Is Amy Chua, Tiger Mother perfectly right or horribly wrong?

Yale Law School's John M Duff Professor of Law, Amy Chua has caused quite a stir on the parenting front with her new book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Penguin) and whatever else it achieves, it's destined to sell books, so her parents will be delighted she's succeeded at that.

Not read the book but...

I haven't read the book, nor do I intend to unless sent a review copy (large hint) but I've read the articles and seen the interviews, particularly this morning's with Vanessa on Channel 5 (whatever is that chap doing there?). I get the gist of it though and decided to throw in my two penn'orth because a third of my piano students are Chinese and boy have I noticed the difference in cultures between east and west? And that's just it. Why should we be so outraged by attitudes of other cultures because they aren't like ours? How arrogant are we to say another approach is 'wrong' and ours is 'right'? There is no right or wrong, just differences and some may work and some may not in both cultures.

UK piano students

Now for the empirical take. To generalise (which I know I shouldn't) some of my British parents are great lead swingers; they cancel lessons at the drop of a hat - amazing how many cars break down so often and how grandpas have a habit of re-dying (Tip 1: if you're going to tell a little white one, make sure you remember what it was.) Kids tend to be hawked round from football to dancing, from Brownies to swimming and on to guitar and/or piano lessons, not to ensure they excel at all these activities, because they don't, but (just my opinion this) it enables the parent(s) to drop into Tescos and leave them with the musical childminder for half an hour while they do the shopping. This seems to have come to an abrupt halt since I made it clear they were to be picked up at the end of the lesson and not 15 minutes later while I'm teaching someone else. 'She'll be here soon, she's just gone shopping', has lain dormant for a while.

What happens with these kids is that they are doing so much stuff that they have no time to practise any of it, so they are mediocre at all of them. I could weep over those who begin with a genuine talent, only to fade into oblivion on the keys as they spread their time between multifarious activities. Then there's the X boxes and social networking which ensure they don't go to bed (or to sleep) until the small hours and take up far too much of their childhood. And nobody seems to care; except me perhaps. I sit by them as they yawn and stretch, sneeze and cough ('oh, has he got a cold?'-surprised parent) after a late night sleepover and a heavy day at school. What chance does a struggling piano teacher have trying to motivate them? How can that be 'right' eh?

Chinese piano students

The Chinese parents, on the other hand, have strict ideas about what they expect from their children, discipline for a start (remember that if you were born before 1960?). 'How is that 'wrong'? In the last lot of exams, the two distinctions went to two Chinese girls and the rest got high merits (including a Chinese boy whose standard slipped because his parents were being too Western to notice).

I once had a pupil whose Chinese mother berated her at every slip of a key leaving the child a quivering wreck in floods of tears. Once I'd convinced the child that it was OK to make mistakes and told the mother that she was the cause of the child's problems and it couldn't continue, it stopped, we became great friends and the pupil achieved what her mother had wanted in the first place. I think it's about compromise. Practising is a problem for all children and most of my Chinese parents are willing to compromise, especially those born here or who are in mixed marriages, which provides a better balance. And they do seem to have an innate talent for playing the piano. I have an adult Chinese student who applies herself to practising diligently and is happily playing Clementi and Beethoven after only 12 months.

What now?

Amy Chua

My greatest test is about to come. During a recent trial lesson, I asked a young Chinese boy why he wanted to learn the piano? 'I don't,' he said. 'My father wants me to.' Pretty honest considering dad was sitting by his side at the time, looking thunderous. It isn't unknown for them to have had three or four piano tutors before they get here, probably nothing much wrong with any of them, but if a pupil doesn't want to learn, they're unlikely to pull it off with any of us. Maybe I'll turn out to be Little Miss Perfect.

PS: Harry the Cat

And now, I must go and kill that cat for he's been whining all day, despite four different bowls of food, none of which meet his expectations and he's standing on the stairs above my office, deaf as a post and shouting his head off.

Read Benioff's City of Thieves - great book!

David Benioff's City of Thieves (Sceptre) gives a fascinating insight into the deprivations of war during the German invasion of Russia in 1941. Its darkness is only lightened by the humour and Benioff successfully mixes the two to present a well-researched version of his grandfather Lev's harrowing experiences in the coldest environment recorded; when ordinary citizens were dying on the streets from cold and hunger and some had even turned to cannibalism.

Benioff is a Hollywood screenwriter and author of The 25th Hour and When the Nines Roll Over. He lives in Los Angeles and New York City. After taping his grandfather's memoirs of his boyhood experiences during the Second World War when Leningrad was under nightly attack from Nazi bombers, Benioff wrote this exceptional novel. It's a novel of great breadth and originality, based on Lev's life when, aged 17, the Germans invaded Vyazina where his mother and sister had fled to safety. He never heard from them again. His father, a famous poet, had already been murdered by the Nazis and Lev is suddenly alone.

When he's arrested for looting a dead German paratrooper, he finds himself sharing a cell in the notorious Crosses prison with a student accused of deserting his regiment. Will they be executed? Not if they complete a task in one week for the deadly NKVD Colonel who wants a special wedding present for his beautiful daughter. But finding a dozen eggs among a starving populace isn't that easy and the two men bond as they experience cannibals selling ground human sausage links, dogs used as bombs, frozen soldiers, no food and little energy to propel them forwards.

Killing becomes a matter of survival during war but for the Nazis it's a sport and a call for bloodlust. Benioff has turned to Curzio Malaparte's Kaputt for his information about their anti-partisan actions. The pleasures and brutality of their murders are sickening but compelling reading. It's important to know about it and to be aware how easy it is for people to degenerate into a sub-human primitive state and one wonders how those who survived and returned to their homeland managed to live with themselves afterwards.

Beautifully crafted, totally believable, wonderful characters and truth. Read it.

For more about the book and author, use this link:
http://www.hodder.co.uk/authors/author.aspx?AuthorID=2248

Rose Tremain's Trespass a great read...

Melodie Hartmann, aged 10 has moved from an exciting cosmopolitan lifestyle in Paris to a village in rural Cevennes where the most excitement so far has been a school outing and picnic in an area once famous for its thriving silk worm industry. Viewed as snobby and superior by her village peers, she is bullied and runs off, straight into more excitement than she's had in her young life.

Her experience opens up a can of worms, silk or otherwise but it certainly kicks off Rose Tremain's Trespass with a bang and pulled me into it. I read it in two sessions owing to its unputdownable qualities - superbly written, fast-paced and full of drama and conflict. It's always a joy to read plots that are new and original and this is one of them and the flavour of France is an extra bonus for me. The spattering of ellipses all over the place was the only irritating thing I could find to moan about.

The action switches from London, where Anthony Verey, famed antique dealer has his shop in Chelsea to his older sister Veronica, a garden designer who lives with her lover Kitty, a wannabe watercolourist in Les Glaniques, a village in the Gard. Poor Anthony's brown furniture has fallen out of fashion and he's minded to sell up and move nearer to Veronica, much to Kitty's disgust.

