourself.)

 

My dog Luna lives for watching
then unsuccessfully chasing squirrels.

- Reading Aloud to a Child (Or a Pet): reading A-L-O-U-D is an excellent way to get an ear for the sounds and structure of writing. When reading aloud, I get completely and totally immersed in the story and it is oh, so rhythmical in a way that reading silently just isn’t. (Sometimes I read my stories A-L-O-U-D to the walls – thankfully, they don’t voice their opinion).

- Cooking, cleaning, washing and Taking Care of Other Chores that always seem to need doing on repeat: see juggling (above).

- Listening to Craft Webinars or Reading Craft Books: mostly listening to other authors speak is a comforting language of threads of a shared experience in the life of writing; it is also great procrastination “Hey, I’m learning HOW to do it, yes, really” instead of bum on seat. Bonus is you can do it at the same time as Walking the Dog . . . and get in the zone.

- Watching Children be Children: if you are lucky to meet a child on your walk or pass a playground or even have family with children or children of your own, you can do something very important while practising not writing: watching and listening.

 

- Sleeping. A surprising amount of writing can be done in that subconscious state before you fall asleep. This is a great time to noodle around with ideas and story problems. Plus it's necessary.

 

-Eating Chocolate (Shhh!) definitely helps you keep going.

 

In other words, I Am BUSY Living, So A Piece of Me Can Find Its Way Into My Books:

All this living is collecting material for writing. One day you’ll see it in my books. I am working on a new nonfiction project; while I’ve done some research and there is much more to do . . . as I’m ‘writing through living’, I’m figuring out HOW TO TELL THIS STORY to make it compelling for a child to read. Every book I write is written because of some living I did. A piece of me is in there, and it is this that I am hoping will connect with readers big and small to make the story resonate with them also. 

 

Nonfiction picture books are 100% TRUE STORIES. 

 

To figure out and collect the ‘true’ bit, I need to do a lot of outreach and research. I've decided my topic has ‘legs’ – e.g. it hasn’t already been done by someone else and it has a strong enough hook – so I am busy uncovering more of the required facts. Eventually, it will be time to weed out what should go in the book, and what should be parked up (what is not relevant to the story can possibly go in the backmatter).

 

Fueled by curiosity and a love of my new topic, my quest is to discover the inner truth, the passion that makes THIS story tick, the child-centred angle, something that will elicit an emotional response from my young readers so they, too, can connect with the spark that led me to write this book.

 

When I sell my idea to a publisher, you'll be the first to know how the living has made it become a real book. As I told a group of school children on a virtual author visit recently, it can take years to make a book, sometimes as long as they have been alive.  It's about trusting the process.

 

 For this, I need much time LIVING.

 _______________________________________________________________________

Natascha Biebow, MBE, Author, Editor and Mentor

Natascha is the author of the award-winning The Crayon Man: The True Story of the Invention of Crayola Crayons, illustrated by Steven Salerno, winner of the Irma Black Award for Excellence in Children's Books, and selected as a best STEM Book 2020. Editor of numerous prize-winning books, she runs Blue Elephant Storyshaping, an editing, coaching and mentoring service aimed at empowering writers and illustrators to fine-tune their work pre-submission, and is the Editorial Director for Five Quills. She is Co-Regional Advisor (Co-Chair) of SCBWI British Isles. Find her at www.nataschabiebow.com

 

 

Read it - again, and again, and AGAIN! by Jane Clarke

Do you or a family member have a favourite picture book, read so many times that everyone knows it by heart  - and can see the illustrations with his or her eyes shut?

Every night my 3 year old granddaughter requests

Wow! said the Owl by Tim Hopgood

Yep. EVERY NIGHT. You might be able to slip in another book as well, but this one has to be the last book before sleep. It’s reassuring and upbeat, with a sense of wonder - and my 10 month old granddaughter already loves it, too.

