When is a writer not a writer?

When I first started writing, I had two ambitions.
1) To be published so that others could enjoy my books and think I was a genius (ha!).
2) To become an eccentric recluse and live in my very own writer’s shed with a telepathic butler to deliver exactly the right food to my door at exactly the right time.
My dream writer’s shed would look something like this one designed by John Seely and Paul Page situated at Mottistone Manor, Isle of Wight.
mottisfont manor shed Mottisfont manor shed interior snipped
Oh dear, I really did have a lot to learn.Now that Help I’m an Alien is about to hit the shelves I have had to  :

  • Learn how to build and maintain my own website.
  • Become an accountant so I can prove to HMRC how little money I earn.
  • Get to grips with Twitter. You can follow me on @jofranklin2 to see how unsuccessful I have been.
  • Be even more punctual than usual because I’m often booked on a non-flexible, non-transferable, but very expensive train journey.
  • Become a competent photographer and learn how to edit photos to squeeze them onto social media NB I learnt how this morning and have now forgotten.
  • Try and network professionally. I’m still struggling with this one. If I go to a party I’m more likely to befriend the waitress than the high powered publishing executive.
  • Be able to work eighteen hour days, seven days a week because there is so much to do.
  • Work hard at keeping everyone happy, including my agent, publisher, family and dog.
Help I'm An Alien

Artwork by Aaron Blecha

Luckily, since Help I’m an Alien has moved from being my fantasy to being a reality, I have had some help.

I’m interviewing my critique group, my agent, my publisher, my publicist and my illustrator over the coming weeks to shed some light on what they do and to share with you what role they have played in creating the published version of Help I’m an Alien, because I couldn’t have done it on my own. Do come back and see what they have to say.

Being a published author has nothing to do with being an eccentric recluse, but I love it anyway.

Notebooks and Notebooks

Despite being a total stationery addict, I have never been able to create a traditional writer’s notebook. My notes are too scruffy for Moleskine etc and I am always in too much of a hurry to warrant using a notebook from my special collection. I write copious amounts in cheap spiral bound books and rip out the paper once it’s all typed up. My working method means that I trash notebooks.

However I am starting researching a new series that delves into an area I don’t know much about. It probably won’t get written for 6 months or more, so I am cracking open one of my ‘too lovely to write in’ notebooks with the intention of filling it with notes and ideas.

leuchtterm notebook medium
It’s a Leuchtturm1917 in pale blue. A5 lined, it has two ribbon place holders, a Moleskine type wallet at the back, a table of contents, a few perforated pages that can be torn out and an elastic closure. The 249 numbered pages of gorgeous acid free paper terrify me (am I ever going to have enough to fill them?), but I am determined to be a grown up and run a proper writer’s notebook for once.

I’m going to keep it with my research books so that I always have it at hand when I want to make a note. I only hope that the beauty of the stationery won’t stifle my creativity.  I’m going to try not to worry if I need to cross things out, even though it seems like sacrilege to deface the beautiful pages. I’m hoping that I will be calmed by the cool colour and the smooth paper. If I’m feeling stressed I will stroke the cover. I’m going to be a grown up author for once.

I’ve made these pledges before, but never stuck to them! Hopefully this time it will be different. When I come to start writing the next book, I will be armed with a notebook crammed with information and ideas and it will be the best book I have ever written. Wish me luck!

If you are a stationery addict like me, I recommend you check out  https://www.bureaudirect.co.uk/ for an amazing selection of awesomeness.

Films are stories too

I really like going to the cinema. I’m not a film buff and if you asked me who directed, or even who starred in a film I had just seen, I wouldn’t be able to answer. I’m not into the cinema for the celebrities. I’m into it for the story and the visuals.
ED picture house snippedRecently a new cinema has opened on my doorstep. The East Dulwich Picturehouse is a great addition to my life. It has three screens, a cafe and shows films I want to see.
I am a freelance author which means if I knuckle down and work flat out in the morning, I can justify going to the cinema in the afternoon.
Ed picture house board snipped
While the East Dulwich Picturehouse was being built, the owners encouraged people to become founding members. This meant joining the cinema before it had opened as a way of raising some funds. In return, founding members have their name on a board inside.
Can you find me?
Sometimes I go on my own and sometimes I arrange to meet a friend. This week I went to see ‘The Big Short’ (Certificate 15) with Rosie. It was a great movie. A lesson in how to tell a story about a subject, the financial crash, that could have been dry and boring.
  • Focus on a few characters and their personal story.
  • Make them vulnerable in some way while the other characters are portrayed as odious, greedy or ignorant.
  • Use trashy interludes to explain the technical terms and make it clear to the audience that you know they are trashy.

Trust me it works.

