Censorship and Children's Books

A few months ago, I wrote an essay for my MA about the extent to which censorship should be exercised in children's books, and I actually had A LOT I was bursting to say on the subject, much of which was not really academia-appropriate (the sad fate of sarcasm), so here I am.

The basic debate here is whether or not a novel written for children should have its content restricted or dialled down, because its aimed at children and god forbid the little darlings understand that the world is not a perfect place. My answer as a in-no-way-biased-aspiring-writer-for-children, obviously, is:

And I'll tell you why.

Though actually, first let's play examples. So last year, this book:

Won the Carnegie Medal (pretty much the biggest deal in children's literature). Now in the spirit of fairness, I will cheerfully admit that I read this (aged 20) before the announcement, and can best describe my feelings about it through this image:

It's narrated by a sixteen-year-old boy who, with an assortment of other strangers, is kidnapped and trapped in an underground bunker by a psycopathic (and unseen) Big-Brother-typed character, who messes with their food / sanity / heating / everything else and generally tortures them. It's pretty goddamn bleak. What it is not, however, is - as Lorna Bradbury of The Telegraph described it - a 'uniquely sickening read', that 'seems to have won on shock value rather than merit'. And her statement that 'we are left with the uncomfortable feeling that, like the prisoners, we have spent time being manipulated by a psychopath and pervert', presumably directed at author Kevin Brooks, deserves to be met with no more or less than this attitude:

So there's your basic argument FOR censoring children's books - it'll traumatise them or upset them or make them ask questions the adults around them would rather not answer.

And here are my top three reasons (and there are many more) as to why those arguments are spectacularly missing the point:
1. These are books, not films. A child is always going to be limited by their own understanding when they're conjuring these images in their own head. I'm not going to pretend that a children's writer doesn't have to write with SENSITIVITY to the age of the reader, but there's no reason why that would restrict what it is you're writing about. Look at Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book - the opening of that novel, aimed at 8-12 year olds, features the massacre of the protagonist's family. But because of the WAY it's written, no eight-year-olds were traumatised in the reading of this very important scene.
2. Any and all children have a right to be represented in the novels written about and for them. That encompasses race, gender, social backgroung, religion, AND circumstance. Appalling things can and do happen to children, and for however long these awful things are happening, these children cannot be ignored.
"But what if my perfect little middle-class cherub reads a book about a child who is kidnapped and molested, and is shocked and horrified by it?!" Well, damn right. I imagine that was the point.
3. On a similar, albeit pretty bleak, note: as Kevin Brooks himself has said, children 'don't need to be told that everything will be all right in the end, because they're perfectly aware that in real life things aren't always all right in the end'. As adults, unfortunately we can't pretend that we live in a happy-clappy world where everything works out perfectly in the end, bad people are punished and good, sweet children live the lives they deserve because - and I'm sorry if this comes as a shock - that just isn't the way it is.

Now there are many more facets to this whole argument (such is life), like the 'gatekeeper' parents, Young Adult genre in itself and the hideous concept of 'parental advisory stickers'. But come on people:

If you make a reader out of child, they'll read for the rest of their lives, and if you patronise and lie to them, they're probably going to be less inclined to do that. And what a first-class way to make the world worse.
So, personally, I reckon that as long as there are 'controversial' topics out there, they will and should be written, published and read for children and adults, regardless of how many middle-class feathers are ruffled at The Telegraph.
(Oooh, contentious...)

Columnist Competition Entry: Inspiration Constipation

I didn't win, so thought I may as well get a blog post out of the hours of frustration:

I’ve been trying to write this column for over a month. But it’s only now, when I have a week to complete this, another (3000 word) competition entry and write two different CVs and cover letters that I’ve actually started to feel some ‘inspiration’ (read: panic). I would wonder why I do this to myself, but – at this point – I think I’m past that.