Brothers, sisters, love, hate and change are ongoing themes in this book. Contrasting with Veronica's fierce loyalty towards her younger brother, we find a whirlpool of emotions running through the hatred between Audrun Lunel and her older brother Aramon who delighted in telling her in their younger days how she was really the daughter of a village woman and her Nazi lover during the war. Now neighbours on land they have inherited in La Callune, a village in Cevennes, Aramon wants to sell up to foreigners and can't because of Audrun's unsightly home marring his view.

Their lives become entwined with the Vereys when Anthony decides to view Aramon's farm. The story flows like a Grecian tide, carrying fascinating and bitter flotsam in its wake. Things will never be the same again for any of the characters by the end of Trespass.

Last Train from Liguria

Christine Dwyer Hickey's Last Train from Liguria covers the period between the wars leading up to World War II when Mussolini was instituting Hitler's recommendations for ridding Italian society of Jews and other foreigners who had contributed so much to their financial and cultural prosperity - something of an own goal for them both as it transpired. But we hear the rumbling sounds of war threatening to overthrow the status quo and Hitler holding rallies in Germany. This aspect was convincingly described but I found this an altogether curious novel with its irritating aspects outweighing its positive ones to the point of spoiling what could have been a very good read. If we're going to break the rules, we have to know why.

Absence of verbs

The author's descriptive ability has to be acknowledged. She produced some superb passages of high-quality prose, which were marred, for me at any rate, by 'sentences' containing no verbs. Many were short, sharp fragments, firing out like bullets from a gun, such as 'Time'. 'But'. 'One. Word.' Others were simply subordinate clauses, which made no sense without verbs or an attachment to sentences which they should have qualified, for example 'Since breaking up with Hugh, and even more again since leaving my job a fortnight ago.' How is that a sentence? And should it be the ending of the previous sentence or the beginning of the one that followed it?

Deliberate mistakes?

At first I imagined it to be the work of someone who was an inexperienced writer and whose publisher's editing needed an overhaul but this persistent style, which slowed down my reading, finally led me to the conclusion that it was simply a contrived style adopted by the author to show that she was prepared to break the rules, rather like Gertrude Stein viewed punctuation. I don't know which is true but the book was also full of literals, so perhaps Atlantic Books need to take more care with their editing and proofreading. In any event, it all spoilt my enjoyment of what could have been a good read and although reviews have been mixed, some of the ravers worry me. (Example: '...like someone who's just crossed the dessert.') Writing in present tense is another style I love to hate, although it was well sustained without dropping into other tenses, as so often happens. I find it mildly pretentious and too much like reading stage directions or having a camera following the action with a running commentary. But that's me and perhaps some people don't mind it.

Slow plot

The action in Bordighera, where our heroine, Bella has gone to look after a small boy belonging to a Jewish woman in the late 1930s is punctuated by fast forwards to 60 years later in London where she lies dying, tended by her 'granddaughter'. In this way, we learn more about what happened to her attempts to smuggle the child, Alex and his baby sister out of Italy to safety in England.

It's a slowly unfolding plot, long-winded and drawn out in parts, covering strands of information that don't appear to be particularly relevant to the actual plot at the time but that are, in fact, important to later events. It took quite a long time for our Bella to get to Italy and we had to follow her tedious journey and the family events at her London home that brought about her departure. This may have been deliberate as it leads up to and culminates in a faster paced crisis and climax. It left me with more questions than answers though, particularly, what happens to the baby when she grows up? And although the story begins with the reasons for Alex's piano teacher, Edward leaving Dublin and his journey to Italy in 1924, which gives it the dramatic start that we understand all good books need, giving the initial impression he was the protagonist, he then disappears from view until later in the story and never quite comes to life as a fully-rounded character.

Apart from that, the type was too small for me to read with ease.

Donate a book to Glowinski's Library in Poland

Meet an extraordinary man. Tadeusz Glowinski, or Teddy to his friends, lives in Poland in a pretty little town called Olesnica. Behind him, on his apartment wall, you  can see a colourful map of the world. It's there because there isn't enough space for it in his library. On it, you will see all the places from which kind people have donated books for The Foreign Language Social Library section of Glowinski's Library; and illustrations (digitals and pictures) for its Gallery of World's Illustrations. Not only illustrators and writers are keen to send Teddy their work but librarians, publishers and kind-hearted folk around the world have contributed too. He's always looking for donations to help boost the library's shelves (especially if they're signed or dedicated).

Glowinski's Library




Teddy (67) began his library in 2000. Since then donors from 83 countries have sent him books as a result of masses of emails that he whizzes around the world, persuading people in the book world to send him their books. He's a visionary and single-minded. And he's dedicated to books and to the growth of his amazing library, ironically at a time when our libraries are closing down or morphing into coffee shops with books on the side.

A graduate in speciality librarianship and information science from the University of Wroclaw, Teddy worked as a teacher for many years before embarking on his life's project. He works in his library as an unpaid volunteer and the books are lent free of charge. 

I would like to encourage those of you with a big heart to listen to his call and send what you can. Log on to the Glowinski Library website at http://glowinski.olesnica.pl/ and if you'd like to contact Teddy, his email is teddy@box43.pl or teddy@olesnica.pl  

Gluten-free bread is good! Check out your fingerprints!

Artisan's gluten-free Quinoa bread

As a postscript to my gluten-free cookbook post, the Artisan bread arrived in a neatly-packed box and well within the use by date; sliced them and put them in the freezer ready for toasting. Can recommend the quinoa as it's soft and springy and the pea and alpine herb bread tastes like, er pea and alpine herbs.

Good customer relations

The thing I really appreciated about Artisan was that at the end of their phone sits a human being, ready to answer questions and chat about their products, so that I didn't have to waste valuable time pressing buttons, being cut off and running up a phone bill in line with my blood pressure; no recorded messages that brought me round to the place I first started, or that produced a human robot who read to me from a script. Big business hasn't got around to listening to public opinion yet and instead of dispensing with these ridiculous, time-wasting technologies, they seem to be on the increase. So, top marks to Artisan and firms like them who've understood that keeping the customers happy is the key to keeping customers.

And another thing...most firms who send goods via snail mail don't give them another thought once they've taken the money and sent them off. Artisan ask where to deliver the goods if you're out when they arrive and they're plastered with labels warning posties of the perishable goods inside that need to be handled with care and delivered fast. I realise this is beginning to sound like an advert for Artisan Bread Organic (ABO) but I think with today's attitudes in the marketplace, any company that shows care and respect for their customers deserves a public acknowledgment.

