Meg rants about 'Piper' and grief!

Today is the day that 'Piper' is published, a book that would never have been written but for my mother. Well, I wouldn't have been born but for my mother - but you know what I mean! Because I knew her, because I loved her, the story began to grow.

First, for my younger readers:

This bit's nothing to do with my mother - though she did have a passing interest in chocolate which I'm going to mention.If you read 'Piper' and I very much hope you do, you may be shocked by some of my ideas about what happens to the children. Sadly, most of them are based on things that actually happen to children here and now, in different parts of the world. Children go blind making carpets in India, children are kidnapped and 'traffiked' into slavery on cocoa farms or even worse situations, children have been shot down on the streets of Brazil, simply because they are homeless. This is all very depressing stuff - 'Piper' I hope, though it may disturb you, is not depressing. There is light at the end of the tunnel!If, however, you are shocked and challenged by some of this, please do what I suggest at the end and visit http://www.stopthetraffik.org/ to find out more. One of my young friends has recently written to Cadbury's to find out if they can guarantee that their cocoa beans come from farms which do not used traffiked children. Maybe you would like to do the same? Unfortunately, the variety of Fair Trade chocolate isn't huge, so it's important to keep up the pressure on the big companies to adopt Fair Trade policies More varieties of Fair Trade chocolate on our shelves has to be a good thing in every way - except for those tempted to eat too much, I suppose!

And now for the wrinklies' bit!

I didn't know when it started, that 2007 was a year I would spend weeping! Not all the time, of course, but an unprecedented amount! I spend a lot of time driving up and down the M40. This year it has felt like a vale of tears. I've wept into my swimming goggles, in showers, in the teeth of howling gales, over books, films, plays, down the phone to my friends and on my sister's, my children's and my husband's shoulders.Why? Well, it started with my dog dying in January and continued when our friend Nick died three days later - and then it just snowballed. When my friends' mothers simultaneously began to get ill and, in a couple of cases, die, it got worse. Suddenly, for whatever reason, I had begun to grieve for my parents, and in particular for my mother, Ruth Elizabeth Craven, who died 21 years ago. Suddenly, in a bizarre and completely unexpected way, I was actually feeling envy for the friends whose lives had been turned upside down by their aged parents. I had always felt lucky that I wasn't going to have to face all that; suddenly, I wanted to. I felt guilty that I wasn't able to. It felt like something one ought to do - to care for your parents when they are old and vulnerable. It felt like a rite of passsage that was denied me. Madness, I know and I don't expect sympathy. I didn't expect sympathy when I had no mother to show my babies, no built-in baby-sitter and no mother to consult about everything from sore nipples to bedtime routines - though I did feel pretty resentful about it from time to time. But suddenly I was grieving for all that too. And grieving that I hadn't been able to say goodbye. Someone told me that grief is like a pile of horse shit that is dumped on your doorstep. You don’t want it and you certainly didn’t order it – but the work of grieving is to get on and dig your way out. I have come to accept that, far from neatly ‘getting over it’, we do the digging for the rest of our lives. It’s not such bad work, actually. More interesting than you’d expect shoveling shit to be. You just need plenty of tissues for cleaning up.

One day recently, I found myself confronting the abyss I'd never dared peer into - the circumstances surrounding my mother's death. I'd always talked of my gratitude for them in the past - that, though she was actually riddled with cancer, she never knew and never had to undergo any treatment. That was because she died under the scanner. She had a heart attack. She was whisked off for a scan one morning, without my dad being there. Did she explain that she was claustrophobic? We will never know. I suspect she was too weak and brow-beaten by the suggestion that her pain was psychosomatic to say anything. And so she died alone and probably terrified. And, as I said to a friend recently, what I ought to do is go out into a field and howl. But I will never do that - so this is it instead. The howl in the field. Because someone should howl. Someone should rant and rage and keen. She would have died soon anyway - but it would have been kinder to have been surrounded by the people who loved her. Perhaps that's why, early this year, I felt compelled to organise a study day about alternative approaches to death. If you would like to know more on that topic, do contact the enormously helpful Natural Death Centre www.naturaldeath.org.uk

So what's all that got to do with 'Piper'? Well, Tanith, the central female character owes a lot to my mother. She grew out of my late appreciation that my brave, uncomplaining mum, who hid her tears in the pantry, spent most of her life in pain. As a child, I didn't give it a thought that she looked so old. She had me quite late in life - I knew that. But looking back, you could see the pain in the premature aging, in the lines of her face, the set of her jaw. In the sanctuary of childhood, she was just my mum. It is only now, now that I can't say or do anything, that I can see how her disability made her suffer.

