LIFE’S NOT ALL FOUNTAIN PENS AND VELLUM NOTEBOOKS

LIFE’S NOT ALL FOUNTAIN PENS AND VELLUM NOTEBOOKS

When I imagined myself being a professional author, I thought I would be sitting around all day  in my velvet dressing gown with my fountain pen and posh notebook, writing reams of perfect words in a Jane Austen type way. Of course in 2018, life isn’t like that at all.

Even though I do still write with a fountain pen (Lamy, italic nib) some of the time, I also have to embrace technology. I am no techno expert though and I’d be grateful for any tips from other authors on things they find useful in their daily life. Meanwhile here are a few things I have had to get to grips with to some extent or other.

Jo Franklin Fountain Pen

PC/Laptop/MaC equivalent

Okay, every author needs one. In fact many have two. Desktop for home use and laptop for everything thing else. Some use their laptop at home but I prefer to have a proper desk set up with large monitor and full sized keyboard to help with the ergonomics of being a writer. Many authors suffer from RSI or shoulder and neck problems and when they discuss their agonies on Facebook it soon becomes clear that they spend their writing hours on the sofa with a laptop balanced on their knees. So I keep my laptop for travel. It is gradually being usurped by my ipad mini and bluetooth keyboard which is smaller, lighter and works sufficiently well for me.

All the software that goes on the above

Gah! Where do I start?

  • Windows – version I don’t know
  • Microsoft Word to type up and format my scruffy words
  • Excel for my accounts and other things
  • Powerpoint for presentations.
  • WordPress – for my website and blog which I created myself – cue, round of applause.

I really struggle with image manipulation. I recognise the need for good quality, wide ranging, not too many megabyte pictures for my website, business cards, leaflets, banners etc But I think I have spent more time grappling with this more than I have on writing all my books together. The whole thing around image storage, the interface between my iphone, the cloud and the pc and anything to do with image manipulation is a mystery to me so don’t ask me what programs I use because I really don’t know. I stumble through a forest of clicks and end up with something.

Then there’s the (mostly) free apps or pc programs like

  • Canva which is good for the layout of leaflets etc I used it to create my website banner.
  • Jotform which I have used to create an online booking form for CWISL the author group I belong to.
  • Bitmoji which is a fun way to create a cartoon character that looks a little like me. I’ve got to liven up these blog posts somehow!

Jo Franklin bitmoji reading

  • Teleprompter which is a free autocue app on my phone, an essential addition to my repertoire for making videos. That reminds me …. I need to start getting to grips with making videos. Did I tell you I’m an author? I’m beginning to think that maybe I’m not.

Of course there are other products available. Do let me know if there is an app or pc program that you find invaluable as an author, teacher etc

Advanced features of the above software

One thing is certain, software programs are getting more and more sophisticated and it easy to think that you won’t ever need those advanced features but you’d be wrong. Even in Word an author needs to know how to use ‘Track Changes’ with confidence as this is often used as the main way for editors to communicate their thoughts to the author. Track Changes is ghastly! Probably because I don’t really know how to use it properly and I’m always worried that the editor is going to be able to see my feeble earlier drafts and all my spelling mistakes. My spelling is getting worse. Particularly with homophones.

Styles, Headers and Table of Contents are also really useful features in Word too. I use these in particular in my planning documents . It is clear when I try and explain these features to my students on my plotting course that they have never used them. Suddenly I have to turn into a Microsoft trainer and try and explain these features which is really difficult. There are loads of great tutorial on You Tube.

The navigation pane is also really useful. It is muddled up with the find and replace feature but it’s brilliant if you have used headers for each of your chapter titles. You can call up the navigation pane and have listed all your chapter headings on the left hand side of your screen. With one click you can navigate to any chapter you want to. This is also why I give my chapters names rather than just numbers. I need to be reminded what the chapter is about so I can navigate my way around my own manuscript.

Jo Franklin navigation pane for Help I'm a Detective

Navigation pane for my next novel Help I’m a Detective

Videos, video editing, YouTube

One of my good intentions for 2018 is to get to grips with videoing in a time efficient but effective way. Ha, ha, ha! I’ll get back to you later in the year on how I get on with it or whether I gave up.