ABO's Real Bread award



Fingerprint clue to gluten intolerance

Ingrid Eissfeldt, director of ABO says: 'We care about what happens in your body after you have eaten our bread - we don't stop at "mouthfeel"'. Their products have been influenced by the work of naturopathic physician Dr Peter D'Adamo, noted for his Blood Type Diet. So their breads are labelled with the different blood types and genotype compatability. 'Did you know that you can tell the digestive power of your guts by looking at your fingers?' asks Ingrid. She tells me that if I can see my fingerprints I'm OK. I can't, of course. They're covered by little lines going this way and that. Gripped by fear, I learn more. 'If the lines are worn and hard to see you are probably gluten intolerant.' So that painful bowel biopsy was all for nothing...I rather suspected as much when I came to in the middle of it.

Gluten-free fresh flour

Artisan also sell fresh gluten free flour and Ingrid warns that it needs to be fresh as once it's milled it oxidises and tastes bitter. 'That's when industry reaches for potato flour and egg powder to mask the off flavours. Because they don't understand the water absorbing properties of gluten free grains, they stick the bread together with Xanthan gum.

'Ever made a pancake with rice flour? It's so crisp and delicious you'll never use wheat flour again,' she says. Their website contains vegan recipes using fresh flour. Who's for truffles on a quinoa Glutini? Log on to http://www.artisanbread-abo.com/ and check it out for yourselves. You can order by phone (01227 771 881) or online.

Love, lust and loss during World War II - The Night Watch

Helen Giniver runs a dating agency round the back of London's Bond Street station. Viv Pearce is her colleague, who takes care of the admin. Helen lives in Streatham with Julia Standing, a well-known author. She is besotted with Julia and prone to irrational fits of jealousy over what looks like a relationship brewing with another woman -- not without reason if you follow the book's backward drifting timeline from 1947 to 1944 when Helen bumps into Julia for the first time, having heard about her from her then lover, Kay Langrish, Julia's ex.

Kay now lives in the attic flat of her neighbour and landlord Mr Leonard, a Christian Science healer in Lavendar Hill. She spends her time watching various disabled people on their way in and out of consultations with Mr Leonard or just wandering about the streets, looking mannish and just generally looking, though back in 1944 when she was co-habiting with Helen, she was an active and dashing member of the ambulance service, rescuing victims of the blitz or dealing with their remains.

Viv's guilty secret is Reggie, 36 and married. Viv is single and lives at home with her widowed father. Her younger brother, Duncan lives with Uncle Horace -- not his real uncle but none other than Mr Mundy, the prison warder who befriended him when he did a four-year stretch at Wormwood Scrubs for something we don't discover until the third section of the novel in 1941 in a poignantly described episode. Kay observes them as they visit Mr Leonard regularly for Uncle Horace's bad leg to be healed. Duncan works in a candle factory doing menial work and here it is that his old cellmate in the Scrubs, Robert Fraser, now a journalist, re-discovers him. Viv recognises Kay from a harrowing incident during the war, skilfully related, when Kay - a stranger to her - helped her out of a serious predicament in an act of human kindness that could have cost Kay her job.

Having set out her stall, Sarah Waters in The Night Watch (Virago, 2006), works backwards to unravel the stories that connect her main characters and explain how they got where they are in the first place. The more I read, the more I was sucked into their past lives, the better to understand how Viv came to have an affair with Reggie and the part Kay played in saving her life. Ironically, neither Viv nor her boss, Helen seem to be aware that their lives are linked by the various people they know. Duncan's sad and poignant past is revealed, uncovering aspects of life that were illegal or taboo in the 1940s and enabling us to compare the differences in attitudes and tolerance levels between those times and today.

The human condition is laid bare in those years of rationing and deprivation, where nightly enemy bombing raids were part of the normal way of life and fear was a constant bedfellow; where generosity of spirit compelled people to hold out the hand of friendship to friends and strangers alike. Waters' cast embraces a spread of 'characters' in the absolute sense of the word, superbly created and developed with their own distinctive traits and foibles.

This is a beautifully crafted piece of work, displaying a wealth of meticulous research and attention to detail that brings the story to life in a three-dimensional form. The bombing raids are so realistic that you can see and hear the planes droning overhead dropping their insidious load, imagine the searchlights scanning the night sky and smell the acrid smoke of the fires; you can imagine the shattering of people's lives and homes, the abject horror of the blitz and how it destroyed their world.

The Night Watch is a revealing historical document and story of love, lust, loss and change. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prize and you can read an extract on Sarah's website at http://www.sarahwaters.com/  An adaptation by Paula Milne will be shown on BBC-2 this Spring. 

Gluten-free cookbooks for Coeliacs and wheat intolerants

Anyone who has a wheat intolerance, like I do, will know the misery of coping with the symptoms and how socially debilitating it can be. And if you're intolerant to the wheat, the chances are you may have issues with other gluten grains like oats, barley and rye, so substituting wheat for rye bread, which I can only liken to eating the sole of my shoe or chomping my way out of a cardboard box, can be soul-destroying when you're in need of a comforting fix of hot, springy buttered toast.

Since food manufacturers began tampering with our food in the hopes of making it last longer and look more appetizing, consumers have begun voting with their digestive systems which have finally lost patience and it can only be consumer demand that accounts for the plethora of gluten-free food shelves that have appeared miraculously in the supermarkets (I suspect, rightly or wrongly, all made by the same source but packaged corporately); not to mention all the new food products that have emerged, often from sufferers themselves or with suffering relatives, after experiments with healthier ways of cooking (which reminds me, I'm still waiting for that box of gluten-free bread samples using non-gluten flours and no yeast (hurrah!) from the Artisan Bread Organic bakery (online bakery at http://www.artisanbread-abo.com/).

The problem for some of us, though, is that most of these mass-produced gluten-free foods on the shelves contain other substances, like sugar, citric acid or corn products which, if you have systemic candida or other gastric problems, are also likely to create digestive disturbances. The upside is that at least someone is making an effort and there are now all sorts of once-forbidden products that are free from intolerance ingredients on the market, like flour, stock cubes, pasta, chocolates and ice cream (http://www.boojabooja.com/)

Food for Friends gluten-free recipe book



So you can imagine my delight when Infinite Ideas, the Oxford publishers, sent me a copy of Food for Friends - Modern Vegetarian Cooking at Home, by Jane and Ramin Mostowfi with Kalil Resende. Included in the recipes are vegan and gluten-free options and they're taken from the menu at the restaurant of the same name that they run in Brighton. Ramin and Jane took it over in 2004, joined by Kalil six months later and they have since built up a good reputation for inventive vegetarian cooking using local ingredients and exotic flavours. 'One of the features of our book is that many recipes are dairy and/or gluten-free, and that simple adjustments are often suggested for adapting dishes to specific diets...' The book is a collection of their customers' favourites and for the ingredients you don't have to drive 60 miles to find the only supplier of obscure foodstuffs in a barn down a cobbled street.

Beginning with the Basics - stocks, sauces, dressings - salads and soups lead on to pastas, grains and pulses, fritters and burgers, tarts and stuffed veggies, ending with big pots and slow cooking and a section for special occasions, desserts and baking. So if you're gluten-free, you can take your pick from Spiced Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, Coconut and Ginger Soup to Puy Lentil, Aubergine and Red Wine Moussaka and much more.