Writing is my particular interest, but I don’t imagine this feeling is new to anyone with creative ambition (…at least, I hope not). Hopefully you know what I’m talking about:

Step 1: Think up, decide on and become unreasonably excited about a project idea.
Step 2: Spend hours and hours fleshing it out in your head, probably never once actually setting pen
to paper, or fingertips to keyboard.
Step 3: Realise this project has been existing only in your mind for several months, panic and make garbled notes, drafts or sketches at four in the morning: lose these, presumably forever (not that they were legible, anyway), and be eternally unsure whether or not you dreamt the entire thing.
Step 4: Spend days meticulously organising your mental process into an actual Word document: realise all you have done is write stuff down, without making any actual progress.
Step 5: Overanalyse.  Begin to feel as though that unholy, sadistic little flashing cursor is actually mocking you.
Step 6: Decide it was a crap idea anyway.
Step 7: Rethink. Repeat.
Or, you know, something like that.

I truly believe it is the curse of the creative to simultaneously be easily distracted, woefully self-doubting and every shade of procrastinator. Creative types talk about ‘inspiration’ as if it’s this pre-packaged, gift-wrapped burst of genius descending on a velvet cushion with a hallelujah chorus accompaniment. And frankly, when it happens that’s pretty much how it feels. Unfortunately, it also seems to vanish the split second fingers make contact with a writing instrument.

That being the case, if you’re trying to make an actual living out of being creative, you can’t really rely on ‘inspiration’ – it doesn’t understand that rent is kind of a monthly thing. Sadly, sitting at a desk and feeling as though your brain is bleeding nonsense onto a piece of paper is sometimes all you can do. Bad, forced creativity is just that; bad and forced. But it’s better than nothing. Most of the time.

If you take away all of the material difficulties of being a professional creative (actual poverty, job-hunting, the fresh hell of freelancing, senior family members consistent enquiries as to when you’ll be looking for a ‘real job’), I would argue that is the most difficult part: sticking with an idea until the end, through the inspirational desert, crippling insecurity and failed attempts. It can, does and will happen – generally, you’ve just got to produce a lot of crap first. And, tragically, that definitely doesn’t come with a hallelujah chorus.

Please Stop Shouting at Anti-Feminists on the Internet

So first of all, let's cover the basics: claiming to be a feminist will not suddenly force a woman to sever ties with every man she knows, grow armpit hair to her knees and disconnect the oven. It will not force her to work full time, or hire a nanny, or stop making sandwiches. It will not stop her from wearing make-up, or doing the dishes, or wanting to have children. Basically what I'm saying is there no reason to see the word 'feminist' and react like this:

Or this:

Or this:

Because calling yourself a feminist just means that you believe women should have the CHOICE to do any of those things. Really, that's all.

But I hate the effect the word 'feminism' has on people. Whether it's an eye-roll, a gentle recoil, pointed posturing or a loud, twattish guffaw, it's almost never what I think it should be: a slightly baffled expression, possibly coupled with a shrug. When somebody brings up feminism, I wish everybody would just go, 'Yes, and what of it?'

But I think people react that way because those who don't want to call themselves feminists fall into two categories:
1. 'Pathetic, prehistoric, rage-fuelled assclowns' who seriously believe men to be superior to women. I don't think they're worth addressing (or existing).
2. People who want women to have all the rights and choices men have, but who don't want to call themselves feminists because they don't understand how harmless the word in itself is, and/or because they have at some point had some bozo on the internet call them an embarrassment to women everywhere because they changed their surname when they got married. Or something.

And here (finally...) is my point: please stop yelling at each other on the internet.

You know who you are. You people who tell women off for having boyfriends, or enjoying cooking, or wanting children, all in the name of FEMINISM. And I'm asking you: please, please stop it. When has anybody ever changed your mind by shouting at, insulting or patronising you?

