In Praise of Writers' Resilience

by Em Lynas

Part 1. Pre-Published

Rejection Requires Resilience

Writers for children, like any writers, encounter rejection at every stage of their career. They need resilience to keep going but what is resilience for a writer? What are the moments in each writer’s journey that require it the most? What does it even mean and – how does a writer get it and keep it?

Resilience:

The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.

So, what sort of difficulties is a childrens’ writer likely to encounter? How can you develop resilience? How can you spring back from rejection? Is it possible to spring back?

A host of Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, British Isles members, have allowed me to share their inspirational stories from our facebook group to show that writers are tough and can bounce back from every knock back into who they truly are – writers who need to write.

Kathryn Evans: When we start this journey we often have no idea how long it can take, we look for quick fixes and are frustrated when they seem to come to nothing, but it all adds up, eventually it adds up. 15 years of seriously trying, 5 of those with my agent. I gave up for 6 months and it made me miserable. I needed to remember that I don’t write to get published, I write because I need to and I want to. I started again, writing a weird book that was totally me and mine . It was More of Me.

Rejection can come from many sources:

• From family and friends
• From critique groups
• From agents
• From editors
• From publishers
• From booksellers and bloggers
• From Award awarders
• From buyers and readers

In this post I’ll deal with the pre-published rejections and suggestions for how to deal with them. The next post will be all about post publication rejections and ideas on how to deal with those.

Rejection from family and friends

Not all family and friends will understand your compulsion to write. Their rejection of your dream of one day being published may be subtle, passive aggressive, or just downright rude. And hurtful.

They may say:

Isn’t that book finished yet? On repeat.

Are you still writing your book? On repeat.

Don’t you think it’s time to give up? On repeat.

When are you going to give up? On repeat.

Why don’t you write a book about – insert inappropriate suggestion that has nothing to do with children’s books.

So and so (insert name) has just had a book published. She only started writing last year.

I see David Walliams has another book out.

It can’t be that hard to write a story for children, there’s hardly any words.

This is often accompanied by looking at you oddly, as if you’re a different species.

Disclaimer: The above is not representative of my immediate family and closest friends. Most often it was acquaintances.

You can’t do anything about acquaintance’s rejections of your publishing aspirations but you can educate those who are closest to you to be more sensitive and understanding.

How?

Gather information that it TAKES A LONG TIME! All they hear on the news is about the super deals done with young debut novelists. This is not representative!

·        Research how long your favourite authors took. How big is their slushpile of rejected works, unfinished ideas? My favourite – it took David Almond twenty years before his first book, Skellig, was published. And he’s brilliant!

·       Show them this post if they need convincing.

I found that there was a tipping point, about five years into my writing journey. A sense that rather than thinking I was nuts to keep on flogging a dead horse, family and friends were proud of my determination and resilience in the face of many rejections. They were proud that I continued to learn and grow as a writer and overjoyed when my first book came out.

Sally Poynton: When I started this journey my youngest was a baby, he’s now coming up 15. And I’m still not published. I think it can be so difficult with all the rejection and the fact that success is binary. You are either published or not. The thing that gets me through is support from friends and family and the key thing is CELEBRATING THE SMALL THINGS. Making sure that every small competition long/listing or good feedback is marked, or you’d go mad.

Rejection from critique groups

I am in a SCBWI_BI critique group and I would highly recommend joining SCBWI to meet other children’s authors and gather feedback. Writing for children is a very specific skill, different for each age band, and you need feedback that reflects that.

Most critique groups recommend the Feedback Sandwich (a polite term for the more colloquial Sh*t Sandwich which is often a far more accurate term)

Top slice - Highlight a positive.

Filling - Add in some constructive criticism, preferably not subjective.

Bottom slice: Highlight a positive.

This sounds great, a really kind way of giving feedback, but in reality we’re all dismissing the bread and waiting for the sh*t. We need it. If we’re ever to progress as writers we need to accept it and take it on the chin (sorry, yuck). But even the most constructive criticism, kindly delivered, can be felt as rejection and a knock to your confidence resulting in bad thoughts.

