HUROPEL and Babel

Babel had its first outing on Friday. I talked about the issues in it and how the society on Terrestra in the year 3500 dealt with a healthy but aging population.   

The HUROPEL Conference is taking place at the University of Salford 4-15 April 2011. HUROPEL is a collaboration between Universities in 6 countries in Europe running an ’Intensive Programme’ for two weeks on the themes of Human Rights, Older People and End of Life Care.

Babel fits, because in Babel there is “switch-off”. Much of the novel is about doing away with “switch-off”. Yet the issues are complex. Terrestra is scared of disease because it has none. So, it keeps itself isolated. Coupled with this is an intolerance of imperfection. It’s actually quite difficult to talk about one issue without bringing in another.

Fiction is useful to us, however, because it can explore factual material in a closer emotional way. Science Fiction is particularly useful for young adults because it stylises and symbolises our present lives. It can be to young adults and adults what anthropomorphism and glove puppets are to younger readers.

I talked and read passages for about 50 minutes. We then spent another 45 on questions. Which were lively and interesting.  I had the impression that Babel’s first public appearance actually went rather well.

More about HUROPEL. More about the world of  Babel. 

CWIG One-day Conference 2 April 2011

This was a day that started off with us all licking our wounds and ended with us feeling cautiously optimistic about the future and remembering that what we do has value.

We have to be realistic: school budgets are slashed, librarians no longer have their School Librarians Association fee paid and are often only employed for the weeks the children are in school, and school visits are harder to come by because schools no longer have the money. Even if you do one for free… you often fail to sell books – parents don’t have the money either.  

And yet, a publisher who came to talk to my students this week reported that his sales had only gone down by 2% because of the recession.

Tony Bradman reminded us that we have a responsibility to be paid properly. We have an economic value. Perhaps it will be difficult to return to the golden days for the 1950s and 1960s when children’s literature had a special place possibly because of the 1944 Education Act, but we still have something very important to bring.

Yes, we have to promote ourselves now. I do already do a lot of what was mentioned – blogs, Twitter, Facebook etc. but for some time have been looking for a sensible way of providing a newsletter. One of the other delegates came up with the answer: Mailchimp. It’s a package that will manage your database and is free up to 500 subscribers.  

That’s why we go to these occasions: to find out from our friends.

And yes another great value is meeting up with old friends and meeting in the flesh for the first time those chums we know in cyberspace.

Ideas were shared also for the full conference to be held at reading in 2012. That already sounds as if it too is going to be inspirational.  

Frank Cottrell Boyce was the final speaker. He reminded us that everybody can benefit from reading and not everybody is going to write. So the traditional author visit, with the writer reading from their book, still has enormous value.

The whole conference was so inspiring that my little note-book, in which I jot down ideas for short stories and blog posts, had as many pages filled in a couple of hours as it normally has in a couple of weeks. We have a future and it actually looks quite bright. It just needs managing.                      

  

Unlocking the Salford Quays

The sculpture trail was opened on Sunday 27 March. I went to the event and it became for me yet another Artist’s Treat.

I have to admit, though, it was quite a shock walking into the Lowry and first up seeing a screen with me on it and the rest of Diva’s Dockers performing the Salford song.  Never mind, the day got better.

The walk around the Sculpture Trail takes about one hour, though it took me ninety minutes, as I stopped to watch a display of dance by young people, chatted to the guide at each spot and spent time reading the rubric at each spot.

It was a mild day and very pleasant for walking. It was flat, anyway. It struck me that there is a lot about the Quays that I don’t know. I found some interesting houses as I wandered around. It’s always pleasing anyway to see the wildlife that exists on the former Ship Canal now that the industry has gone.

I managed to catch the tail end of one of the guided walking tours that had ended up at the final sculpture, The Casuals. The sculptures themselves give a real sense of Salford’s history. Listening to this talk enhanced my feeling of connection with the past – especially as the son of one of the former dockers was there.

I ended the afternoon at a drinks reception in the Quays Bar. The Lowry gives you a fantastic view of the Quays, especially from that bar.

