Six things that must happen to reverse this headlong rush to an illiterate British generation

Halfway through 2011 came a horrifying National Literacy Trust survey of more than 18,000 children.

It listed the following staggering statistics:

• one in four children is unable to read or write properly when they leave London's primary schools
• three in ten live in households that do not contain a single book
• one in six people in the UK have the literacy level expected of an eleven year old
• in 2005, 1 in 10 of the children and young people surveyed said they did not have a book of their own at home; but by 2011 this figure had increased to an incredible 1 child in 3.

Why is this not seen as a national scandal?

I believe it's because we have two cultures in this country. Those of us who are educated and read all know other people like ourselves who encourage their own children to read.

For these statistics to be true, we must be outnumbered by those for whom reading books is virtually an unknown pasttime.

All my life, newspapers have been wringing their hands about the levels of childhood and adult literacy.

Successive education ministers of every political hue have experimented with different teaching methods.

And all this time the problem has been getting worse and worse.

I believe that it's a root problem of our British culture; a culture that is leading to the closing of so many libraries.

Library closures

I learned my love of books from my local library.

But the latest figures on closures are that 415 libraries (323 buildings and 92 mobiles) are currently under threat or closed/have left council control since the beginning of this financial year out of around 4612 in the whole country.

Librarian professional body CILIP forecasts are even worse: it says that 600 libraries are under threat (inc. 20% of English libraries).

This does not include school libraries. Here, as this article from the Guardian reveals:

• school libraries are facing drastic funding reductions
• many school librarians are being downgraded or even made redundant
• School Library Services are closing
• some children’s book awards have folded
• book gifting schemes have had their funding reduced
• some schools have postponed author visits.

Every month brings bad news: in December we learnt that Hertfordshire Schools Library Services, one of England’s largest and most respected Schools Library Services, is set to close in the New Year.

The latest library visitor figures, covering the year to March 2011, showed overall library visitor numbers down 2.3% to 314.5 million and book issues down 2.9% to 300.2 million.

Although this is a reduction, it is less than what you might expect given these closures.

In November, Alan Gibbons called for a moratorium on the closure of libraries.

Tackling illiteracy and library closures was also the subject of Patrick Ness's Carnegie Medal acceptance speech, which he won with Monsters of Men, the third of his Chaos Walking series.

Too often, writers are told by publishers (I was told myself this year) that teenage boys don't read books and so we can't publish your book.

What can we do?

As writers, we must join with Ness and Gibbons. We can no longer be complacent. Our livelihood is at stake.

Yes, we have to keep writing compelling books. But we also have to act.

Here are six things that need to happen:

1. We must be prepared to occupy libraries faced with closure, just like the occupy movement.
2. The government must stop closing libraries and encourage more children to read in every way possible; even if it comes to giving away books. This happens in developing countries where the level of literacy is higher than ours, for God's sake!
3. Publishers must reconsider the pricing of books. Books are expensive compared to other media which children enjoy, much of which is free, like television, the Internet, radio, music and video games. There needs to be a range of cheap books aimed at less literate children to get them reading so they can later migrate to more difficult books for their age group.
4. The pricing of e-books needs to be much, much cheaper (for the iPad etc.), with all kinds of promotional tools like the vouchers used by iTunes, which would be the modern equivalent of book vouchers.
5. Reading books must be made more cool. Celebrities rated by children need to come out and encourage children to read.
6. You should get involved in CILIP's advocacy work on school libraries and schools' library services, if you aren't already.

It's going to take a lot of effort to turn this devastating trend around. But for the sake of the next generation, we have to do it.

The Paradox of Reading - Joan Lennon

Isn't it amazing that anything so outwardly solitary can be so densely populated, anything that we do so quietly can resound with so many voices, anything that we do in such stillness can fling us quite so far?

Here's to reading, then, as the year turns towards spring and blessings get counted. First page of the list, for sure, and not far from the top.

Visit Joan's website.

Visit Joan's blog.