So if you are an aspiring author looking to fill the hours while you wait for the rejections to come in, first of all write another book and secondly try and develop your tech skills so that when the day comes, you are ready to be an author in the 21st century. When you’ve worked out how to do all this stuff (and more) let me know will you, because I am still struggling. Bring back the quill pen!

Top Tips on Forming Your Own Writers Group

 Top Tips on Forming Your Own Writers Group

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I really can’t stress enough the importance of my writer’s critique group. My crit buddies are more than professional colleagues. They are also very close friends. But forming your own writer’s group from scratch can be tricky.

1 Nominate a leader

A group needs to be organised and led by a named individual. One way of ensuring that the group is led by the right person (ie someone you has the same ideas as you) is to become the leader yourself. However the leader should not be a dictator. Just because they are good at organising everyone doesn’t mean they are the best writer or that they give the best feedback. So even if you are in charge, remember to keep checking in with the other members of the group that they are happy with the way things are going.

Jo Franklin is the leader of the group

Me trying to be a positive leader

 

2 Decide the Aims/Rules/Parameters of the Writer’s Group

Agree at the beginning,

  • how often you are going to meet
  • how many people will submit work for comment at each meeting
  • how many words each submission will be
  • whether you are going to submit and read the work before the meeting and the deadline for submitting to other members.
  • rules for constructive feedback ( I thought everyone knew this but I have been caught out before. I probably need to do another blog post on this)
  • what to do if something goes wrong. Sadly this tends to fall to the leader to sort out any infighting. I suggest that the leader gains support from the other members before tackling a difficult member of the team. I probably need to do another blog post on this because when a critique group goes toxic, it is very unpleasant.

Alli and Emma snuggling up on our weekend away

3 Keep the group to a manageable number.

I think six is the ideal number. It’s a good number to fit around one table and gives you enough people for varied feedback even if one member of the group is ill. If it becomes apparent that one member is not able to commit to the group then look around for a replacement before the whole thing collapses.

4 Define the Genre for the Group

If possible, stick to one genre (or age group if writing for children) for the critique group. This will avoid any genre vs literary arguments and having to justify the language chosen if writing for children. There can always be flexibility if an established member of the group goes off at a tangent and starts writing outside the usual genre. However the group should reserve the right to ask someone to leave if they go off piste and the rest of the group don’t like it.

Jen knows how to enjoy herself

5 Recruitment of New Members

The membership of a critique group can be a bit like shifting sands. At times, people will leave and it will be necessary to recruit new members. The best way to find new members is by personal recommendation. The quality of an individual’s feedback is more important than the quality of their writing! It’s a good idea to draw up an list of expectations for a new member so that they know what they are letting themselves in for.

6 Balance

You should think of your critique group as a co-operative. Reading and critiquing other people’s work takes time. Time away from your own writing so a group works when everyone puts in the same amount of effort and hopefully gets the same level of reward in return. It is payment in kind. If someone repeatedly expects other people to critique their work but can’t be bothered to spend time to comment in return, resentment will start to form among other members. Resentment is bad!

Tasha – you don’t have to be mad to work hear but it helps

7 Trust

As you get to know each other you will soon learn who to trust. All writers need constructive, helpful feedback. Sometimes that feedback will hurt, but as long as the critic can back up what they are saying with hard evidence, you really should listen to what they are saying. That doesn’t mean you have to act on it, but you should listen, go away and digest what the person says. The chances are they have highlighted a problematic section of your work, even if they haven’t nailed the exact problem. So to instill trust, all feedback needs to be precise and constructive.

And if it all works out you will have a ready made guest list for your book launch and friends for life.

The gang together at my book launch

New Year – Bullet Journal

New Habit for 2018

I’m known as the organised one among my friends. I’m usually the one who organises a night out. I organise my regular writing critique group. I used to have a job as Project Manager so I guess it’s my natural instinct to be organised. But sometimes my organisation goes wrong. So this year, 2018, I am trying something new. I’m keeping a bullet journal.

Now bullet journalling isn’t new. If you do an internet search you will find all sorts of YouTube videos and Pinterest boards on how to do bullet journalling. You can add fancy patterns, Washi tape, different coloured inks to your spreads … but hang on a minute. Do you know what a bullet journal is?

Bullet Journal

A bullet journal can be all or one of these things :

  • A to do List
  • A diary/journal
  • An appointment calendar
  • A planner

And anything else you want it to be.