There is some sadness at the passing of the old way of life “what once was, is no more, memories of the Salford docks”… “a way of life has now changed, gone are the pubs and the big steel cranes.” Yet there was also a feeling of celebration about what the area has now become.

Writers and Time

I tried to write 1,000 words a day. I mainly managed it – at the time when I was a full-time teacher and had young children. A few years in I decided to do an MA in Writing for Children.  By then my little children were teenagers, with all that that brings along, and I was Head of Modern Languages at a quite difficult comprehensive. The writing was a little more demanding because it had two masters: the academy and the industry. Nevertheless, I managed to write a lot: MA assignments, competition entries, and some projects of my own. This happened after 10 p.m. on week days, at weekends and during the school holidays.  

I eventually got published and decided to give up the day job, though still did supply teaching and one-to-one tuition. One book deal led me to upping my daily quota to 2,000 words. I now have over 50 works in print and could class myself as a full-time writer. I have a job as a lecturer in creative writing because of my writing. I still aim at 2,000 words or two hours writing a day. I’ve actually found that even with all the time in the world, I can rarely do more than this. After the first two hours, the energy flags. Because of the other things a writer has to do – and most of what I do for the university can be described as just that – there sometimes isn’t time to do the actual writing.

Many writers recognise this. Jacqueline Wilson now often writes on the train, Alan Gibbons in hotel rooms and Philip Pullman misses his earlier routine of writing for a couple of hours after a busy day teaching.

I know many writers, in fact, who have given up the day job and are now writing less than they did before. It’s almost as if they needed the other routines of their lives to make this one stick. Maybe there is also an element of now having less to write about as they have less contact with the outside world.

So, getting published isn’t the golden ticket to a life where you stay cocooned in your writer’s room, sending the works electronically and watching money being transferred into your bank account. It often means you’ve got to get out there, get behind your book and help sell it, and that can sometimes put a squeeze on your writing time. We have to learn even more self-discipline now. We must be able to write in any circumstance and to drop into writing mode without difficulty after a busy time doing other things. We may no longer have the luxury of a room of our own and of an uncluttered mind that we had before we were published.

                            

Artist’s Treat Bury Museum and Art Gallery

I actually got around to awarding myself an Artist’s Treat yesterday. The first one since September. The Artist’s Treat is recommended by Julia Cameron, of The Right to Write and The Artist’s Way. One needs to get away from the thoughts and ideas, the black-and-whiteness of words on a page and from the constant need to hit a deadline.

One needs colour for starters. And life. So actually anything will do. I chose a museum and art gallery – preceded by a ride on the tram.

There’s also a need to do nothing. I remembered a similar exercise from my MA in Writing for Children, University of Winchester, when we were invited to walk around the cathedral without any expectations. I was taken by surprise, and hey-ho, the story that came then is appearing at last, 13 years later, in the Bridge House 2011 charity collection.

Yesterday’s treat was a visit to Bury’s Museum and Art Gallery. I found out more about the Sculpture Trail, which some of my colleagues are working on and which is partly situated in the country park opposite where I live. Paintings are always good, anyway, for bringing colour. The latest installation tells of a life and a death and interfaces with serendipity. It was good to talk about this to one of the guides.

Then, an amble through the rest of the town centre.

Retail therapy just does not do it for me any more. Maybe the sitting in a café and leafing through the brochures I’d picked up at the museum was a luxury. Even so, I’d have rather been at home getting on with my creative and critical bits and pieces. I don’t think I need a hobby any more. The treat begins to feel more like a chore.

However, I suspect the contrast is still necessary.

Competitions

There are thousands of competitions out there. They naturally need money to be able to run so generally there is a fee of some sort. There isn’t all that much relationship between the size of the fee and the usefulness of winning or even just submitting to the competition.
Examples
Here are a few examples:

Competition:  Winchester Annual Writers, fee £5.00 - £7.00 , prize books, usefulness -you always get feedback
Competition: Terry Pratchett Prize, fee - free, prize £20,000 advance and publication of novel, usefulness - this will make or break you – forever.
Competition: The Red Telephone, fee - £10.00, prize publication of novel, usefulness - small publisher, but it’s a line on your CV
Competition: Arvon Foundation, fee -£7.00, proze - publication in anthology + £7,000 usefulness -cash will come in handy.