In Memory: N M Browne

Today would have been my father’s birthday - a once forgettable date, lost between Christmas and New Year which led to rather a meagre birthday present haul. I never forget it now. He died twenty years ago, a few months before his 58th birthday and I still miss him desperately.
He was a painter who gave up painting for twenty years - from my early childhood until his early (and too brief) retirement. He gave up because it was impossible to combine painting with earning enough to support us. He was good at what he did and exhibited widely before I was born. Would he have ‘ made it’ if he’d carried on? Maybe. Did he regret the sacrifice ? I don't think so.
Anyway, the struggle to find time to teach, paint, and be a family man was too much. I still have a portrait of me he began when I was about four. I outgrew the dress I was wearing before he was able to finish it, which says it all. Consequently, I grew up with the knowledge that doing what you love is a privilege not everyone can afford.
My father always fostered my ambitions, even my mad decision to give up teaching, study for an MBA and become a business woman. He thought I was bonkers, but supported me none the less. He died before I discovered what he had always known - that I wasn’t really that kind of person.
I began writing only after his death, when suddenly life seemed short, precarious and altogether too precious to waste on work I hated. I had always wanted to write ‘one day,’ but dying days are certain and ‘one days’ aren’t.
He never saw me published and never met three of my four children.
Whenever things go badly with my writing, which if I’m honest is often, I wonder what his advice would be. Would he tell me to stick with what I love, to seize the day, or to face up to economic realities as he had to do?
I have no answer to this particular conundrum: I only wish I could ask him for his.

New Year, New Publisher Catherine Johnson

How's your year been? I think I have had the pre-requisite number of ups and downs. I don't think I would be still writing if I weren't a glass half full sort of person, one who thinks something good is just around the corner and it will all work out in the end, even if my tax bill is looming and there's now sign of a holiday this year...
Anyway here they are...


Ups.
1. New publisher! Thanks to Frances Lincoln for taking me on and thinking Brave New Girl is 'funny and warm'. Out in September which, I know, is aaagges away!
2. Jo De Giuia at Victoria Park Books. A woman who works so hard for books and writers and whose shop must rank as the best specialist children's bookshop in London and it's on my doorstep. Thanks to her and Dylan Calder for StarLit and for a new London wide chldren's festival coming next year called Pop-Up.
3. Lovely books! This year I enjoyed Gillian Philips; Firebrand, Let's Get Lost by Sarra Manning, The Long Song by Andrea Levy and Ottoline at Sea by Chris Riddell, Slightly Invisible by Lauren Child and There are Cats in This Book by Viviane Schwarz.
4. I am still writing. I have not had to get a proper job for ages. I feel totally blessed.
5. Meeting lovely writer friends. This could be a lonely job, but it isn't because we get to chat. How lucky am I!

Downs
1. No book out this year. The Barrington Stoke has been pushed back, and due to being dropped by Random House I have had a gap....
2. Not finishing the book I was supposed to finish....well I sort of finished it once and am dragging my feet a bit *sigh*
3. Still no Pony. When I was around eight I read a story about a girl who opened her bedroom window on Christmas morning and saw a pony waiting for her outside. This has never happened to me.
4. Katie Price selling more books than me. Ho hum.
5. Don't get me started on the new government!

HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all, my all the words flow and may you never get stuck!
xxx Catherine

FRESH STARTS and SECOND DRAFTS - DIANNE HOFMEYR

The period between Christmas and New Year is probably a time when most writers take a break. Right now I’m sitting on my deck with my feet up on this African Senufo bed with a view over the sea and a cup of coffee in hand contemplating 2012. Like Rosalie in her Taking Stock blog yesterday, I’m taking stock.

Last year in the run-up to Christmas when everything ground to a halt in snow-bound Britain and Heathrow had more iced-up aeroplanes on its runways than a flock of flamingos on a salt pan, I spent hours forced to slow down. My suitcase was packed, the desk cleared (as far as I’m able to clear it) and I waited. In one of those incredible long periods of more than 12 hours at a time over three days in the halls of Heathrow, I started a new novel. It was set on the coast of the place I was about to fly to, and started with a shipwreck. Perhaps I was metaphorically shipwrecked.