I still can’t get it right. I haven’t done this. I haven’t done that. I’ve failed. They’ve rejected my story. I obviously can’t write. I’ll give up.

It’s important that you distance yourself from the work. This is not a criticism (or shouldn’t be) of YOU, this is all about whether the story works in the way you want it to work, (or should be).

Reality check:

What are you expecting from the critique?

·       Do you want an – I love this, thanks for sharing critique?

·       Do you want an analysis of whether your story is working or not?

I do think initially everyone wants the first and it’s part of your growth as a writer when you accept and appreciate the second.

·       Check that your critique group is right for you – are you getting the best feedback as a children’s writer if your group mainly consists of poets, creative writers, or real crime writers?

This is a ‘Find Your Tribe’ moment. You need a gang of writers who have your back because they will help you bounce back and build the resilience you will need for the next stage. My recommendation is – join SCBWI.

Susan Brownrigg: It took me 20 years to get published and I still don't have an agent. Barbara Henderson was my inspiration for trying a different way, and for approaching an independent publisher - Uclan - who are amazing. My advice would be ... enjoy other people's successes ... think of the books that didn't get picked up as a back catalogue for returning to one day ... and take a break if it all gets too much - if you love writing, a story will eventually whisper in your ear when you are ready and your hurt has healed. Try to accept that you may not get published but you will always be a writer.

 

Rejection from agents

Steel yourself: There are three types of rejection from agents.

Agent Rejection One:

The agent rejects your submission and does not take you on as a client.

I shall hold my hands up at this point and admit that I sent out my stories far too early and received many, many, many rejections. Looking back, they were right to reject me, I hadn’t learned enough about my craft and they were clumsy stories, but it hurt all the same. You would be a very unusual author if an agent had never rejected a submission and acceptance that rejection is part of the journey helps enormously.

Agent Rejection Two:

The agent takes you on and is unable to place your book. They don’t think it’s worth re-working it. They want to move on to something else. What have you got?

This happens more than you think.

Keep learning and writing while you are waiting. So that when/if rejection comes you’ve got something else that you love, ready to go.

Agent Rejection Three:

The agent takes you on as a client and then rejects you.

Having been through the third I can tell you this was the worst rejection of all rejections and stopped me writing for almost a year. My tip for surviving? Acceptance of the natural behavioural pattern. I only discovered this a few years later. Maybe I had to go through it in order to understand it?

Event: A rejection drops into your inbox.

·       Reactions:

o   Physical reaction: Stomping, stamping, shouting, throwing, walking, running, scowling, slumping, Netflix bingeing etc etc etc

o   Emotional reaction: disappointment, despair, anger, misery, despondency, hopelessness, depression, gloom, crying, sobbing, confusion, self-doubt, retreating etc etc etc This reaction can go on for a long time (months, years) depending on the number of rejections accumulated previously, your personality and the nature (severity) of the rejection. Be kind to yourself!

·       Reflection: Eventually the emotional brain has had its reaction and the logical brain takes over. Evidence is gathered to support continuing to write. Or. Evidence is gathered to support giving up.

·       Decision: A decision is made. You either stop, continue, or take a break.

·      Action: Depending on the decision you either write or you don’t. You start something new or go back through your slushpile.

Understanding your behavioural pattern and the length of time you personally need to spend in each phase can help make the reaction more bearable. You know you have to go through it, there’s no escaping emotion but perhaps you don’t have to experience it quite as intensely and you can move on faster using distraction techniques.

I stopped writing and turned to learning more about writing. I read all the How To books I could get hold of and read blogs on writing. I blogged about writing on Notes From the Slushpile. I began the poetry blog the funeverse with a group of SCBWI_BI authors. This helped to keep me focused on children’s literature but relieved me of the pressure of Must Get Another Agent. I also began knitting so that I could be successful at something and when I’d finished a few jumpers I returned to writing. Sheila Averbuch took up different hobbies.

