Hi guys, I hope you're having a great week so far (or if not, that you're hanging in there for the weekend). A quick post today to ask for your support for all low earning self-employed people, which includes me and many of the talented children's and YA writers I know.
Some of you might be aware of the recent uproar over the proposed (unfair) changes in National Insurance Credits. They were going to make self-employed people pay more National Insurance, bringing them in line with employed people, even though self-employed people don't get access to most of the contribution based benefits that employed people do, such as statutory sick pay. The government were forced to do a u-turn due to widespread resistence, which was a great thing. But another issue to do with the tax paid by self-employed people has managed to slip under the radar, and it's just as serious.
They're goung to abolish something called Class 2 National Insurance credits, and this means that many very low earning self-employed people will face losing their state pension, even though many of us have already paid into it for years and despite the fact that self-employed people have no entitlement to any employer subsidized pension, which means any pension provision we make for ourselves already costs us way more than an employed person would expect to pay (that's if we can afford to do any saving for retirement at all).
Here's some more background if you're interested.
If you (whether you're self-employed yourself, or hope to be one day) think that targeting the lowest earners and forcing them to stump up massive wads of cash just to keep themselves above the poverty line in old age, while leaving higher earners untouched, is deeply unfair, then please sign and share my petition here.
It's all I can think of to do right now, and you never know - it could make a difference. And thank you in advance for supporting children's and YA writers.
Thursday, 30 March 2017
Monday, 20 March 2017
LINKITY AND WHOOPS AND WIP STUFF
Hello, Dear Readers! It feels a bit insensitive to wish you a happy Monday (especially if the weather where you are is as filthy miserable as the weather where I am right now) so I'll just say that I hope the week's getting off to a good start for you so far.
As you can probably tell from the blog title this week, I've got a sort of gallimaufry to share today. First up, some links to a pair of posts made by the lovely Bonnie of A Backwards Story and her friend Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl where they interview me about BAREFOOT ON THE WIND and you get a chance to win a copy, or a copy of one of nearly a dozen other Beauty and the Beast themed novels, as part of their week of Beauty and the Beast. It's an international giveaway, so get in there!
This is celebrating the release of the Disney live action B&B this week - which, by the way, I really want to see, but have mixed feelings about too. So if anyone's already seen this and wants to give me yays or nays about the film in the comments, feel free!
In other BAREFOOT ON THE WIND related news, the book has been longlisted for the Southern Schools Book award, which is super fab. The longlist is rather intimidating, but it's great to see my strange little Feminist tale there among all the big names, and some friends of mine too.
Finally, *deep breath* at long, long, loooooooong last... the work in progress known as Codename: DTH... is finished!
WHOOOOOOOOP!
Well, I mean that it's finished in first draft. And a particularly messy, rough, incomplete first draft, too. I haven't even written the epilogue, because although I know the book needs a closing chapter to tie up lose ends and give the reader that satisfied The End feeling, I feel as if anything I write now will just be a placeholder that immediately ends up going in the bin once I've re-read the manuscript. So I decided to leave it instead. I've never done that before and it gives me a really queasy, guilty feeling.
However, since the book is already 130,000 words long (yeeeee!) which is as long as Shadows on the Moon was in first draft, I definitely don't feel like I need to be adding any unnecessary new length at this stage!
The book's now printed out in an entirely different font and format than the one that I'm used to working on, and has been secured with a veritable fleet of bulldog clips, since I don't have a folder big enough to fit it (yep, it's a bit... chunky. In a loveable way!). Since I've finished this a little ahead of schedule I'm going to give myself some extra time to get distance from it before I do a complete hard copy re-read and mark-up, write that epilogue, and then get to cutting, revising and polishing. I'm hoping that I'll be able to make substantial reductions in wordcount before I take that scary step of sending this off to my agent to see what she says.
