The first Megaphone masterclass took place on Saturday 02/04/2016 at Writing West Midlands’ meeting room in the Custard Factory, Digbeth, Birmingham (venue kindly provided as in-kind funding by Writing West Midlands). I didn’t notice the graffiti outside the window when I was taking this but it’s quite funny!
We looked at book, story, plot points and communicating your story to readers. I’m so pleased and excited to finally have things underway, and to be working with these five very able and promising writers !
I’m interviewing the first ever Megaphone participants, giving those who follow the blog and have an interest in Megaphone an insight into the people who’ll be on the scheme. Today, Danielle Jawando tells us a bit about herself and her writing and her hopes for Megaphone.
Leila: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your writing life so far? Have you been writing long, and what drew you to writing for children and teenagers?
Danielle: Writing and books have always been a huge part of my life. In fact, most of my childhood memories include reading or scribbling down some form of story or the other. Although writing has always been something I’ve done, I never realised I wanted to be a children’s author until much later on.
True to form, English was my favourite subject at school and I then went on to study a BA and MA in Creative Writing at the University of East London. For me, this was one of the most significant turning points in my life. I’d never really been around other writers, or people who loved words as much as I do. So those years spent analysing craft, exploring narrative, discussing theory and questioning what it means to be a writer, made me realise that this was what I wanted to do.
I then went into teaching, and taught a mixture of English GCSE, Functional Skills and Creative Writing in an FE college (along with running various writing workshops within Hertfordshire.) On the rare occasion I didn’t have marking to do, or lessons to plan, I would stay up and write. But I found that I just didn’t have enough time, and when I wasn’t writing, that’s all I could think about. Although I enjoyed teaching, deep-down I knew that I was writer, and the less I was able to write the more miserable I became. For me, writing wasn’t just something I enjoyed, it was a necessity. When I didn’t write, I felt disconnected. Lost almost, and I knew then (that even if nothing came of it), I had to finally do what I’d always wanted. I began sending stuff out and the good old rejection cycle started. Then, at 23, I had my first short story published by Deadink and NAWE, not long after that I found out I’d been shortlisted for an Original Voices scheme with ITV and Emmerdale.
After several very close calls (and countless no’s), I finally left teaching in May last year, to start storyline writing for Coronation Street. I worked on Corrie for seven months and during that time, I also wrote a few short plays, one of which was put on with a local theatre company. I’m currently in the process of developing a full-length play (‘O’Donoghu’s Wife’) which will be touring next year. But I guess, through all of this, the one thing I’ve been desperate to do is to write children’s fiction. When a close friend of mine sent me the Megaphone application last year and I read about the scheme, I knew I had to apply. I was thrilled when I found out I had been chosen as one of the five participants.
I guess the first thing that drew me into wanting to write children’s literature, is my love for children’s books. I think that some of the most wonderful stories, important messages and pressing accounts of society and the human condition, come from children’s literature. Of course, having taught would undoubtedly come into this. I feel that as generation after generation evolves, so does the need for new stories. I think as writers, we owe to the world to constantly look for new perspectives, new narratives and new ways to have those important conversations. It’s an exciting time to be a children’s author, there’s even more of a shift in boundaries, in censorship, in diversity and in voice. Finally, I’ve always found the way children and teenagers see the world fascinating. Perhaps it’s that balance of innocence and experience, or that element of truthfulness that children so often possess. They tell you how it is, they look at things and when something isn’t right, they speak out. Either way, all of these things have contributed and Megaphone is something I’m very much looking forward to being part of.
Leila: And can you tell us a bit about the book you will be writing this year – what’s it about, and what inspired you to write it? What do you think the biggest challenges will be in writing it? (the things you think will be most difficult – e.g. researching, or structuring, etc.)
Danielle: The novel I’ll be writing, I’ve had in my mind for about four years now. I was coming to the end of my Masters and was writing my thesis on the representation of mental illness within literature and the effects that institutionalisation has on voice (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of my favourite novels.) I read a lot of Foucault, Laing and Goffman at the time, and I was both disturbed and fascinated by the history of mental illness, and the way in which society treated those who they perceived to be ‘mentally ill’ at the time.