Sheila M. Averbuch: If you can’t write – as I couldn’t, for months – try at least to protect your writing time and do something else satisfying in it, something creative or mentally stimulating (I practiced my old acting monologues, and tried new recipes, and learned Japanese). That way, if and when you feel you can work with words again, your writing time is ready and waiting for you, and it hasn’t been swamped by life. Even if the world hasn’t yet given you a signal that it needs your writing, you need your writing.

Emma Styles: I started in 2008 & not published yet. I had an agent for just over three years, that book didn’t sell & I found myself back on the slushpile. That all happened very early on & was a bit of a rollercoaster. But I learned a lot & like others have said, writing has just become what I do, how I make sense of things, and I can’t really stop. I have tried a couple of times. I remember telling a writer friend, ‘I could have quite a nice life if I wasn’t writing.’ Which was ridiculous & I knew it! I think I had an idea I’d have all this spare time, but to do what? And yes, it’s the friends that have kept me going, plus that mysterious something to do with ‘making stuff up.’ I would love some of that stuff to be appreciated by others which I guess keeps me going too.

So, let’s now assume you’ve taken the next step and you have an agent. Success has occurred not rejection! And now let’s assume your agent has deemed your work ready to be submitted to their favourite publishers.

Now you’re ready for the next post.

In Praise of Writers’ Resilience.

Part Two – Published

Coming soon

This is where I look at the types of rejection you may experience post book deal. I shall leave you with this inspirational story of writerly resilience from Janet Foxley.

Janet Foxley: I started writing a story for my daughter when she was one and finished it when she was 31. I had no support in the form of a crit group, editorial agency or anything like SCBWI until year 29, when my daughter, by then interested in writing herself, drew my attention to an editorial agency she’d spotted advertising in a magazine. The structural report they gave on it showed that I wrote well but had no idea how to build a novel. I turned it round and the editor loved it but pointed out that a 116,000 word saga by a new writer would never find a publisher. I self-published it (through Matador) before self-publishing was respectable and cheaply available, and threw away most of the unsold copies last year when we moved to a smaller house.

With that knowledge I set about writing something the right length, but it still took 8 years, two edits from an agency (one of which sent it in the wrong direction) a comment from a publisher’s reader that put it back on track, a prize short-listing and several rejections before it won the Times/Chicken House prize and a publishing contract.

During the 35-odd years from starting writing to publication I did several of the courses advertised in writing magazines and finished several books that were nowhere near fit to submit. For me, the only way of making progress was to pay for structural edits from people who not only knew how to structure a novel but also knew the market. So my advice would be, listen to knowledgeable critics, be prepared to rewrite and rewrite, but also be prepared to scrap an unviable project, or one that has become too stale to love any more, and start on something fresh. I wish there had been something like SCBWI when I started - I’m sure I’d have progressed much faster.

What made me keep going? Quite simply the need to write.

Em Lynas is a long time SCBWI member and author of the Witch School series with Nosy Crow. She is represented by Amber Caraveo of the Skylark Literary Agency. You can find out more about her and her books on her website emlynas

Author School Visits - Tip 1

by Em Lynas

I haven't done many school visits yet as my books You Can't Make Me Go To Witch School and Get Me Out of Witch School haven't even been out a year yet and I've been busy writing Help! I'm Trapped At Witch School! until this month.

But I have done a few and I'm learning what works and what doesn't work for me and so I thought I'd share because it might be helpful to all you authors out there who aren't ex-teachers and are feeling the fear of the school visit.

I've just been appearing at the West End Festival in Glasgow as part of their schools programme and it's got me thinking about the importance of dialogue to establish character from the outset for mg readers and how that helps in the creation of events.

Pre-published misconception - children coming along with their school to talks/workshops/performances will be familiar with the book.

The truth - This is unlikely. If there's been time, an organised teacher, and an available book then, yes they may have read some but mostly - not. They're coming along for many reasons, it might be a free visit organised by a festival, it might be they've picked me at random or because I'm local. Or because they need to tick the - we've seen an author box. Or it may be they are huge fans and can't wait to hear what I have to say. I just don't know what situation I'm walking in to.

So, as I'm planning I'm thinking - How do I engage the children (and teachers) and interact with them about a book they probably know nothing about? How do I talk about it without giving away any spoilers? How do I make that fun?

