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The brief came from Rigby to write a really short book (about 200 words) based on the concept of colour. The instructions were simply this: 'Think of what colours mean to you. How you use them. How we taken them for granted.' So I did. And somehow, the idea floated into my mind about all the sayings we have which use colour. Red with embarrassment. Green with envy. Blue with cold. Purple with anger. I started to play around with the idea. A girl came into my head. Not a nice girl. Rather nasty really. And she was teasing two boys, brothers. Making them really angry - and purple. Extremely embarrassed - and red. Or maybe she made them totally frustrated and envious of her talent. And they turned green, with reds spots and purple stripes… The only trouble was, I couldn't think how the book would end, but I started writing it anyway. (Odd for me because usually I always know what will happen at the end.) I made the girl a sort of cousin-come-to-stay of the boys, but I also made her a bit weird. She manipulated the whole family, played on their emotions to turn them all horrible colours. To suggest she was a bit alien, I made her always hungry. Once she ate a chicken, wings, legs, bones and all. That's what gave me an idea for the end! What luck. If she got hungry enough the boys could play on that emotion. If she got really, really starving, she might just weaken and then start to fade away. She'd get lighter and lighter in colour, going, going…gone. And she would never be seen again. Of course, that turned out to be a lot longer than 200 words. I never could write really short books. So I sold the story to Pearson for their Supa Dooper series instead.
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I really, really liked the barley tree. Even though it tried to kill me. |
The kids were young, (about 6 and 8), I had a baby sitter booked and I was heading off to Mt Martha to my mother's place to pig out on a whole week of uninterrupted writing. Ah, bliss. I dropped our daughter off at school and was heading for the car, my legs moving automatically, mind already fixed on the opening paragraph for the chapter book I was going to write.
And then, strolling through the school playground I met the school's librarian.
'I'm heading off to write,' I told him. He was a great supporter.
Behind us, the buzz of a chain saw started. Two of the school's huge old cypress tress were being cut down. They were getting old and unsafe and bits were dropping off them onto the ground. Big bits. But that wasn't my problem.
Graeme looked across at the trees and sighed. 'You could write about the cypress trees being cut down,' he said.
I wasn't listening. I get at least five people a week telling me some great plot idea that totally inspires them – and leaves me totally stone cold
'I write about people, kids growing up, that sort of thing,' I told him. At least I was polite. 'Not trees. Not much character development in trees.'
'But the kids play under these trees,' he said. Graeme loves kids and teaching and books. 'They eat their lunch here, burrow under the roots. They play chasy here. This one is their safe base, their barley tree.'
The barely tree. And suddenly I was taken back to the time when I was a kid and one tree was always the home base, safe. We called it the Barely Tree.
And that's what I called the book. And the story was about one kid, who tried to stand up to the school teachers and authority and the chainsaws – and save the Barley Tree.
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No way,' said Mum. 'Football's for idiots. You can't play. And wild horses couldn't drag me there.' But Andrew wants to play footy. Needs to. So he joins the school team and starts training. Then the lies start. 'They were just little lies, small and harmless. And all around me |
'I need two or three short chapter books Jen. By next month. Can you do it?' That was one of my favourite editors from Rigby calling.
I was hungry, I was in need of money. Of course I could do it!
Two books were easy, I had been toying with the ideas for ages. I went ahead, wrote them up and was happy. There was one week left for my deadline. I was feeling smug. But maybe I could just slip in a third book….
The only trouble was, my husband and I had just agreed to help out some friends of ours build a bedroom in their huge shed up near Mansfield. (Near Mt Buller.) We were due to go up there that weekend.
I cut a deal with my husband.
'I'll write,' I said. 'You can work on the shed with Pete and Susie and the kids.'
So there I was, sitting on a hill top in the middle of farmland, listening to the hammering from below, the squeals from the kids, the mooing of the cattle - and wondering how on earth I was going to get Grand Idea Number three.
Lying on your back on under a warm cloudy sky and listening to other people work is not a good idea. The chances are strong that you might fall asleep.
On the other hand, looking at the clouds floating by and wondering why other people always saw shapes in the clouds (which I never did) was interesting too in a way.
Most people I knew saw horses.
And they were always saying 'Wild horses wouldn't drag me there…'
Was I concentrating, was this an idea - or was I just falling asleep?
There was a football lying in the grass nearby, and a kid starting to form in my mind. A kid who really, really wanted to play football - only his mother wouldn't let him. Why not? The answer came easily. Her brother had been so badly injured on the footy field. And she was torn between her love of her child and her fear that he too would be injured. But the kid had secretly tried out for the school's footy team, and he was good, really good. He should have been happy, but slowly the web of lies he has to weave to keep the secret from his family start weighing him down, expanding, all around him.