A few things really stuck out to me, one of them was Foucault’s discussion that madness itself is not a natural disease, but rather “a disease of civilisation.” Foucault believed that this was often created in order to evade a certain moment of our own existence, “the moment of disturbance, and penetrating vision into the depths of ourselves.”
Another significant influence was Laing’s The Divided Self, in which Laing provides detailed accounts and case studies of what ‘schizophrenic and schizoid’ patients. Laing’s main purpose was to describe the decent into madness in a comprehensible way, allowing others to understand the transition between the ‘sane schizoid way of-being-in-the-world,’ to the ‘psychotic way of being-in-the world.’ Laing then goes on to discuss, how the term ‘schizoid’ often refers to an individual who is “split in various ways.” An already “shattered humpty dumpty, trying to exist in the world.” These images really stuck in my mind, and from those bits, all of these questions started to form. It made me wonder how someone born into such a controlled and institutionalised society, where madness is this disease of civilisation, would cope? It also made me wonder what it would be like for this person with this shattered sense of self, a core they’re constantly trying to piece together, would cope?
From that, my novel and my characters were born.
My protagonist, (Nathan) is a teenage boy with this divided and split sense of self, almost like a Rubick’s cube he’s constantly trying to piece together. I then began to think about other aspects of his life, his mum, his brother, his younger sister and those relationships around him. The novel is going to be a split narrative, with two parallel points of view running along side by side. One point of view is going to be told from Nathan’s perspective (who is institutionalised and perceived as being ‘mentally ill’), and the other point of view from his brother, Sol (who is perceived by society to be sane.) It’s not just about this depiction of mental illness and the effect of institutionalisation, but I also want to show this ‘transition’ in a comprehensible way. For me, this story is also about those murky bits in-between. How a young boy with this divided-self experiences the world, how his relationships are effected, how he grows up. I’m really interested in those grey areas, which so often bleed into every aspect of our lives.
Some of the challenges I know I will face, will undoubtedly be research. For a novel like this, I think it’s important to not only get the critical and theoretical research, but also the experience from those what have worked within the mental health profession. I’m still playing with the idea of my novel being set in a dystopian universe, but either way, I want it to seem real, truthful and believable, so research will be a significant aspect. As my novel is also a split narrative and will have two parallel points of view, another challenge will undoubtedly be the structure and the distinctiveness of both voices. I think I’ve managed to accurately portray the voices of teenage boys (years of teaching construction students have definitely helped that), but my challenge will be in keeping them separate and distinct. I’ll definitely have to embark on some thorough planning. Finally, with most things in life, I don’t want this novel to be as clear cut as this is ‘reality,’ this is ‘fantasy,’ this is the voice of someone who is ‘mentally ill,’ this is the voice of someone who is ‘sane.’ As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m very much interested in those grey bits in-between. I’m hoping to write something that will consistently have my readers questioning their perception on sanity, but also society’s perception on it. Through it all, I want them to understand, experience and feel what both brothers are going through – which I know will be a challenge!
Leila: Finally, what do you hope to get out of Megaphone?
Danielle: A lot of my friends are either published writers, or in the process of sending out their manuscripts and the one thing they always tell me, is how difficult it can be to receive critical feedback from an editor or agent. One of the wonderful things about Megaphone is that it opens up the direct channel of communication to editors and agents. There are so many experienced people involved, from Leila Rasheed to the countless editors, writers and publishers who have volunteered their time. One of the things I’m hoping to get out of Megaphone, is that crucial experience and advice from industry professionals. I’m excited to attend the masterclasses and I’m also excited to learn, from everyone who is involved in the scheme.