Well, luckily, You Can't make me Go To Witch School has illustrations by the fabulous Jamie Littler and so I based my event around them and talked about character creation with the aid of a simple Power Point slide show. This has a become even simpler with each event. I think I started at 25 slides and now I'm down to 8. It was also interactive for the first event - Noooooooo!

The slideshow is a sort of Who's Who at Toadspit Towers.

Here's a few characters with the relevant dialogue I read from the book.

Daisy Wart

Reluctant Witch and Awesome Actress.

“Granny.” I say it with firmness. This is definitely a hands-on-hips moment, so I put them there. “Chocolate, currently in my backpack, is a birthday treat. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare with pictures, also currently in my backpack, is a birthday treat. Money, in the backpack, is a birthday treat. Dumping me at witch school is NOT a birthday treat. I absolutely refuse to enter a dilapidated building named Toadspit Towers because I am NOT a witch!”

Ms Thorn

Lover of Strictness and Conformity

“Is you the headmistress?” asks Granny. “Is you Ms Toadspit?”

“I am not,” says the woman. “I am Ms Constance Thorn. Senior Teacher of Toadspit Towers. You may speak.”

Dominique Laffitte 


Thinks She Is The Best and Brightest Witch at Toadspit Towers
“Ms Thorn has appointed I dormitory monitor for I am the Best and Brightest Witch.” She points at the rosette on her cauldron as proof. “I have knowledge of everything in this school. If there is anything you want to know then ask I. And if there is anything you should know then I shall tell you. And if there is anything you do wrong, I shall tell you that too. You are lucky to be sharing the dormitory of the youngest Best and Brightest Witch in the history of Toadspit Towers.

Jessica Moss

Feeling The Fun And Loving Her Life!

“What’s happen— Hey, a new girl,” she says, spotting me. Her eyes light up at the sight of the cake. “Ooh, cake. My mam can’t bake cakes. They go flat in the middle and come out like biscuits. But that’s OK because I like biscuits. And pie.”

Once the children had been introduced to the characters we chatted about who was going to be for or against Daisy. Who was going to help her to escape from Witch School and who was going to get in the way.

That's when I realised how important first impressions are to children in mg and why the first words spoken are so important. They completely 'got' each character from the way they spoke, the words they used and the attitude. It was a light bulb moment even though I really should have known that all along but as I was writing the books I was just writing for me, creating individuals who I wanted to spend time with. I wasn't always thinking about the reader and how quickly I need to establish personality. I will now though.

We were able to go  deeper into the characters but I'll blog about that another time. This could end up being a series.

So I learned something on that visit as well as having a ball with the kids making up new characters. I'm already trimming and adjusting ready for the next one and I'm sure I'll learn something on that too.

If you don't have illustrations you can still use images. You could find three images for each character and ask the children to choose the one that was the most likely to say the dialogue. That could be fun!

Em

@emlynas on twitter - follow me!

Em is published by Nosy Crow and rep'd by Amber Caraveo

In praise of rights teams

by Paula Harrison

A small selection of the Rescue Princesses books that have been published internationally

I feel very lucky. I love my job and I don't have to climb bleary-eyed on to a commuter train to London at 7 o'clock each morning. Plus I get up to make a cup of tea whenever I want. This is no small thing.

Yet when I run a course for pre-published writers, as I did in London a fortnight ago, they've heard how little writers earn, how it's getting harder to make a living as an author. This is all true. The market is difficult. Celebrity writers are gaining a lot of shelf space. Many writers are hanging on through money from school visits or sometimes teaching writing to adults. BUT there is still a lot of excitement about debuts and a new author has that in their favour.

Another thing that makes children's authors very lucky is that UK children's publishers are simply excellent at selling foreign rights. Nosy Crow, the publisher of The Rescue Princesses (pictured above) has sold rights to those books in many languages including Italian, French, Hebrew, Japanese, Turkish, Romanian and Czech. The American publisher they sold rights to has published twelve books from the series.