Phil Vickery's Gluten-Free Cooking recipes



TV chef Phil Vickery goes a step further in his book, Seriously Good! Gluten-Free Cooking. He became interested in gluten-free cooking when selling some of his Christmas puddings at a fayre and noticed how many people thought they couldn't buy them because they had Coeliac Disease. Phil already knew about it from his past cooking experience and was delighted to tell them that the puddings were gluten-free. He joined up with Coeliac UK to produce his cookery book and it begins with a lengthy explanation about Coeliac Disease, its symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and suggestions for choosing and eating alternative foods.

Although many people on a gluten-free diet can't tolerate gluten, they are not necessarily coeliac, though recent research suggests that a large percentage of people diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) - an umbrella term used by medics for 'I don't know' - are in the process of becoming coeliac. It isn't something that happens overnight and it can take many years to develop. And it's worth remembering that tests and biopsies for Coeliac Disease can produce false negatives and positives. (And can be very painful - I remember waking up in the middle of a Coeliac bowel biopsy and being unable to convey how excruciatingly painful it was.)

Phil's recipes are not vegetarian but there is a special section of vegetarian recipes. I looked for the Christmas pudding recipe but ironically, it isn't there, so I'll have to make do with Millionaire's Shortbread with Bramley Apple Dip. But he does cover Breakfasts, Smoothies and Drinks, Snacks, Outdoors, Comfort, Salads, Parties, Baking and Desserts. Both these books are lavishly illustrated with beautiful colour plates and are in hardback format.

By coincidence, as I was writing this, a friend arrived home from a cruise on Cunard's recently-launched Queen Elizabeth liner to tell me that they provide a full gluten-free menu for anyone who requests it. I'm finding that more and more savvy restaurants are providing gluten-free alternatives on their menus, so there is hope for humanity yet.

Cooking Without...

And I can heartily recommend Barbara Cousins's cookery books, which cut out just about everything a sensitive stomach could wish for - Cooking Without, Vegetarian Cooking Without and Cooking Without Made Easy (Thorson's). I've been using them for years and they're great everyday cookbooks.

Sarah Waters and The Little Stranger

Hilary Mantel, writing in The Guardian, called it 'A perverse hymn to decay...' 

I didn't find Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger (Virago) frightening, unnerving or chilly as other critics did. In fact, for most of the time I was waiting for something sensational to happen. A dead child's name scratched on the walls, odd knockings, bangings and bell ringings didn't induce me to sleep with the light on (although a fox screaming outside my window as a I read, as experienced by Suzi Feay of the Literary Review, certainly would have made me reach for the Rescue Remedy).

My mother and aunt were ardent followers of things that went bump in the night and were constantly tripping off to eccentric old ladies in turbans to find out what the future had in store for them. When my mother died, she left behind a diary full of automatic writing that nobody could decipher. The Sister and I were used to pushing upturned glasses round a circle of letters with Yes and No at the top and bottom and asking daft questions that always ended up in riots of laughter, so we were no strangers to the 'supernatural'. This came to an abrupt halt one day in our mother's absence, when we 'borrowed' the forbidden equipment from the sideboard. By the time she arrived home The Sister and I were clutching one another in terror, scared stiff of the terrifying atmosphere we'd created in the room and a ghastly smell like bad cheese that permeated it. I said it was her feet; she swore it was mine and we became hysterical.

Author Sarah Waters

If I'd wanted to be scared it wasn't happening for a long time in The Little Stranger but I did enjoy reading the book and found it hard to put down, finishing it in two sittings despite its length. And I must admit that were I any of the characters in the novel, I would have been terrified out of my wits. The narrator, Dr Faraday gives us the background to the focus of the story -  Hundreds Hall, a Georgian mansion in Warwickshire - which provides the perfect setting for a creepy Gothic novel. Faraday has visited the pile, as a boy. Now, as an adult in the 1940s, he strikes up a friendship with the remaining Ayres family, who are all basically damned, living eccentrically in decaying splendour in a forgotten era.

Faraday, now a qualified doctor spends a lot of time with the widowed mother, Mrs Ayres and her two grownup children, Roderick and Caroline. But his logical medical mind attributes the strange happenings there to psychological issues, so that if he and his colleagues had had their way the entire clan would have been locked up in mental homes. Readers are given the option of deciding whether it is paranormal activity and an entity is at work in the house to destroy the family or whether it's possible for a frustrated human being to subconsciously convey their angst into the house to attain the freedom they desperately desire by terrifying them all into insanity or worse. This is what is so fascinating about the author's extraordinary tale.

The drama and conflict at the climax is enthralling and skilfully handled and her research impeccable. She weaves her knowledge into the plot, mainly through dialogue so that it's given naturally and not in large chunks of indigestible exposition or as an academic lesson in how knowledgeable she is, like some writers do (though I have to say that Faraday certainly has his fair share of introspection).

The doctor is an unexciting man and some of his tale is repetitive and long-winded but Sarah Waters controls the pace this way and builds up her story slowly until events explode. She also manages to get inside the male mind and evoke the various moods and reactions of Dr Faraday when his expectations are damned in circumstances beyond his control. In parts, the style of his narrative reminds me of Daphne du Maurier. And she exposes the weaknesses of the British upper classes in their cloistered environment, a dying ember of a bygone era declining into a post-war world in which they are unable to adapt. Enlightening but sad.

The Little Stranger was shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize in 2009 and the South Bank Show Literature Award. Film rights are under option. A firm devotee of this author, I'm off to read The Night Watch.

You can learn more about Sarah Waters's work on http://www.sarahwaters.com/

Scary short stories from top Russian writer

'There once lived a woman who had a tiny little (sic) daughter named Droplet.' The baby never grew, which wasn't surprising, as the woman found her in the head of a cabbage.

'There once lived a woman who was so fat, she couldn't fit in a taxi, and when going into the subway she took up the whole width of the escalator.' She was really twin ballerinas who became victims of a magician.

Children's fairy tales? There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbour's Baby is a most unusual collection of urban folk tales, dark and creepy with extraordinary plots and here and there a hint of humour. Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's stories are published under Penguin's Modern Classics list and she is said to be one of Russia's most acclaimed authors. She has written 15 collections of prose and her novel, The Time: Night was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize in 1992.

Her short story collection pulls you into forests, empty rooms in derelict buildings, hospitals, death, decay and other such dimensions, the stuff that nightmares, or scary paintings, are made of. If you need cheering up, they're not for you. They contain a strong scent of sadness, lost moments, missing children, neglect and distorted images. They trickle off at the end without satisfactory closure, open-ended so that readers can draw their own conclusions. They left me asking 'So what? What was all that about?' The trouble with an open end is that readers can feel cheated and unfulfilled.