Now a year later I’m physically back on that coast having just flown out yesterday but this time with a completed first draft in my suitcase. It’s taken a year. (Am I the only writer who needs a year for a story to formulate?) Now begins the task of strengthening that tentative and fragile text. Time to assess.

In no particular order, I’ve come up with the following actions we can take to turn first drafts into second drafts.

Cutting out the Flack

Measuring Inner Change

Strengthening Point of View

Bridging Conflict

Freezing Moments in Time

Raising the Stakes

Developing the Protagonist

Developing the Antagonist

Discovering the True Theme

Writing the story to its Fullest Potential.

Making the story more Robust.

Deepen the Dilemma

I’m sure you can all add to this list. But with my coffee hitting the adrenalin spot, it's suddenly struck me how many of the things we do with a first draft, are things we can apply to our lives… especially when a New Year is fast approaching. This could get very psycho-analytical. I might start feeling very flawed!

And first drafts often feel flawed… particularly if you write intuitively rather than with blow by blow planning. The bundle of newly printed-out pages waiting in my unpacked suitcase, is fragile. Over-exposure to too many friends or family or even an agent, while a story has just moved from something inchoate to a more fully fledged shape with a beginning, a middle and an end, can leave any writer feeling undermined.

At the start of the New Year, I’m not going to put myself through the rigours of analytical appraisal (even though my family might think it a good idea) nor am I going to be too harsh on my first draft. I’m going to take it for what it is… a first draft… slightly flawed but with great potential!!! That list can be put on hold for a while. I'm drinking my coffee and enjoying the view hoping for a few dolphins in the Bay.

PS. Have just thought of another one for the list... Cutting a lot out!

www.diannehofmeyr.com

What bookish delights did you get, or give for Christmas? - Linda Strachan

Christmas is a time for giving and what better gift to a lover of words than   a good book, or two, to curl up with.








I received a variety of different book gifts -



I love cookery books and I was delighted by the gift of Mums Recipes Two,
a cookbook with some interesting recipes which helps raise funds for MUMs.


The main focus of MUMs is to help reduce maternal and infant deaths in Malawi. The first volume raised £100,000 and there are now three volumes.  You can find out more about them and the project http://www.mumsrecipes.org/









Michelle Lovric's The  Undrowned Child was another present, and I am looking forward to this trip to Venice




.

 Mark Z Danieleweski's  House of Leaves -  a large tome that is dauntingly heavy and on initial inspection it has a very strange layout.

I'm not at all sure what it is about or if it is something I can engage with, especially at the moment when I am trying to keep my head clear until my current work in progress is completed.

So it may have to wait on the shelf for a bit,. On the other hand I am curious to find out about all this strange layout. I feel as if it is a challenge..... so watch this space!






 I also gave some books as gifts and among those were
             
Gillian Philip's Firebrand                                                 

Lob by Linda Newbery

 and  Cathy MacPhail's Grass  









 



So, what bookish gift did you give or receive this Christmas?



Dead Boy Talking (Strident Publishing)  'will knock you off your feet with the speed of its delivery and the raw, tough realism..'  The Bookette
Writing for Children (A & C Black) ideal reading for all aspiring and newly published writers
For younger children the Hamish McHaggis series (GW Publishing)
Follow Linda's blog  - Bookwords - writingthebookwords.blogspot.com
Visit her website -www.lindastrachan.com

Taking Stock... by Rosalie Warren

Sorry about the visual pun, but it's Christmas after all and I had a lovely picture of some leftover gravy just begging to be posted...

It's now a little over five years since I gave up my university post as a result of ill-health and decided to take the opportunity to focus on my writing. This was something I'd always wanted to do but had never found much time for, in among the demands of bringing up a family, studying for a PhD and then being a researcher and lecturer.

So maybe it's time to take stock and ask myself what I've learned, where I've failed and what I've managed to achieve, as well as trying to decide my aims for the next five 5 years or so.