Another thing I’m hoping to get out of Megaphone is a good support network of friends and writers. Writing is such a lonely feat. You spend most of the time in your own head, or locked away trying to get your ideas down. It’s one of those jobs where you are constantly doubting yourself and sometimes can’t see the wood through the tress. I think it’s so important to have a group of fellow writers who you can trust and share your work with (especially in those early stages, when things are still raw.) Another great thing about the scheme is that there are four other people going through the exact same process as myself. So we will be able to support and encourage each other along. We’ve already been in contact (although we haven’t yet met), and have shared book recommendations and the writing samples which we submitted during the application process. I’m hoping that long after the scheme has ended, we will all be in contact.
Finally, without meaning to state the obvious, I’m looking forward to writing my novel. Aside from all the wonderful people I’ll meet and the wonderful things I’ll learn, I can’t wait to have my finished manuscript.
I’m interviewing the first ever Megaphone participants, giving those who follow the blog and have an interest in Megaphone an insight into the people who’ll be on the scheme. Today, Avantika Taneja tells us a bit about herself and her writing and her hopes for Megaphone.
Avantika Taneja
Leila: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your writing life so far?
Have you been writing long, and what drew you to writing for children
and teenagers?
Avantika: It’s difficult to own my identity as a writer, but I suppose the
written word has always been my way of processing and encountering the
world. When I moved to London over eight years ago and embarked on
some solo travel, books and my Alice-in-Wonderland diary were my main
companions, so that was the first time I properly scratched my
creative writing itch. The anonymity of building a new life emboldened
me to take my first creative class back then, so my relationship with
writing is very much intertwined with my relationship to the city.
With a career in educational charities in NYC and London, my work has
always related to children and young people – enabling them to make
sense of the world and their voice within it, largely through the
education system. I had a few isolated opportunities to write for
children in a previous job, in the voice of animal characters,
distilling complex social issues into age appropriate stories.
Lucky for me, a couple of years ago I happened to marry a witty
wordsmith who is a screenwriter/filmmaker, and that has hugely
nurtured my storytelling imagination and helped me treat my craft more
preciously and professionally.
Leila: And can you tell us a bit about the book you will be writing this
year – what’s it about, and what inspired you to write it? What do you
think the biggest challenges will be in writing it? (the things you
think will be most difficult – e.g. researching, or structuring, etc.)
Avantika: The story I will be developing is a fictional piece about a young
Syrian girl and her family’s journey into refugeehood and the inner
world that the children create to cope with traumatic changes around
them. Throughout the physical journey of fleeing Aleppo, entrapment in
Turkey and the perilous path to Europe, the young protagonist invents
an imaginary society, The Children’s State of Aleppo, for the benefit
of her younger brother, where children rule the roost (democratically,
of course), chocolate fountains abound, borders are open and passports
are not needed, as enshrined in their Manifesto. The Children’s State
gains more solidity in their imagination and becomes ever more utopian
as they encounter more and more obstacles in the real world in their
quest for home.
My inspiration is of course current geopolitics and my own political
and personal interest and experience with migration regimes. But it is
also rooted in the utmost respect I have for children’s ability to
retain their sense of wonder and imagination even in the most
harrowing circumstances, and their capacity to imagine big, bold,
whimsical solutions to social problems. I want the children’s context
in my story to be very real, so to speak, forcing them to grow up too
quickly, and yet I hope my characters defy this with their childlike
ability to invent and carve out their own agency when so many things
are unravelling around them.
For me, migration stories are about the themes of childhood and
growing up: love and loss, displacement, sense of belonging and
arriving at a new ‘home’ – be that a place or a renewed identity.
Through the prism of one family’s story, I want to further normalise
the experience of mobility, migration and forced migration like some
of the inspiring children’s books I have relished by Elizabeth Laird,
Benjamin Zephaniah and Michael Morpurgo.
I expect my biggest writing challenges to be around researching and
representing the ‘real’ context my characters are embedded in. Because
the context is a live and moving and violent and highly politicised
one, I will have to anchor my characters in a particular moment within
this. I expect to be constantly battling the tension between age
appropriateness and overprotecting my audience, and I will need to
find some creative devices to condense the background of a complex
conflict within the story, without employing a ‘teachery’ voice.