This is the one my 4 year old granddaughter in the USA currently requests most:

Llama llama red pyjama by Anna Dewdney

There are several picture books from my sons’ 1980s childhoods that I can visualise page by page because I was requested to read them again and again, and again. Top of the pile are:

Henry’s Busy Day by Rod Campbell - with the much-stroked (and snot-wiped-off) furry ending that makes you go aaah.

 Dogger by Shirley Hughes was another huge favourite:

My sons totally identified with Dave and his toy dog. It’s quite a long book, so after the umpteenth reading, I’d attempt to skip the odd page, or summarise. They always caught me out.

Going further back, I realise that I must’ve been the same when I was a child, because I can still recite the entire text of this book and see all the illustrations in my mind’s eye: 

Downy Duckling by W Perring and AJ Macgregor (first published 1942! The original got lost somewhere down the line, but I was able to find a new edition, yay!)

I remember the feeling of comfort and safety that this story gave me as a child, and finding it again is like a warm hug from the past. 

So what do all of these very different books have in common? I think it’s that they lull the child into his or her happy place. 

It might be too overt for today's tastes, but the ending to Downy Duckling nails it:

What picture books have you read again, and again, and AGAIN?

Jane's very happy to report that one of her four granddaughters is currently stuck on one of her books - Who Woke the Baby? illustrated by Charles Fuge - at one and a half she's too small to say why, but she clearly loves to roar at the lion and clap at the happy ending.

Behave or the monsters will get you! Moira Butterfield

I don’t want to worry you, but if you’re in Spain there’s a giant hairy hand under your bed, waiting to grab you if you don’t go to sleep. In Iceland there’s a child-eating giantess who will be able to hear you if you’re naughty. Meanwhile there’s a horrible shape-shifter out to grab Inuit children in the snow up north and a formless terror lurking in Portugal – so scary it can’t be described.

In the course of researching mythical characters who help children I’ve found myself waylaid by monsters that have been used by parents around the world to scare their children into behaving. It’s a cast of terrifying beasts, I can tell you, all used in the past to stop children wandering into the dangerous countryside, staying out in the dark or just being plain naughty.

There are shadow creatures, child-eaters and a number of weird characters with sacks. The one I find particularly scary-sounding is Bonhomme Sept-Heures – Mr Seven O’clock. He’s said to lurk around Quebec with his sack, waiting to grab children who haven’t gone indoors by seven. It’s his very specific name that sounds so chilling to me!

Alright! I'll come indoors! 

There’s sometimes a religious connection, too. A friend’s father had interesting experiences of Krampus, a nasty sidekick of St. Nicholas who turns up in Austria at Christmastime to punish naughty kids, while St. Nicholas rewards the good ones. As a boy my friend’s father would watch the town parade on December 6^th, and while St. Nicholas threw treats, young men of the town dressed as Krampus, carrying large sticks and chains to threaten the onlooking children. The young boy’s father, meanwhile, would wait until his son was in bed and then scrape snow chains up and down the stairs to terrify him into thinking Krampus was about. Tough parenting or what? Apparently it was all connected to the fierce-sounding Catholicism of the area. It was deemed vital that children were suitably terrified of behaving badly so they wouldn’t go to Hell. 

Having asked around I only found one person under the age of 70 who remembered any of these bogeymen and women being used on them, so it seems we’ve moved on in my neck of the woods, thank goodness. But friend and multi-talented children’s illustrator Estelle Cork had imaginative parents who cooked up their own version, declaring that some local grain silos were the ‘Monster’s Home’ and Estelle had better behave or she’d be sent there. Terrified whenever she passed them on the horizon, she imagined the monsters inside in the exact shape of their silo containers, as per this sketch (she may have done this for her therapist but I didn't like to ask). 

Look away, Estelle! 

