It’s an expensive ‘do’ going to a football match these days.

Our tickets for the match against Leeds United (category A) on February 27th (left) have cost us £24.00 each - that’s £72 for the three of us + petrol + lunch. Had we wanted to sit in the Direct Golf stand (upper tier) they would have been £27 each.  This is for a League 1 match - the old third division - goodness knows how much tickets for Premiership games must cost. A quite search on a ticket-touting site was offering Wolves V Chelsea tickets at £112 each!!  How do ordinary families afford to go every week?

So it was interesting to read about Mansfield Town’s once-in-a-lifetime offer to fans this Saturday (6th February). The club owners declared that fans could simply turn up, pay what they wanted on the turnstile and sit wherever they liked.  The result was a record crowd for the season - 7,261 (of whom 74 were away fans from Gateshead). A gate of over 7000 isn’t bad at all for the Blue Square League. Radio Nottingham interviewed fans on the way in, asking them what they intended to pay. Most said a fiver, some said a penny and other ‘a couple of quid.’  Some of those interviewed did say it was the first time they’d been to a match so the ruse worked in getting people’s interest. Sadly for Mansfield they lost 0-2 in what the Nottingham Evening Post called a ‘dire’ match.  Nice idea though - I wonder if it would catch on in Harrods!

It’s a hard life…

All this week I have been planning the next book in my Girls FC series. Instead of sitting at my desk and drafting ideas, I’ve made it my mission to try something different this time so I’ve broken the habit of my writing lifetime and Gone Out. Brave or what?

Not wanting to go too crazy on the first day, I headed for the town library. There I settled at a long empty desk with a large picture window to my left and the poetry and plays section on my right.  Although the table could have accommodated another person or two I made it plain this was not desirable. Having observed the habits of the lesser-friendly commuter on trains from Edinburgh to London, I threw my coat went over one chair, my bag over another and spread my sheets of scrap paper across the desk as liberally as an MPs receipts. The message was quite clear. Busy Person Sitting here. Back off.  Luckily the library wasn’t too busy - most people were squashed over in the computer suite - so I was left alone.

Do you know what? I got loads done. I had my postcard of the Parrs in front of me and the ideas flowed. This book, the 9th in the series, is Gemma’s story.  Every team has one player who shines above the rest and Gemma is the Parrs’ star. That much anyone who has already read some of the books will know. They won’t know much else - Gemma is shy and quiet and so far hasn’t contributed much apart from scoring dazzling goals.  Nobody knows much about her. I didn’t know much about her until I started plotting.  By that I don’t mean I am starting from scratch - I know in my head what the storyline of all the books is - but I don’t know the nitty-gritty.  That’s where the planning stage comes in. By the time I left the library - about an hour and a half later - I had Gemma’s whole family history worked out. I was pleasantly surprised; turns out its a good ‘un!

Anyway. Working in the library. For or against?

For on a quiet day when I can have a table to myself. Marks out of 10: 8

Day 2:  This was Byron’s Cafe Day, already blogged.

Marks out of 10: 3

Day 3 & 4:  Stray’s Café

Bliss! Cosy, warm and plenty of light. The shop had a recently converted annexe off the main café that was empty. I found a corner table away from the window (I didn’t want to encourage customers) and did my spreading out stuff. Again, I surprised myself by how much work I got done.  At home, I’d have been distracted. Checking my e-mails, doing chores and so on. Here, I just got my head down and scribbled away. I was beginning to wonder what I’d been missing all this time. So this was why Harry Potter became such a success. Café culture!

Marks out of 10 Day 3: 9

(better than the library as I could drink coffee too. I would have given 10 out of 10 but 1 mark dropped for not having Americano and real cream. Cappuccinos are nice but calorific)

So far so good. Except… when I tried Strays again the next day (same table) it wasn’t as productive. The café was slightly busier but also the low level noise was bothersome. The jazz CD that was playing was jarring. There had been music the day before but it hadn’t been as intrusive somehow. Also, the door kept banging as people came in and out. Luckily I was only working out my match fixtures for the season but had I needed to work-work I couldn’t have.  A little cloud began forming on the ‘Doing a JK’ horizon…

Finally to Friday.