What pulled me into them and eventually hooked me in the final section was the author's astonishing imagination, her flair for pacing and strong sense of place; but above all, her originality of plot and diversity of conflict. Like Alice's adventures, they contain one twist and turn after another. There are only so many stories to be told - seven it's said - and though they are re-told in many different ways, so often aspects and incidents seem undeniably familiar; here, we are presented with new and original ideas that aren't.

Themes cover loss, death, homelessness and poverty and loss of identity. They feature grotesques, bundles of clothing, rags, cloaks with hooded faces. Stories are told in a surreal world of unconsciousness, dreams or through near death experiences. As for fairy stories, we don't know what happens to Snow White in her coma but these stories unfold in that twilight state. It was almost a psycho-analytical experience of activity in the author's mind, like troubling dream sequences in need of interpretation.

It was therefore no surprise to learn from the translators' introduction that Petrushevskaya's writing had been banned in Russia. Her stories about Russian women were too dark and direct for Russian taste. Her plays were shut down. It was only with the breakdown of the Soviet Union that she was able to publish her work and become the national literary figure that she is today.

The stories are divided into four sections. To read the story Revenge from the first section: Songs of the Eastern Slavs, follow this link at Penguin Classics: http://www.penguinclassics.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780718192075,00.html 

Campaigns for books and World Book Night give-away

Listed on the Society of Authors' website are a number of campaigns on the lookout for supporters to uphold the rights of writers and the future of books; some are under threat from lack of funding and others from annhilation by new technology or overzealous political correctors.

To help prevent our libraries from cuts and closures:

• Voices for the Library - http://www.voicesforthelibrary.org.uk/
• The Library Campaign - http://www.librarycampaign.com/
• Campaign for the Book - http://alangibbons.net/

If you're against vetting in schools and visa restrictions on visiting artists and academics, try the Manifesto Club - http://www.manifestoclub.com/

To join the campaign for all UK children  to become readers, log on to the Just Read Campaign - http://www.justreadcampaign.co.uk/ and if you truly believe that e-books and readers are likely to sound the death knell for the printed book, join The Campaign for Real Books - http://www.campaignforrealbooks.org/

If you're a writer, you might want to sign the petition of the Libel Reform Campaign - http://www.libelreform.org/ or any of the following:

• The National Campaign for the Arts (which represents all the arts) - http://www.artscampaign.org.uk/
• Save the Arts, organised by the London branch of Turning Point Network - http://www.savethearts-uk.blogspot.com/

The Largest Book Give-away Ever

You have until 4 January 2011 to become a book giver for World Book Night (WBN), which will be inaugurated on Saturday, 5 March, just two days after World Book Day, the national reading campaign. A million books will be given away by 20,000 dedicated readers to the public in the UK and Ireland and the event will be broadcast by BBC2.

One of the 25 chosen titles

If you would like to participate, you will be expected to say in about 100 words why you want to give away 48 copies of your favourite book chosen from a selected list of 25 titles. Recipients may be reluctant readers or people who don't have easy access to books, bookshops and libraries. To enter, log onto http://www.worldbooknight.org/

Alan Yentob, Creative Director BBC and member of WBN editorial committee said: 'BBC2 will host World Book Night from its inception on December 2 through to the event itself on 5 March. Whether as a giver, recipient or viewer, we hope that BBC audiences will be inspired to get involved with this groundbreaking project.'

Author Margaret Atwood said: 'When Jamie Byng told me about World Book Night, I was amazed not only by its magnitude but by its simplicity. The love of writing, the love of reading - these are huge gifts. To be able to give someone else a book you treasure widens the gift circle. I was thrilled to be asked to support World Book Night, and doubly thrilled that The Blind Assassin was chosen to help launch it. Long may its voyage be!' 

The campaign is supported by such high profile people as Colin Firth, Antony Gormley, Seamus Heaney, Damien Hirst, Nigella Lawson, JK Rowling and many others and is backed by The Booksellers Association, The Publishers Association, Independent Publishers Guild, The Reading Agency, libraries, charities and other organisations.

Write a film review for Christmas and win £100

Fancy yourself as a film reviewer? Classical narrative structure works as well for movies as it does for novels but you'll be looking at image and action a little more closely. You only have until 24 December to come up with a film review of the greatest Christmas film never made.

Best for Film have launched a Christmas writing competition called Write Christmas to combat the Hollywood tat that turns up every year at this time. Invent the 'most ridiculous, potentially iconic Christmas film' that has never been made and you could win £100, publication on http://www.bestforfilm.com/ and an A1 poster of your movie by OTM Entertain, the team that designed posters for The Hurt Locker, In the Loop, Splice and The Losers.

Judges are Metro film editor, Larushka Ivan-Zadeh; actress, author, film critic for The Danny Baker Show, Emma Kennedy and parody film critic, author, blogger, Cleolinda Jones.

To enter, email your review before the deadline to info@bestforfilm.com with 'write Christmas' in the subject line. And you can read more about it on http://bestforfilm.com/community/write-christmas-competition  Good luck!

Mabel Lucie Attwell's story

Mabel Lucie Attwell (1879-1964)

Rummaging round a second-hand book sale, I found an old quarto size Lucie Attwell's Annual, gifted to Nancy Brindle by her aunt for Christmas 1934. So, if you're wondering what happened to that chunky children's tome, Nancy, wherever you are, I've got it. These children's books were published by Dean & Son, Ltd of 6 La Belle Sauvage, Ludgate Hill, London EC4 and they were beautifully illustrated with colour plates mounted on the pages and glossy coloured prints of cherub-cheeked children, pixies and elves.

Attwell was a book illustrator in the early part of the 20th century, having studied at the Regent School of Art and Heatherley's School of Art but failed to complete her courses because she liked to have free rein over what she drew. The chubby-cheeked children with the chunky legs were modelled on her little daughter, Peggy Wickham who became an illustrator herself. Attwell also illustrated a Hodder & Stoughton edition of Peter Pan and Wendy by J M Barrie, among many that she drew for books, magazines, advertisements, postcards and greeting cards.

She was born in Mile End, London in 1879 and she rose to popularity during the 1930s and 40s. She married the artist Harold Earnshaw in 1908. They met at the St Martin's School of Art and both contributed to the ILN Group of magazines, such as Britannia & Eve. She moved to Cornwall to live with her son, Peter in 1945 and died there on 5 November 1964.

I remember these annuals well, if only for the large black typography on the lovely thick pages that I used to tear into pieces, screw up into balls and chew as a toddler, just to annoy The Sister, who thought I was mad.

The characters in them had names like Bertie Bunnie, Babs and Bunty (she seems to have favoured the 'B's). Bunty goes for a visit to London Town with her imaginary elves, the Boo Boos, smartening them up first with baths and new suits. Bunty has an argument at the station as the clerk doesn't know how many Boo Boos go to one ticket. Nothing changed there then...It contains lots of twee poems about going to jolly parties or gathering flowers gay and various activity pages for cutting out, like Billum B Boo who couldn't make up his mind whether to be a bobbie or a sailor. Readers are urged to help 'this queer Billy B Boo' by painting him a suit in blue. It all seems so innocent compared to what kids get up to these days.