'Piper' is, of course, very loosely based around the 'Pied Piper' story. From being very young, I felt for the child who was left behind, the child who was lame, like my mum. What happened to him? What would it be like to be the only child left when all the others had disappeared? He is quite literally isolated by his disability – as, in many ways, was my mum.

For my mum, isolation came very early. She was apparently born a healthy child – and then she lost the ability to walk. Possibly she had TB of the bone – we will never know. What we do know is that my grandmother, Elizabeth Edelston, a formidable woman, by all accounts, who had 8 older children, refused to be put off by the doctor who called her youngest daughter a ‘runt’ and told her to expect her to die. She waited until there was an opportunity to see a locum – who promptly referred my mother for treatment. Immediately, she was packed off to hospital in Heswall on the Wirral, many miles from her home on a farm, in a village outside Preston, Lancs. My mum remembered this clearly. She remembered her mother making the journey to see her once a week, spending almost the whole day on a bus. She remembered the kind nurse who called her Ruthie and tied a pink bow in her hair when her mother was coming. What she omitted to mention was that she stayed in that hospital for five years. I found that out when one of my aunts, in her eighties at the time, put herself on a train to come and help me when my four little children had chicken pox. Her eyes filled with tears at the memory of the three year old darling of the family being taken away and not returned until she was eight. I remember standing in our bathroom, not knowing what to do with the pain of hearing that. Moments like that help you understand why some people self-harm for release.

Worse was to come – the war, a bad blitz experience, major surgery on her hip, severe depressive illness and ECTs. But she was also emergency trained as a teacher, which she saw as a god-send, and she had two children, something she had thought would never happen. Throughout it all, she hung onto her faith in God. She never gave the impression that this was a straightforward, cut and dried issue. She was always wrestling, always working through issues about her faith, always trying to find out more.

I didn’t find her an easy woman to live with as I got older. It grieves me terribly that she died when I was still stuck in my adolescent relationship with her, aware more of the tension between us than the love. I would have liked to have grown through that and begun to know her on more equal terms – as I did, for a short period, with my dad. There is much of the way that she lived her life that I have rejected and I think she would have been uncomfortable with that – but there is more that is inbuilt and which I cannot discard – my own ever-questioning relationship with God for example. And these things that she taught me:

If you think you haven’t got any friends, look round for someone who needs one.

Don’t criticize something if you can’t put something better in its place.

If you don’t understand, ask. It’s amazing how often other people want to ask the same question.

Speak out. Stand up for what you believe in.

It is better to create something than to buy it.

If you work hard for something rather than it falling into your lap, you will value it more.

Enough! Too much already! ‘Piper’s’ Tanith is one tough cookie – and so was my mum. So all you people who are struggling with aged and ill parents, if you love them, make sure that they know. From an entirely selfish perspective, it will make things much easier for you later. Really, I don’t envy you and wish you well.

I mourn your loss so early, Ruth Elizabeth Craven. And I’m sorry you never really knew how much I cared. But then I didn’t know either.

Ranting about Christians and Social Action!

For the younger reader....

This week I have been interviewed by 'The Leamington Courier' because 'Piper' will be published on Oct 31st and launched at Myton School on Nov 2nd. I waffled on hopelessly - it's very difficult to talk about a book without giving too much away - but I did say it raised some difficult issues that I was concerned about - the divide between rich and poor, over-population, the way we share out food resources, slavery, damage to the environment. It probably sounded terribly heavy - so I kept stressing that it is also romantic! But I was very interested to be asked if I thought young people were interested in such questions.' Yes,' I said. 'Of course. The young people I meet are very interested - especially about the environment and human rights issues.' Last week I went on the 'Cut the Carbon' march with a daughter and her friend; only today a young chap I know, told me he had written to Cadbury's to ask about where they got their cocoa beans and whether they could guarantee the workers were treated fairly and no child labour had been involved. So I think I'm right and young people are interested. But am I? What do you think? What issues do you really care about?

For the more wrinkly reader....