The idea is to have one notebook where you capture everything you want to achieve and to be organised in an attempt to make you achieve those things.

There are loads of brilliant planners on the market now. Kikki K have a very nice range

Kikki K Swedish Stationers Extrordinaire

And of course Paperchase can be relied on for gorgeous stationery. They have particularly good list pads

Paperchase Lists

But the problem with commercially produced journals and list pads is that they might not have the categories that you require. So you make your own and that’s a bullet journal.

My Bullet Journal

Now I am a complete beginner at bullet journalling and although I am organised, I am also well known for having great ideas and never following them through. But I am into the second week of the year and so far I am still with it.

I’m using a Leuchtturm A5 Bullet Journal with dot grid paper. But before you dash out to buy one, I suggest you buy any notebook with dot grid paper as it wasn’t worth the extra to get the bullet journal version. There are only a couple of extra features that you can put in yourself. I would recommend a Leuchtturm notebook though, because they have numbered pages and space for an index at the front, which are useful features for a bullet journal (as well as for general notebooks).

Jo Franklin Bullet Journal

My new bullet journal

Dot grid paper is useful because you can use the dots to create boxes if you need to and it can accommodate any sized writing.

I started off setting up a year planner

Help! my year looks very empty

Then I set up a monthly spread which includes my active projects – because I have so many, I’m worried I’m going to forget one – my daily habit tracker – I’ve already realised that I am not committed to doing a seven minute workout every day. I left a space for ‘Notes’ and ‘Buy’ but I’m not sure I will bother with these in the future. That’s the great thing about bullet journals, you create the spreads yourself so you can alter them at any time

Monthly Spread

I tried to get all fancy pants with a turquoise highlighter pen, but to be honest my bullet journal is never going to be a work of art so I probably won’t bother doing that again.

In week one, I create a weekly spread but hardly used it so I modified it for week two.

This will be useful for me. As I spend so many days on my own at home, I can forget appointments which take me out of the house. Hopefully by creating my own week at a glance, I will get better keeping the shape of the week more firmly in my head.

But the main thing for me is the daily To Do List.

I run Todoist on my pc and phone which is a brilliant app by the way, but I am really bad at marking tasks complete that I haven’t really done or just constantly moving them forwards to the next day. I am going to keep Todoist going but hopefully by writing out the tasks that haven’t yet been done, I will be more mindful of what I am supposed to be doing and more importantly, what I am putting off.

The idea is that at the end of every day, I go through my list and mark off what I have done, move forward anything left outstanding and schedule longer tasks into my diary. I also have to do this in Todoist. In this case, doubling up the effort is helping me stay on track.

There are certain marks which are used in bullet journalling but of course you can make up your own ones :

.   means To Do

x   means Completed

<  indicates that the task has been scheduled so doesn’t need to be carried forward to tomorrow

>  means carry forward the task to tomorrow

You can make up other ones. For example you might want to add thoughts or other notes to your list that you transcribe to a different notebook.

Conclusion

So am I going to stick with bullet journalling for the whole of 2018? I don’t know, but I like it at the moment and I can see this habit evolving. And of course it is very satisfactory to tick off a task which has been completed. Monday Blogpost – Complete.

Happy New Year 2018

Happy New Year 2018 Fireworks in London (from BBC)

Happy New Year 2018 and thanks for dropping by.

A new year means new beginnings, resolutions and good intentions. 2017 was a very tough year for me in my personal life so I am very pleased to leave it behind and look forward to fresh horizons. As with anyone who takes a hit on the personal front, my work life has suffered over the last twelve months and I start the new year looking forward to getting back to the focus of being an author.

As I have said in other posts, being an author is not all about writing. There are a lot of other aspects to the job – including writing blog posts! So my current Open Projects List looks like this :

  • Series fiction proposals – this is my creative focus for the beginning of the year. I’d love to write and sell one of my zany series fiction ideas to a major publisher.

Move over Famous Five and Beast Quest!