If you pay attention to the children's book world you'll have noticed tweets and pictures coming from Bologna this week. Rights teams and agents fly out there every March and work incredibly hard. A huge part of the work (I am told) goes on before and afterwards, following up on appointments and so on. I'm massively grateful for their efforts and thrilled each time a book in a foreign language comes through.

Top: American and Polish editions of The Secret Rescuers from Nosy Crow
Bottom: French and Spanish editions of Robyn Silver from Scholastic

Seeing your story travelling round the world is an amazing feeling. I should also mention the fabulous work done by translators such as Nicolas Ancion who translated Robyn Silver into French and the amazing artwork produced by talented illustrators around the world including Alban Marilleau whose cover artwork is pictured above.

No doubt rights teams are wheeling their suitcases back home right now feeling pretty exhausted. Well, I would just like to say a HUGE

THANK YOU!

And Happy Easter! Apologies that the blog is a short piece this week - I blame the Easter baking! I will leave you with a picture of the new Rescue Princesses book out very soon. The Enchanted Ruby is the 13th book and publishes as part of a refresh for the series. The beautiful illustration pictured is by Sharon Tancredi.

The Writer's Journey - How Long!?!

by Em Lynas

Last year was weird. I signed with agent Amber Caraveo of Skylark Literary and landed a 3 book deal with Kate Wilson of Nosy Crow.

Next year is set to be weirder as I write two more books in the Toadspit Towers series and promote the first.

It feels weird because it’s led me to do a bit of thinking and wondering about time: how it’s passed and how and why I kept writing over...

EIGHTEEN YEARS!

Eighteen years from ‘I think I’ll become a writer!’ to ‘I have a book coming out in August!’

Why did it take me so long? What were my steps? What led me to here? What led me to Toadspit Towers, School for Witches and the deal with Nosy Crow. If I'd known it would take so long would I have even started?

Let’s go back to 1999. Yes, the last century! Before the millennium! I was a teacher. A reception teacher who needed to get out.

I had A PLAN! Become a picture book writer and never suffer an OFSTED ever again!

I was obviously an expert in picture books (reception teacher remember) so, I wrote lots of picture books. They were bad picture books. They all lacked something. But not always the same something. They were amateurish.

Some of these books had:

No lead character, tick; no conflict, tick; no plot, tick; no theme, tick.

Comedy? Tick. Yes. They all had comedy.

I kept writing because:

I had great feedback from agents and editors. I even had a near miss from a big publisher. They kept Maybe the Baby for a year and then said no. That was a bad ending. The book’s ending was bad too.

What next? Stick to picture books and learn my craft? Of course not. Picture books were obviously far too hard (everyone said so) and I needed to try something different, something easier.

Aha! PLAN 2 Become a comedy sketch writer.

Link provided to
Lily's Tassels
 on request.

I signed up for a comedy class. It turned out to be less a class and more a boozy gang of very sweary comics (think VIZ but actual live people) led by a not-very-funny outspoken woman with a not-very-funny act that involved extreme piercing and tassel twirling. 

I kept writing because:

This group led to my friend and I meeting with a local comedian who had an idea for a comedy drama script.

Aha! PLAN 3 – Become a script writer.

We wrote the script for From Fags to Riches. Six episode outlines and one full script of episode one. That script is waiting to be discovered. It’s good. One day it may find a home.

This script has:

An interesting premise, tick; a well-structured plot, tick; believable characters, tick; loads of peril, tick; comedy and pathos, tick; well-known actors and actresses interested in taking parts, tick.

No production company deals, tick; it’s not my voice, tick.

I kept writing because:

I was getting a sense of my voice. I had my own ideas. They wouldn’t go away. I’d learned a lot about structure while we wrote the script. But what next? Stick to scriptwriting? Nope. I love books. I love comedy. Mmm. Comedy.

Aha! PLAN 4 Write a book. A comedy for adults.

Mother on the Mantelpiece. I still like this book. Brenda, school secretary, is a middle-aged woman being haunted by her mother who still ‘knows best’ and is ruling her life from the grave.

This book has:

an interesting premise, tick; an unrequited romance with the bloke downstairs, tick; believable characters, tick; comedy and pathos, tick; a beginning, tick.