Just that short list raises a heap of questions about fairness.
The fee you pay at Winchester covers the expenses of the judges – many of whom work really hard. Often the judges are those writers who got their first break through the Winchester Conference. The writers always get a little feedback.
Transworld, who offers the Terry Pratchett Prize, is a huge publisher with lots of resources. A £20,000 advance is easy for them. It is still very generous. But there is a word of warning. If you win and your book is a flop, it may be difficult to become published again. It is a massive advertising campaign for both Pratchett and Transworld.
The Red Telephone – I know because I was one of the judges – raised enough to publish the book and put something towards marketing. The judges were not paid – much. The people at The Red Telephone will no doubt work really hard at getting the book out there. However, they do not have the resources or the connections of a big publisher. What if the prize-winner had submitted normally to a mainstream publisher?
The Arvon Foundation is a very respected organisation that organises courses for writers. This prize is amazing. The anthology in which your work will appear will have some built-in respect but it probably won’t become a best-seller.
Why fees are charged
You might also like to consider why people who organise competitions are charging fees. This may be:
To make a profit to pay the organisers
To cover the cost of the organisers – sometimes including paying the judges a fee
To make a profit for the organisation that sponsors the prize. This may be a commercial venture or a social enterprise venture.
To spend on the status of the competition – e.g. the competition organiser might host a prestigious awards ceremony.

• To cover the cost of publication.
• To cover the cost of publication and marketing the publication.
• To cover the cost of marketing the competition.
• Any combination of the above.

You need to balance any judgement about how fair these reasons for charging a fee are against how much you benefit if you win the competition.
Benefits of winning or of taking part
Here is a list of the benefits you might get from winning a competition:

• A line on your CV
• A cash prize
• Publication
• Publicity
• An opportunity to write with a purpose
• Feed-back on your writing.

Obviously, if more than one benefit is offered, the competition is even more beneficial. Just entering a competition gives you an opportunity to write with a purpose and in some cases to get feedback on your work.
However, even that is not is not all that straight forward. Here are some extra thoughts in connection with all of these benefits.
The line on the CV
The more prestigious the competition, the more impact winning has on how your CV looks. It’s a good idea to get your own web site as soon as you have one thing published or you are placed in one competition. Then keep a list of “awards” on that site. If as time goes by you win more prestigious prizes, you can delete earlier ones. Do get a web site you can edit yourself.
A cash prize
Always useful. Why not keep anything like this, including advances and royalties from eventual publications in a separate bank account? Put a tax allowance from royalties and advances into a separate savings account so that when the taxman calls for his share you have it ready. You don’t pay tax on competition wins. Then invest your earnings so that they grow more cash for you. Part of that investment should be in paying for further competition entries.
Publication
This always sounds good but a word of warning. The average novel sells 2,000 copies, anthologies of short stories and collections of poetry somewhat less. Will the organisers of the competition sell that many? Might not your work be better submitted normally to a publisher?
Beware, however, also of a really big publisher publishing your book. No matter how good your work if it is early work it will probably sell less well than that of an established writer. And even if it sells well because the organisers of the competition market well, it may not be received all that well. The big publishing houses show little mercy. If your work does not do well, they’ll never publish you again and you’ll possibly have less chance than complete unknowns of being taken on by any other big publishing house.
Only go for this option if your work is extraordinarily good.
Publicity
Winning any competition will give you two sorts of publicity:

• That generated by the organisers
• That which you generate yourself by using social networking platforms and by contacting local press and media.