Today, someone very politely suggested to me that I should hold off on any further suggestions for social action to the members of my church. Sharp intake of breath. Mad battle to stop the red mist descending. Quick rant at husband. Quick rant at daughters and their helpless friend who now probably thinks they have completely demented mother (well - it wouldn't take long for her to work that out anyway) - but no help. Will still have to rant at unsuspecting public in the hope of a good night's sleep.

I would love to say that I can see my friend's point. But I can't. There are some things where, however hard I think about them, I cannot see where the other side is coming from. This is one. I look at the world and its endless, overwhelming neediness and I think of the paltry amount of time that I can spare for addressing it and I read or hear of opportunities for us all, Christian or non-Christian, to do our little bit and I think that the least I can do is to share them with the people I know. This little bit, this small opportunity that has come to my notice, might just be the one that someone is waiting for. They hate on-line petitions, they're too busy to volunteer regularly, their work is too inflexible to go on a demo, they can barely make ends meet so certainly can't sponsor anyone - but they can spare one afternoon to rattle a tin outside Sainsbury's - or whatever!

I'm not suggesting for a moment that I'm up to speed myself on social action - I'm not. Anita Roddick's words, 'Do something, do anything, but do something!' ring accusingly in my ears far too much because, of course, I could do more. My approach is too scattergun, too random, I suspect, to be truly effective. There have been times in my life when I've put my social action eggs in one basket for a while and perhaps then they've had more chance of survival - but there are so many issues and so little time and how can we prioritise? I have been working on a novel for young teenagers for a long time now in which the central character is an eco-worrier - she's into saving toads and badgers and the environement, she's into fair trade and organic, she's a staunch supporter of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Amnesty International. I'm still working on it - it's not quite right yet - but one criticism which surprised me was that no one can be worried about quite so much and perhaps I need to make my character focus on just one of two issues? Well, I'm sorry but I certainly worry about all those issues and more besides! How can you not?

But maybe that's where my friend is coming from too. It's all just too much. It's not actually that we can't worry about it all, but we don't want to. We will burn out. And in terms of the church members, they will feel so overwhelmed that they will feel unable to do anything. Or it will become like water off a duck's back; they will cease to be moved.

I can see that. I'm there, every Saturday morning, struggling to make the right decisions over buying fruit for my family. There are so many things to consider - fair trade, local, organic, price and will my kids actually eat it?! I could buy lovely locally grown Coxes apples at a reasonable price - but no one would eat them! It's exhausting and dispiriting andoverwhelming - but I don't see that I have a choice. I cannot say that I am a practising Christian and not take the care of the environment and the welfare of the world's farm workers seriously. Can I?

But I confess myself a wimp - I ceased subscribing to the 'New Internationalist' because I couldn't cope with facing a new world crisis, a new major injustice, a new issue I felt compelled to do something about, every single month! So you see, I'm getting there. I'm beginning to see my friend's point of view....

No. Hold it right there. Go any further along that route and surely, we're on the slippery slope to inertia and apathy. Helplessness. Standing by and wringing our hands. And Jesus would do that? Yeah, right.

I have a postcard pinned over my desk. It says, 'I wanted to change the world but I couldn't find a baby-sitter.' It's there because, to an extent, that's how I feel. I am too busy with the cares of my work, my family and friends, to be as socially active as I would like to be. But it's there too, to remind me that I do not want to find myself with that excuse on my lips on my deathbed. Those words should challenge us as Christians too. We want to change the world but actually we're pretty comfortable how we are. It's an effort to find a baby-sitter and, supposing we did, we'd have to get out there and do something. We wouldn't be able to be nice and cosy in our house groups and prayer meetings and worship services with our lovely Christian friends. We'd have to sacrifice some of that. I don't like the 'mission' excuse either - our chief role is to evangelise, to concern ourselves with the immortal soul. I'm with Christian Aid with their splendid slogan: 'We believe in life before death.' If I were a non-Christian, I would be far more impressed with someone who put themselves out to meet my physical or social need first and then allowed me to ask them about what motivated them, rather than someone who was only out to save my soul.

So it's no good. We can't cry, 'Enough! No more, please, God! We can't take it!' We have to relentlessly do whatever we can, whenever we can, however we can, even if, as it is in my case, pathetic and small and weedy. We cannot shut ourselves off from it. OK, we have to look after ourselves - keep ourselves healthy - not drive ourselves crazy. But I think the majority of us in British Churches, are a long way from doing that. We're not, like William Wilberforce, damaging our health because of our decades of campaigning or like Lord Shaftesbury, dying with the words, 'But there is so much more to do!' on our lips. Jesus withdrew to pray on occasion, setting us a good example in taking time out from all this. But he didn't always succeed - and he didn't then turn round and tell people to go away because he'd had enough! And I may be wildly wrong here but I'm pretty darned sure that he dealt with people's physical and social needs alongside their need for forgiveness.