  • Devise sessions for an after school club – I’m delighted to have been asked to run a creative writing club at a school in Forest Hill. I hope to be able to share some of their work later in the year.
  • Write a day course for adults. I teach creative writing part-time at The City Lit in London and I am running a course in early February so I need to put the materials together.
  • CWISL – I belong to a group of authors called CWISL – Children’s Writers and Illustrators for Stories and Literacy – we work together to deliver literary events for children. I’m joint webmaster for CWISL and I’m also jointly responsible for creating the annual literary quiz
  • Review my website (this one) and build a new one to promote my services as a literary mentor to aspiring children’s authors. So if you know anyone who would like some help then ask them to drop me a line.
  • Papers Pens Poets. Like many authors I am a stationery addict. Eighteen months ago,  I set up a website with my dear friend Anita Loughrey, exploring the way authors use stationery in their work. Papers Pens Poets includes interviews with authors and stationery reviews.

Anita at the London Stationery Show

Anita and Me – a business lunch overlooking the Thames

Sadly, Papers Pens Poets has been another victim of my difficult year so I’m determined to put that right in 2018.

So it’s a busy start to 2018. Bring it on!

Jo Franklin

Federation of Children’s Book Groups Conference 2017

FCBG Banner

Last weekend I attended the Federation of Children’s Book Groups Conference (FCBG) near Reading, Berkshire.

What is the FCBG?

The FCBG is a UK charity bringing children and books together, encouraging reading for pleasure. Most members are librarians or teachers or ex-librarians or ex-teachers, but whatever their background they are all passionate about children’s books and nurturing a life long love of reading.
You can find out more about the FCBG here.

Authors United

I went with my great friends Anita Loughrey and Miriam Halahmy and we met fellow author Claire Barker along the way.

Anita and Miriam Anita and Claire Barker
Miriam and Anita Anita and Claire Barker

FCBG Conference 2017

The conference has great talks by authors and publishers. A publisher stand where publishers showcase their latest books. A bookshop selling copies of books by authors appearing at the conference. This year the bookshop was my all time favourite Tales on Moon Lane. It was also a great opportunity to hang out with people who love children’s books as much as I do.

Tales on Moon Lane

I particularly enjoyed the talk by the author Cas Lester, the seminar on techie stuff you can use to help get reluctant readers into reading by Bev Humphreys and the small publisher panel featuring Alanna Books, Tiny Owl and Book Island. It was also a great opportunity for me to meet Roy Johnson who is the Sales and Marketing Director of Troika Books, one of my publishers.

A great weekend of bookish awesomeness.

And there might have been one or two cocktails sampled while we were off duty.

Cocktails

 

NaNoWriMo2016 Day 2 – Why I’m doing this now.

By Jo Franklin

Jo Franklin NaNoWriMo Day 2

Day 2 NaNoWriMo dashboard

Once upon a time I didn’t know how to plan a novel. I’d have an idea and next thing I knew I was writing it and I felt euphoric. Then I realised that if I was ever going to be a published writer I had to grow up a bit and learn how to create a satisfactory structure for my readers. I learned to plot. You can read about the process I normally follow here  here.

These days, I spend weeks examining the structure of my novel before beginning writing in earnest. I also clear my outline with my agent to make sure I am onto a commercially viable project. I firmly believe that up front planning is a very important part of writing a good book.

NaNoWriMo isn’t like that. The ethos behind the scheme, as I see it, is to get on and write madly for a month even if you aren’t very sure where you are heading. I guess that’s why I’ve avoided it up until now. I spent years writing like that and it didn’t get me anywhere. Since I’ve been a confirmed planner I have had five books published in seven different countries. Planning works.

But this year I found myself in a funny place at the end of October. I’d had to call a halt to the project I was writing because it wasn’t going to a commercial place in its current incarnation and for once I couldn’t find a solution to the problem. My brain felt empty.

Not writing is like not smoking when you are a smoker. Writing is an addiction and not writing is torture. All writers say the same. They are relieved when they type the end and congratulate themselves while they take a break to recover but before very long they have the antsy itch to write again. Soon that itch takes over and even though they have promised their kids that they will spend the summer focused on them or have taken out a new gym memberships determined to shed the writer’s butt pounds they put on during the last manuscript, they break open a new notebook or open a new file on the computer and start again.

For various reasons I could see that I wasn’t going to be starting a new book his year and I felt bad about it. As October drew to a close, a number of writer friends started talking about doing NaNoWriMo this year. Most of them had done it before. And for the first time I was tempted to join them.