But I doubt if the story, Betty's Black Brother would pass muster these days and rightly so. Betty, aged five receives a letter from Africa. Her parents live there apparently and they're on their way home with a baby brother for her. Betty loves her little black doll, Yao Yao best, so she's looking forward to a brother who looks just like him. When her parents arrive with the new bundle, Betty is very upset to find he is white. Mother gives her a paint box to calm her down. Seems she didn't want a little white brother...'He did look rather a pet although he was white...', but she thinks he would be 'prettier' if he were black. So she takes her paintbox and sets to work on him with the black paint. Mum, after the initial shock, understands how she feels but explains genteelly that when baby grows up, 'he would just hate to be different to other English boys.' She illustrates this by a bed of roses of various hues and compares them to children, saying they are all beautiful but every tree 'has its own special shade...' and that each country has 'its own special colour too,' white for England, black for Africa and brown for India. She explains that it wouldn't be right to 'rob another country's colour for our Baby...' My goodness, words fail me. I wasn't expecting to find such blinkered thinking among the pixies and elves. I'll stick to Pop and Mop, the twin Weemen who live on the borders of Goosey Glen. Heaven knows what they're going to get up to...

There's a Mabel Lucie Attwell club anyone can join on http://www.mabellucieattwellclub.com/

Working with schools when your child has ADHD

Writer Camilla Chafer edits a great little education and parenting website at http://www.theschoolrun.com/ which is full of good advice, free worksheets, resources and competitions. Camilla and I are both authors of books published by Need2Know Books so when she asked to interview me for an article she was writing, to include in an ADHD pack, I readily agreed. The article highlights how parents and schools could work together to ensure ADHD children get the best from their education. The article is reproduced below by kind permission of The School Run and packs are available from their website by pressing the 'Subscribers' tab at the top.

ADHD: The Essential Guide
by Diane Paul (pub. Need2Know Books, 2008)


Working with schools when your child has ADHD

Many schools struggle to understand the complexities of ADHD which leaves parents feeling unsupported.

TheSchoolRun spoke to expert Diane Paul, author of ADHD – The Essential Guide for her advice on how to help parents work with their school to help their child.

Diane explained that ADHD is complex and where strategies might work for one child, they won’t for another. “ADHD isn’t the sort of thing that will go away, although symptoms can improve as they grow older. These children can cause huge disruption in a classroom and disturb teachers and other children; that is why, in extreme cases, drugs are used to calm them down.

These are all available strategies but there is no guarantee that they work for everyone, as there are so many variations of ADHD which can be combined with other issues. Teachers aren’t always sympathetic so there is no guarantee a parent can work with them or that the strategies mentioned will work. Some parents find moving to other areas to find sympathetic schools, or where LEAs who don’t have financial restraints for special needs, can help

For parents, who need support too, the best suggestion is to join a local support group. There they will find other parents of ADHD children, can network, compare notes, join in activities and learn how to cope.”

How should parents approach their school about concerns that their child has ADHD?


Most young children go through a stage of being boisterous and energetic and with classes of up to 30, teachers may not be aware that some of them may be showing signs of ADHD. Other children may stare out of the window and daydream a lot and, although it can be a symptom of ADD, there’s no reason for teachers to suppose they are any different from any other child. So parents need to impress upon teachers that, if they suspect or know their child has ADHD, it is because this negative behaviour is ongoing, consistent and repetitive, whereas the other children will mature and grow out of it.

About half of ADHD children may also have specific learning difficulties, like dyslexia, dyspraxia coupled with other conditions like Asperger’s Syndrome, anxiety or depression and these need to be addressed separately. It’s important to talk to the teacher, head teacher or SENCO about it, so that teachers can keep an eye on the child and work out a strategy for helping them. ADHD children are likely to display the same types of behaviour at home, at school and in social settings.

Parents need to work with the school, wherever possible but neither parents nor teachers are qualified to diagnose ADHD. That needs to be done by a team of medical professionals.

What can parents do to ensure schools support their ADHD child?

Some schools, teachers and doctors don’t always recognise ADHD and put the behaviours down to the ‘terrible twos’ or poor parenting. ADHD is a universally recognised condition and diagnostic guidelines are available from the World Health Organisation.

Parents need to be assertive with authority figures like teachers and doctors and to find out as much as they can about ADHD so they can discuss it knowledgeably. Some internet sites contain useful information, like NHS Direct or ADHD support groups, whose information packs would be useful for schools and parents.

Any meetings or phone conversations with the school need to be minuted as it’s important to keep records of what is said and copies of all correspondence and keep a diary to record incidents, meetings and action taken. Schools have to recognise the situation and the SENCO can make a referral for a statutory assessment. They will visit parents and submit forms to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) and the teacher will form part of the diagnostic team.

What can schools do to support ADHD children?

Medical and behavioural treatments work alongside support at school and home. Drugs work in the short-term but are only prescribed in extreme cases. This may mean taking them at school as they help to calm down the child; so teachers need to be aware that they have to take them, though many are on slow release tablets these days.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommend behavioural interventions at school among other strategies and it’s useful for schools to be familiar with their guidelines.

Educational psychologists should deal with any behavioural issues or educational difficulties like reading, writing, spelling, language disorders and specific learning difficulties. Behavioural therapists can show teachers how to plan activities and give praise when the child succeeds. Teachers should be aware of the many strategies to help control poor behaviour.

What sort of help is accessible by schools to support ADHD children?

Schools are legally obliged to identify pupils with educational or behavioural difficulties and can make a referral to CAMHS for special needs assessment. They will give their opinions, answer questionnaires and comment on your child’s behaviour.

If the school disagrees that there should be a referral for assessment to obtain a Statement of SEN for special support, you can apply for one yourself by contacting your local LEA’s SEN section. Authorities vary and many teachers lack training to deal with ADHD and don’t employ appropriate strategies, or financial constraints could hold them back.

The school’s SENCO should help if your child isn’t progressing or developing skills, if they display poor behaviour, find it hard to communicate with friends and teachers or have speech or language issues.

Are there strategies parents can use to ensure their child keeps on top of homework?

• Teachers could give them homework task charts to ensure that they’re organised and they know what they need to do.
• Ask your child to say out loud what they need to do, then let them repeat it silently to themselves.
• Being organised is important, so they need clear rules.
• If punishments are used, they need to be given right away.
• When tackling big tasks, do them a bit at a time so they won’t be too daunting.

How far does criticism affect ADHD children and their education?

It’s hard to say. Every ADHD child is different and has different degrees of the condition with a variety of co-morbid symptoms.

They can have poor self esteem generally and need building up, not putting down but this is true for everyone.