I tried a different café this time. A smaller one down a narrow street. The Illy sign looked promising so in I went. Downstairs was tiny - room for three tables only and all taken - so I headed up the narrow staircase to another small room but with more tables and only two customers. Unfortunately the two customers insisted on having a conversation with each other. I know! Fancy going in a café to talk to your friends! The cheek of it.  To be honest I hadn’t been expecting to get as much work done today because it was Friday, therefore busier in town, so I’d only bought my Book of Saints with me to choose a name for Gemma’s school.  Funnily enough it wasn’t the conversation but poor lighting that did for me. Even when I moved to a table by the window it wasn’t strong enough for reading or writing. Pity as they did have Americano with cream!

Marks out of 10 Day 5: 6

Conclusion: JK was definitely on to something here. When it’s fairly quiet and well lit, a café is a great writing environment. I discovered that I don’t need total solitude -  I found I could concentrate when surrounded by other people. However, I was aware of some conversations (and jazz solos) more than others. It depended on the pitch (I’m hard of hearing in one ear).

Getting out of the house was definitely beneficial. I felt part of the world without the need to engage in it. I found myself raring to get to town every morning. What I’m not sure about is whether this would work when I begin the writing proper - when I’ll need to concentrate on structure and dialogue?  I guess there’s only one way to find out. Watch this space.

The Reading for Success team - look at the books they’re reading - how can they not be successful??

There are several initiatives at the moment linking sport with encouraging children’s reading. Premiership League Reading Stars, Reading Champions and Playing for Success to name a few. Walker Books, my ace forward-thinking publishers, have linked my Girls FC series with the PfS team at Huddersfield Town AFC. Mike Mawson, the PfS organiser, used ‘Do Goalkeepers Wear Tiaras?’ as a basis for the project. His group of volunteers answered questions, did quizzes, looked at the different characters and so on. All good fun.

I’m afraid I don’t have any of the girls’ names who took part but I hope they enjoyed participating.  Spread the word, lasses.  Girls’ football books rock!

For more information on Playing for Success visit their website on www.playingforsuccessonline.org.uk/

Newark Market Place

Lord Byron woz ‘ere

I have decided that my Girls FC books are taking too long to write so I’m trying something different and doing a JK. By ‘doing a JK’ I mean writing in cafes rather than at home. Who knows what might happen?  So, disregarding Eve Ibbotson’s advice to ‘write in the same place every day so that ideas know where to find you,‘ I took myself off to Newark yesterday and found a table in Byron’s café instead.

Byron’s Café was not, of course, a café in 1806 when he first stepped over that fine edifice you see on your left. Then it was a printers (S and J Ridge) who were awarded the task of printing 28 of the good Lord’s poems in a collection called ‘Fugitive Pieces.’

To say the building had seen better days would be an understatement. Better decades more like. The original staircase leading to the upstairs accommodation would have been handsome at one time but the wood beneath it has been lost in layers of gluey paint and the woodchipped lilac walls, grimy with grease, already foretold that my coffee would not be of the freshly brewed variety.

I’m afraid the cafe fulfilled my expectations.  I don’t mind a greasy spoon experience now and again but… y’know. I don’t want to sound all lady-who-lattes here but this was where Byron had been, right? He’d set foot in here. He’d had his first poems printed here. We’re talking about Byron, guys. You know. Don Juan. Childe Harold and all that.  The dude who died a tragic, heroic and above all Romantic death (marsh fever 1824 aged 36, Missolonghi). Lord Lock-up-your-daughters mad-bad-and-dangerous-to-know Byron. Here, on your indifferent doorstep, Newark.

Are you gathering I was a tad disappointed at what I found?