But when I looked at my diary for November, my heart sank. There were so many events lined up. Good meaty author events. The sort that take all day and leave me exhausted for the following three days. The sort of events where I will meet my readers and maybe even sell a few books. Really important events that I have been looking forward to. How could I possibly fit in writing a whole novel in this time?

Then out of the blue on October 20th my dear friend AJ, announced that she was going to do NaNoWriMo this year! AJ is a brilliant but unpublished author who finds it very difficult to make the time to write. If she could give NaNoWriMo a go then so could I. So without thinking much about it I Googled the website and created my very first NaNoWriMo profile.

And now I am committed!

Day 2 = 1650 words

Total wordcount = 4044

Nanowrimo – Day 1 Write a novel in a month? Arghh!

by Jo Franklin

November is traditionally Nanowrimo month which stands for National Novel Writing Month. All over the world people pledge to write a novel in November or at least 50,000 words of a novel.

nanowrimo shield

National Novel Writing Month Motif

Luckily as I am a children’s author, my books are never over 50,000. In fact I’ll struggle to find enough words to fill 50,000.

Normally I don’t bother with it. November is not generally a time when I am buckling down to a new book. That happens in September for me, or sometimes January or anytime when I get a contract. But as I find myself at a loose end this month and know that December is a write off for me for boring medical reasons, I decided to throw caution to the wind and sign up.

Loads of people in my writing community are also writing like mad this month. I don’t exactly know who and I don’t know how to make them my buddies on the Nanowrimo website. In fact I’m still working out how the Nanowrimo website works, but I have done my words today and managed to post them on the official website so that is an achievement.

TODAY’S TOTAL = 2394

Jo Franklin's Nanowrimo total Day 1

Day 1

In order to meet the 50,000 word target you have to write 1666 words a day, every day for the thirty days of November, so I’m ahead. Feel free to cheer now. It probably won’t last because I have a sore throat and a very busy calendar ahead this month, but 2394 is better than zero.

It’s 17.45 and I haven’t done any of the things I have to do today so I’m off now to send a few emails, cook supper and think about what I am going to write tomorrow.

Juggling Children’s Author

by Jo Franklin

Being a children’s author is really hard work. I thought it was going to be all about writing books and living the life of an eccentric recluse in a hobbit hole or writing shack. But I was so wrong. I am juggling so many things and I don’t think I am always successful.

Here are some of the things that I have to do every day :

Write my books – This is the best bit of my author life. I’d love to be doing it all day every day, but that is totally unrealistic. It takes me a year to write most of my books. That is partly because I have to do all the other things listed below, but it is also because the space between actually writing is as important as the writing itself.  I like to leave gaps in between writing my drafts so that I can look at my work with fresh eyes and come up with important improvements to the text. The non-writing spaces in my working day are also important. It’s amazing how I often find the answer to a problem in my writing in a pile of dirty laundry.

me-writing-snipped

Jo Franklin at work

Website Design – In case you didn’t realise, this website was designed by me. I hope you like it. The problem with having a website is that I need to keep it fresh so my visitors (you!) don’t get bored and keep coming back to see what I am up to.
I feel I am failing at this. I have to keep reminding myself that I do more on my website than some authors but not as much as others (Pop over to Candy Gourlay’s website if you want to see some awesome content) . And now someone has emailed me telling me that a link doesn’t work and I don’t know how to fix it. Gah!

School Visits – Not only do I have to develop great school visits, I also have to go out there and deliver them. Yes I do school visits and author appearances at libraries and festivals. Here are the details.  Meeting readers is the second best bit of being a children’s author (after writing the books in the place) but the downside is that it is very tiring and normally wipes me out for a day afterwards which stops.

Author Talks St Alphege

Jo Franklin visiting St Alphege school in Solihull

Provide Extra Content – Either on my website or to schools I have visited or will be visiting soon. This means colouring sheets, wordsearches, teacher’s resources, craft activities to go with my books. I have totally failed at this one but it is on my To Do List – honest.

Twitter – I’m on Twitter – @Jofranklin2 – but I need to be better at it. I think I should be engaging in lively conversations with the right people (authors, publishers, librarians, bookshops and teachers) without engaging with the wrong people (trolls and spammers for certain, but also an sort of time suckers that don’t lead me anywhere) while promoting myself, my book and my author appearances (children’s authors need to do many author events and school visits)  without being a promotion bore which upsets people (especially me).

