Guest Blogger Teri Terry: confessions of an unpublished children's writer

Teri Terry is one of those writing friends I met online, and have been lucky enough to have a peek at some of her works in progress which are very, very good.

She currently divides her time between writing, stalking agents and publishers, and working in a library in Bucks. She is contemplating a research Masters degree at Bedfordshire on limits in YA literature. Teri won second prize in Writing for Children 12-plus at the 2009 Winchester Writers Conference, and first prize in ages 8-11 the previous year. She has written seven novels to date. She is currently stalking agents and publishers with a YA fantasy, Life's a Beach, Katie Moon, in which Katie sells her soul to surf, and also an adult crime series, Ready Steady Die: shades of Janet Evanovich, but as it is set in England, more polite and with fewer guns. Work in progress includes a YA horror story, Claustrophobia, and a dystopian fantasy, Slated.

That Teri is still an author-in-waiting is, I believe, a temporary situation. It's only a matter of time, Teri.

I have a confession to make.

I suffer from Rosoff-envy. I can’t help it. I can’t read any of her stuff without turning a deep shade of lime green and reaching for chocolate.

Teri Terry writing while wrapped in sleeping bag; 

Teri (right) in a deep shade of lime green

So I couldn’t resist going to hear Meg Rosoff and Mal Peet speak at the Oxford Literary Festival.

The blurb had it that they were going to tackle what it means to write for Young Adults, and it was even capitalized. They were going to chip away at the limits of teenage fiction; avoid its comfort zones; discuss edginess, and risks. And Meg’s blog also promised it would be ‘chaotic, messy, and horribly indiscreet’.

Soldiering on despite sneezing and sniffling and general germy-ness, I caught the bus to Oxford, prepared to be shocked.

As promised, there was no moderator to rein them in. They were free to interrupt each other at will, and they did.

Meg began by introducing Mal, winner of the 2009 Guardian Children’s Fiction Award for Exposure. She then read a lyrical passage from Penalty, despite claiming to know and care about as much for football as I do.

Meg posed the question: what makes a YA writer?

Mal said he does not write for a particular reader, but has a Myna bird on his shoulder when he writes, saying ‘crap, crap, crap’. Football issues aside, I instantly warmed to Mal: I thought that was just me! He went on to say that he tries to present books that are ‘complex, testing and challenging’, and that he expects his readers to be good enough to read his books. If he writes for anyone, it is what he would have read himself at 15 or 16.

Meg’s view is that they are elderly adolescents and write for themselves. She disagrees with the idea that a different tone of voice should be used when writing for children, and wants the reader to ‘rise to the book’. Also she writes for adolescents for a reason: in many ways it was the most important time of her life. It is about remembering what it is like to not be able to see the world clearly; to be searching for what life is about; working out how to find love, and relationships. And these don’t things don’t end at 19, or even 21.

Meg asked Mal about the embarrassment of being a YA writer: she finds herself making excuses for writing for children, not adults.

Well. Try admitting to being an unpublished children’s writer. Few confessions can clear a room with more speed.

Mal usually says he is a plumber, as they are more in demand than children’s writers, and make more money.

As a defence to the ghettoization of children’s writing, Meg pointed out that the books you read and treasure at 15, 16 and 17 make more impression on you than anything you ever read as an adult. Crime and Punishment got her through a traumatic summer of boys climbing through windows to be with her beautiful roommate. I would have gone for chocolate, but I can see how that could work.

Mal attempted to take over, and introduced Carnegie-medal winner Meg. He also read a wonderfully evocative passage from Meg’s What I Was.

He asked Meg about her books ending in a sort of ‘triumphant melancholy’. She responded that is what life is kind of about, and she has to watch that they don’t end with a character cradling a Puppy of Hope. Her husband has the job of killing off said puppies with a red pencil. We all die at the end: the way to make sense of it not lasting forever is to feel we made the best of things we can.

Mal asked if she feels any responsibility to not be bleak: she doesn’t feel her books are bleak. She writes about what is in her brain: various permutations of love, and how it doesn’t always follow the path it is supposed to follow. As a writer, your subjects should choose you. It is not about having a contest to see who can be the most shocking. Mal added that books should not be categorized by what they are about, but how well they are done.

Regarding endings, Mal felt the truth about writing novels is that you never finish one, and he never feels a wonderful sense of closure, but is an obsessive fiddler. He hastened to add, with his books. Meg, on the other hand, is usually happy with books in the end, but in all cases, they are not the book she set out to write.

In response to a question on the title of What I Was, Meg noted that until the last second it was, instead, The Dark Ages. It was renamed at haste when the original title was rejected.

My quote of the day: Meg admires Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer ‘in the abstract’. Hmmm…

Overall, what did I learn on my trip to Oxford?

• It is OK to publicly admit to imaginary friends on one’s shoulder. 
• Consider plumbing as a career option. 
• It is all right to still be tackling the big questions of life that I was probably supposed to work out when I was 16. 
• It is wise to have alternative titles in reserve 
• Keep a copy of your manuscript with you at all times, since you never know when Catherine Clarke may hold the door open for you, again 
• Bus 280 may or may not choose to stop at the temporary bus stop during road works and only comes once an hour on Sundays 
• Watch out for the Puppy of Hope. (I’ll keep my Bunny of Hope – you know, the one sitting on my shoulder, who is convinced my publishing deal is around the corner and we’ll be scoffing cocktails on a cruise ship, soon, and that a few squares of extra dark organic will help in the meantime.)

Teri's Bunny of Hope. With cocktail. On cruise ship.