Upstairs in the café itself, the walls turned from icy lilac to a grubby pastel pink. This included the radiators in what is - quite rightly in this instance - called ‘a distressed look.’ They weren’t the only ones.  I was pretty distressed myself. Why would a building of such significence and magnificence be allowed to decay like this?  Yet the potential of the place was breathtaking.  Plastered high-ceilings together with a long row of sash windows across the far wall looking out onto the historic market square;such potential!  The place should have been a tourist magnet. Instead it looked like a bus station caff from 1964.  There were three saving graces. The lady who served me was lovely. She became worried that my coffee wouldn’t be strong enough (it wasn’t) and took it away to replenish at no extra charge. The cafe was quiet (well, dead, but that meant I didn’t have to worry about being disturbed by other customers) and thirdly the view. Wednesday is market day in Newark so there was plenty to watch.  A student with a cardboard placard advertising ‘free hugs’ (A level psychology experiment? ) among other things.

I did try. I took out my things (a stack of A4 paper, pen, pencil, postcard of my Girls FC team). I jotted some thoughts but not many. I was too distracted by the pink radiators. As for Lord Byron; he’d long gone, taking his genius with him. I drank my coffee, packed away and went to pick up my dry cleaning. Maybe I’m too fussy.  I’ll try somewhere else tomorrow.

craftsmanship lost in magnolia

editing... it can take a while...

I was just having a sort through of all the left over sheets from Tabinda’s draft and I found eight page 2s. Page 2 is the first page.  Sifting through these rejects it is clear I was not satisfied with the opening sentence.  Bearing in mind I had already changed my entire opening scene because I was unhappy with the tone it set and I’d reached the printing-off stage, you would have thought the opening sentence was done and dusted. Nah -ah.

It began as:

‘We had just won a corner against Lutton Ash Angels.’

I expanded that to: ‘We had just won a corner against Lutton Ash Angels, the dirtiest team in the league.”

I then expanded it further to:

‘It was a wet Saturday morning late in October and we had just won a corner against Lutton Ash Angels, the dirtiest team in the league.’ ©

That’s how it has stayed. I am not claiming it is a sentence of outstanding natural beauty but it does what I wanted it to do. It serves its purpose by planting a picture in the reader’s mind from the start. We know when the story takes place (day and month) we know where (won a corner = football pitch)  and we know something’s going to happen because Lutton Ash are ‘dirty.’

My aim as a writer is to get the reader hooked from the beginning. I don’t do clever and complicated. I hope I do interesting. I want the reader to want to read to the bottom of the first page at least; If they don’t, the chances are I’ve already blown it. Older readers will persevere with a story, giving it the opportunity to warm up but with short, quick reads like the Girls FC series, you have to be sharp from the start.  Kids don’t have time to waste. There’s too much stuff to do. Other books to read. Playstations and Wiis to attend to. Brothers to torture and so on.

Good opening sentences are crucial. One of my favourites comes from Karen Wallace’s Raspberries on the Yangtze: ‘It all began the day my brother and I decided to murder our mother.’ Brilliant!  Killing your parents - straight for the jugular.

Sticking with the morbid side have a gander at this corker from Geraldine McCaughrean:

‘On the morning of his fourteenth birthday, Pepper had been awake for fully two minutes before realizing it was the day he must die.’ ( The Death Defying Pepper Roux).  Questions immediately pop into the readers’ heads. What? Why?  This is a deliberate - and highly successful - attention grabbing ploy.

Then there’s the straight-to-the point opening…

‘Nathan Wheatear hated his Uncle Jago and could not remember a time when he didn’t.’ (The Tower of Moonville by Stephen Elboz)

… and the more ambiguous…

‘Some things start before other things’ (The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett)

…to this simple observation from Pete Johnson’s main character in How to Train Your Parents: ‘I think I’ve arrived somewhere weird.’

I like this one from Penny Dolan’s ‘The Third Elephant‘:

‘Large trees hid the old house from the street lights.’ Very simple but you’re there already, in the scene, aren’t you?

Loved this one:

‘Another ghost arrived last week.’ (The Ghost of Uncle Arvie by Sharon Creech).

Here’s a classic:

‘Well, it’s not often a great bundle of clean paper comes my way like this, so I’ve decide I’m going to use it for writing about the street where I live and then when I’m very old, say about thirty, I’ll be able to read about what happened in 1948.’ (Private Keep Out by Gwen Grant)  Talk about setting your stall out!  Wow! That narrator flies at you, chirpy, self-assured and witty.