I’m glad we’ve consigned these bogeymen and women to the past,  but in some cases we’ve gone to the other extreme. A recent survey suggested that a third of parents surveyed would not read a story to their child if it had a bad character in it. I even read a recent blog where a parent urged people to self-censor picture books as they read them – giving examples of how to do it which basically rendered the books nonsense.  Of course you wouldn’t read a story that freaked your child out, but surely those parents should have more faith in their child’s intelligence. Reading a story with a baddie in it, getting his or her comeuppance, teaches good values. Reading a story together in a safe environment gives your child the opportunity to regulate their anxieties  - with your help and the help of the author who is going to make things come out right at the end. 

I’m not suggesting that parents specifically go out and look for books with villains in them. I’m suggesting that it’s OK to relax a little about content. Trust the author and trust your child. Don’t start censoring their books.

Anyway, I'd love to hear if you were scared by bogeymen/women/things when you were a child, to keep you on the straight and narrow. And if so, did it work? 

Moira Butterfield

www.moirabutterfield.com

@moiraworld

Currently writing a book which is top-secret until 2018. If I told you I’d have to send Krampus round!

PS: If you’d like to read more about some of the weird child-catching bogeymen and women of yesteryear, here’s a great site on European monsters. Definitely don’t share it with your kids, though.

https://europeisnotdead.com/video/images-of-europe/european-monsters/

Different voices by Jane Clarke

Do you put on different voices when you're reading picture books aloud? I do. I can't help it.

I go for perky and interested when I read the Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (the pop! is key to this narrator's voice I think - who doesn't love a good sound effect?)

I adopt a tone of total innocence when I read the hilarious Bottomley books by Peter Harris and Doffy Weir. These books are told from first person (or should I say cat) point of view with the text contradicting the pictures. Here's a page from Bottomley Cattery.

And I have a different voice for each animal in the Gruffalo, some scary, some scared, some soft, some loud, some hissy. Reading the Gruffalo aloud is a bit like acting.

a page from The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

I have voices for all the characters I write in my own picturebooks and tones of voices in my head for the characters in the texts I'm writing. A few of my books have audio versions. It's strange, but wonderfully magical, to hear an actor voice them.

Knight Time read by Jane Whittenshaw, Gilbert the Great and Gilbert in Deep read by Dervla Kirwan, Stuck in the Mud ready by Cassandra Morris

Even for non actors like me, using different voices and making different sound effects when you're reading a picture book aloud helps the reader and the child listener enter the magical world of make believe.

It's fun to experiment using different voices when you read a picture book aloud, and it's fun to try out different voices when you're writing a picture book text. Narrator, first person, second person or third – every voice can be different and distinct.

What voices stand out for you? 

Jane's proud and excited to announce that her new picture book, Who Woke the Baby is published this month.

It's crammed full of yummy illustrations by Charles Fuge and there are plenty of animal noises to make when you read it out loud.

Three Ways Authors Can Get the Most Out of their Computers • Jonathan Emmett

I don't think I'd have made it as a professional author without a computer's help

A question children often ask me on school visits is “do you write with pen and paper or on a computer?”. I know there are some authors who swear by pen and paper, particularly for the first draft, and say that a computer would get between them and the story. For me it’s the other way around. I’m slightly dyslexic and doubt that I’d be able to make a living as a writer without a computer helping me to set down, shape and polish my stories.

I’ve just gone without my computer for a week, while a faulty hard-drive was replaced. This absence reminded me how much I’ve come to depend on my computer and prompted me to write this post.

Here are three ways authors can get the most out of their computers. My own computer is an Apple Mac, and I’ve included some detailed instructions for other Mac users, but these tips also apply to Windows PCs.


First and foremost …

1: Learn to touch-type

If you’re still pecking away at your keyboard with two fingers, you’re getting your ideas down on the page at a fraction of the rate you could be. Having been born in the dark ages, before computers were in every home, I taught myself to touch type on a mechanical typewriter using a Pitman typing book. These days, you can learn far more easily using typing-tutor software (you can find some recent reviews of some here. It’s never too late to learn. Touch-typing is an invaluable skill for anyone that uses a keyboard and I’ve never understood why it’s not routinely taught at an early age in UK schools.

