Archive for the ‘writing’ Category

Posted on September 27, 2009 - by MG

Quite Secret New Thing

As neglectful of this blog that I’ve been, I hope you’ll forgive me. The usual excuses apply.

In the past few weeks I’ve launched a new website, Mayan Mysteries of 2012 – a Young Person’s Guide, as well as two new trailers, for The Joshua Files series (2010 version) and for Joshua Files 3: ZERO MOMENT.

And very exciting, I’ve been working with the Walker Books for Young Readers (part of Bloomsbury USA) the US publisher of Joshua Files on their version of INVISIBLE CITY.

As well as putting the finishing touches to the proofs of ZERO MOMENT. It’s starting to feel like a pretty full-on job, this author lark. (I’m joking, it always was, now there’s just more pressure.)

But FINALLY I can start to devote some real thought to Quite Secret New Thing.

We have a title, for one thing. I’m not going to tell you the title just now, sorry to be a tease. I feel like it might jinx things, so lets wait until I’ve got going with the writing, n’kay?

Titles often come last, after you’ve written the darn thing at least. (And I have yet to write a SINGLE page of Quite Secret New Thing.) But for some reason I needed to know I had a good title. We (Agent, Editor and I) had been referring to QSNT as (harumph) For Kids where (harumph) is a stupendously famous and successful novel for adults which hasn’t yet been kid-ified.

I’m not going to say what (harumph) is obviously…

The thing is, there is a very sound reason, or seventy, why (harumph) hasn’t yet been kid-ified, in fact the whole project began with me musing whether it could even be done. So for the past year I’ve been thinking about why (harumph) doesn’t work for young readers, what is the essence of (harumph) which makes it exciting and what needs to be done to provide young readers with the equivalent reading experience.

Thinking, however, is one thing.

Writing is another. Ha. Many an idea sounds good until you commit it to paper.

So on Friday I drafted the plot, the plot of Quite Secret New Thing aka (harumph) For Kids aka (censored).

And immediately I saw the first flaw.

The nature of the genre of QSNT is such that the protagonist is thrown into a maelstrom of a very complex, very alien adult world. He does not cause the story to happen; the story happens around him.

Which is Very Not Good. As literary agent Rachelle Gardner reminded her readers recently, the protagaonist must be pro-active.

Or at least, ideally.

Sometimes though, you have to have quite a lot of stuff happening to the protagonist or around the protagonist, before they take action.

Think of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Harry is passive, the things that happen to him happen in spite of what he does or wants to do (being abused by the Dursleys, which he puts up with, being sent to Hogwarts). Until his friend Hermione suggests that they investigate the forbidden corridors of Hogwarts, in true Famous Five fashion, and stumble upon the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone.

In detective stories, the protagonist, the detective often is a passive observer of events, remaining somewhat outside of the action (crime, generally). Until they engage with the mystery. (I watched a MARPLE show last week, Murder Is Easy, in which Miss Marple merely flashed her gimlet blue eyes at all manner of suspects, murderer and victims, but did not a thing to stop the carnage of murder, until she was good and ready. She did not really alter the trajectory of the story until right at the end.)

But whatever the allowances of the genre, Rachelle Gardner is quite right. The protagonist should be pro-active. It makes for a better story. So even in detective fiction, the author should go back to the plot and make as much of the action happen because of the actions of the protagonist.

It really helps, at this stage, to have written the plot down. Or if you’re a jump-in-and-write type of writer, to have written about 20,000 words.

So I’d better get down to it.

