Month: May 2013
Matthew Arnold School Visit
On Thursday 16th May, I visited Matthew Arnold School in Oxford, accompanied by Moira da Costa of the Oxford Children’s Book Group, who had kindly arranged the event.
Over lunch, I chatted with half a dozen Year 10 students from the school’s very active book group. Most were keen and dedicated writers themselves, and had many good questions about publication, the craft of writing, motivation and how to form dislocated ideas into a coherent plot during the brainstorming stage.
Afterwards, I talked to two different groups taken from Years 7 and 8 in the school’s spacious, comfortable library.
Memorable Questions:
Q: Is it scary to see a book you wrote in a shop?
A: No – not for me, anyway. The other customers might be a bit unnerved to see me bouncing up and down with glee.
Q: How does it feel when you’re writing?
A: It depends how it’s going. When it’s flowing well and the ideas keep coming it’s the best feeling in the world (though I do need someone to remind me to eat). When I have writer’s block, it’s depressing and frustrating. When I ‘block’ it doesn’t stop me being able to write, but I end up rewriting the same section over and over without finding something that works. When I’m near a deadline, on the other hand, I write like crazy and get through cauldrons of tea. That stage is invigorating, in a panicky sort of way…
Dark Societies
Everybody loves a good dystopia, whether it’s a glossy techno-paradise masquerading as the ideal state, a grimly militant regime set up after a zombie apocalypse, or futures where society has found solutions far worse than its original problems. Many serve as dark warnings, or comments on the world’s current course. A surprising number are hopeful, showing human courage and resourcefulness winning out against a dark and fallen world.
On 2nd May at Waterstones Piccadilly, The Post Apocalyptic Book Club hosted “Dark Societies”, a panel event discussing books about Societies Gone Bad.
The panel was ably moderated by Leila Abu El Hawa, and consisted of Tom Hunter (Director of The Arthur C Clarke Award for Science Fiction), Robert Grant (Literary Editor of Sci-Fi London and Juror of the Clarke Awards), Anne C Perry (Assistant Editor at Hodder & Stoughton and co-founder of the wonderful Kitschies Awards), Adam Roberts (author of BSFA award-winning Jack Glass
We discussed this year’s Clarke Award shortlist and winner, the importance of awards and the vogues for different dark futures. (Zombies are still ‘in’, but the fashion may well change.)
Given the many threats to humanity, Adam Roberts offered to take over the Earth as supreme leader so that he could hold all the dark futures at bay. I was quickly sworn in as his Commander-in-Chief and Minister in Charge of Hats.
Lots of really excellent (and sometimes daunting) questions from the audience about the politics of dystopian writing, whether it is fundamentally optimistic or pessimistic, etc. I hope everybody else enjoyed the event as much as I did. I certainly learnt a lot from my fellow panelists.
School Visits with Just Imagine
On 30th April, I visited Chelmsford for some school visits arranged by Just Imagine Story Centre.
At Tyrrells Primary, I ran a character design workshop for Year 6 students from Tyrrels, The Bishops’ School and Springfield Primary (nothing to do with The Simpsons).
The group came up with some amazingly original characters, including a kind-hearted pygmy elephant, a leprechaun who would rather kill children than see them upset, a sock-hating forest being who had to cross an ocean to rescue her family from a museum, an animated gargoyle who could pick locks with his teeth, a youthful criminal mastermind, a girl who turned into a marshmallow due to an extreme allergic reaction, an unpronounceable alien and many more. I really hope that some of those ideas become stories!
After lunch we traveled to Felsted Primary, where I gave a talk in the music room, followed by a signing in the sunshine.