This one’s not bad, either:

‘Hi, my name is Danny Ogle and my life is over. Want to know why?’  (from There’s Only one Danny Ogle by moi and yes, I know, that’s two sentences. I’m a cheat. Get over it.

George Orwell set the bar high with his prescient 1984:  It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.

All those sentences make me want to read on.  What’s your favourite one that you’ve ever come across?

I wash’d thy face but more defects I saw

I found this wonderful poem on an American website by simply Googling ‘poems about writing.’  Check it out on www.judithpordon.tripod.com.

Even though The Author To Her Book by Anne Bradsheet was written so long ago I think it sums up perfectly how it feels to post a ‘finished’ book off as I did yesterday.

The Author To Her Book

Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain

Who after birth did’st by my side remain,

Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true

Who three abroad, expos’d to publick view,

Made thee in raggs, halting to the press to trudge,

Where errors were not lessened (all might judge).

At thy return my blushing was not small,

My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,

I cast thee by as one unfit for light,

Thy visage was so irksome in my sight:

Yet being mine own, at length affection would

Thy blemishes amend, of so I could:

I washe’d thy face, but more defects I saw,

And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.

I stretcht thy joynts to make thee even feet,

Yet still thou run’st more hobbling than is meet;

In better dress to trim thee was my mind,

But nought save home-spun cloth, i’th’ house I find.

In this array, ‘mongst Vulgars mayst thou roam,

In Criticks hands, beware thou dost not come;

And take thy way where yet thou art not known,

If for thy father askt, say, thou hadst none:

And for thy mother, she, alas is poor,

Which caus’d her thus to send thee out of door.

Anne Bradsheet (1612-1672)

draft cover of Tabinda’s story

At 9.00 am this morning I posted the manuscript to the eighth book in my Girls FC series to my editor. The relief!  I was determined to get this book finished by the end of January (having hoped to have it submitted before Christmas) so I worked all weekend to make sure I met my deadline. My poor daughter wished she hadn’t bothered coming home I was in such a state.  Writers - or any artist I guess - don’t make the best parents. We are self-centred, always in another world and at times have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the real one.  Total immersion in your book makes you snappy and irritable and unapproachable. Things like cooking and even dressing feel like too much of a distraction to a writer, let alone engaging in conversation. Ask a writer who is in the middle of a book something as basic as: ‘Fancy a cup of tea, Mum?’ and they will stare at you blankly for at least a minute while they filter out all their head stuff. It’s not good.

I’m glad Tabinda’s story is in the post though. It’s my first attempt at writing a character with a totally different culture and background from mine. Tabinda is a British born girl, half Muslim, half Sikh.  Although neither her religion nor her culture is an issue in the book I felt it was vital to make the story ring true by including cultural references when describing food and clothing, for example.  I hope I got it right - if not, it’s not from want of trying. Like my friend Gwen Grant said when I described the storyline to her the other day ‘You don’t make things easy for yourself, Helena!’

I do hope girls with an Indian and Pakistani heritage will enjoy seeing a girl who looks like them on the cover of a football book and relish reading about a main character with a similar background.

I must thank the girls from Forest Fields Primary School in Nottingham again for all their help and Karmjeet Kaur, the book rep at OUP, for helping me with those important little details. No pressure, you guys but if it bombs, it’s all your fault!

Thank you Sangeeta, Mujgana,Mahfuza, Hadia and Sangeeta. I owe you!

J.D. Salinger the American writer has died at the age of 91. What a legacy he has left behind.  His seminal book, The Catcher in the Rye, was a classic that has influenced writers, playwrights, film directors and musicians ever since. I remember reading the opening page and being blown away by it. Published in 1951(I read it twenty years or so later, by the way!) it was perhaps the first ‘teen’ book of its kind. The main character, Holden Caulfield, is bolshy, defensive, angst- ridden, anti-establishment and so, so real. He disarms you from the start.

‘If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap.’