Posted on August 24, 2009 - by MG

Open shark house

Open shark house
It’s a landmark of Headington, the cause of tut-tutting as well as mini-thrills on the bus route as you pass the street that houses this extraordinary sculpture by John Buckley. Bill Heine’s shark house!
This weekend Bill opened up the recently refurbished house as an exhibition centre for local artists including renowned children’s illustrator Korky Paul. I’d just bought ‘The Dog Who Could Dig for my nephew and niece’s birthday. What fun to find one of Korky’s original illustrations from that book as well as Winnie the Witch on display!
Well anyway, meanwhile we’re in Switzerland for the birthday week…mine,my brothers, sister-in-law, nephew and niece. I have just suggested cocktails and chocolate fondue for my birthday. Oh. My. Goodness.
MG Harris

Originally uploaded by mgharris

Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Posted on August 21, 2009 - by MG

My bloggy friends

Oh the pressure of finding a photo for a blog post.

This is a photo of the volcano Popocatepetl, taken from the balcony of my uncle Xavier’s late lamented Tocame bar in Atlixco. It was a fine thing, that bar. Great views of the volcano, too. Known to locals as Don Goyo, the mountain smoulders away, threatening to get pyroclastic on everyone, never actually doing it.

Why a smoking volcano. Well, because while finishing Joshua 4, smoking volcanos were on my mind a fair bit…

Anyway. My blog-buddy and German translator of Joshua, Frank Boehmert recently mentioned on his blog that I don’t update as much as I used to. He rightly guessed that business and Twitter are why I’m not so active here any longer.

It’s also because I’ve started spending free moments (when I’m not busy with Twitter and Facebook) reading other blogs. Here’s some recent faves:

• Frank’s happy day of receiving a finished copy of ICE SHOCK in German.
• My dear friend Martin Bonfil’s popular science blog La Ciencia por Gusto  (in English it’s Science for Pleasure)
• Tracey Anne Baines kidlit blog Tall Tales and Short Stories fetauring interviews with literary agents (including my own agent Peter Cox) and children’s and YA authors (including me!)
• Liz de Jager’s awesome YA book review blog My Favourite Books
• Looking forward to The Spectator’s new Cappuccino Culture – The Arts Blog on Monday

Meanwhile I’m off to Switzerland for the birthday week, from Sunday. Mountains and walks, and birthday cake almost every day! A great environment in which to complete the polish on Joshua 4 in time to hand it over to Editor Polly by September.

ZERO MOMENT is coming along very nicely. I’ve seen a colour mockup of the cover and Polly and I have been working on the jacket copy. Will post both on themgharris.com as soon as blurb is finalised…

Posted on July 17, 2009 - by MG

Author visits and the (self) importance of being offended

My pal Richard Howse, one half of the LiToon satirical cartoon partnership has honoured me by including me in a topical funny about the whole vetting of authors hoo-hah.

Meanwhile, without me having so much as sign up to any kind of trade union of authors, for the second time I find that a cadre of established, successful children’s authors have again taken it upon themselves to speak for me.

Last time the message was that we didn’t want consumers to be given any help choosing which books might be suitable to buy for children of which age. To a new author like me who is glad to have any extra people encouraged to buy my books, the subliminal message coming from this celebrity-studded group sounded rather like – I think you’ll find that I’m famous! That’s all the information you need to buy my book for your child!

This time the message is that we authors won’t be doing school visits anymore, not if we have to register with the Independent Safeguarding Authority, how very dare you!

Hmm, well not all authors are thrilled to watch the self-appointed group of spokesmen in action again. @RobertMuchamore, author of the mega-popular urban teen spy series CHERUB tweeted, “Irritated at another round of whinging by the usual grey haired mafia of ‘renowned’ kids authors”

Luckily Anthony Browne the new children’s laureate and Gillian Cross are showing more level heads.

This one, I’m in two minds over. As a school governor I’ll have to register anyway and the fee is waived. School governors aren’t complaining but then school governors tend to be community -minded volunteers who give hundreds of hours of their time to help run schools. School governors are motivated by the desire to make our schools as safe and effective as possible. This legislation probably will make it easier to protect children in schools. So we don’t complain at the imagined affront to our integrity. Mainly, we don’t even imagine one.