Dump the P Words and Get Writing

November is National Novel Writing Month or Nanowrimo. People all other the world sign up to completing a novel within a month. I don’t sign up for it because I normally start writing a new book in September having had a break over the Summer holidays, but I like the idea of Nanowrimo as it helps you focus on writing.There are many factors to being a writer that writes rather than a resting writer (the same as a resting actor but with more guilt). As it happens many of these factors begin with the letter P so here are my thoughts on dumping the P words.

Make writing a PRIORITY in your life. Tell people you are a writer. Get on and write. I had a ten year hiatus from writing and during that time I stopped telling people I was a writer because I was embarrassed that I hadn’t written a word for years.

I regret those years now, because if I had been using that time to PRACTISE my craft I might have become a better writer earlier. Musicians spend hours practising to get the piece write and the same applies to writing. I suggest write every day or at least most days. Get the words on the page and keep the flow going. It’s much harder to write after a break, says one who knows.

PUT yourself first. So what if you are a parent or a carer or a CEO of a multinational company. Or all three. If you are a writer you need to put your writing-self first sometimes. It’s not selfishness. It’s self preservation. You will lose your touch if you don’t write.

PROTECT your writing time. If you have defined hours when you write, it’s easier to protect that time. Tell your family and friends and ask them to respect your writing hours. If the phone rings, don’t answer. When you return the call later, tell them  you weren’t able to come to the phone because you were writing. Ask them not to call at that hour again. At home have a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign outside your writing cave.

When my children were small, I often got up at 5am in the school holidays to write. They knew I couldn’t be disturbed until 8am. I could hear them on the other side of the door saying ‘It’s ten to eight. We’ve got ten minutes.’ And they would sit on the stairs until eight o’clock before bursting in to demand breakfast. Not ideal, but at least I got my writing hours in before I had to switch back to being a parent.
NB Parent is not a writing P word. It’s a non-writing word and should be avoided if at all possible!

Be PROFESSIONAL. So you are not earning any money from your writing – yet, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treat it as a job. A second job maybe, but still a job. If you ever sell a book, the money you receive is an advance against sales. It isn’t compensation for the hours/days/years you have spent creating your masterpiece. Don’t bother working out your hourly rate, you will weep at the dismal figures. There is no such thing as the minimum wage for authors. If you don’t be professional in your approach to writing, submitting or working with publishers, you will never get paid anything. Start as you mean to go on.

Banish PROCRASTINATION. Work out what your procrastination vices are and deal with them. Turn off the internet, get someone else to do your housework, only shop outside of your writing hours.

I have suffered from procrastination-itus on and off over the years. For me it is all about fear of failure and that usually strikes when I don’t have faith in what I am doing. The best way to regain your faith is to do all of the Ps above and then share your work with your PEERS. My critique group is at the heart of my writing practice. I couldn’t do it without them. They bolster me up when I am feeling down and if I do nothing else, I write something to discuss with them when we meet.

Despite my fear of failure, I don’t suffer from PERFECTIONISM, but I know plenty of people who do. I think writing a first draft quickly whether in the wrapper of Nanowrimo or not, is the best way forward. For me, all the work goes into the second draft which takes a lot longer than the thirty days of November. You can read about my writing process in earlier blog posts.

If you suffer from serious perfectionism it can be totally paralyzing. I can’t offer any advice on this, but maybe someone who has overcome their perfectionism will comment below.

The most important thing is to get your PEN and PAPER out and make a start. I’ve just treated myself to this little bundle of loveliness from www.bureaudirect.co.uk and I’m going to give it a go now.

NB Buying green sparkly ink – that’s how you turn PROCRASTINATION into a POSITIVE move towards words.

Roald Dahl Day

13th September is Roald Dahl Day. The date was chosen because this was his birthday.

The name Roald Dahl is spoken with such reverence by teachers and librarians. Surely he is the greatest children’s writer of all time? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Fantastic Mr Fox. James and the Giant Peach. The names are so familiar now. If Roald Dahl was a category on the quiz show Pointless, the contestants would really struggle to think of a Roald Dahl title that no one else knows. Roald Dahl is famous. Everyone has heard of him. Every child has read his books.

But I have a confession to make.

The edition I owned as a child

The edition I owned as a child

I have only ever read one of Roald Dahl’s books. 
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I really loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was a book I owned, rather than one I borrowed from the library, so I read it many times. This is the cover of my edition. I’m afraid I don’t know the illustrator’s name but it doesn’t look like Quentin Blake.
This book sat on my shelf in among a hotch-potch of other titles by lots of different authors. I didn’t have complete sets. I only had the Voyage of the Dawntreader, not the whole Chronicles of Narnia. (Was it called The Chronicles of Narnia back then?)

Roald Dahl wasn’t a phenomenon when I was a child.

There was no requirement to buy the complete set of Roald Dahl’s books for children. I don’t even know if they existed as a set.