Ranting about writing for SATS!!!

It's a tricky thing this blog writing if you're a children's author - who exactly is it for? Young people who read your books or your friends, your colleagues and any other adults who may be interested? So this post, though it is still mostly me ranting, is going to be in two parts - one for younger people and one for the more wrinkly reader. Younger version first then!

This bit's for kids...

In the past few weeks, I have had an amazingly exciting time, doing lots of different things from taking part in a Swimathon in aid of local charities (nearly killed me - I am not such a good swimmer as Grace in 'Fur'!!!) to starting to teach an adult creative writing group to doing several school visits. If you're at St John Bosco School, Moor Hall School, Leigh C of E School or Pinfold St Primary, hello! I enjoyed all my visits - they were all different and I had a fantastic welcome everywhere. You have some very special teachers and are doing some very exciting writing. I am particurlarly keen to know, however, whether Caesar survived last Thursday or whether that man Brutus who was skulking around Leigh School in a toga, bumped him off in the end. Could someone let me know, please? It's a shame if Caesar died - I thought he made quite a good job of pretending to be a deputy head. The laurel wreath was a bit of a give away though.

I thoroughly enjoyed helping all of you get going with your story writing and would love to hear how you got on. What happened to all those Bad Babies? How did you get on at Pinfold Street with all your terrible boating disasters? And all the people who were working on funny stories, do send me any which you think will make me laugh!

And please tell me what you think about story writing in schools. Do you enjoy it? Is it fun? Do you prefer to have complete freedom to 'do your own thing' or do you quite like having a lot of help and input from a teacher or an author? Those of you who have used writing frames, like Boxing Clever, do you like doing that? Does it help? I'd also love to hear what you like and don't like about author visits. Authors visit schools a lot these days but we don't always get feedback on what went well and what didn't. Sometimes I leave forms for teachers to fill in but it seems a bit mean as they have so much to do anyway.

My new book, 'Piper' will be published on October 31st so I'm getting excited about doing my launch event at Myton School in Warwick - but am less happy to find a note on my desk this evening. The local newspaper wants me to get in touch about it which probably means another photo. I get teased a lot about how much my photo is in the newspaper (it was even in for the Swimathon) and I always feel really embarrassed about it. Definitely one of the worse things about being an author - but you have to go along with it for publicity. With so many new books being published all the time, you really have to do everything possible to get yours noticed! If any body has any bright ideas for publicity stunts, let me know!

This bit's for grown ups...

This week's rant then!

I love visiting primary schools! I'm always amazed by the enthusiasm and energy of the teachers and their incredibly caring, patient attitude to the children. I learn a lot from working alongside them which I often do as I frequently run workshops rather than doing the traditional author talk and reading. But I really do question what on earth is going on with year 6 SATS. Can someone explain to me why 11 year olds are expected to be able to write a coherent short story in 45 minutes, a task the majority of adults would be completely incapable of doing? Short story writing is possibly the most sophisticated and subtle type of creative writng there is - yet children, some of whom are struggling with basic literacy, are assessed under exam conditions on this task - 15 mins to plan, 30 to write. We'd like a beginning, middle and ending, please, clear establishment of characters and setting, the development of a problem which will be resolved in a suitably satisfying way, a build up of tension - oh, and we'd like to know a bit about the feelings of the characters as well. Clear use of connectives, varied sentence openings, adverbs, adjectives, similes and metaphors, please, and a suitable amount of dialogue - make sure you use speech marks and paragraphing correctly!

Right, no sweat! I did actually write one once, to see if it could be done. I just managed it but only because I didn't plan - and if an examiner could have read my handwriting, it would have been a miracle.

A school I visited recently was using a story frame technique called Boxing Clever which I could see was a reasonably effective tool for helping kids to jump through the necessary hoops - a kind of jig-saw puzzle approach to story-writing. These are the bits you need - it's up to you to fit them together. I had huge admiration for the young teacher using the system who's dynamism was utterly inspiring. He and the other teachers I met were absolutely doing the best they could for the kids they were teaching.