No plot, tick; no ending; tick.

By now I’d been to a few scriptwriting courses and creative writing courses, and had begun to engage with other writers. I joined the online critique group You Write On and Harper Collins critique site Authonomy.

What a great procrastination! What an emotional rollercoaster. What a waste of writing time. BUT I did learn lessons. It was an introduction to objectivity versus subjectivity. ‘Your characters are so believable!’ ‘Your characters aren’t believable.’ ‘Love your premise.’ ‘Hate your premise.’ ‘Your plot is so well paced.’ ‘Your plot is too frantic.’

I kept writing because:

People at courses and online laughed. They found my writing funny. That was amazing.

Aha! PLAN 5 Write a different book. A really silly book for kids. The daftest book I can write.

I loved Tony Ross’s book Don’t Do That! About a kid who gets their finger stuck up their nose and it reminded me of the saying – If The Wind Changes You’ll Stay Like That! A warning not to pull faces.

And so Gurner Gobbit and the Bloodcurdling Bug-Eyed Jawbreaker was born. This was the first novel that I actually completed. I loved it. I loved Gurner and his recklessness, and his best friend Pete who was obsessed with reporting Gurner’s antics. It was whacky – set in an alternative Lancashire where extreme face pulling was the norm. But certain faces were BANNED as too dangerous. Pulling the BANNED faces had consequences.

This book has:

A ridiculous premise, tick; bonkers characters, tick; crazy events, tick; comedy conflict, tick; logical plot, tick.

Really poor set up of the events and ending, tick; a protagonist who can’t speak because his face is distorted, tick.

I kept writing because:

I joined SCBWI. Gurner won an honorary mention in The 2010 Undiscovered Voices. An editor saw the book on Authonomy and expressed interest. People thought it was funny.

Next plan. PLAN 6. 6! Get a book ready for the next Undiscovered Voices competition. Maybe twist a traditional tale?

To Destiny or Death! Prince Bob is turned into a frog by the evil Hagatha and it’s all King Fred’s fault!  I love King Fred and his food related idiolect. Another completed book! And it’s in my voice.

This book has:

A big heart, tick; strong characters, tick; a structured plot, tick; conflict and peril, tick; logical set up and motivations, tick; funny dialogue, tick.

A protagonist who can’t speak because he’s a frog, tick. There is now a pattern of non-speaking protagonists. If 2 makes a pattern.

I kept writing because:

To Destiny or Death! won a place in the 2012 Undiscovered Voices competition. I signed with an agent. I had publishers interested. It failed to get past sales and marketing.

Note the date. 2012

We’re now thirteen years into the journey to publication. I haven’t mentioned the other picture books I’ve written, the two teen books planned and not written, volunteering for SCBWI, setting up the poetry website the funeverse with SCBWI friends, joining the blog Notes from the Slushpile with even more SCBWI friends. I'd become very busy at being a writer.

Back to the timeline.

This was a dip time. A bit of a depressing time. I considered not writing. I felt I knew what I was doing now. I understood structure, set up, characterisation etc etc etc but I was failing at the last hurdle – being published. It was very difficult to maintain any enthusiasm for submitting and sharing my work with the publishing industry.

I kept writing because:

I still loved writing and I had another story. A story that still makes me smile. Florence and the Meanies – Cupcake Catastrophe! I also wrote book 2 Canine Calamity!

Based on the Cinderella dynamic, Florence and her two fairy godmothers must save the princes from the evil Meanies. Florence was a lot of fun to write, especially because the two fairy godmothers Hatty and Dotty are such contrasts of good and naughty. But having parted company with my agent I wasn’t sure I wanted to put Florence (and me) through the submission process. So I worked with my daughter Katherine Lynas to produce an illustrated version for the kindle and we did the layout for a createspace book too. I’ve since withdrawn the book because ... I have a plan for Florence.

These books have:

Everything I want them to have especially warmth, heart, my voice and my daughter's fabulous illustrations.

I kept writing because:

A new character popped up with a very personal and unique story. Daisy knew what she didn’t want. She definitely didn’t want to go to witch school. I wrote her story. I re-wrote it. I wrote it again. That was in 2015.