Leila: Finally, what do you hope to get out of Megaphone?
Avantika: First and foremost, a like-minded community with a shared vision for
the landscape of children’s literature. It’s an absolute privilege to
be welcomed into a community of established children’s authors and
industry professionals as well as other aspiring children’s book
writers on a similar journey.
Through the mentorship and nurturance of Megaphone, I really hope to
tackle some of the storytelling challenges described above as well as
develop my craft by becoming more conscious of my own voice and my own
process. As my husband would say, becoming a writer means
professionalising your self-doubt so I’m also eternally grateful for
the mentorship and community to help weather the emotional journey
ahead!
I hope Megaphone can be the structure and accountability every writer
needs: knowing I am going to have to take my writing outside of
myself, even if it’s initially just to one other person, will force me
to create, in the best sense. Beyond this, benefiting from the
experience of established authors and industry professionals will add
a real practical weight to the writing process and a point of access
to a world that sometimes seems impenetrable from the outside.
Ultimately, I see Megaphone as an absolutely brilliant and affirming
way to turn a passion project into a reality.
I’m delighted to say that, together with the editors, I’ve made the selection of participants for Megaphone. We had over sixty applications, from all over England, and I was delighted with the standard. Ten were shortlisted, and the editors helped select the final five. They are… (in no particular order!)
Tina Freeth (writing and tweeting as Maisie Pernas)
Danielle Jawando
Avantika Taneja
Joyce Efia Harmer
Nafisa Muhtadi
Huge congratulations to all five, I’m very excited to be working with you!
And to all who applied – thank you so much. We only had five places to give, but I was so pleased with the standard of the applications that came in. Keep writing, and I hope that if Megaphone runs again you will consider re-applying.
Just re-posting this blog from Nosy Crow. I echo what they say about the amount of submissions they receive and how many they can publish. Back in the day, Chips Beans and Limousines was picked up from Usborne’s slush pile – that was something like one in three thousand! But if you’ve submitted and not got anywhere, don’t give up – keep on working on your writing. Usborne saw about three books from me before they took Chips. (But do follow all publisher guidelines of course!)
Hi everyone, I just wanted to apologise for the delay in announcing successful applicants’ names. It’s coordinating the last stages which is taking more time than expected. I will let you all know by next Monday at the very latest.
In the meantime, please be aware that the following is the date for the first masterclass, which will be with me, and will be a general introduction and orientation in writing for children/ teenagers.
First workshop = Saturday 02 April, 1 pm till 3 pm.
The venue is as specified on the FAQs page: Writing West Midlands have kindly given Megaphone use of their lovely meeting room in the Custard Factory, Birmingham (Digbeth).
Finally, if you’d like to get hold of a guide to writing for children, I can recommend Writing Children’s Fiction, a Writers’ and Artists’ companion, by Linda Newbery and Yvonne Coppard. It’s a wide-ranging book with a conversational tone, and you can dip in and out of it as you please.
Peter Kalu is a poet, novelist, playwright and script writer. He started writing as a member of the Moss Side Write black writers workshop and has had five novels, two film scripts and three theatre plays produced to date, winning a number of prizes in the process. I interviewed him ahead of his upcoming appearance at Bare Lit Festival (with Megaphone tutor Catherine Johnson), about, among other things, his Young Adult books, both of which are published by HopeRoad, and the Commonword Diversity Writing for Children prize – recently re-launched and open to submissions on the website: http://www.ihaveadream.org.uk/ . Peter’s depth of experience as a writer and with Commonword-Cultureword meant I was especially keen to find out his thoughts on the barriers BAME writers of children’s fiction face and how they can overcome them.
Leila: I’ve really enjoyed reading both The Silent Striker and Being Me. Marcus and Adele have such different voices; their characters really come through. It might be down to the use of first person, but Adele’s life seems more chaotic than Marcus’, I think because she has a more extroverted personality.