Acronyms and How to Use Them – SEO, HTML, CSS and probably a hundred more that I don’t even know exist at the moment. I am having a go at this but I’m still an amateur which probably shows. Part of the problem is that SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is such a black art that it is easy to upset Google by mistake.

FYI – I never mean to upset anyone but it does happen sometimes so if that’s you – I’m sorry!

Video Artist – It’s all about YouTube these days. In fact it’s getting to the point that no one is ever going to get a contract for a children’s book ever again unless they have a YouTube channel and a gazillion subscribers. I currently have two videos on my YouTube channel (as of 10th October 2016) and I will make more but they are so time consuming to make and then I have the added responsibility of making sure that I don’t accidentally post them with obscene words in the subtitles. Don’t ask! I leaned this the hard way.

Photographer – So that I have an unlimited stream of visual publicity material. This is one of my latest efforts. In fairness, I had to enlist the help of my daughter Eleanor because taking a selfie while sitting on a grave is very difficult

jo-looking-wistful-snipped

Jo Franklin pretending to be wistful in Nunhead Cemetery

Ideas Factory – I need to be able to come up with new concepts at the drop of a hat so when my agent lets me know about a new opportunity for some commissioned work I am able to respond instantly. I did this the other week and …. yippee! Sorry it’s secret squirrels for now but it seems to have paid off this time.

Juggling all of the above – The hardest thing of all is that I have to juggle everything. Switching between tasks is very bad for my writing. I am trying to be more disciplined about ring fencing my writing time, but it is difficult because if I get an email from my agent or from a librarian trying to organise a school visit, I have to respond immediately.

So next time you ask yourself the question ‘What does an author do all day?’ think of me juggling all these tasks and more.

 

Goodbye Lovely Friend

by Jo Franklin, children’s author

This week I turned my full focus on a new project. It’s one that has been bubbling away in the background for a while, in a couple of different guises, but as I sent my latest wip (work in progress) off to my agent for what will hopefully be her final comments, the time had come to throw myself into something new. I felt totally invincible as I do every time I start something new. The publishing world were going to love this book. What’s not to like? It isn’t even written yet. There can be no bad words in it.  So I began. It was great.

And then I received the terrible news that a lovely friend of mine had died.

Sue Hyams

Sue Hyams

Thank you Sue Eves for this rare photo.

I guess it wasn’t totally unexpected. Cancer is like that. It creeps up silently, screams aggressively right in your face and then dares you to strike back. The doctors have a powerful array of weapons but they are something of a blunt instrument and nearly wipe out the whole person, not just the unwelcome visitor.

Once Sue had come to terms with the diagnosis – Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer – she got on with it. The prognosis wasn’t good, I can’t remember the exact figure she told me but it was something like only a 20% chance of survival. I can do the maths. It meant that there was an 80% chance she wouldn’t make it. But we never talked about the 80% and concentrated on the 20% instead. Grueling treatment followed and some serious surgery followed by more treatment. She also turned to alternative treatments to supplement the traditional and I believe this was a major factor in her being able to reclaim her health for a while.

She was a great friend to me during this time. I was cracking up and she didn’t bat an eyelid about my more bizarre behaviour. In fact she was probably the only person who could see exactly how unbalanced I was. She didn’t judge. We talked about stuff. Old and new and we both got better.

Of course, I wasn’t the only person in her life and she shared with me her excitement for her daughter’s progress through the various ups and downs of being a budding actress. She told me about her sister who lives in Wales with a gaggle of horses. Somewhere in the mix her mother died so there was lots to deal with there. All the time we were both writing. Sometimes the output was better than others. That’s the writer’s lot.

And then the cancer came back. More treatment and I knew my friend was slipping away. On Thursday 8th September 2016 her suffering came to an end. She was 56.

It’s been a tough few days. I had to tell our friends. Share my grief. Hear theirs. I am sad that my lovely friend was taken away too soon. But I am also grateful to have known her. We had a laugh and shared all sorts of knocks and bumps along the way.

My life goes on now and although she isn’t with me physically, she is in my heart and I hold her enthusiasm for my own writing very close. I’m going to go back to my new project with renewed gusto, because I’m writing it for you, Sue. With a massive thank you for being my friend.