Use ten not two! Touch typing is an invaluable skill for any author and it's never too late too learn.

2: Have your computer read aloud to you

It’s good practice for any writer to read their work aloud, but it’s essential for picture book authors as picture books are often read aloud to children by adults. Although I still read text aloud, I use my computer to do this most of the time. I'm not sure if this is linked to my dyslexia, but when I read something I've written aloud, my brain often glosses over errors and I read what I'd meant to type instead of what I've actually typed. However when I listen to the computer reading the same passage, the errors are immediately conspicuous.

Having your computer read aloud is particularly useful when writing rhyming texts. Reading aloud is the only way to check that a rhyming text scans well, but if you’ve written the text yourself, you will have preconceptions as to the rhythm of a line and which words need emphasis. Someone reading the text for the first time won't share these preconceptions so you want to make sure that a rhyming text will still read well without them. One way around this is to ask someone else to read your text back to you, but their patience may begin to wear thin if you keep asking them to re-read the same lines, with minor variations, again and again. And after a few readings they'll begin to develop preconceptions of their own. A computer has infinite patience and is incapable of forming such preconceptions. It will give consistently impartial readings with even rhythm and emphasis, putting in appropriate pauses for commas and other punctuation. Standard computer speech used to be very flat and American sounding, but has come on in leaps and bounds in recent years. Macs now come with a range of English Language voices pre-installed with yet more available as free downloads (go to System Preferences>Accessibility>Speech, click on "System Voice" and click on “customise” in the pull down menu to find them). You can find further instructions on how to use a Mac’s Text to Speech function here.

Macs can speak English in a variety of voices and accents, including Australian, Indian, Irish, Scottish and South African.

It’s worth taking the time to choose a voice you like and to adjust the speed. My favourite is “Serena”, who speaks with an English accent. You can use the player below to hear what she sounds like reading the opening lines of The Silver Serpent Cup. The software makes the occasional mistake, (its pronunciation of 'noisy' in the passage below is slightly out) and it can slip up with homonyms. However it can cope surprisingly well with made-up words and generally does a remarkably good job.

Today the town of Furryville’s a very noisy place,
Crammed with crowds of creatures getting ready for a race.
The air is filled with honking horns and engines revving up,
As racers take their places for THE SILVER SERPENT CUP.

3. Use software that suits the way you work

Most of the publishers I work with expect manuscripts to be sent to them as Microsoft Word files and when I first became a writer, I used to write directly into Word. However as the years have gone by, Word has become increasingly unwieldy to use, with half of its functions hidden away in a bewildering array of sub menus. There are now lots of cheaper applications available, some of which are far better suited to writing a book. About 9 years ago I started using Scrivener, an application designed specifically for authors. It provides a far cleaner, simpler interface than Word and allows authors to access and organise the myriad files, documents and web pages relating to their project through a single window instead of cluttering up the screen with half a dozen windows from various applications. And once you’ve finished a project, you can export it as a MS Word file to send to your publisher.

The Silver Serpent Cup in Scrivener. Scrivener allows you to open multiple text documents, pdfs, web pages and
images within a single application window. One of Ed Eaves' concept sketches is shown on the right.

I hope the tips above have proved useful. If you have any other computer tips for writers (perhaps you can tell Windows users how to get their computer reading aloud), please post them in the comments box below.



UPDATE 26 Sept 17 : Text to Speech Instructions and image for Tip 2 updated for Mac OS Sierra 

---

Jonathan Emmett's latest computer-assisted picture book is Fast and Furry Racers: The Silver Serpent Cup illustrated by Ed Eaves and published by Oxford University Press.

Find out more about Jonathan and his books at his Scribble Street web site or his blog. You can also follow Jonathan on facebook and twitter @scribblestreet.

See all of Jonathan's posts for Picture Book Den.