I read books based on the cover or the blurb or a recommendation. Once I had read that book, I read something else and it may have been by a different author. In my case, it was definitely written by a different author. I didn’t even know who the author was.
There were some series, like The Little House on the Prairie. I read all of those. But I don’t think the author as a brand existed back then. So I wasn’t compelled to read the complete works of a selected author. I loved the Flambards books by KM Peyton, but I didn’t read anything else by her.

I wasn’t interested in authors, I was interested in books and because I wasn’t caught up on a wave of a phenomenon, I read very widely. Much more widely than my children do. Sad but true

I’m an author now and I hope that children will want to read my books. Most will be read because of the awesome covers or the exciting blurb on the back. Some will be read because a teacher or a parent has seen a review and some will be read because the child has met me at an event and is curious enough to know what this mad book woman is on about. I am unlikely to become a phenomenon. I’m not sure I want to be.

So enjoy Roald Dahl day. Read his books. Marvel at the illustrations by Quentin Blake. Laugh at the antics of the crazy characters, but next time you go to a library or a bookshop, pick up a book by an author you have never heard of. Read it. You might be surprised.

A book does not have to be a phenomenon to be a great read.

When is your book going to be published in the UK?

When is your book going to be published in the UK? This is the question I get asked all the time. By my friends, by my family, by the postman, by every stranger on the street, by children I meet at events, even by my own children. When I look at them blankly, they go on to ask ‘Why isn’t your book published in the UK?’

I suppose it’s a fair question. I am English after all. I write in English. I don’t speak any foreign languages. I don’t even go abroad that often, but I currently don’t have a book published in the UK, only in Germany, USA and France.

Why is that?Publishing is an international business. Books are bought by publishers from publishers or agents from other countries all the time. Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Hunger Games come from America. The Moomins are Swedish. Tintin is Belgian. Many of my UK writing friends have their books published in other territories, but I guess most of them have them published in the UK first.

Every publishing deal is different, but often when a publisher buys a book they buy World Rights. That means they have the right to sell the book on to other publishers. They have a rights department that sell books abroad. That doesn’t mean they sell the printed UK book abroad, that’s called Export (not something I know about at the moment as I don’t have a UK publisher). They sell the right for another publisher to take the manuscript and translate it for their market. This may happen when the book is first bought by the UK publisher or it may happen once the book has been published. It’s a good way for the publisher and the author to make more money from the original manuscript.

Sometimes a UK publisher only buys UK rights (or UK and Commonwealth or some other combo). The author retains the foreign rights and their agent tries to sell the rights to foreign publishers. Again this may happen while the book is in production in the UK or it may be any time after the book is published.

However, some manuscripts are turned down by UK publishers. Let me clarify that, MANY manuscripts are turned down by UK publishers. Even long established authors get rejections. Just because an agent can’t find a UK publisher for a manuscript, doesn’t mean that manuscript is rubbish. It just means the agent can’t match it to a UK publisher, who needs a book like that, at that precise moment.

That’s what happened to me with Help I’m an Alien.

I am extremely lucky, I have a wonderful agent – Anne Clark – and she has a brilliant Foreign Rights Consultant – Margot Edwards. They matched me up with a publisher who did want me book. That publisher, Coppenrath, happened to be in Germany. So my first published book appeared in print, translated into German. The good news continued. They liked my book so much, they asked for another two.

But Anne and Margot didn’t stop there. They have also sold Alien to the USA and France.

To me these publication successes are as important as other author’s UK publications. I can’t do much to publicize my books. I can’t do school visits because I don’t speak German, but I do get fan mail from German readers and I always reply to them – in English.

I think some of my author friends think I’m mad going on about my foreign deals. They seem to think they are insignificant. Maybe they only see their foreign deals as a bonus, they don’t have a relationships with their foreign publisher like I do and don’t bother trying to promote their books abroad. Or maybe they think the credit should go to the translator. Maybe they don’t have any foreign deals at all!

For me, because these foreign editions have materialized before a UK edition, I take a different view. Three different publishers like my writing so much they have turned my manuscripts into books for their market. They didn’t read a translated version, they read the raw manuscript and liked it so much they paid for someone to translate and illustrate it. My German translator is Christine Spindler and the illustrator is Der Anton for the Help series. They have done a terrific job, but it’s still my book. I’m very proud of it.

Even the US edition has been edited/translated for the US market. The title has been changed to I’m an Alien and I Want to go Home. A character has a different name, Freddo has become Eddie. All the punctuation has been US-ified (we don’t use the Oxford comma in the UK or double quotation marks and we think putting a full-stop after Mr and Mrs is very old fashioned) and of course there are the usual sidewalk/pavement, dollar/pound Americanisations. Alien-US is set in America.