And wild horses wouldn't drag his mother to see another football match, ever again…
I though the story might be too serious, but it wasn't. I worked on it for five days straight and it was one of those stories which wouldn't leave you alone. I lived and breathed it for a week. And then I handed it in with the others.
Wild Horses won a lot of awards, including a CBC Honour award. But I look at it now and I am amazed I could write so well in so short a time.
Pressure sometimes helps. And at other times, all it does is raise your stress levels 110% and makes you swear to give up your job forever!
The Frogs of Betts
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Professor Betts drew himself up to his full height and then glared up at his assistant. 'With these frogs here I am about to prove one of last remaining mysteries of the world. I will write books. Have my own TV show. No, my own TV station!' |
This one really started as a short story way back when I was a Maths and English teacher. Because I was a published writer, (ie I wrote a humour column for a few newspapers and magazines) I was conned into teaching creative writing to a group of gifted kids gathered from all the surrounding schools.
They were a mad bunch. Every kid there was a fabulous writer, with a totally weird sense of humour.
Naturally we got along just fine.
One kid, Chris Betts, started up this in-joke about pygmies. What was a short pygmy called? Were they a height-challenged pygmy, a short pygmy or just a pygmy, pygmy?
Every week, the pygmy jokes got worse and worse.
Meanwhile, when the kids were writing, I wrote too.
In one story I created a mad Professor Betts, with a fetish about pygmies - and an ego the size of a pine tree. And just to rub it in, I gave him a fetish about frogs too. And after the kids had read all their stories one week, I read my Frogs of Betts to them in return. They rolled on the floor laughing. They gave me the smarties award for the best story of the week . And they never stopped stirring Chris Betts about frogs and pygmies for the rest of the term.
Ah, revenge.
I forgot about the story for years until an editor was desperate for a story at short notice.
'Haven't you got anything in the bottom drawer?' she asked. 'Any short story you've written you haven't published yet.' And so I went through my filing cabinet and found Frogs. And because I thought it was still good and I still liked it, I sent it to her. She liked it too.
I wonder what Chris thinks of it...
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Amy once said if the Devil gave me a choice of Heaven or Hell, I would just hunch my shoulders and say 'You choose.' Amy is my best friend. To be perfectly honest, Amy is my only friend. The only trouble was, Amy was leaving.. And that meant Rachael must start the dreaded high school, cope with the Trendy Trio and put up with a brother who can't cook - all alone. |
If I had been conscientious, disciplined, and not totally addicted to writing, You Choose would never have been written. The title came when my editor from a previous book called 'Where are the Billabongs When You Need Them?' complained about the title.
'It's too long,' she said. So I sat down and mulled out ideas and finally came up with a list of twenty alternatives. Over the phone, we painstakingly went through the list. She didn't like any of them.
'How about "You Choose"? I like that one,' I said. She didn't. I tried persuasion. She tried logic. I worked on being firm. She worked on calming tones. She was the editor. She won.
But somehow the title stuck in my mind. I told you I write from titles. So I started thinking about the sort of kid who didn't choose. Who sort of drifted. Laying on the floor in the study, the girl Rachel came right into my mind and wouldn't go away. The Trendy Trio came, all long legs and poise who made Rachael feel so gawky. And Amy, her best friend. Her only friend. Only Amy was leaving. And her mum wrote psychic columns for a living. And Rachel was starting high school and everything was changing, the world was full of decisions and choices…
I really wanted to write that book.
So I rang up our babysitter, and booked her to come and look after the kids. I wanted two weeks. She only had a week free. So I kissed the kids and my husband goodbye, hit my mother's house again (she was away, so it was peaceful) and started writing.
I wrote from ten in the morning to two at night, 16 hours at a stretch. Occasionally, I stopped for a meal, but I didn't stop thinking about the book. My big reward was taking a walk at 5.00 every evening to stretch my back and to get some fresh air. 14,000 words in five days. I had no choice. It nearly killed me, but that was all the babysitting time I had.
At the end, I had the draft of You Choose finished. And I could barely string two sentences together.
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He was a big-wig politician, moving up. She was his daughter, trying to move out. She couldn't solve the fights at home, so she took on an easier fight - to save the environment. And so began the Green Guerrillas, four kids who set out to stop seal cub slaughtering, pollution in the city and save whales - if they don't fall off the smoke stacks or get arrested first. |
Click here to find out more about Dreamcatcher and the ideas behind it.
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How do you stop a billion-dollar paper mill setting up in town - and pumping deadly quantities of dioxin into the air? Tess Robertson has the answer – maybe. 'It's a paper mill, right? So we don't use paper. We use only email, web pages, demonstrations…It's a paperless war…' But all she has to help her are the three Green Guerrillas, a stubborn kid sister and one dark-eyed karate kicking photographer who won't take 'no' for an answer. |
Click here to find out more about Shadow Seeker and the ideas behind it
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