But what professional writer uses a story frame? OK, some write to a formula or a very strict brief but that is entirely different from a frame which suggests that these are the 'bits' you need for a story and what writers do is put them together. I certainly don't work in that way (though it might appear so from the product) and I've never met anyone who does. If professional writers don't create stories by using frames, why are kids being taught to use them? Not because they're a real tool used by real professionals but because they're a crutch invented to help kids be examined in a task which is completely inappropriate for them. Yes, allow children to write creatively in school - of course the joy of that should be nurtured. But the only reason they're being examined at all is because it's politically expedient - so why set such a sophisticated literary task that teachers and educationalists are having to come up with task specific tools to get their kids through it? If you have to test their literacy at all (and, I being an ex-home-educator and raving educational liberal, would argue that you shouldn't), for heavens sake, set them a simple, age appropriate literacy task - not something that would stretch a literary genius! Then they might have some time left over for having some fun writing creatively and their teachers (the saints!) would have one less hugely burdensome target to worry about.

Any politicians who'd like to send me their short stories that they've written on a random topic in 45 minutes, are welcome to do so. If I think they're good enough (see the criteria above - oh, and make sure your opening is stunning too so you immediately grab my interest), then I will publish them on my web-site. Meanwhile, I'll carry on helping teachers and children have fun writing creatively - if it helps with the SATS, that's a bonus! Meg

Very first blog entry! Exciting stuff!

I have to confess - I've rarely read anybody else's blog. I haven't been able to see what the attraction is. But in recent months I have come to realise that I appreciate a place to rant/sound off/let off steam/whatever you want to call it, especially if anyone replies. So I'm giving it a go. If you reply, that'll be a very exciting bonus - but for now I'm just going to enjoy ranting!

If you've read any of my books, you may have guessed that in some ways they're a cover for my ranting habit. I have many axes to grind! Kate, my main character in the the 'My Mum' books has quite a bit of me in her! She argues with God a lot. She struggles with him - or is he a she? She'll probably think about that one day! She raises a lot of spiritual questions. And guess what? So do I - probably much to the irritation of people who have a more secure and straightforward faith. But I'm writing for young people and that seems an appropriate place to raise questions.

I detest 'issue' books - the ones that pretend to tell a story but are really 'to make you think' about abortion or disability or bullying or racism - or whatever! And I know I could be accused of doing that myself. (I so remember one boy I taught who looked in despair at the book I was recommending to him and said, 'God, miss, not another meaningful book!') At heart, I want to change the world - to be Lord Shaftesbury or Bob Geldof or any one of the many people I admire - but my talents and time are limited and I do love writing. So the stories will always have an undercurrent of ranting about something - although I hope they're not 'issue' books but really good stories too. When I look at the ones I've lost interest in or haven't been published, I can see what's missing - they haven't been fired by something I really care about. 'Fur' was interesting because it was initially inspired by a furious moment I had with one of my best friends - I was ranting about the amount of time and money girls and women spend on getting rid of body hair and he just couldn't see what the issue was. But as I began to write, as ever, bigger issues came through - forgiveness, reconciliation, moving on from the pain of the past - stuff I come back to again and again because it seems so important. Two friends pointed out that it was about grace - with a small g. It was only at that point, that I realised the significance of my central character's name - Grace. That gave me the shivers, I can tell you!

And now 'Piper' is soon to be published, fired by my horror at the ruthless killing of Brazilian street children and finding out about children in India going blind from carpet weaving. I'll soon be posting something on my site about why I wrote it - there's more to it than that - but as ever, the need to rant was in the mix!

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a newspaper column? You could be paid for ranting! I've just done a free column for our local rag ranting about blood doning which was very therapeutic. On Sunday I'll be leading our church's Harvest Festival but the drama which I've helped the young people to create is under-cover ranting about the crisis in British farming. When Michael Morpurgo wrote 'Out of the Ashes' after the last Foot and Mouth outbreak, I spotted a fellow ranter - though he does it far better, of course. He runs Farms for City Children so is action rather than all talk. Deeply admirable. I rant more than I do and satisfy myself with random acts of kindness and sporadic bits of activism. Actions speak louder than words and one of my big gripes with God is that he gave me a gift with words - lovely, very lovely, but impractical. So I rant a lot and hope it motivates others to do quite a lot of acting for me! If you're a young person who reads my books - or an old one for that matter - I hope you love the stories but that in some way your actions will be changed! Scary. Hope that doesn't put you off reading them! Meg