Notes from the Slushpile is a team blog maintained by eight friends who also happen to be children's authors at different stages of the publishing journey.
Just imagine that you died. Yes, I know, it's weird but you're a writer so indulge me. You died; in fact you knew you were going to die and you were definitely not going to go gently into that good night. You raged. But it went dark anyway.
I don't want to go
Then you came back to life.
number 10
You woke with all that knowledge of dying and the knowledge of how you didn't want to go. Just think how you would feel; all the big things and the small things would rush upon you. I can't articulate this better than a children's author called Amy Krouse Rosenthal.
RETURNING TO LIFE AFTER BEING DEAD
When I am feeling dreary, annoyed, and generally unimpressed by life, I imagine what it would be like to come back to this world ... after having been dead. I imagine how sentimental I would feel about the very things I once found stupid, hateful, or mundane. Oh, there’s a light switch! I haven’t seen a light switch in so long! I didn’t realize how much I missed light switches! Oh! Oh! And look — the stairs up to our front porch are still completely cracked! Hello cracks! Let me get a good look at you. And there’s my neighbor, standing there, fantastically alive, just the same, still punctuating her sentences with you know what I’m saying? Why did that bother me? It’s so… endearing.
Can you imagine it?! All that relief and gratitude and love for life in all its variety, renewed and reinvigorated. Hmmm, I wonder how long that would last? I have never actually died and come back to life but that poignant piece in the excellent BrainPickings really made me think about how my child reader might begin to view her world - with joy, with amazement, with despair, with puzzlement, with a shrug.
What's going on again?
For me, writing for children is a remembrance of not just what happened but crucially how it felt when it happened. As adults we carry baggage of various weights and sizes but as writers we should be able to rummage around and find the bit which takes you to a place or a person or event when you felt something for maybe the first time.
Remembering anew
Italo Calvino would have us believe that, “every experience is unrepeatable,”. That may be so but as writers we must seek to use that experience and enhance our stories by recalling how it felt to be five or fifteen. Can you easily recall any childhood memories? Try a sample of mine from childhood:
remembering my grandmother's voice and how she once told me that curtains were the work of the devil
waking up from a bad dream and seeing balloon monsters at the end of the bed and no voice to call out
a party ending and not wanting to go and being lovingly mother-handled down the drive
moving house and waving goodbye to my friends through the rear window of the car
getting lost on a birthday trip to London and being told off when I was finally found
I don't remember all of these incidents in detail but rather what sticks is how they made me feel - confused, terrified, furious, sad and relieved/unhappy/bewildered (that last one still gets me). It's not so much a case of write what you know but write what you feel you know.
Chris Riddell - tells a story every time
The still turning points
Occasionally the past can pierce the present. You might experience one of those amazing occurances where you just couldn't make it up (of course you can). They are what T.S. Eliot called 'the still points of the turning world'. Helen Shapiro writes:
At the end of the first evening at a large retreat, an old man approaches as I’m packing up my books and papers for the night. He looks at me with such warmth and love. Do I know you? Startled, I glance down at his name tag. I raise a hand to my mouth, then stand and hug him hard, wordlessly. He had been my first piano teacher.
The chance meeting took her back, without warning, to a happy time with a formative person in her life. Her reaction was wordless and all the more affecting because she felt it. Apart from this being classic, 'show and not tell', this is a lovely example of how a story can start or end ...
lost and found - Oliver Jeffers
Have you ever had a hand-to-the-mouth moment? Something which stirs a forgotten memory. Something powerful enough to transport you backwards in time to a once important person or a place?
A meeting with someone you knew or someone a close relative or a friend knew
A scent, a smell which brings it all back in an instant
A found object which evokes a past you wanted forgotten or had forgotten you had - a photograph, jewellery, a lock of hair, a toy, a shabby item of toddler clothing ... the list is endless
A place, taking you somewhere awful or delightful
A song, a poem, an extract from a diary
So many ways to stimulate your story brain and it's all inside you!
Not all memories are pleasant
Sometimes we have to really dig around and find those memories. That sounds ominous. But you know what I mean. It's the suppressed memories - the ones you really have to mine for - that often provoke the greatest depth of feeling. It's a little bit painful to try and prod these into being. I did a writing exercise which made me think about this.
think of something you are ashamed of having done
why do you think it happened
who made you think it was shaming?
