Picture This

Whenever I'm planning out a new story, the first thing I do is collect pictures – of people who look a bit like my characters; of places and settings that I think might find their way into the story; of anything that sums up the way the story feels. They help me find my way into its world, then to become immersed in it. For me, writing is also very visual – I see my stories in my head like films, and collecting images that relate to my characters and scenes really help with that.

Until now, those pictures have been printed out on scraps of paper and shoved in a notebook along with the rest of my notes for whatever story they belong to, or collected into a document on the computer and, after the story is written, forgotten about. That was, until the other day, when I got an invite to join Pinterest from Twitter friend and fellow blogger Nettie Thomson (you can check out her wonderful website and blog here). Pinterest is a kind of virtual pinboard, where you can 'pin' pictures you find on the internet and sort them into categories. Of course, I jumped at the chance to sign up. And although I haven't had a lot of time (yet!) to play around with it, you can find the beginnings of my board for ACID here. I'd love to know what you think!

In other news, I'm going to be taking part in my first ever author event as part of the 2012 Derbyshire Literature Festival in May - eek! It's a panel discussion with fellow YA author and Lucky 13 CJ Flood, whose debut novel INFINITE SKY is out from Simon and Schuster in early 2013, and poet Helen Mort, whose debut poetry collection DIVISION STREET is being published by Chatto and Windus, also in 2013. And it will be chaired by recent Derbyshire Poet Laureate and current Writer-In-Residence with Writing East Midlands River Wolton. What great company to be in, eh? I'll post more details as soon as I have them.