Fair enough the Category 1 people probably need some pretty bloody firm words, but the majority of people, in my experience, who shy away from describing themselves as a 'feminist' are just confused. They don't understand that it's not supposed to be an angry word because maybe at some point, some blogger with FEMINIST tattooed on their forehead called them a 'bit of a prat', or a 'bellend', or a 'daft arse' (presumably because they said that feminism isn't really something they think about, and they like cooking).

So please don't shout at these people who don't understand. Try explaining to them simply and gently that feminism and equality are the SAME THING. Seriously, that is it.

Hopefully, if we all get on board with this, whenever a female celebrity is inevitably asked whether or not they are a feminist (because, you know, there's no way people who interview celebrities ever ask redundant questions to try and shoehorn out a controversial answer), and basically says 'no', we all react a bit differently. Instead of writing patronising and offensive open letters to call attention to your own blog, or launching some sort of internet lynch mob, we can all just give them a gentle shake of the head, point them in the direction of the various excellent people who espouse feminism with politeness and style, and help them Get It. That's all it is. They just don't Get It yet.

Eventually, one day, I'm really hoping that every time some provocative tit of an interviewer asks a celebrity 'Are you a feminist?', said celebrity will pull this face:

(Hopefully with this haircut, too.)

After all, people don't go around asking 'Are you a racist?' at random, because there is only one acceptable answer. And there is only one answer to 'are you a feminist?'

But we're not going to convince anybody of that by yelling at them.

Gushy Harry Potter Post

Warning: expect mush and attempted profoundness.

For no real reason, I've spent a lot of time over the past couple of days watching various JK Rowling interviews / documentaries. I've got no idea what triggered it, but last night I watched A Conversation with Daniel Radcliffe and JK Rowling (filmed shortly before the release of the final Harry Potter film), and today I watched JK Rowling: A Year in the Life (filmed over the course of the year leading up to the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). I've had tears in my eyes on about eight different occasions, and was a watery, gibbering mess by the end of the latter.

I can't explain, even to myself, why my reaction was so overly emotional. Harry Potter is hardly my little secret; it's become a cliche to say that Harry Potter got you into reading (which it didn't, for me), to say it inspired you to write (which it partially did), to say it defined your childhood (which it certainly had a hand in). And it bothers me that I feel the need to justify my personal relationship with Harry Potter because it means so much to so many people. I don't really believe that there are degrees of loving something - it's not something you can measure.

I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone when I was six or seven, I think, and the final Harry Potter film was released two weeks after my eighteenth birthday - so the world of Hogwarts was my imaginary playground throughout my childhood. Sure, I may have shared that world with God only knows how many other kids, but one of my favourite things about reading is that it's a solo activity. For however long or short a time, it is just you, and the characters, and an adventure; and bloody hell, what an adventure.

There are so many things I could talk about, in relation to JK Rowling's books, but it was actually hearing Rowling talk about them that I think has got me feeling so nostalgic. Being so young when I was first introduced to Harry Potter, JK Rowling was a name to me a long time before she was a person, and when I first became aware of the person I wasn't sure what to think. For someone with an imagination so clearly extraordinary, JK Rowling seemed kind of...boring. And I think it's only in the past 48 hours that I've really understood how wrong that kind of judgement was.

It's a pretty astonishing realisation, when it hits you that the phenomenon (and I don't think that word is ever more appropriately used than when in relation to Potter) that is Harry Potter stemmed from the mind of one woman, and all the personal experiences, memories and tragedies that went towards forming that woman. Hearing her talk out loud about these characters, created by her but adopted by SO many others, and the directions she almost took their stories (there's a bit where she admitted to nearly killing off Ron - this blog post would not be waxing quite so lyrical if she'd followed that through) made me realise how much the work of one person's creativity can affect others. I have absolutely no doubt that there are people in the world whose lives were saved by Harry Potter, that there are people who found hope, happiness, friendship, escape, confidence, strength, imagination and who knows what else in those 17 zillion pages.

But for me, Harry Potter is a part of the foundation on which I built my aspirations, and I think I sometimes forget that. It felt nice to be reminded.

