Issue 14 – December 2021

Editor’s Letter

It seems incredible to be almost at the end of another year. Author’s Pen began in August 2020, during our first year of lockdown and it seems surreal to be approaching a second New Year with the world still gripped by Covid. It has been a period of nearly two years where we have been shown how small our world is and we have learnt to communicate in different ways, but no less effectively. Many new readers have been created as a result of the various lockdowns and authors have seen their writing either inspired by or hampered by the change in working patterns and by the emotional rollercoaster of the unknown.

During the last year of lockdown, I attended some writing sprint days organised by editor Anna Burrt and was inspired to set up my own regular group. Writing sprints are such a simple idea and work well in online meeting rooms. The idea is to share your project and craft knowledge to gain support and to support each other’s writing for a short period between writing sprints. Our group meets for two hours and the three half-hour sprints are broken up by three ten-minute chat sessions, which allow all the writers to get to know each other and what each is working on. Authors always comment on how much they achieve in the short writing sessions and it seems to be a good way to write good content in a short period of time. 

This month I’ve completed Sophie Playle’s online face-to-face Developmental Editing course and have signed up to complete her practical applications course, which begins in January alongside two courses by Louise Harnby. All of which very neatly spent my Christmas and Birthday money!

I’ve also begun working with author Sandra Gordon on her children’s story inspired by a teddy found in the lost property office of a disused railway station. This is our second edit and I’m looking forward to seeing Sandra’s published story in 2022.

Happy writing,

Lesley

Contents: Writing prompts, book reviews

Writing Prompts

As the nerve-shredding screeching began anew, Archie plotted the demise of his new flatmate …

The New Year’s countdown began and Sophie scanned the room looking for Fynn …

Grim looked back on the events of that past year, how had he reached this point …

Finally, think of what you would like to achieve with your writing this year and seal the results into a self-addressed envelope to be opened at this time next year.

Book Reviews  

The Emotional Craft of Fiction, by Donald Maass

I really enjoyed this writing craft book and it is one I will recommend and continue re-reading. It opened my eyes to another way to reach readers, one which is in part linked to showing and telling and which engages reader’s hearts in the story and is therefore invaluable for creating memorable and empathetic characters. It does this by approaching writing from a different angle, that of analysing the reader’s reaction to the character. In doing so, it helps the author to understand the journey the reader must undertake in order to feel they are walking the protagonists path and that the journey is worth their investment.

Donald Maass essentially believes that many authors don’t dig deep enough and this results in characters whose depth is only skin deep. This book encourages the author to explore the psychology of their characters and to create emotional depth. Maass suggests that by doing so authors are reflecting back the readers own experience to engage emotionally and that this creates an empathetic reader experience. Maass also stresses the importance of engaging readers through use of simple imagery and language.

I thoroughly recommend this book.

The Curse of the School Rabbit, by Judith Kerr

This is a wonderful and entertaining read for younger children and is one that their parents will also enjoy reading aloud.

When Tommy’s younger sister, Angie, brings home Snowflake – the school rabbit – to stay for the holidays, Tommy is horrified. He is certain that bad things happen around Snowflake and this does appear to be the case. One day, Angie can’t care for Snowflake and Tommy is forced to take on the rabbit and this doesn’t mean that he begins to care for Snowflake, but he knows that other people care for the rabbit, so he throws his heart and soul into doing a good job and to overcoming his own aversion to Snowflake.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman

Oh my goodness, this is such a powerful story and is a mixture of both adult fairy and fantasy story.

Neil Gaiman’s protagonist returns in his fifties to his childhood home for a funeral and continues past his family home to the farmhouse at the end of the lane. As he sits on a green bench beside the small pond which his friend and protector – eleven-year-old Lettie Hempstock – had told him was really an ocean, he is transported back to his childhood and to half-forgotten memories of the importance of the pond.

The story is told through the eyes and memories of the unnamed protagonist from his seventh birthday when he meets Lettie for the first time. From their first meeting, Lettie takes the boy under her wing and he knows that whatever fate befalls him that he can rely on Lettie more than anyone else in the world and he also knows that she appears to be older and wiser than her years. There is magic and danger existing around the Hempstock Farm and Lettie, her mother and her grandmother have been successfully keeping it under control for many centuries until this point.

Neil Gaiman tells the story from the perspective of a seven-year-old boy and his characterisation is completely believable from his unnamed protagonist’s reaction to the things that befall him through to the baffling responses of his parents. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a compelling story of lust, greed and sacrifice. It is also beautifully written, please read it. 

The Hodgeheg, by Dick King-Smith

I really enjoyed this light tale for young readers, which explores the idea of a hedgehog having the intelligence to want to find a safe road crossing place for himself and his family, so they can travel safely to the local park. We’re told at the beginning of the story that his Auntie Betty has been killed crossing the road and that the roads are becoming more dangerous for hedgehogs. The hero of this story is Max (full name: Victor Maximilian St George) a tenacious young hedgehog who sustains a bump to the head which causes him to mix up his words. It’s a great story for teaching road safety awareness, particularly as all of Max’s early attempts to cross the road come so close to ending badly. Does a safe place to cross the road exist? You’ll just have to read Dick King Smith’s book to find out.

The Lies You Told, by Harriet Tyce

This incredibly powerful story built to the point where I didn’t know whose lies we were reading about: the playground mums, Sadie’s,the protagonist’s, estranged husband, Jeremy’s – the defendant’s – or Freya’s – the prosecution’s. There were clever similarities between the relationships that developed, which included both physical and psychological bullying and grooming. These interwoven threads showed how much of these behaviours can occur below the legal radar and which allow people to believe they’ve either got away with their behaviour or that they’re untouchable for one reason or another.

The story’s catalysts grew and developed for more than two hundred pages before they exploded into an unputdownable read where all three story arcs collided and bounced off each other as they built to the final unguessable crescendo. This isn’t to say that nothing happened for the first two hundred pages, the story was compelling, the action was pacy and characters were well developed and engendered highly charged emotions. The writing was highly skilled throughout and I read these 367 pages in a little over a week- pretty good going with Christmas vying for my attention throughout.

This is Harriet Tyce’s second book and she relies on her legal training as a practising barrister for ten years in addition to exploring the psychological relationships between parents and their children. The characters themselves differ from Blood Orange but the story is no less compelling than her first blockbuster. I definitely recommend this book.