Once it's in a state my agent can live with, then we'll be on a quest to try and find a home for the book - whether that's with my beloved Walker or someone else. I honestly, truly love this story and these characters and this world. I think it's the best and most challenging thing I've written since Shadows. And I believe the book is one that needs to be out there for readers to find. Fingers crossed that there's an editor (and marketing and finance teams) out there who can love it and believe in it as much as I do. If/when it does sell, I should be able to give you all a bit more detail about it.
In the meantime, I'll be refreshing my brain a bit by ploughing through as much as my To Be Read Pile as possible, and also working on some other - COMPLETELY DIFFERENT OMG - stuff, just for fun, to keep the writing muscles limber
Read you later, my muffins!
As you can probably tell from the blog title this week, I've got a sort of gallimaufry to share today. First up, some links to a pair of posts made by the lovely Bonnie of A Backwards Story and her friend Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl where they interview me about BAREFOOT ON THE WIND and you get a chance to win a copy, or a copy of one of nearly a dozen other Beauty and the Beast themed novels, as part of their week of Beauty and the Beast. It's an international giveaway, so get in there!
This is celebrating the release of the Disney live action B&B this week - which, by the way, I really want to see, but have mixed feelings about too. So if anyone's already seen this and wants to give me yays or nays about the film in the comments, feel free!
In other BAREFOOT ON THE WIND related news, the book has been longlisted for the Southern Schools Book award, which is super fab. The longlist is rather intimidating, but it's great to see my strange little Feminist tale there among all the big names, and some friends of mine too.
Finally, *deep breath* at long, long, loooooooong last... the work in progress known as Codename: DTH... is finished!
WHOOOOOOOOP!
Well, I mean that it's finished in first draft. And a particularly messy, rough, incomplete first draft, too. I haven't even written the epilogue, because although I know the book needs a closing chapter to tie up lose ends and give the reader that satisfied The End feeling, I feel as if anything I write now will just be a placeholder that immediately ends up going in the bin once I've re-read the manuscript. So I decided to leave it instead. I've never done that before and it gives me a really queasy, guilty feeling.
However, since the book is already 130,000 words long (yeeeee!) which is as long as Shadows on the Moon was in first draft, I definitely don't feel like I need to be adding any unnecessary new length at this stage!
The book's now printed out in an entirely different font and format than the one that I'm used to working on, and has been secured with a veritable fleet of bulldog clips, since I don't have a folder big enough to fit it (yep, it's a bit... chunky. In a loveable way!). Since I've finished this a little ahead of schedule I'm going to give myself some extra time to get distance from it before I do a complete hard copy re-read and mark-up, write that epilogue, and then get to cutting, revising and polishing. I'm hoping that I'll be able to make substantial reductions in wordcount before I take that scary step of sending this off to my agent to see what she says.
Once it's in a state my agent can live with, then we'll be on a quest to try and find a home for the book - whether that's with my beloved Walker or someone else. I honestly, truly love this story and these characters and this world. I think it's the best and most challenging thing I've written since Shadows. And I believe the book is one that needs to be out there for readers to find. Fingers crossed that there's an editor (and marketing and finance teams) out there who can love it and believe in it as much as I do. If/when it does sell, I should be able to give you all a bit more detail about it.
In the meantime, I'll be refreshing my brain a bit by ploughing through as much as my To Be Read Pile as possible, and also working on some other - COMPLETELY DIFFERENT OMG - stuff, just for fun, to keep the writing muscles limber
Read you later, my muffins!
Monday, 6 March 2017
RETROTUESDAY: WOMEN DOMINATE? IN WHAT UNIVERSE?
Hello, lovely readers! It's time for RetroTuesday, when I delve into the archives of the blog and drag an older post (squinting, blinking, perhaps weeping) back into the daylight for readers who may have missed it the first time, or might enjoy reading it again. Today's post?
I want to share with you an article I read today, which made me feel like choirs of heavenly voices were singing and casting golden light on me: Gender Balance in YA Awards
The glory of this article, Dear Readers! It has confirmed what I always suspected based on knowledge of my field: while there may be slightly more female YA authors (and why is that supposed to be a problem? More on that below!) men still dominate in terms of critical attention and also (although this is not covered explicitly in the post) tend to dominate in terms of sales, with the average NYT Bestseller list (as pointed out by Shannon Hale and Maureen Johnson) showing an 8:2 ratio in favour of male writers.