‘All that David Copperfield kind of crap.’ Fantastic! What a fishhook of a sentence. That’s exactly what an opening should do; draw you in, make you want to read on.

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt (published in 1996 about growing up in Limerick in the 1930s) had the same impact, though it wasn’t a ‘teen’ book as such. ‘People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty, the shiftless, loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and their terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years. Above all - we were wet.’

‘Above all - we were wet.’ Ha! So we’re going to get humour too, the reader thinks. Excellent.

For pure pathos in an autobiography, though, Maxim Gorky’s My Childhood’s (published in Russia around 1914) introduction takes some beating.

‘Father lay by the floor, by the window of a small, darkened room, dressed in white, and looking terribly long. His feet were bare and his toes were strangely splayed out. His gentle fingers, now peacefully resting on his chest, were also distorted, and the black discs of copper coins firmly sealed his once shining eyes. His dark face had darkened and its nastily bared teeth frightened me.”

There’s no short, pithy phrase to repeat here but the description of the coins on his father’s eyes haunted me when we first read this in class in Year Nine.

But I digress. Back to The Catcher in the Rye. What was interesting about this book was the impact it had on Salinger. It became such a cult Salinger couldn’t deal with the fame that came with that. He shunned the limelight and became more and more of a recluse. Although he wrote other titles Franny and Zooey, Raise High the Roof Beam included, it was Catcher in the Rye people continued to reference. I can see why it must have ticked him off. It’s like Robbie Williams being asked to sing Angels over and over again at concerts. ‘Come on you guys! I’ve done other stuff!’

Rumours are that Salinger had stacks of manuscripts that never saw the light of day. Watch out for the feeding frenzy that now takes place.

J.D. Salinger born January 1st 1919  died in Cornish, New Hampshire, January 27th 2010.

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday, writing was like pulling teeth, but today I managed to finish the first draft of Tabinda’s story and begin the final edits. I love this part. Although I use a word processor to write, when it comes to checking through the draft, I prefer having real sheets of paper on my desk to read through.  So, I print the manuscript off, sharpen my pencil and begin scything through the text, cutting out sentences, paragraphs and sometimes entire chapters without a qualm. I’m that hard, me.  ‘Murder your darlings’ as Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch advised in his essay ‘On the Art of Writing’ delivered to Cambridge University in 1914 (thank you Google).

‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of finely executed writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before you send your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’

It is sound advice -  for the sake of pace, usually - and I have followed it throughout my writing career.  Would-be writers who can’t bear to cull their offerings tend to remain just that. Would-be.

After the pencil work I’ll return to the screen and make the changes, print the story off again (I never said it was an environmentally friendly method) and go through the same process. This time there should be fewer corrections; it’s more a matter of attention to detail this time - a better word here, a tightening of a sentence there.  Individual sheets are printed this time instead of the whole thing, although this can be annoying when the changes impact on the layout and. After that I leave it for a day or two before coming back to read it through again with fresher eyes. Finally, after a few more adjustments that I previously missed, it should be ready to post.

Today I could not write.

I tried.

I sat there and stared at the screen

Willing the words to come

Telling myself I was not to leave until I’d written something

Anything

Eventually a paragraph of sorts appeared

As truculent as a teenage boy being forced to go to school.

Present, but determined to contribute nothing of worth.

So, like a jaded teacher,  I gave up

and waited for that final bell.

I sought displacement

Like a contestant on the Crystal Maze

I did a physical

Raked dead leaves from the back lawn

Put a wash in the machine

Set the coal fire and stocked up on kindling

I checked my e-mails and was mocked by an empty inbox

Played Van Morrison

The Cure

And Jack Peñate

Peeled some spuds

Then read opening pages of some children’s books

To see what gripped and drew the reader in

Hoping for inspiration from them.

The Once and Future King

The Little White Horse

Ballet Shoes

Malice

and Jackdaw Summer

But that didn’t work.

I’d already got my opening and it was just fine.

It was the end I needed to crack

So I decided that I’d better stop all this self indulgent time-wasting lame excuse for laziness

and pull my finger out.

I’m sure that’s what Enid Blyton would have done.