Next up France. I haven’t started work with my French publisher, Albin Michel, yet so I don’t know how it will be, but I can’t wait to find out.

So that leaves only one question – when are my books coming out in the UK?

Wait and see.

Fiction Express

0_808_summer-camp-craft

I’m thrilled to announce that I have a new book in the making.

After the October half term holiday, I am going to be writing for Fiction Express. This is a brand new venture for me.

Fiction Express are an online publisher that works with schools. This is what they say about themselves on their website :

“Fiction Express for Schools e-books are published in weekly chapters at 3 pm (UK time) each Friday. At the end of every cliffhanging chapter there are voting options to decide where the plot should go next. The readers have the following Monday and Tuesday to read each chapter in school, and will vote by 3 pm on Tuesday afternoon. The author then writes the next chapter, in ‘real time’, according to what the readers chose.”

The book I’m writing is called ‘The Bushcraft Kid’. I’ve already written the first chapter which will be published on the Fiction Express website after half term. Each class that has signed up to Fiction Express will be able to read my chapter and then vote on what happens next. Then I have to write it.

Just to clarify (to myself as well as to everyone else) I have to write a brand new chapter between Tuesday evening and Friday lunchtime every week for five weeks. Holy Moly! I’ve never had to write to such a tight timescale, but I am very excited to join the Fiction Express team of authors and look forward to the challenge. Apparently, I also get to blog directly to my readers. I can’t wait to meet them all and explore the world of The Bushcraft Kid with them all.

If you want to find out more about Fiction Express click here
If you use Fiction Express in your school, I’d love to hear from you. Either Contact Me or message me the usual Fiction Express way. You know what that is. I don’t, I’m new around here.

What I did on my Holidays

The most amazing thing happened to me while I was on holiday

I found my brain.

It’s been missing for a while. Not the brain that makes me breath and move around, or the brain that makes me a parent. I mean my creative brain. It’s been lost for a while and I can assure you that losing your brain is a lot worse than losing your phone when you are an author.

9d50dd42-3797-43d6-8297-06db7f2c0d78

While I was away, I spent a lot of time thinking about what I was going to work on next. I haven’t been writing for a few months. I’ve been too busy worrying about whether I am a real writer and whether I will ever be able to write another good book.
I was totally out of touch with my creativity. Even though an idea has been kicking around in the back on my imagination for a while, I haven’t had the courage to begin writing it.Then something totally weird happened. Sleeping in a strange bed made me have  a vivid dream one night.

I dreamed that I was writing a new book. Actually writing it, instead of thinking about it. The words were coming out of my pen at great speed and I had three characters who were all a little bit oddball. They had issues and secrets and didn’t really like each other at first, but were thrown together in an interesting setting with a problem to solve. I no longer had an idea, I had a story. Even more amazing was that I felt like an author again.

It was only a dream, but when I woke up the feeling was still there. I had total belief in myself and my ability to write a book.

Somehow I’d lost touch with my creative soul, which is a pretty scary thing for a writer. I felt that I would never write again, but going on holiday gave me the space to renew my spirit, find my creative brain and now I am ready to begin the new story.

I can’t wait.

I Don’t Like the Rain

I really hate it when it rains. For a start it messes with my hair.

mickey with wet hair snipped

Rain is cold and wet. My friends must agree with me because when Mum took me to the park there was no one there for me to play with. I kept to the bushes where the raindrops couldn’t get to me but Mum kept calling me to play ball with her on the football pitch.

She must be mad! The football pitch is totally open to the elements, there is no shelter. There is nowhere to hide from the rain. The grass is also wet and because there are some bald patches where the goals used to be, there is a lot of mud too. That mud splashes up and makes my fur dirty.

I don’t like the rain.

When we came home I curled up on the sofa and pretended to be asleep all day so she wouldn’t force me back outside. When I woke up it was still raining. We went for a walk in the woods which wasn’t too bad and when we got home I found my ball and entertained myself.

I think Mum was pleased with me in the end

A Writer’s Friends

I belong to a few different writing communities, but the one I couldn’t do without is my crit group. Over the years the membership has changed slightly, but today in May 2015 the members are Alli Jeronimus, Jennifer Miles, Tasha Kavanagh and Emma Styles. We meet monthly and discuss a chapter or two of each of our work.

We are a team. We each give our individual feedback and then discuss the work as a group. There are often similarities in what we are saying. Occasionally there are big differences, but we all come to our meetings with an open heart. We want to help each other succeed. The crit group team celebrate and commiserate together.

This week was a particularly lovely celebration. Tasha’s novel ‘Things We Have in Common’ has hit the shelves to wide critical acclaim. It’s an absolute chiller of a book. Not one I could have written, but I am so proud to call Tasha a friend and so proud that the book was developed with the support of our crit group.

Well done Tasha!

Things we have in common snipped