And yet! It is still widely accepted as fact that YA is 'dominated' by female authors and female stories, and that somehow the ladies are to *blame* for a drop in boy's interest in reading during teenage years. So widely accepted that while that post was making the rounds on Twitter this afternoon I actually saw a male author arguing that there is a 'boy crisis' in YA, and that the stats in the Gender Balance post don't work because male authors win a disproportionate amount of awards.
Um. What? If male authors win a disproportionate amount of awards in the YA field, doesn't that merely illustrate the same point?
I'd really like to know what the people who continually harp on about this issue in this way - lack of 'boy books', 'feminisation' of YA, failing a generation of young men, etc. - would like to see as a solution. Female authors realising the error of their ways and discarding their silly novels about silly girls, and henceforth writing only books about young men being traditionally manly? Female authors taking on androgynous pseudonyms in order to avoid scaring young men off with their lady cooties? Female authors retiring from the field of YA writing altogether and running cakeshops instead so that the men can take their rightful place as leading lights of YA?
Surely I'm overreacting - no one would ever suggest that! Except that I've read at least a couple of industry professionals making serious arguments that there needs to be a drive to create an influx of male editors, publishers, cover designers and writers into the YA sector - presumably to produce books which are sufficiently manly to drive away the girl cooties.
But what am I so worried about? If women were to stop writing YA books and the number of female protagonists were to drop, that wouldn't hurt anything, would it? Everyone knows girls are happy to read about the universal experience of being a boy. Whereas boys are naturally horrified by the suggestion they should read about that weird niche experience of being a girl. You can't expect them to care about the stories that have female protagonists. It's unfair and goes against all their instincts. It's not like women and girls actually make up just over half the human race - and therefore half of the human experience - or anything.
And even if literacy rates among girls did drop - maybe to levels similar to or lower than the current levels for boys - well, that wouldn't really matter, would it? That's the way it always used to be, boys coming first in everything, and it never did anyone any harm, did it?
Has anyone stopped to question why it is that there *are* slightly more female authors and more female editors in the field of children's and YA publishing? I should say it's fairly obvious. It's for the same reason that there are more female pediatricians, female nursery-school/kindergarden assistants, female elementary/primary school teachers, female nannies etc. etc. Because our society teaches us, every day and in every way, that being interested in and looking after children is women's business. That's it's OK and natural for us to get into any job that is concerned with kids.
Men don't go into those fields very often because, in general, it's not considered normal or natural for them to be interested in or want to care for children. You only have to watch the episode of Friends where seemingly sensitive, New Male character Ross is repelled by the very idea of a male nanny, to see the attitudes that are likely to put young men off from any career where their primary business is dealing with kids. Not to mention that any field in which the majority of roles are filled by women is likely to be far lower paid than a field which is dominated by men. We're still nowhere near pay equality anywhere in the world.
Why the sudden outcry, then, at the idea that there may be slightly more females working in YA or children's publishing and writing, even if guys do in general win the majority of the awards and get the majority of the sales in that field?
Because, all of a sudden, YA and children's publishing have become high profile and lucrative. And this has caused all the people that previously dismissed writing for children or working in children's publishing as petty and unimportant - and therefore, naturally felt that it was 'women's work' - to discover a deep interest in it.
But to their shock and disgust, many of the biggest names in children's and YA writing are women. Many of the most successful agents and editors are also women. Many of the books seem specifically aimed at girls. Is it really possible that women are contributing more to this field than men!? Not in terms of general sales or award attention or anything, but - there are still all these women everywhere!
What is the world coming to when such a high profile and lucrative field is full of GIRLS? Women are taking up all the room and attention that the men need!
No wonder boys don't read!