Peter: Thanks for those generous comments. I didn’t set out to create a sense of chaos, that’s simply how the Being Me novel evolved. In some way it’s a bluff – an embracing of unexpected turns the novel took as I was developing it. It does reflect Adele’s personality well, so maybe it was inevitable. I did the same thing in the short story I had published recently in the Closure anthology, but for different reasons.
Adele is definitely more extrovert than Marcus. Maybe the other difference between the two characters identity-wise is that Marcus begins with a sense of a stable core identity and HAS this sense Piccasso’d/destabilised by the onset of his deafness. Whereas Adele does not start with such a composed identity. From the get-go Adele has competing stories being told about herself – at school, by each parent, by her friends. She’s a girl. She’s a boy. She’s black, she’s white. She’s a caring person, she’s a villain. She’s unlovable, she’s adored. She’s a loyal best friend. She’s a let-down and an impostor. And Adele’s work is to figure out how to reconcile all these competing stories of herself. So Marcus and Adele have very different work to do. One is trying to rebuild his understanding of himself as having a stable core identity, the other is trying to work out what is the story or set of stories I want to tell about myself. Does any of that make sense?! It’s not something I set out to do as I was writing them, but looking at the two characters now, that’s how I feel about them.
Leila: That does make a lot of sense. Marcus is centred in a way that Adele isn’t. I wondered which voice you enjoyed writing most.
Peter: They were both a challenge. I enjoyed writing particular scenes. The scene where Adele spends the night in the Adenuga family’s spare room listening to all these strange noises and movements, that was fun to write. The Marcus moment where he objects to his uncle being buried with Marcus’ favourite football and his mum faints as he scrambles after it was a highlight for me. There’s usually also some key emotional scene or moment in each book that I wouldn’t say I enjoyed writing, but which mattered a lot to me.
More generally, I had such a great bunch of writers around me giving me feedback for both books and I enjoyed meeting up with them and bouncing ideas back and forth. I’ve not answered the question have I? I can’t choose!
Leila: Was there a particular reason to write Silent Striker in third person and Being Me in first?
Peter: I was aware that Marcus’ story was in parts autobiographical so I wanted to ensure I didn’t under-distance the space between author and character. To fend that off, I placed the Marcus story in the third person and used the past tense for it. Those choices flip for the Adele story – she’s in the present and in first person. I wanted Adele to be the unreliable narrator of her own story. The spaces between what she thinks is going on and what others – including readers – think might be going on interested me. I decided that was best done in first person. Then for speed and immediacy the present tense. Again, I might be rationalising. I probably make these choices intuitively.
Leila: The voices in both novels are different, but feel really realistic. I feel as if I could hear them on the back of the No 50 bus any day after school lets out! I wonder why there aren’t that many voices like this in children’s literature.
Peter: Not enough published writers are catching those No 50 buses! In my area it’s the No 192 that’s legendary. Dropping the metaphor, I guess few working class writers break through. Mainstream publishing is run by the middle classes and they choose books for their imagined readership which of course means a reflection of themselves. At least that’s my impression.
I recently opened up some YA books in a Manchester Waterstones (so serving a population of high cultural diversity). And randomly chose some books that looked as if they were set in the ‘now’. Overwhelmingly, they featured middle class protagonists.
Leila: What was your own journey to publication like? Did you try many publishers before finding the right one?
Peter: The book was part of a project with my writing buddy, Tariq Mehmood who wrote You’re Not Proper at the same time that I was writing The Silent Striker and Being Me (I write faster than him!) We would meet up several times a week and swap notes. The journey to his kitchen and back those mornings was invigorating. While writing, I’d heard some of what Malorie Blackman said at a writing conference about how black writers break through. So rather than approach a mainstream publisher, I went straight to Hope Road: I knew they had a commitment to diverse writers.
Leila: And what are your writing goals for the future?
Peter: Apart from another CYA novel (featuring zombies!), I’m working on a crime novel. And completely unrelatedly, I want to write a novel in the way that visual artists produce collages, but I’ve not figured out the techniques needed yet.