Authors should no more be offended at being asked to register than teachers, governors or parent volunteers.

It’s true that authors aren’t left alone with children, not often. Especially not famous authors who address hundreds of children at a time. But occasionally I’ve been left alone with small groups of children, both as an author and as a governor. It does happen. Life is so much easier for teachers if they can walk away for a few minutes now and again. Don’t we want to help teachers?

I suspect that these handful of celebrity authors are no more seeking to represent fellow children’s authors, nor are they claiming that authors are automatically morally superior to, let’s say, school governors.

They are reacting naturally and with dismay to something that has quietly been happening in state schools for years, which is a fairly radical change in the culture.

You can no longer be automatically trusted to be alone with children just because you are a respected adult, a famous author, a Head Teacher. The hard lesson that’s been learnt from the few horrible cases of unsuitable adults gaining access to children in schools is that you can’t easily tell who might pose a threat.

No-one is above suspicion, so everybody is checked. To leave certain people out implies a value judgement. A teacher is not above suspicion but a parent is? A governor may be dodgy but all authors are fine? Such judgements will inevitably cause a ruckus, which is why the ISA has opted to register everyone.

Child protection is a serious issue, the most serious one for governors. Governors have always agreed to the CRB checks and will sign up to the ISA.

The authors who’ve complained are right to point out that this says something sad about society. Simply put it says that we acknowledge that we live in a world where kids are abused and we have to do everything in our power to prevent such abuse.

But refusing to acknowledge that truth is also pretty naïve and can have dire consequences. It’s like pretending there’s no such thing as death.

We all live in the midst of pathology. The police, doctors, prison wardens and countless other grown-up professions deal with the daily consequences of this truth. You don’t hear them gripe.

Authors spend huge amounts of time in fictional fantasy worlds where kids endure some fairly horrible dangers. How ironic it is that some authors should be the last to accept such a grisly truth.

Posted on June 21, 2009 - by MG

Starting something new (part 2): the voice

For those of you who are also writers, here’s another of my very occasional posts about writing.

(If I weren’t so lazy about editing videos you’d be having an author visit update about me trip to Scotland, complete with a video of my publicist Alex and I sampling awesome tearooms and sweetie shops. This will happen soon!)

I’m definitely pushing things to the limit at the moment. Writing Joshua 4, editing Joshua 3 and planning a Brand New Thing is not ideal. There are moments when my head can deal with everything. Then it goes and explodes a bit with all the competing stuff.

Kudos to all those writers who write faster than me and work on several projects at a time. For me, write-one-edit-one is the limit of my efficiency.

The plot for the New Thing is almost there. I’m happy now that finally it’s strong enough to start. A conversation with my wicked stepfather-in-law, a composer with a degree in history, the other day elicited a most useful piece of information.

Three ideas clicked into place and bingo, I finally knew the YEAR in which the New Thing is set. Yep, it’s historical. Bit of a departure for me, I know. But writers only develop if they keep challenging themselves.

The next thing to develop is the ‘voice’. Who is telling the story and why?

Normally this wouldn’t be such an issue for me. Except that I would quite like a rest from a very intensive first person narrative, like that of ‘The Joshua Files’. And ideally I’d like a break from writing as a teenage boy. But who could be the narrator of a boy’s story if not him or another boy? His mother? In children’s fiction, no way! His girlfriend? What if he doesn’t have one? His best friend? In the period in which this is set, that would be a boy. So no. His sister? Hmmmm..maybe. The omniscient third person? Risky, tricky to avoid the modern bias on historical events/attitudes.

At this stage I like to experiment. You’ve nothing to lose from trying a few openings, from a few points of view, first person, third person. One usually leaps out as the right one for the story.

Another day or two of work and I might have this cracked. Problem is, I can’t take a day from writing Joshua 4. I’m on a massive roll and it’s occupying SO much story-brain.

How long does it take everyone else to find ‘the voice’ for a particular project?