Bunkum. It is that attitude, that very one, which causes boys not to want to read.
The fall in literacy rates for boys is nothing to do with icky female authors and their icky books that dare to treat female characters and their stories as important. It is everything to do with a society that teaches young men that in order to be 'normal' they must embrace traditional ideals of masculinity - and that means rejecting any activity which might might be considered feminine, even tangentially.
Like reading.
It is everything to do with a society that teaches young men that being a great reader is nerdy and girly or even - worst of all! - GAY. So if they do read, they must be careful to never, ever, ever betray any interest in a book with a woman's name on it or a girl protagonist. In fact, to be safe, just play video games. Or football. Those are safe, boyish activities.
It is everything to do with a society that accepts male dominance as so natural, so unquestionably normal and right, that the NPR list of Best YA Novels, which was split quite equally between male and female authors - 59 women, 44 men - is heralded as evidence of something unnatural or sick, a forced 'feminisation' of the publishing category. The people who reacted with shock to this list feel instinctively that YA ought to be dominated by men, just like TV, films, advertising, academics, medicine and every other profitable field in our world.
So what if male YA authors do appear to get more awards and more sales? That isn't enough. The idea of a significant amount of women being prominent beside men in any important field is so alien that a slight majority of female YA authors (even if they're not receiving as much critical attention or getting as many readers) is considered, in itself, a problem.
Things will only be right when things flip the other way and male authors not only dominate in awards and sales but also sheer numbers. Only then will the natural order be restored, and boys miraculously become great readers - even though, of course, they will still scorn and turn away from any books written by, giving starring roles to, or marketed at, girls.
What is the betting, Dear Readers, if that through some twist of fate being a nanny suddenly became a high profile and lucrative field, people would be leaping out of the woodwork straight away to condemn the female domination of this profession? That suddenly fingers would be pointing at the women who've been quietly doing this job for decades and blaming them for the 'feminisation' of the young people under their care? That there'd be talk of trying to encourage men into the field so that boys - those poor, misunderstood boys! - didn't miss out unfairly?
Listen up.
Fewer boys read because our society teaches that it is not 'normal' for them - ie., 'manly' for them - to be interested in sitting quietly in their room, alone, reading books. Since they're also taught that the most horrible, awful thing to be accused of in the world is being unmanly or, in other words, 'girly' (or, le gasp, GAY, quelle horreur!) of course many of them jump ship from reading to killing things on computer screens as soon as they hit puberty.
Fewer men enter the field of children's and YA publishing because our society teaches that a career focused on children and young adults is not 'normal' for them - ie., manly - and because they are aware that 'women's jobs' are not as well paid (even though it turns out that many men will be rewarded for entering this field with better sales and critical attention).
THIS IS NOT WOMEN'S FAULT.
Stop blaming us for the effects of a society that oppresses us. We're not the ones that built it (even though many of us are so indoctrinated by it that we will fight to defend it). That's why it's a patriarchy. If you don't like it, try dismantling it. Good luck. I'll be over here writing the stories I want to write in the way that seems best to me, without any regard to you, or any other group that apparently sees my contribution to my chosen field as so utterly pointless and insignificant. I don't need to justify the fact that I'm female or that I'm interested in the stories of female characters, and nor do the other lady children's and YA writers out there.
WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO EXIST, THE RIGHT TO CREATE, AND THE RIGHT TO PROSPER.
If you feel that mere fact threatens you and the young men in your life? The problem is yours. Not ours.
If you need anymore background on the different ways that boys and girls are socialised to act? Read this: Boys Will Be Boys Is No Excuse.
Oh, and if you think that I'm wrong, and We're All Equal Now, So We Should Shut Up And Go Home? That post has some pretty telling points to make on the skewed idea of 'equality' that the media presents too (but this has adult language and a trigger warning, so stay away if it's not for you).
WOMEN DOMINATE? IN WHAT UNIVERSE?