I won't regale you with my shameful past. Although some of these 'shameful' episodes seem funny now. But at the time they made me hide my head ... all right, just one. I was playing outside in someone's back garden. We had a football and I used to pretend that I knew everything about football (such a lie!). Anyhow, I told my friend I could kick the ball further than him. I kicked it into his kitchen window (classic). His dad came out and raged at his son and I stood there and let him. He never dobbed me in but he gave me such a 'look' and never talked to me again. Now, that may not be exactly how it went but good grief I can recall the disappointment of losing a friend through being cowardly. It's fine - I forgave myself a couple of weeks ago.
So, I hope this helps a bit. Remember - you are an individual writer with individual memories and feelings. And this lovely baggage is what gives you your individual voice.
Because it is Summer and nobody is going to read this and crucially, I wear clothes, I have decided that I am qualified to give advice on the important matter of what to wear at a prize ceremony.
Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White is a story about two friends - a naive, young pig, Wilbur, and a wise, kind spider, Charlotte. When Charlotte is dying, Wilbur is distraught and asks her:
“Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.'
"You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that."
Charlotte's Web by E.B White
Did I cry when I read these words - yes. Friendship will get me every time. It can be messy and complicated and it can be noble and self-sacrificing. Such a simple sentiment, 'You have been my friend.' and yet it's laden with a whole lifetime of feeling and experience. When I read this, I don't just think about the beautiful friendship of Wilbur and Charlotte but I relate it to my own experience of friendships and how it might feel should this relationship end with the death of a friend.
Okay, so, this is one of my all time favourite picture books. We have a tattered big book copy which was read and read to all the children. I barely had to look at the words to recall them. But I always had a catch in my throat here ...
"Then Bella did something very kind.'
I can barely say that line which sounds ridiculous but it is redolent with the practical-big-sister love Bella has for her brother. There is also the happy resolution of the MASSIVE problem (when you're 3) of losing a companion/toy. Shirley Hughes has a wonderful eye and ear for the way small children are and consequently we invest in their characters and dilemmas quickly. My children never cried when I read the story though, which makes me think that some younger readers are more Bellas than Daves. Unless they're baby Joes and he's just too dribbly.
If you want to read Kate Saunders' amazing book, prepare yourselves for Serious Tears. The Psammead is a sand fairy, thousands of years old, and it's a bit of a heartless monster. By the end of the book, the death of a young man brings about an epiphany:
"I'm awfully glad you're here. Can you stay with me?' 'Yes, my dear,' the Psammead said and gently stroked Cyril's cheek with his paw. 'I'll never leave you now.'
From heartless to heartbroken. The moment is terrible and wonderful. And it left me crying at the transformation of the Psammead as well as the lost generation of young men killed in the first world war.
Nooooooooooooo!
As a rule, I find that I cannot bear to read sad stories which involve animals which means that I have never read 'Black Beauty' or 'Warhorse'. Neither have I written a story with an animal as the central character. For me, it's too sad. I don't know why, maybe it's to do with their trusting nature and relative simplicity of character. Maybe I should challenge myself - that's what brilliant stories like this do to the reader.
Some less obviously sad books make me well up. 'Not Now Bernard' by David McKee is the story of Bernard whose parents ignore him when he wants their attention. They do not notice when he is eaten by the monster. They do not notice when the monster wants their attention. They are terrible parents. They did not deserve Bernard. The story-telling is relaxed and funny and my children laughed their little heads off but I always felt sad at the end and that lost child stays with me even now.
Maybe the saddest book ever; Michael Rosen's, 'The Sad Book'. It is not a book on how to deal with grief. It is an observation and exploration of the author's anguish at the death of his son and it is beautiful and true.
What follows is a brief list of sad books from SCBWI members. Please don't leave this blog feeling sad, rather feel uplifted that we can produce such incredible human stories. There are so many marvellous books which make me cry. They do so with understatement and clear language and never become sentimental. They are books which confront our most challenging experiences and deal with difficult emotions. They rehearse life and all its experiences. They tell us that we not alone.