What will be the balance between these two ways of attracting attention? Will they between them expose you to over 2000 people? If not, consider submitting to a publisher instead. Also consider whether you have the time, the energy and the resources to achieve that exposure if you have to supplement what the competition organisers do.
An opportunity to write with a purpose
Competitions always give you the opportunity to work with a purpose. They can become almost like creative writing exercises. You also have a deadline to write to and some specific submission criteria. This gives a framework that reflects what happens generally in the industry.
However, don’t be too hard on yourself if you cannot write to that particular brief. Look for something else instead.
Feedback on your writing
Not many competitions offer direct feedback on your writing. However, you can extract your own feedback. If you win or are placed, the judge will give you some feedback. Take note of what they say and try to do it again.
If you don’t win or are not placed, look at the wining entries and what the judges say about them. What can you do to improve your script next time?

Which competitions should you enter?
Those:

• That you’ve deemed to be fair.
• For which you already have something suitable.
• For which you could easily write something suitable.

Don’t ever think that you have to enter every single competition. However, you do need to develop a strategy for deciding which to enter and for keeping track of your submissions.
A few suggestions are listed below.
Entering the competition

• Find out all you can about the work of previous winners.
• Make sure the work is the very best it can be. Edit it several times. Share it with your critique group or workshop and as many other people as possible before you send it out. Let it rest for a while and then look at it again. Allow sufficient time for all of this to happen.
• Check, double check and triple check that you have submitted correctly. Each competition has its own collection of idiosyncrasies.
• Then, job done, get on with the next one!

Strategies for keeping track of competitions

• As opportunities arise, cut and paste the details into a file. Keep entries in order of last submission date. Work through the entries in chronological order. Include in this file competitions that you’re not sure you might be able to create something for. If you keep on thinking about it until submission date, you might come up with something.
• Construct a spread sheet with dates of winners’ announcement day order. Check this regularly. Make an informed decision of about how long.
• Once you know that you have not won, put your entry into a folder of short stories, poems, flash fiction or whatever and look out for other opportunities. BUT ALWAYS REVISE YOUR WORK BEFORE YOU SEND IT OUT AGAIN.
• Look out for information about why the winners won. Open a file on that competition and keep these files in a competitions folder. Refer to them again before you enter next year.

Dangers of the Digital Age

I’m vain enough to set up a Google alert for myself. I’m now glad I do. What a shock two days ago when I came across the whole of my book digitized and displayed on the Scribid site.
I immediately contacted my publisher and the Society of Authors. Then I whinged to several of my social networking contacts. Everybody had heard it all before. It wasn’t news.
The publisher is asking them to take it down and the Society of Authors says that this site is quite good at responding to take-down requests. My publisher thinks they will just put it back up again.
I actually believe the person who posted the book is a little naïve and doesn’t actually know she is breaking the law. In some ways it’s very flattering: she thought my book was so good she wanted to share it with everyone. It is a poor quality scan and the pages load very slowly. I’m guessing that if anyone really wants to read my book, they’ll go out and buy it. “Exactly,” said my publisher when I shared that with her. So, no such thing as bad publicity.
However, what has happened is actually strictly illegal and in my opinion this site that encourages such rampant breaking of copyright law should be taken down. The ISP should be concerned. Think what happens when people are caught filming inside a cinema. They often get away with it, but when they are caught, punishment is severe.
One problem is that we have had the whole file-sharing precedent which rocked the music industry. It is recovering a little, and control is getting back into the hands of the recording companies. It does still not always favour the musicians.
Writers now also face a dilemma about genuine e-publishing. It is extremely easy to publish straight to Kindle. What a fantastic thing to do with your entire collection of out of print titles. Getting paid is a different matter. No UK platform. You need a US bank account and Amazon does not seem to appreciate that there is a tax agreement between the US and the UK.
Another model would be providing content for free and financing through advertising. Google-Adsense is almost ethical in that the advertising tends to match the projects and the advertisers do not have an input into your content. If you go to advertisers direct, you can be choosy about who advertises with you. You can refuse to be dictated to. However, if you want to earn enough you may be forced to compromise.
So, whilst we’re entering a new age with many exciting possibilities, there are plenty of dangers, too.