Leila: Can you tell me a bit about Commonword and Cultureword – how did you come to be part of these organisations, and where did the idea for the Diversity Writing For Children prize come from? It’s great to see it relaunched, by the way!
Peter: I got the writing bug after reading Alice Walker and Maya Angelou in the 80’s. I went to the Moss Side Write workshops that had been set up by Commonword-Cultureword, where I met the legendary, Lemn Sissay. My involvement kicked off from there.
The Diversity Writing For Children prize came about through schools telling us there were no books with BAME characters in them, no books that reflected their classrooms. The more we looked into it, the more startlingly apparent this absence. The prize does something to tackle that.
Leila: What barriers do you think that UK BAME children’s/ YA authors face in particular? And how do you think they can best approach them, get over them, go round them…
Peter: Two arguments tend to surface. First, white children don’t feel comfortable having to read about the UK through the eyes of black characters. I simply disagree with that – it’s not what I’ve found. Second, parents – who buy the books – don’t feel comfortable buying such a book (approx 40% of buyers of YA fiction are actually older adults who simply enjoy the genre). There’s some truth in that. It’s well known for instance that mainstream publishers for a very long time avoided putting a black kid’s face on the cover of a YA book as their marketing departments told them it would inhibit sales.
As writers in command of our craft there are solutions to that white ‘we don’t feel comfortable’ problem: exotifciation, omission, ellipsis, inversion, exfoliation. In non-technical terms, add a major, heroic white character, reduce cultural friction, downplay division, celebrate collaboration, fly into fantasy, erase the blackness, write under the radar, at least make your book a black-white two-hander. These solutions can work but at times can feel soul destroying for a BAME writer. I prefer not to craft something that is guaranteed to make white people comfortable, but instead to allow they themselves address that issue of why they are uncomfortable (or, to simply not be published). The world’s changing. Heterogeneity is growing. Those who ignore it or oppose it are like King Canute trying to turn back the tide. Publishing, including YA publishing, in the end will embrace it, probably when it hits their cash tills.
Leila: I’m interested in how the conversation around diversity in children’s literature plays out in the USA as well as in the UK (for example, A Birthday Cake for George Washington). What do you think the differences and similarities are between the USA and UK children’s publishing industries and how they include (or don’t) BAME writers?
Peter: The commentator, Paul Gilroy described Britain as suffering from colonial amnesia. The most barbaric events of the British colonial era didn’t happen on the landmass of Britain so that amnesia is easier to sustain. The USA has no such distancing. Plantation slavery is a fraught part of USA history and happened on American soil. Yet the Washington book news story showed the USA was giving amnesia a good go.
The demographics in UK are different: a higher South East Asian population and, I believe, a greater ‘mixed heritage’ population.
The Oscars controversy suggests USA is only slowly waking up to its privilege and prejudices, and still does not like to look at them straight in the eye. That uncomfortable thing again. The statistics for USA and UK on percentage of BAME characters in published CYA books sing the same song. The USA statistics on under-representation are here: http://blog.leeandlow.com/2015/03/05/the-diversity-gap-in-childrens-publishing-2015/
As far as I can tell there has been no hard, statistically significant research done in the UK but the anecdotal evidence is similar to that of the USA.
Yet it’s not all bleak. As in the USA, there are signs of improvement. My impression is that the general population is way ahead of the publishing industry. If I crystal ball gaze, then my guess is that ventriloquism –getting white writers to depict black lives – will be the prominent in the first wave of change, to deal with that ‘comfortableness’ issue. Simultaneously more BAME writers will get taken up, though not at a speed to frighten the horses. Finding publishers who will break cover and take a risk is the game. Of course, once that risk makes some publisher big money, suddenly every mainstream publisher in the land will follow suit, perhaps as a new fad.
The publishing industry is not an island. It sits within society itself and so there are limits to how fast things can progress in publishing while the (older) UK white population keeps up its postcolonial melancholia, its longing for a mythical white Britain.
Lee and Low publishers in the USA have produced this intriguing infographic. Trends in the UK are likely to be similar. Note the male/female divide closing at executive level…