Do teachers need to consider the language they use when talking to an ADHD child and whether it is positive or negative?


Positive feedback for ADHD children, who tend to suffer from low self-esteem, is essential. Punishment is less effective. Teachers could make them monitors or give them special tasks so that other pupils will view them positively too.

They could be encouraged to approach the board and write words on it.

How can teachers and parents help their child get organised and not become distracted in class?

• ADD children who gaze out of the window should be placed away from them and nearer to the teacher at the front of the class.
• Ensure classroom rules are clear and easy to understand.
• Directions should be specific.
• A checklist for each subject is useful.
• Vary activities so that the child doesn’t get bored doing the same thing for too long; alternate sitting down and physical activities.
• They will respond better to specific tasks with goals and rewards.
• Try to use books with large fonts but illustrations need to be tied up to the content on the page so they relate to them.
• Pages shouldn’t contain too many activities.

What are your top tips for ensuring ADHD children get a good experience from school?

• Be lavish with praise and ensure others can hear when you mention their achievements.
• Keep calm so you don’t reflect any negative reactions to the child.
• Make eye contact when addressing them.
• Give instructions in one sentence.
• Structure projects so they use lists and charts.

A useful book for parents is 1-2-3 Magic to help control poor behaviour, encouraging good behaviour and strengthening relationships. There is a teachers’ version called 1-2-3 Magic for Teachers. The latter explains effective classroom disciplines and means of productive communication with parents.

http://www.theschoolrun.com/



Judges for Man Booker 2011 - win signed 2010 shortlisted books

Judges for the 2011 Man Booker Prize have just been announced: Matthew d'Ancona, writer and journalist; Susan Hill, author; Chris Mullin, author and politican and Gaby Wood, Head of Books at the Daily Telegraph. Former Director-General of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington takes the Chair.

Literary Director of the Prizes, Ion Trewin said: 'Every year we look for a different mix of judges and I'm particularly delighted by the breadth and range of interests of the 2011 team.'

Dame Stella Rimington commented how much she looked forward to chairing the distinguished panel. 'I am sure we will have many stimulating debates and will come up with a worthy winner of next year's prize.'

Howard Jacobson won the 2010 Prize with The Finkler Question (published by Bloomsbury) and the 2011 longlist will be announced in July. The longlist, or 'Booker Dozen' as it's known, comprises 12 or 13 titles out of which the shortlist of six books will be announced in September. The winner will be announced on the BBC from London's Guildhall at the awards ceremony on 18 October 2011.

Win a set of signed copies on the 2010 Man Booker Prize shortlist



And now's your chance to win a full signed set of the Man Booker Prize 2010 shortlist:

Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue, Room (Picador - Pan Macmillan)

Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room (Atlantic Books - Grove Atlantic)

Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy, The Long Song (Headline Review - Headline Publishing Group)

Tom McCarthy, C (Jonathan Cape - Random House)

All you have to do is log on to www.themanbookerprize.com/news/vote and enter. Good luck!

Writing for the love of writing, says Case Histories author, Kate Atkinson

Author Kate Atkinson

The New York Times wrote of author Kate Atkinson that she begins her story, grabs the reader and doesn't let go. I loved her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1995 and also enjoyed Human Croquet but didn't get round to reading any more of her work until I laid my hands on Case Histories and When Will There Be Good News? Both books feature private eye Jackson Brodie in detective stories. The New York Times is exactly right for I did find them beautifully written and impossible to put down, even though the bulging cast lists had me so confused that I resorted to writing down names and brief notes about the characters to avoid having to flip back and forth to remind myself who they were and who was married to whom. But hey, that's what age does to you when you reach, er...

The plots of both stories are intricately worked out and it was probably their complexity that hooked me and compelled me to read on. Atkinson weaves her stories around chunks of exposition so that the plots unfold as you plunge into each character's back story as they appear; it's something I advise my students not to do, probably because they can't pull it off as effectively as she can and once the plot has frozen, I tend to forget what was going on before that. Sometimes I find it irritating when the narrator throws out anecdotes and memories about someone's relative or friend or some minor scene that has no bearing on the story. It's rather like a flash of lightning with jagged points firing out in all directions in rapid succession so you can't stop looking. But the stories come out of the characters and fully-rounded three-dimensional people they are.

It's all about love and loss. In Case Histories the four sisters were beautifully drawn and to say anything about them would be to give away too much; Sylvia, the leader is the ugly duckling who hears the voice of God and Joan of Arc and has fainting fits; attention-seeking Julia, the outrageous flirt seems to have bagged Brodie and discarded him for another by the next book, Amelia, more bookish has a crush on him and poor Olivia, their mother's favourite, at the age of three, is murdered.

Theo is morbidly obese and dotes on Laura, one of his two daughters who agrees to work in his law practice before university. She is brutally murdered in his offices by a knife-wielding maniac and Theo spends the rest of his life trying to find the murderer before turning the job over to Jackson.

Michelle, a housewife lives in a country cottage with her baby and husband and is secretly studying. In a moment of madness when interrupted, she murders him with an axe.

Jackson, meanwhile, has been hired to follow Nicola, whose husband thinks she's cheating on him and here and there we follow Jackson's own turbulent private life so we don't regard him as an automaton and are aware that he's a real person with emotional problems of his own.

So you can see how complex his task is going to be with a dramatis personae that long and yours too if you haven't already read it. I'm still halfway through the second book but am finding it even more difficult to follow than this one and haven't made a note of anything, having developed right arm rotator cuff impairment from hunkering over the keyboard for too long without a break, hence my absence from the blog for a while.

At The Guardian Hay Festival in 2009, Atkinson said that she would prefer to have enough money just to write books and not have to write for publication. A lot of my past students say they want to write so they can go into bookshops and see the spines of their books lined up on the shelves showing their names, or because they have boring jobs in IT and think the life of a writer would be more exciting, or they want to be the next JK Rowling, or they want to be rich and famous.  How refreshing to hear an author actually saying that they write for the love of writing, which is the reason most of us do this; anything else is a bonus.

Case Histories will be televised as a six-part BBC1 series adapted from the book itself, One Good Turn and When Will There Be Good News? Case Histories won the Saltire Book of the Year Award and the Prix Westminster. Atkinson's latest Jackson Brodie novel, Started Early - Took My Dog is now on sale. I've a feeling I need to catch up. Her website, http://www.kateatkinson.co.uk/ has lots of resources and help for reading groups. 

York Festival of Writing open for bookings

Just back from an exhausting day at the Open College of the Arts headquarters in Barnsley (Yorkshire) observing the stalwart tutors who assess students' assignments for their grades. Up at 5am to catch an early train to Sheffield and a helpful tip to change trains instead at Meadowhall, as the connection left from the same platform. It didn't, of course but we won't go into that and suffice it to say that I missed the same connection on the way back. Consequently, the blog has been neglected for a few days while I've caught up with other things, like sleeping or detaching Black Bertha, the spare cat from Harry the Cat's nose at regular intervals when he catches her with his stash of tuna.