The failures speak for themselves. I'm not a household name, my books are not bestsellers and I'm not a millionaire... though I'm not sure whether I was aiming at those things, and I certainly wasn't expecting them. What I have achieved is three published books, several more completed ones which have not yet found homes, and an exciting new project for younger readers recently commissioned (and still under wraps). But, much more importantly, I've learned quite a bit, made some wonderful new friends and had a lot of fun.

I spent the first two years of my 'freedom' writing short stories and submitting them to competitions, as well as joining several online writers' groups and learning how to give and receive feedback. I took a creative writing class and began work on two novels, one of which I'd had in mind for several years. It turned into Charity's Child, and an independent publisher, Circaidy Gregory, with whom I'd had a short story placed in a competition, expressed interest. It was published in 2008 and I experienced all the joys (and disappointments) of being a first-time published author. The trouble was, I knew very little about how to publicise a book and my publishers, though enthusiastic, had limited resources. I had some encouraging reviews, did a couple of signings and was invited along to some bookgroups to discuss my novel. An agent read it and invited me to London to meet her. It was all very exciting, but she didn't sign me up (a story that would soon become familiar).

My second novel, Low Tide, Lunan Bay, was less serious - a sort of comedy-suspense-romance. I sent it to an appraisal agency, who recommended that my protagonist, who found new love on the internet at 46, had her age reduced by ten years. I did just that (gosh, I was compliant in those days...) A publisher, Robert Hale, liked it but said it was too long - could I cut it by 25%? I did - by removing the sub-plot and sewing up the seams. Hale accepted it and I was, of course, delighted, though I still think it would have been a better book with the heroine ten years older and the sub-plot still in place.

My next novel, Alexa's Song, failed to tick a number of boxes. Male protagonist for a female readership - black mark. Too 'dark' for a love story. Mental health issues - woopsadaisy. Several agents said it would be 'difficult to place'. It still hasn't found a home, but I may well revise it and publish it myself as an eBook one of these days. I think there's a need for more books about depression, bipolar illness and so on, and I'll be only to pleased to add to the list.

I attended the Winchester Writers' Conference in 2008 and entered one of their competitions - to write the first 500 words and synopsis of a novel for age 12+. My entry made the shortlist and became, eventually, Coping with Chloe, the story of a teenager whose life is being taken over by her twin. Several agents expressed interest, but no bites. I sent it to Cornerstones for an appraisal, then rewrote and resubmitted it. One agent, who shall be nameless, got very excited and promised (I thought) to sign me up when I'd made a few changes. I made a few changes, while she made just the one - her mind.

I was distraught, to the point where I didn't submit anything or even do much writing for several weeks. Then I picked myself up and sent Chloe to a new children's publisher, Phoenix Yard, who liked it... and signed me up. My editor there was brilliant - and thanks to her help it came out in March 2011 and has had some great feedback and lovely reviews. Though not, sadly, huge sales - or not yet, anyway...

In March 2012, Charity's Child is going to be reissued as an eBook and as a new edition in paperback, by the original publisher, Circaidy Gregory. Other possible eBooks for the future include my 42000 word novella about a woman with Alzheimer's, which is probably too short to be considered by a publisher. There's also an SF book for 12+ which hasn't yet found a home. And my current project is an SF novel for adults, which draws on my research interests - cognitive science, linguistics and AI. If it doesn't find a publisher, I'll definitely publish it myself.

One thing I've learned is that it doesn't get any easier - you just set the bar higher as you go. And there are always going to be people who are more successful than you, so why worry about it? I've also discovered that authors, and children's authors in particular, are some of the maddest, funniest and kindest people in the world.

I've learned that you have to stay true to yourself. There are always compromises to be made in terms of what agents and publishers are looking for - but if you lose your vision of what you want to write, you might as well give up.

I'm very happy still to be writing, after five crazy years. I wouldn't want to do anything else... though to earn a bit of money from time to time might be nice.

And finally finally... I've discovered that hearing a child or young person say they liked your book and found it interesting, exciting, helpful or whatever, is one of the best feelings in the world and no writer could wish for anything more.

Wishing all of you - readers, writers, whatever you may be - a very happy, healthy, prosperous and successful New Year.