Then, in 2016 Prince Bob won a SCBWI BI slushpile challenge with Amber Caraveo and she said the magic words – what else have you got? And I answered – I have Daisy! She’s an actress who’s been dumped at Toadspit Towers, School for Witches, by her granny. Amber fell for Daisy. She fell for the voice.

Pg 93 in the catalogue! Click here!

You can read about Daisy on the Nosy Crow website. In August 2017 she will have her book birthday and I will be a published author.

So, EIGHTEEN LONG YEARS! Could I have done it sooner? Was there a short cut I missed? What if I’d done a creative writing degree? What if I’d done an MA? Would I have climbed the learning curve faster? Would I have been published faster? I don’t think so. No. Not me. There was so much to discover and learn. Not just about the techniques of writing but I had to discover my voice, discover what I cared about and discover what motivated me.

I thought comedy was the motivation, I thought I just wanted to make children laugh. But comedy is just the genre I use to write about the things I care about. It just took me a while to discover what those things were. 

What was the main thing that gave me the confidence to keep writing? SCBWI BI. Winning Undiscovered Voices and the Slushpile Challenge was incredibly motivating. I had to be doing something right if I'd won those. And you should never underestimate the power of SCBWI friendships. They just won't let you give up!

If you're writing for children and are a member of SCBWI BI (or Europe) you can enter these amazing competitions for free. Do it.

Em Lynas

Feel free to follow me on twitter and facebook if you are at all interested in books and writing for children. You can nip over to my website emlynas but I'm not often in.

11th day of Christmas: Literary Agent Gemma Cooper and Nosy Crow's Kate Wilson

Princess Paula to The Rescue! Paula Harrison on launching books, writing for younger readers and how to get that lucrative publishing deal...

by Maureen Lynas

Hi Maureen, thanks for having me on 
Notes from the Slushpile. 
I’m very excited to be here!

Countdown to Christmas: Publisher Kate Wilson of Nosy Crow

Managing Director of Nosy Crow, Kate has 25 years’ publishing experience. She started her career as a rights seller, before becoming MD of Macmillan Children’s Books, Group MD of Scholastic UK Ltd, and then (briefly!) CEO of Headline. She cares about good books, design, literacy and technology.Since starting Nosy Crow, she likes waking up in the morning.In September 2011, she won the title of Inspirational Business Mum of the year at the MumpreneurUK awards.

Publisher Kate Wilson: As The Nosy Crow Flies!

By Addy Farmer

Kate Wilson, founder and MD of Nosy Crow, landed at the Lincoln Book Festival on Saturday 14th May.

Refusing all offers of food and rest, Kate flew up the stairs and perched on her seat to talk about what Nosy Crow was all about.

Update! View the trailer for Nosy Crow's new app - Cinderella

Enough with the bird analogies and down to the Nosy Crow business and Kate's passion for children's stories. A Scot with a peculiar accent and a mean side (she said it, not me, and she meant careful with money rather than vindictive), Kate started her publishing career in rights with Faber and Faber which was a good thing as she began to learn if a book worked by showing it to experienced editors buying translation rights at book fiars.

The first stirrings of the fledgling publisher came when Kate observed potential buyers turning a page and then turning back before going on. Okay if this happens once, she says, but when it happens time after time, you know that maybe something's not quite working with the way the story is working. She moved on to publishing and business roles as MD of Macmillan and Scholastic and decided after 23 years of publishing books for other people that she’d like to publish some of her own.

This drive to create and get children reading for pleasure through story making is the wind beneath the wings of Nosy Crow (sorry). These ideals are backed by some sharp analysis of what does and does not work in children's publishing and how she could make Nosy Crow the publisher that flies.

Kate works with a small team in a smallish office but within polite cake-eating distance of one another. Nosy Crow produces children's fiction (including board books, novelty books and picture books) for 0 – 12, and highly-interactive apps for children from 2 – 7. They’ll publish 23 print books books this year and 5 apps.