I want to share with you an article I read today, which made me feel like choirs of heavenly voices were singing and casting golden light on me: Gender Balance in YA Awards
The glory of this article, Dear Readers! It has confirmed what I always suspected based on knowledge of my field: while there may be slightly more female YA authors (and why is that supposed to be a problem? More on that below!) men still dominate in terms of critical attention and also (although this is not covered explicitly in the post) tend to dominate in terms of sales, with the average NYT Bestseller list (as pointed out by Shannon Hale and Maureen Johnson) showing an 8:2 ratio in favour of male writers.
And yet! It is still widely accepted as fact that YA is 'dominated' by female authors and female stories, and that somehow the ladies are to *blame* for a drop in boy's interest in reading during teenage years. So widely accepted that while that post was making the rounds on Twitter this afternoon I actually saw a male author arguing that there is a 'boy crisis' in YA, and that the stats in the Gender Balance post don't work because male authors win a disproportionate amount of awards.
Um. What? If male authors win a disproportionate amount of awards in the YA field, doesn't that merely illustrate the same point?
I'd really like to know what the people who continually harp on about this issue in this way - lack of 'boy books', 'feminisation' of YA, failing a generation of young men, etc. - would like to see as a solution. Female authors realising the error of their ways and discarding their silly novels about silly girls, and henceforth writing only books about young men being traditionally manly? Female authors taking on androgynous pseudonyms in order to avoid scaring young men off with their lady cooties? Female authors retiring from the field of YA writing altogether and running cakeshops instead so that the men can take their rightful place as leading lights of YA?
Surely I'm overreacting - no one would ever suggest that! Except that I've read at least a couple of industry professionals making serious arguments that there needs to be a drive to create an influx of male editors, publishers, cover designers and writers into the YA sector - presumably to produce books which are sufficiently manly to drive away the girl cooties.
But what am I so worried about? If women were to stop writing YA books and the number of female protagonists were to drop, that wouldn't hurt anything, would it? Everyone knows girls are happy to read about the universal experience of being a boy. Whereas boys are naturally horrified by the suggestion they should read about that weird niche experience of being a girl. You can't expect them to care about the stories that have female protagonists. It's unfair and goes against all their instincts. It's not like women and girls actually make up just over half the human race - and therefore half of the human experience - or anything.
And even if literacy rates among girls did drop - maybe to levels similar to or lower than the current levels for boys - well, that wouldn't really matter, would it? That's the way it always used to be, boys coming first in everything, and it never did anyone any harm, did it?
Has anyone stopped to question why it is that there *are* slightly more female authors and more female editors in the field of children's and YA publishing? I should say it's fairly obvious. It's for the same reason that there are more female pediatricians, female nursery-school/kindergarden assistants, female elementary/primary school teachers, female nannies etc. etc. Because our society teaches us, every day and in every way, that being interested in and looking after children is women's business. That's it's OK and natural for us to get into any job that is concerned with kids.
Men don't go into those fields very often because, in general, it's not considered normal or natural for them to be interested in or want to care for children. You only have to watch the episode of Friends where seemingly sensitive, New Male character Ross is repelled by the very idea of a male nanny, to see the attitudes that are likely to put young men off from any career where their primary business is dealing with kids. Not to mention that any field in which the majority of roles are filled by women is likely to be far lower paid than a field which is dominated by men. We're still nowhere near pay equality anywhere in the world.
Why the sudden outcry, then, at the idea that there may be slightly more females working in YA or children's publishing and writing, even if guys do in general win the majority of the awards and get the majority of the sales in that field?
Because, all of a sudden, YA and children's publishing have become high profile and lucrative. And this has caused all the people that previously dismissed writing for children or working in children's publishing as petty and unimportant - and therefore, naturally felt that it was 'women's work' - to discover a deep interest in it.
But to their shock and disgust, many of the biggest names in children's and YA writing are women. Many of the most successful agents and editors are also women. Many of the books seem specifically aimed at girls. Is it really possible that women are contributing more to this field than men!? Not in terms of general sales or award attention or anything, but - there are still all these women everywhere!
