Back To School

When I went to visit my publisher for the first time last summer, just after they bought ACID, they asked me if I’d be willing to do school visits. “Definitely!” I said, whilst thinking, my book’s not out for almost two years. Plenty of time to prepare myself for doing stuff like that. And in the general whirlwind of excitement that is meeting your publisher for the first time, I didn’t really think about it again.

Then, a few weeks ago, I got a phonecall from Anne Palmer, librarian at Murray Park Community School in Derby, asking if I’d like to do an author visit.

I won’t lie: the thought of it made me pretty nervous. Me and school… well, it wasn’t my favourite place, and I was more than glad to get out of there and escape to art college. On the other hand, this was an opportunity to talk to and work with the target audience for my book. And any school which wants to promote writing, books and reading, and inspire their students to be creative – well, how can you not jump at the opportunity to be involved with something like that?

So of course, I said yes.

By the time the day came around, I was prepared. I was going to be working with year 9 (13-14-year-olds) all day, doing an hour’s workshop on dystopian fiction for 30 students, then two 2-hour ‘writing masterclasses’ for 55 students at a time… Talk about hitting the ground running! But the students were fantastic. The stuff they came up with was incredibly creative and fun, and the sessions seemed to fly past.

Highlights? Well, they have to be one student’s answer to ‘things you’d do if you were brave enough’: ‘slap a gorilla’, which I’m still giggling over now; the table of girls who were all into writing in a big way and told me about the stories they work on in their spare time (yay!); the three students in the afternoon session who got me to come up with a story about zombies invading the school, then work out what they’d do if they were characters in that story (the zombie-fighting ninja-girl with knives in her boots, you know who you are!); and of course, all the students who were kind enough to say they wanted to read ACID and why couldn’t it be out now!

The staff were brilliant too – really supportive and keen – and Dan Seaman, assistant director of English, was a huge help with planning the day. So a MASSIVE thank you to Year 9, Dan, Anne Palmer, and all the staff at Murray Park Community School who helped out with the sessions, supplied me with chocolate biscuits and coffee and generally helped make my first time back at school in, oh, a good few years such a fantastic one!

UPDATE
After posting this this morning, I received a card from the staff at Murray Park saying how much they and the students enjoyed my visit – what a lovely surprise! Another big thank you to everyone. :)

Jaffa Cakes & Mini Eggs (AKA My First Ever Creative Writing Workshop)

On Tuesday night, I ran my first ever proper workshop session at Chesterfield Library. It was for a group of young writers called the Write Here Group, which is run by River Wolton – a recent Derbyshire Poet Laureate and workshop wizard extraordinaire, who I’ve worked with before and who will be chairing the panel discussion I’m taking part in for the Derbyshire Literature Festival next month. I'd been asked to talk about getting published and how to write believable fiction that's set in the future.

Was I nervous? Definitely. I’ve been running a small writing group at the library where I work for several years now, so I wasn’t quite as terrified as I might have been if I was going into this cold, but it was still a slightly scary prospect. What if no-one turned up? What if they thought I was boring? What if they thought the exercises I was going to do with them were crap? I even had an anxiety dream the night before, where I had to meet the group at a party in the hallway of a large, posh house. Everyone was talking so loudly I couldn’t make myself heard, even when I shouted. Then I realised I’d forgotten all the worksheets I’d so painstakingly put together and printed out. NIGHTMARE.

Thankfully, the reality was completely different. When I arrived at the library, I was met by River, and when we got down to the meeting room, two of the group were already there. I chatted to them about the novels they’re currently working on, which sound amazing. There were chocolate mini eggs, and grapes to snack on, and when the rest of the group arrived someone had even brought a box of Jaffa cakes with them.

So far, so good.

We kicked off by talking about how I got my agent, and how to look for an agent that represents your genre (look at the Writers and Artist’s Yearbook, and find out who represents the authors you like to read in your genre – which is how I found mine). Then we did an exercise about how to make up believable future names, which resulted in creating a character biography, then writing a scene featuring that character on the theme of ‘most frightening/exciting day in their life’.

After that we did a more general exercise about worldbuilding, and then I had the opportunity to answer more questions about writing and getting published. Before I knew it, the two hours were up. And I’d loved every minute of it! The group were awesome – friendly and talented, and the quality of their writing just blew me away. It was an honour to be asked to speak to them. 

A huge thank you to the Write Here group and River for making me feel so welcome!