So this seemed like a good time to invite my first guest blogger to contribute to BforB. Harry Bingham writes about the Festival of Writing at York which he initiated a couple of years ago and describes how it all began and where it's going. Next year's event will soon be upon us, from 25-27 March 2011 at York University and bookings are now being taken. Phone 0845 459 9560 or email info@writersworkshop.co.uk You can also book via the website at http://www.festivalofwriting.com/

Harry Bingham is a best-selling author of novels and non-fiction and author of Getting Published. His co-organiser is Kate Allan, author, agent and books industry publicist.

Guest Blogger Harry Bingham

We writers are crazy. About two years ago, a friend of mine asked if I’d be interested in setting up a festival of writing. Like a literary festival, only this one would be exclusively for writers … and instead of filling the event with media-celebrities, we’d bring along agents and publishers and top-selling authors to pass on their knowledge and know-how.

Like an idiot, I said yes.

So we started to research venues, and realised that we needed a place which could offer overnight accommodation for several hundred people. And a restaurant to feed them. And lecture halls which could hold anywhere from 30 to 800 people. And all on a campus which was pretty, but modern, and compact, and disability-friendly, and well-run. There just aren’t all that many places in the UK which could fit that brief, but the University of York ticked all the right boxes. But did we realise that our booking would involve a large deposit? And that we’d be on the hook for all the rest of the (even larger) amount of money, whether or not we sold the first ticket? And did we want to go ahead and make the booking?

Like an idiot, I said yes.

And I’m so pleased I did. There were quite a few nerve-wracking moments during the planning phase (would anyone come? would anyone come?) but the event was an absolute smash hit. We had some brilliant, brilliant speakers (my personal favourites: Katie Fforde for her warmth and general loveliness. Roger Ellory for the inspiration. Simon Trewin for telling it straight.)



We also had some wonderful agents and book doctors, who gave tough, realistic but constructive feedback to all and sundry.

Better still, the delegates who came were just wonderful. So warm, so enthusiastic, so keen to learn. I don’t think I’ve ever spent a weekend with so many people and so much buzz. It was exhausting, but inspiring.

And this year, it’s the same again, only bigger and better … and without the vague terror that no one is going to turn up. We’re pretty sure that the 2011 event will be a sell-out, so we’re encouraging everyone who’s interested to book as soon as they can.



Patrick Jansen-Smith

 This year again, we’ve got some fab people coming. The event I’m looking forward to most of all is Patrick Janson-Smith’s talk. (He’s the chap who made bestsellers out of Andy McNab, Joanna Trollope, Bill Bryson, Sophie Kinsella, and many many more). Also Philippa Pride, who is Stephen King’s British editor. Also, if I could, I’d want to go to the Emma Darwin and Debi Alper double-act on Friday afternoon: they’re doing a mini-course on voice. But alas I’m running my own mini-course on Getting Published, so that’s out.

Plus of course, the usual host of agents and publishers and book doctors, all there to help first-time writers get better.

Last year, our star pupil was Shelley Harris who ended the Festival with six agents trying to sign her up … and who got a very juicy two book deal from a major publisher not long afterwards. This year, who knows what’ll happen? I’m sure of only two things: the first is that the weekend will be wonderful. The second is that by Monday morning, I’ll be so tired I won’t get out of bed until teatime.

I hope to see you all there …

How to write a book in a month

Stuck in The Garret this week trying to develop an idea for a new book with a musical flavour that is supposed to be funny but isn't (yet). Humour is the hardest genre to work in and is so subjective. Kate has a piano lesson and when she's finished struggling through a Rag that has terrified the life out of her ('I'll never play that!) she turns to me and waits...and waits. 'Well?' she says, wanting approbation. When I don't reply she says 'Great, I can go to work tomorrow and tell everyone I sent my piano tutor into a coma.'

During this hiatus, I am engrossed in trying to work out a plot to insert into the theme of the interior world of piano teaching and the interractions between students and tutors. I have loads of material. By Monday afternoon, I have received six piano cancellations for a variety of reasons and I'm certain some grandpas have died twice. Paul has taken a month off as he's taken on too many things (I could have told him that); Elizabeth is going off to South America and will return in January; Isabella takes two weeks off just before her first exam and I give up a free afternoon to take her mock exam and scrape off the rust.

Write a book a month (BAM)

Someone sends me a slim book by Cyn Mobley called BAM or Book a Month. I wish! I'm already struggling with requests from two publishers for non-fiction ideas and I'm not in the mood for writing about blood pressure knowing the research will push mine up higher than it already is. I like following instructions so I look at BAM and it's basically a breakdown of the sort of preparation I would do anyway and how I learnt to develop a script at uni (although in truth this only fell into place when I read an out of print American book on their reading list called Film Scriptwriting - A Practical Manual by Dwight V Swain, which explained everything I needed to know that wasn't happening in lectures). Most of those were taken up by the tutor moaning about his lack of writing commissions.

BAM splits up the development into deadlines, a bit like having a life coach dividing up your tasks to success.

• Finding the story and creating the logline (precis)
• Looking for conflict
• Developing the three act structure
• Fly-to points (plot points or turning points)
• Chapters divided up into acts and scenes and
• Rewrites

Why development first is a good idea

Some writers prefer to begin with a blank screen and invent a character out of whose development a plot emerges; it then takes them over, as do the characters and they allow themselves to be transported into another world, usually to get lost halfway through; or they have three endings and don't know which to choose. Some well-known authors write that way. If I were going on a journey, I would want to know my destination before I set out or I would probably find three possible turnings and not know which to go down. A lot of writers have unfinished manuscripts in their desk drawers from losing control to their characters and not knowing where they are heading but as Cyn Mobley has over 40 books in print, I'm with her. However, as far as the deadlines for each action go, with the best intentions I have far too much going on in my life to reach them. I've never missed a publisher's deadline yet and the fastest I wrote a book was in three months but setting a deadline for myself is another thing. I've never taken much notice of myself.

The Snowflake Process

A few years ago, I remember reading something called The 'Snowflake' Process for Designing Novels by software architect Randy Ingermanson. He believes that good fiction is designed before it's written. He also follows the Three Act Structure technique. One idea sparks off another and since then, I've noticed a plethora of 'writing by number books' coming onto the market, so choose with care. I can recommend these two, which I think were the forerunners.

Randy's article can be downloaded free from his writing site at  http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/ and BAM can be obtained through http://www.amazon.com/ or direct from Cyn Mobley http://www.cynmobley.com/ (don't be put off by the greyhounds; they're her passion).

And about humour, when I did my MA in scriptwriting, a fellow student was asked why she had left three blank spaces on every page of her script. 'Those are for the laughs,' she said. 'I'm going to fill them in later.' We had been told that for comedy, we needed to have three laughs to a page.