What is the world coming to when such a high profile and lucrative field is full of GIRLS? Women are taking up all the room and attention that the men need!
No wonder boys don't read!
Bunkum. It is that attitude, that very one, which causes boys not to want to read.
The fall in literacy rates for boys is nothing to do with icky female authors and their icky books that dare to treat female characters and their stories as important. It is everything to do with a society that teaches young men that in order to be 'normal' they must embrace traditional ideals of masculinity - and that means rejecting any activity which might might be considered feminine, even tangentially.
Like reading.
It is everything to do with a society that teaches young men that being a great reader is nerdy and girly or even - worst of all! - GAY. So if they do read, they must be careful to never, ever, ever betray any interest in a book with a woman's name on it or a girl protagonist. In fact, to be safe, just play video games. Or football. Those are safe, boyish activities.
It is everything to do with a society that accepts male dominance as so natural, so unquestionably normal and right, that the NPR list of Best YA Novels, which was split quite equally between male and female authors - 59 women, 44 men - is heralded as evidence of something unnatural or sick, a forced 'feminisation' of the publishing category. The people who reacted with shock to this list feel instinctively that YA ought to be dominated by men, just like TV, films, advertising, academics, medicine and every other profitable field in our world.
So what if male YA authors do appear to get more awards and more sales? That isn't enough. The idea of a significant amount of women being prominent beside men in any important field is so alien that a slight majority of female YA authors (even if they're not receiving as much critical attention or getting as many readers) is considered, in itself, a problem.
Things will only be right when things flip the other way and male authors not only dominate in awards and sales but also sheer numbers. Only then will the natural order be restored, and boys miraculously become great readers - even though, of course, they will still scorn and turn away from any books written by, giving starring roles to, or marketed at, girls.
What is the betting, Dear Readers, if that through some twist of fate being a nanny suddenly became a high profile and lucrative field, people would be leaping out of the woodwork straight away to condemn the female domination of this profession? That suddenly fingers would be pointing at the women who've been quietly doing this job for decades and blaming them for the 'feminisation' of the young people under their care? That there'd be talk of trying to encourage men into the field so that boys - those poor, misunderstood boys! - didn't miss out unfairly?
Listen up.
Fewer boys read because our society teaches that it is not 'normal' for them - ie., 'manly' for them - to be interested in sitting quietly in their room, alone, reading books. Since they're also taught that the most horrible, awful thing to be accused of in the world is being unmanly or, in other words, 'girly' (or, le gasp, GAY, quelle horreur!) of course many of them jump ship from reading to killing things on computer screens as soon as they hit puberty.
Fewer men enter the field of children's and YA publishing because our society teaches that a career focused on children and young adults is not 'normal' for them - ie., manly - and because they are aware that 'women's jobs' are not as well paid (even though it turns out that many men will be rewarded for entering this field with better sales and critical attention).
THIS IS NOT WOMEN'S FAULT.
Stop blaming us for the effects of a society that oppresses us. We're not the ones that built it (even though many of us are so indoctrinated by it that we will fight to defend it). That's why it's a patriarchy. If you don't like it, try dismantling it. Good luck. I'll be over here writing the stories I want to write in the way that seems best to me, without any regard to you, or any other group that apparently sees my contribution to my chosen field as so utterly pointless and insignificant. I don't need to justify the fact that I'm female or that I'm interested in the stories of female characters, and nor do the other lady children's and YA writers out there.
WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO EXIST, THE RIGHT TO CREATE, AND THE RIGHT TO PROSPER.
If you feel that mere fact threatens you and the young men in your life? The problem is yours. Not ours.
If you need anymore background on the different ways that boys and girls are socialised to act? Read this: Boys Will Be Boys Is No Excuse.
Oh, and if you think that I'm wrong, and We're All Equal Now, So We Should Shut Up And Go Home? That post has some pretty telling points to make on the skewed idea of 'equality' that the media presents too (but this has adult language and a trigger warning, so stay away if it's not for you).
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