The first baby out of the nest was Small Blue Thing, a supernatural romance for 11 plus with NO VAMPIRES. Amongst her impressive aviary of authors is Philip Ardagh with The Grunts and Axel Scheffler's Pip and Posy books.

Some work is produced in house, board books like the Noodle series of touch-and-feel board books with furry ears and sparkly bits. The apps are likewise produced in house but the ideas and story lines could well come from a writer well-versed in this product. Nosy Crow’s first app, The Three Little Pigs, has been published to wide acclaim.

So what's Nosy Crow about?

Children
THE BIG QUESTION is always 'who's it for?' Nosy Crow doesn’t publish a book or an app unless they have a clear sense of the core readership. Kate's not thinking London, literature and reviews, she's thinking Wigan, literacy and real children.

Curating
Selecting the good from the bad using a set of consistent standards and values so that the Nosy Crow brand has real meaning. Kate also stressed the publisher’s role in protecting authors’ and illustrators’ rights in a digital environment in which piracy is rife.

Connecting
Kate thinks that the internet brings to publishers – and to authors – an opportunity to engage with readers in a way that’s never been possible before. Instead of publisher PR being about SHOUTING at an unseen audience, social media provides a way to engage audiences in a two way conversation, and Nosy Crow is active on its website, on Twitter and on Facebook. It's an exciting map of interconnecting participants in the publishing process – the author, the publisher, the bookseller, the critic (everyone's a critic now) – all connecting with one another online. Nosy Crow will go where other publishers fear to tread! Kate wants her company to be an informed voice in children’s books and will talk about books published by other publishers too. A recent Easter and Spring booklist contained just two Nosy Crow books amongst the many others suggested by Kate and her Twitter followers.

Kate (right) poses with groupie and leading stalker.

Speaking at the SCBWI event.

In the world of social media, communication is personal, and Kate believes that being a small, personal company is an advantage in this environment; so she's just as likely to tweet about checking her kids’ hair for headlice as well as her excitement about her latest book.

Creating

Kate Wilson's t-shirt says it all!

Kate thinks that publishers have to “earn their seat at the creative table”. Hers is an active role. Not for her the sitting in a big chair in her own office waiting for offerings! This MD and her team:

a. Commission authors and illustrators to make Nosy Crow’s ideas a reality
b. Are willing to do some heavy-duty editorial shaping

For novels and texts, really good writing is key, and if Kate and if the team see the potential in a submission they will sometimes work with the writer to refine the story. Similarly, if Kate and the team see the potential in even a single character sketch from an illustrator, they’ll work with that illustrator to develop a project.

Collaborating
Nosy Crow has already spread its wings and collaborates with international partners: Allen and Unwin in Australia, Candlewick Press in the US, Carlsen in Germany and Gallimard Jeunesse in France.


So What is Nosy Crow Looking For?
ALWAYS REMEMBER – Who's it for? Nosy Crow will want to know!

Print books:

• Fiction for 0 – 12 but a lot of the youngest book texts are produced in-house and NOT YA. “Mum-friendly” books – no drugs, sex or gritty or gratuitous violence
• Strong commercial concept or character-led series novels and picture books
• Brilliantly-written stand-alone novels and picture books
• Great illustration with child and parental appeal – nothing too dark and arty

Apps:

While some of their future apps (and at the moment, Nosy Crow is developing only for Apple devices) may be based on books, Nosy Crow is also commissioning stories that start as apps, rather than start as books, so is interested in working with authors and illustrators who are excited by, and understand how touch-screen devices can enhance and extend the story-telling experience. Nosy Crow doesn’t want coders, at this stage: they have their own, so they are not expecting to see a ready-made app. They want to see really great ideas and really great art (and want art created digitally in layers for this medium)



Nosy Crow's acclaimed Three Little Pigs app. If you can't see the video, you can view it on YouTube.

There are submissions guidelines on the site, but Kate recommended online submissions, suggesting that illustrators send link to their digital portfolio

Kate has given up the slower flapping wings of big traditional publishing for the zippy repsonsiveness of the smaller bird. She's in touch, creative and passionate about story. Kate wants Nosy Crow to be different and to make a difference. I'm sure it will.