Music, Murder & Magical Creatures - A Day in the Park with Lucy Christopher

On a sunny afternoon in Bute Park, my partner-in-crime, Lucinda Murray, and I had the pleasure of chatting with YA author Lucy Christopher.

Lucy’s a bit of a superstar in the children’s book world.  Her debut novel, Stolen, received the Printz Honor, the Branford Boase Award and the Gold Inky Award in 2010.  Her second book, Flyaway, was short-listed for the Costa Children’s Book Award… We also happen to be lucky enough to have her as our manuscript tutor on Bath Spa’s MA in Writing for Young People and can tell you with authority that she is pretty much amazing.

In this exclusive Chronicles of Word interview, we chat to Lucy about her writing process, her upcoming psychological thriller The Killing Woods, whether it’s vampires or werewolves and just what The Hunger Games was missing.

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Yael: So, our first question, because we’re your students we’re wondering if teaching creative writing impacts your own work at all and if so, how?

Lucy: That’s a very good question, Yael.  I’d say it definitely impacts my work as a writer. I find this with students, but I also find it with myself.  Often the things that you pick up in other people’s work as being of concern are things that you need to deal with yourself. I often find ways to fix my own writing through helping other people look at theirs, so it’s very practically helpful.  It also keeps me very much in the writing world, because if I’m there trying to fix someone else’s book and then I go back to mine, I think “well, I can do this, I’ve just helped someone else fix their book, I know how to fix mine. I’ve got those skills, I can do it.” So it helps to keep me embedded in writing.  And I also just really like it.

There's something particularly lovely about getting to work with a brilliant manuscript tutor and learning that they enjoy working with you, too. We blush at the improbable statement that we've had any impact at all on Lucy's writing, but feel great about it all the same...

Learning from the Masters

There’s no better cure for a writer’s block than reading published work. 

I don’t know about you, but when I can no longer face the pain of the seventeenth redraft of a single paragraph, it’s nice to step away from the laptop, and read something that published author has written.

No doubt they’ve endured the same lengthy, frustrating process as you. Maybe they’ve shared some of the same gut wrenching plot issues, the elated days, the solemn days, the refuse-to-face-the-keyboard days. The days of being face down in words, wading through plotlines, drowning in verbs and ready to abandon the whole thing.

But these authors have got through all of this. They are literally the light at the end of what is essentially a dark, narrow tunnel of self-doubt. They’ve come out the other end, waving their masterpiece in the air and shouting ‘It can be done!’

With that in mind, I’d like to share two of my most recent inspiring reads.

The first is a new book by award-winning author Susan Crandall, called ‘Whistling Past the Graveyard’:

Nine-year old Starla hasn’t seen her momma since she was three, but is sure that if she can just get to Nashville, where she now lives, her momma will have reached her ambition of becoming a world-famous singer and be ready to reunite their family again. A Fourth of July parade gives Starla the chance to escape from the steel-iron grip of her grandmother, Mamie, and head north.

But the journey doesn’t go as Starla planned; she meets Eula, a black woman who is running from a dark, abusive past, and together they embark on a fraught and dangerous road trip, finding pockets of luck and goodwill in towns filled with 1960s racial segregation and tension.

Confronted with a number of life-changing challenges, Starla is forced to shed her naive view of the world, and gain a new understanding of respect, sacrifice and family. This is a beautiful coming of age story about a feisty, precocious girl who never gives up.

And…. If you’re in the mood for something side-splittingly hilarious, but no less intense, then read Trish Cook’s new book, ‘A Really Awesome Mess.’

Two teenagers, Emmy and Justin, have just been accepted into a therapeutic school called Heartland Academy. Each of them is locked into their a unique personal struggle, and the only thing they have in common is their stubbornness, their sarcasm and wish to leave ‘Assland’ Academy as soon as possible. But along with the rest of their therapeutic group, they must see through their issues until they are healthy enough to go home. Cue a series of manipulative yet oddly heart-warming attempts to cheat, lie and outsmart the therapists. Tragic, hilarious, and worth reading for the Hogwarts sorting game alone.

Happy reading! x

How to Tame your Anxiety Dragon: Part 1

Writing is great, but it can be very lonely. Shut away listening to the voices in your head, it’s sometimes hard to separate genuine issues from shadowy fears, let alone find a way to move past them. In the light of this, myself and the brilliant Yael Tischler would like to present our first collaboration for the blog. With our powers combined, we are insane. We hope you enjoy the result. 

This is the first chapter of a potential blog serial entitled “How to Tame Your Anxiety Dragon”. If we get enough comments on this chapter, we’ll treat you all to a second chapter.  And if you like our second chapter, well, you just might get a third.  And so forth… 

Also in the spirit of collaboration, if you’d like to include ridiculous story ideas in your comments, we’ll do our best to work them into future chapters. 

So without further ado... Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

How to Tame Your Anxiety Dragon

Part One

Pip couldn’t see the dragon, but he knew it was there.