DON'T DO IT! - how NOT to write a picture book by Malachy Doyle

 1. Don’t think it’s easy. You need to have lived. You need to have read (lots and lots).  You need to have something to say. You need to have developed a voice, a style, an ease of telling…

2. Don’t over-write it. Write the story, then cut, cut, cut! Every word needs to need to be there, and the fewer the better (preferably under 500). Prune the beginning, cut to the quick, then chop, rebuild, chop, rebuild, chop, chop, chop till it’s perfect.  

 3. Don’t describe stuff. Just tell the story – the speech and the action. The illustrator will add colour to your world, and depth to your characters and their story. 

5. Don’t illustrate it, unless you’re an illustrator (and a very good one, at that).

 

6. Don’t ask someone else to illustrate it for you, either. The publisher will find the right person.

7. Don’t tell the illustrator how to do their job. You wouldn’t want them telling you how to write it.

 9. Don’t rhyme, unless the story steadfastly refuses to be told any other way. And unless you’re a brilliant rhymester, with perfect scansion.

10. Don’t lose touch with children. You’re writing for the young people of now and of the future. You need to know, understand and very much like them.    

11. Don’t skimp on the reading aloud. Rhythm, and a delightful ease in the telling, are key - and only reading your story aloud many many times will show if it’s perfect.

 

12. Don’t just write a story. Write one that needs to be told, with something real and true of yourself in it. Write with heart, from somewhere deep inside you. Write something that truly affects and enchants the reader / listener - something that matters.

13. Don’t make it too easy for your main character. Get them into trouble. Then more trouble. Then, just when you think it couldn’t get any worse...

 

14. Don’t think it’s easy. (Didn't I say that somewhere before?) Only the best is good enough for children. The best words in the best places, the best characters in the best stories… 

15. Don't expect to make a fortune. Or even a decent living. Do it because you have to.  Do it because you have stories inside you demanding to be told. Write because you're a writer.

16. And don’t send a story out till it’s finished. A picture book may take months, even years, and hundreds of drafts, to get right. Ask it every question, look at it from every angle, till you’re completely satisfied with it. And then…

GOOD LUCK!

(with thanks to James and Celia Catchpole, Martin Waddell, Mem Fox and everyone else along the way…)

Malachy’s latest picture book is called Peek-a-Book, and it’s illustrated by Rowan Martin and published by Parragon Books on August 8.

His storybook Pete and the Five-a-Side Vampires is published by Firefly Press on September 18 - and the most exciting thing about this one, for Malachy, is that it’s illustrated by his daughter Hannah!  Whoopy-doo!  

What I've learned from reading aloud, by Jane Clarke

Picture books are designed to be read out loud by an adult sitting next to a child – and I adored reading them that way to my sons when they were small. Later on, as a library assistant at Antwerp International School, I read face to face, holding the books open and reading the words upside down and sideways, so that a whole class of children could see the pictures.  I often do that today, on author visits to schools.

Back them, I had no idea that I would end up writing picture books – but without realising it, I absorbed the pace and cadence of a picture book, and I learned:

Different characters have different voices.

From Trumpet the Little Elephant with the Big Temper, illustrated by Charles Fuge

Page turns have drama.

From Creaky Castle, illustrated by Christyan Fox

There are opportunities to vary the speed and tone of the reading.

From Knight Time, illustrated by Jane Massey

Words can be enjoyed for their sound and rhythm.

From Dance Together Dinosaurs, illustrated by Lee Wildish

Jokes and puns in the words and the pictures can be quite sophisticated and enjoyed on two levels – the adult and the child.

From Gilbert the Great, illustrated by Charles Fuge. Charlie slipped in some pictorial references to the Jaws movies.

It’s fun to join in a refrain (but don’t overdo it).

From Stuck in the Mud, illustrated by Garry Parsons

Reading out loud is an important part of the process when you’re writing picture books. It helps highlight where the text isn’t working. I find it hard to read into thin air, but I can usually find an audience of some sort...

Some picture books work best snuggled up quietly, some work best shared with large groups of noisy youngsters. What picture books do you love to read out loud?