The Cool Company of Comics People

The DFC comic book had me worried at first.

First of all, the name - if the C in DFC means comic, then we all have to stop and think before saying DFC comic. DF Comic? DFC Book?

Second, the first few issues were met with a resounding silence in my household. The kids didn't seem to notice, merely grunting when I pointed out my friend Sarah McIntyre's strip, Vern and Lettuce (pictured).

And then, slowly, slowly, the copies piling up next to my bed began to appear in unexpected places. Under the sofa. On the trampoline. In the magazine rack next to the bread flour.

I caught my 17 year old reading it the other day.

"Do you like it?" I asked hopefully.

"I don't know," was his reply. "What is it?"

Which makes me think the DFC is probably plugging a very large gap. I grew up in a country where the daily newspapers each had an entire page devoted to the 'funnies' - comic strips - targetted at kids. It was the first page I read in the paper and I spent a lot of time cutting out my favourites. It seems there is no such culture here in England.

Nine-year-olds I prepared earlier reading the DFC

DFC content is probably most age-appropriate to my nine-year-old - which is great because she has become a big fan, snatching every issue from me before I'd even had time to caress the stamp. So last weekend, when London's Cartoon Museum hosted a DFC afternoon, we went for it!

Sarah McIntyre posted great photos of the event on her blog - I was rather embarrassingly one of the more enthusiastic participants, shoving five-year-olds out of the way to get my share of the paper.

I'd been working on an early reader series called 'Evil Baby' so I had a go at drawing the character:

He looks a bit like my nephew, Matthew:

Cartoonist Adam Murphy helped workshoppers create expressions for their characters:

I did my best, but I couldn't quite get Adam's face:

Sarah McIntyre told the kids how she had stumbled upon making comics at art school when she discovered that a lot of her friends were into them. She showed us some exquisite mini comics that she had made and then we made our own. Really cool.

The best thing though was seeing all the awesome kids and their incredible imaginations just whirring away. I sat opposite this fantastically talented boy (right) and two other kids. They just churned out the most wonderful (if rather violent and gory) stuff.

My nine year old invented two characters. Knowman -

And Larry the Pot Guy (a Lemon who lives in a pot):

She said Larry the Pot Guy had a strawberry sidekick.

I couldn't have thought all that up.

Just goes to show what comics can do. Bring it on, DFC!

Can Writers Compete With Focus Groups?

I attended a British SCBWI meeting yesterday, planning our conference in November. We met in Waterstones, Picadilly - you know the massive one, several stories high, with a Costa in the basement and a restaurant at the top? I'd never been there before, it was HUGE.

Of course it had all the de rigeur big comfy sofas and reading corners that are usual for bookseller chains these days.

So when Costa threw us out at closing time, where did we choose to hold our meeting?

In the children's book department.

It's surprisingly comfortable holding an hour long meeting on tiny kindergarten sized chairs. It didn't even occur to us to go for the reading tables in the adult section. Talk about obsessed with children's books.

When I think about it though, this is why I joined SCBWI.

I was determined to think, live and breath children's books in my quest for publication. SCBWI lets me do that, giving me access to learning the craft, meeting the people that matter, and befriending like-minded souls which in turn feeds into taking me to the next level and the next and the next (I hope, I hope).

As I often say to my writing friends, SCBWI has saved me a lot of time.

A bit like hot-housing really.

Which brings me to the story of Hothouse - a "book-by-focus group" business that seeks to save publishers the bother of reading slush piles:

Hothouse uses a market research company to put story ideas to children, who are observed from behind a one-way mirror. Using dummy covers, short excerpts and blurbs to prompt conversation, researchers ask the children their opinions on which characters, plots and ideas they enjoy most. Each child is also visited at home by a researcher, who finds out what kind of books they already own and read. Drawing on this research, Hothouse commissions a team of writers accordingly. Read more in Painting by Numbers, The Guardian

They haven't done badly either. Their first offering, Darkside by Tom Becker, won the Waterstone's Prize for children's fiction and the Calderdale Children's Book Prize.

So fellow, garret dwellers, I ask you: is this our new competition?

The concept behind Hothouse is similar to that of Working Partners, sponsors of our recent Undiscovered Voices anthology. It's a system that works well in other media, notably film development.

It is hard to say whether this is ultimately a bad thing or a good thing for children's publishing.

On the one hand, publishers struggling with an ever tougher market get more bang for their buck and must feel more secure producing pre-tested books. Writers who are struggling to get published can get experience and kudos by writing-for-hire, for companies like Hothouse and Working Partners. And publishers groaning under the weight of unread slushpiles can relax a bit. I met a publisher the other day who said she has only ever published one book out of six years of reading her slush pile - it's not the part of the job she likes.

So: a good thing for publishers.

But certainly not a good thing for writers on the slush pile. And where's the art in a focus group?

What can we on the slush pile do in the face of such formidable competition?

Instead of gnashing our teeth about this new reality, I guess we just have to be tougher, better and more well-informed about the business.

Join SCBWI, learn the craft, meet the people. Write the thing and write it well. When you've written it, make it better by joining critique groups etc etc.

And you can take a cue from Hothouse's own business plan. They create books out of focus books? Fine. Go get your own focus group.

I am reading my book Ugly City to a group of Year Fives every Wednesday for half an hour. It's a rewarding experience. They gasp when exciting things happen, they jump when something startles them, their jaws drop with every revelation - AND you very quickly learn to skip the bits where you might lose them. And last week when half the class missed my reading because of some other activitiy, I had to come in and do extra time because they wanted to know what happened next.

What can kids teach us about our books?

Reg Wright, CEO of Hothouse, points out that one of the great advantages of listening to young readers is that they have a surprisingly good feel for where a story should go. "We've had children come up with great ideas for plots," he says. "They may not be sophisticated, but they'll make it their own. Our job, in the end, isn't to implement what they say, but to interpret what they want."

Having written this, I looked back at the quote again about our job being to interpret what children want. We-ell. Sometimes what is fabulous about a book is when it is something you had no idea you wanted ... something fresh and new and completely out of the blue. Just saying.

Jane Friedman on How to Sabotage Your Writing Career

Jane Friedman is editorial director of the publishing company that produces Writer's Digest publications so she should know what she's talking about. She is pictured on the left (not on the right).

Her blog is called There are No Rules - and if you're trying to get published, it's a useful blog to track.

Jane is now up to tip number five on How to Sabotage Your Writing Career.

Here's what she says so far:

Sabotage #1: Attempt to get published too soon. Read more.

Sabotage #2: Look out for yourself too much. Read more.

Sabotage #3: Expect your publisher to market your work. Read more.

Sabotage #4: Treat online and multimedia activities as optional. Read more.

Sabotage #5: Be high maintenance. Read more.

Speaking from experience, sabotaging one's writing career is fairly easy. I think I was a great success at Sabotage #1 in my early days of trying to get published!

In the spirit of this post, I offer one handy sabotage tip (inspired by Jane's Sabotage #4):

If you're really, really determined to crash your career before it's begun, create an online presence that portrays you as amateur, annoying, boring, terrifying (there are those out there who think networking is equivalent to stalking publishers and agents online!) or ___________ (fill in blank with obnoxious or unattractive trait).

By all means, get online - but make sure there is method to your web presence.

I don't think the series is over so be sure to check (or even subscribe!) Jane's blog in the next few days.

Thanks to the Harriet Austin Writers Conference website from which I lifted the above lovely photo of Jane Friedman. The conference is on July 18-19 in Athens, Georgia.