This is your brain on writing: five questions with Fleur Hitchcock

There is currently a major European research project to investigate the furthest reaches of the human brain, involving thousands of researchers and millions of Euros. But I reckon researchers could save oodles of dosh, and do a lot worse than simply seeing Fleur Hitchcock in action:

This week - as part of a book week at St Swithun's School, Kennington - Fleur tried to get schoolchildren to visualise just what it was like inside her brain as she endeavoured to create stories.

The author of The Trouble With Mummies, Dear Scarlett and Shrunk! hauled up lots of volunteers, and lined them up with baskets of eggs, German war helmets, genuine bronze-age axe heads, replica Saxon armour - and she even had children mummifying each other.

The result was not-quite-chaos - and for the children who had already been doing lots of writing exercises, it was a remarkable insight into the writing process.

Fleur has always written, but at school - with undiagnosed dyslexia - she found no-one else could really read what she had written. Inspired by books such as The Silver Sword and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase she has quickly found herself with not one but two publishers in the eight months since her first book Shrunk! was published.

She plots out stories, not with a synopsis, but in storyboards drawn on the back of long rolls of wallpaper. In  response to children's questions, she compared the writing process to turning on the hot tap, and waiting for plenty of cold water to come up before the hot stuff.

(Trouble with mummies: pupil at left learns never to volunteer for a Fleur Hitchcock event)

Fleur signed copies for pupils afterwards...

...and St Swithun's definitely win the prize for 'best coffee offered to bookseller and author' award...

We managed to lure her back to the shop with the lure of more coffee...

...and the chance to find out more about Fleur's approach to writing.


Five Questions with...Fleur Hitchcock's Writing Life

1.    What are you working on at the moment?
So many things *clutches head*. But I am currently working on a book for Hot Key which involves time travel and yoghurt pots...

2.    What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given?
Mmm. Difficult. I think it has to be 'Read as much as you can'. This one really counts. You cannot be a writer if you don't read.

3.    What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?The best thing is meeting the children: that lack of reverence, sometimes you find yourself sitting in primary schools, eating school dinners, talking about your book with children - who wouldn't love that, being asked all kinds of random questions! The worst thing is sometimes you have to modify your stories to get them past the gatekeepers. For example in 'Dear Scarlett' the gangsters are very tame, and believe me I wanted them to be much more scary than that but wasn't allowed to get away with it. Neil Gaiman gets away with it, but not me!

4.    Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing, thing or snack essential before you can start work?
I have to have a hot drink. I have to have the phone unplugged. I have to have the Internet turned off - definitely. Honestly, if you take all the tweets I've done it probably adds up to several books...

5.    What was your biggest breakthrough?
Being picked as the Sunday Times 'book of the week' five days before publication of SHRUNK!  I think it made the biggest difference, and it made me go prickly all over. 

How To Train Your Author: World Book Day (ish) and Cressida Cowell

It wasn't exactly *on* World Book Day, but it was pretty close. On March 10, Cressida Cowell, author of the "How To Train Your Dragon" series, as well as the brilliant 'Emily Brown' picture books, gave a gripping and hugely energetic talk organised by the Oxford Children's Book Group and Kennington Library.

Cressida is an insanely talented author, and one possessed of a passion and energy that captivated a whole range of ages who packed into Kennington Village Centre to see her. In fact, you imagine that in a different age she would have gone exploring in the Hindu Kush, or hacked her way into the middle of a Borneo rainforest dressed in a smart tweed suit.  

And we found out why. As her child, she was taken once a year - for up to a whole month - to camp on a remote Scottish Island with her family (you can just make it out behind Cressida in the image above). And it was here - with the family left to fend for themselves, catching the weird, wonderful and often frightening sea creatures that sometimes even local fishermen had never seen - that the seeds of the Hiccup stories would take root.

 

Cressida urged her young audience to write throughout her talk: someone's got to become an author, why not you? Influenced by the books of Peter Pan, and someone who filled notebooks and paper continuously as a girl, there was only one thing she was ever going to do...

She shared secrets of the Dreamworks film, including the mind-boggling seven years it took to turn the book into the finished film (another one is currently in production). She also shared a few secrets about the last ever Hiccup book (which we can't tell you about).

There were plenty of fans who queued up to meet her and get books signed:

Mostly Books was very privileged to be asked to provide the bookshop. And we had plenty of volunteer help, including some younger members of the audience.:

There was a distinct Viking 'feel' to proceedings:

And Cressida was dispensing largesse in the form of Hiccup freebies, reading and writing tips, along with her signature:

Finally, in between a busy schedule, we managed to ask Cressida a few questions...

Five questions with...Cressida Cowell's Writing Life

1.    What are you working on at the moment? 

How to Seize a Dragon’s Jewel (the latest Hiccup adventure) – and a new series that is a secret and I can’t tell you about.

2.    What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given? 

Read masses. I have always read loads and loads – fantasy, murder mysteries, childrens and adults and just reading is the best writing tip because it helps you to see the way stories are put together. Also – not to be too self-critical.

3.    What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?

Children are interested in everything, all the really important things in life – all the big things; life, death. So you can write about those, but there are also no obstacles, so if you want magic, you can have magic. The worst is that they grow up on you and you have to write quickly.

4.    Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing of snack essential before you can start work? 

With three children you have to be pretty flexible and be able to write no matter what’s going on. I write in a shed at the bottom of the garden and you should see what builders are doing at the bottom of the garden at the moment – it’s decimated. So if I can write through that – it’s amazing what you get used to.

5.    What was your biggest breakthrough?

It is fantastic to see your first book on the shelf in a real bookshop. But there are so many things that happen along the way it never seems like a breakthrough. It was amazing when Dreamworks made a film of the first book – you never think that is going to happen!