In addition to sniffling and sneezing, I am now also suffering from boot-prints on my butt: from my own boot.

At the end of the event there was a long queue to Meg and Mal for signings, and I was thinking to myself: should I or shouldn’t I say hello to Meg.

Would she remember we spoke at the SCBWI conference in November, or that I say hello now and then on Facebook?

I left. Didn’t want to stand in front of her, drooling (and sniffling, and sneezing), saying ‘like, um, I really love your books, er, um, do you remember me?’ and risk her having a ‘who the hell are you?’ look on her face.

But I’d put a message on Facebook the day before that I was going, and then last night Meg posted, where were you Teri?

D’oh.

I wailed to my tolerant other half that it was like he had a chance to meet Bruce Springsteen and didn’t, and then Bruce texted him out of the blue and said, where were you, mate?

Another time, Bruce.

ADD: And here's Meg's own post about the Oxford Literary Festival (strangely mostly about stalking Hilary Mantel. Ah, the literary food chain goes round and round)

Guest Blogger Fiona Dunbar: a Mother's Day Tale

It's Mothering Sunday this weekend and to mark the day, my guest blogger and friend Fiona Dunbar has written this moving tribute to her mother, who herself had writing aspirations. Fiona is the author of the Lulu Baker trilogy which has been turned into the TV series Jinx, and the Silk Sisters trilogy which features a girl with the power to change like a chameleon. You can follow Fiona's blog here. Welcome to the Slushpile, Fiona!

I have killed my father. 

He lies over the desk in the study. The angle of his neck is wrong and from where I am sitting, I can see the side of his dead eye and thick blood at the corner of his mouth…

So begins a science fiction story called The Medusa Plant that, to my knowledge, has never been published. Or maybe it was – if so, it’s all lost in the mist of time now. It was written by my mother.

For years, I strenuously avoided turning into my mum. Having completely idolised her as a child, I then morphed into a teenager, and the rose-tinted spectacles came off. I vowed not to be loud and embarrassing in social situations like her, or have such disastrous relationships with men, or fail repeatedly at achieving goals, such as getting one’s work published.

I really don't know why Fiona doesn't want to turn into her yummy mummy

Not that I had any such ambitions at that time. In those days, my creative impulse was channelled not into writing, but drawing. (I have always written, but back then, the words were a mere adjunct to the pictures). Everything I produced was pronounced a marvel by my mum – and therefore, as far as I was concerned, utter rubbish.

Cornwall 1971: Interesting this photo because grown up Fiona so looks like her mum (see black and white pic below of Fiona with her kids)

This is the First Law of Motherhood:

You can’t win. 

Say your kids’ work is lousy? Consign them to years of therapy. Say it’s wonderful? Ha! What do you know? "You would say that, wouldn’t you? You’re my mum." (I’ve had that one too, from my own teenage daughter).

Fiona and her own kids (taken a few years ago)  

As for my mother’s own creative endeavours ... well, she never fully realised her ambitions there. Why? It’s not as if she wasn’t talented. In fact, I think she was really good. Good enough to have had an agent, and to have had a couple of things published ... but knowing her and her work as I do, I think there was a great deal more that could and should have happened, and never did.

One of her mum's manuscritps

I think she’d have made a good YA author – only back then, there wasn’t really any such thing. She was most at home with short stories, citing Saki as an influence, and wrote both for adults and for children.

Her writing was perceptive, lyrical, macabre and darkly funny. As far as I can remember, she had just two short stories published: a riveting children’s science fiction story called The South Gate Sea, and an adult story about, ahem, losing her virginity. (Yes, I actually read it. And yes, it was thoroughly cringe-inducing). There was also a TV play with Dennis Waterman that I didn’t rate much – but I was pleased for her that it got made.

As you might judge from the above, it probably didn’t help that she was so diverse.

Her concept for a children’s TV series called The Upside-Down People, (featuring characters called Sagacious, Prod and Umpulk) never saw the light of day; nor did a ghost story called Walking To Coverack, inspired by a holiday we took in Cornwall in – oh wow, I’m dating myself here – 1971.

An 80s Fiona poses with her mum

Reading it recently gave me goosebumps – not just because it’s spooky, but because it evokes so wonderfully the sights, sounds and smells of a part of the country I first fell in love with then. And more than anything, because it was written by her.

The last twelve years of her life were hampered by ill health. But she took a keen interest in my own nascent literary efforts, and when, in 2004, she was invited to the launch party of the first of my Lulu Baker books, The Truth Cookie, she was as excited as I was.

Wooden spoons for invitations! Yes, we were going to do this in style. Alas, the party never happened; the night before it was due to take place, she was struck by a brain haemorrhage. She died two weeks later.

So, did I succeed in not turning into my mum? Well, I don’t think I’m loud and embarrassing in social situations – though my kids might disagree. I’ve fared more happily on the relationship front: my husband and I have been together for nearly twenty years. As for the publishing: well, like most of us, I have a drawer full of stuff that didn’t go anywhere. But The Truth Cookie is still in print, has been followed by six other titles, and has inspired the CBBC TV series, Jinx. I have a contract for a new series, and right now, I’m about to embark on one of them…a ghost story, set in Cornwall.

The Lulu Baker books re-released with the Jinx covers

So you might say that yes, I succeeded in that objective.

Except that this is not the whole picture, of course.

There were so many wonderful things about my mum – her warmth, her humour, her wit and compassion ... even, yes, the economy and cleverness of her writing – that I aspire to myself. The big difference is this: she didn’t believe in herself enough. I’m not doing better than she did because I’m more talented – I don’t think I am. I’ve just stuck with it.