Excuses

As of this moment in time, I am trying to simultaneously balance:

1. Writing a children's novel.
2. Writing pieces and assessments for my MA.
3. Attending my MA.
4. A café job, working somewhere between one and four days of which most are weekends.
5. A bookshop café job (because that is infinitely more relevant - one day, my hoardes of screaming book fans may need coffee) of at least three days, including weekends.
6. A temporary writing residency at a local centre for children's literature.
7. Some freelancing (to make it sound far more legit than it is) for a reading project run by a local arts centre. 
8. Maintaining old friendships, which have conveniently scattered themselves across the country.
9. Making new friends, so as to not be sad and lonely. 
10. Seeing a boyfriend who works 9-5 weekdays. 
11. Sleeping.
12. Reading, so as to become a more rounded human being. 
13. General life requirements, such as maintaining personal hygiene. 
14. Pretending that I'm taking this blogging thing seriously. Again.

And currently I am either tragically behind on or entirely ignoring options 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13 and 14.

So yeah. Be right back.

I'm Back!...Again

I feel like my relationship with blogging is reflected in the way most people feel about exercise. I know it's good for me and I know that really I've got no excuse not to, so every six months or so I'm like, "WOO, BLOGGING YEAH." Then I delete a load of old stuff, write two posts of whatever I'm currently feeling constitutes a 'theme', forget about it for three months and get all:

But slowly the guilt starts to kick in (not to mention all the applications for writing work that ask me for a link to my blog and I'm sat there thinking, "I HAVE ONE OF THOSE, YES, YES...oh. Balls."), and eventually I go trudging guiltily back to the blog with a sheepish attempt at a new theme / commitment strategy.

Take this post, for instance. I have a million things to do and three hours to do them, but I still had the idea for this blog post, started it (as in, wrote the first sentence) and then spent twenty minutes scouring the internet for a gif showing that bit in He's Just Not That Into You where Jennifer Connelly smashes a mirror, disappears and comes back with a dustpan and brush. And when I couldn't find it, was like,

Much like somebody getting their running gear on again, getting halfway down the street, feeling the beginnings of their first stitch, turning round and going home. 

And yet, here I still am. And once again, here I'm intending to stay. Theme and commitment strategy as yet undecided.

So, I imagine what will follow is a three-day revamp of the blog in which I battle between the self-deprecation of feeling as though everything I have previously written is shite and the self-indulgence of feeling that if I delete everything then it was all for nothing, and then radio silence. I have figured out how to add new pages though so, you know, that's something!

But you never know, I could end up like this:

Dying, but still going. 

No Make-Up Selfies

If you're not reading this in the immediate aftermath of the 18th/19th/20th March 2014, you will probably neither remember or care what I'm talking about.

But anyway.

The latest craze to have overtaken social media is the No-Makeup Selfie, purportedly to promote Cancer Awareness, and I really cannot decide where I come down on this. Having been nominated this morning, I naturally thought the internet was the appropriate place to voice my concerns before ultimately caving to social expectation. So here goes.

1. What does being make-up-less have to do with cancer?
Well...yeah. I had seen four or five make-up-less selfies before I realised the link to Cancer Awareness, and it's not exactly where your mind jumps. As a promotional campaign it's pretty vague, which then creates the danger of people uploading these selfies with no idea or real perception of what they're supporting. But then...

2. Cancer Awareness is a worthy cause regardless of how it's being promoted.
True 'dat.

3. Being 'aware' of cancer is vague and non-comittal.
'Cancer awareness' is an extremely non-specific banner. EVERYONE is 'aware' of cancer, so what are you actually saying? Are you promoting regular check-ups, like Coppa Feel? Are you promoting the general fight against cancer, like Cancer Research? Are you promoting support for those with, and the families of those with cancer, like Macmillan? Are you promoting the charity that supported you and your loved ones through whatever your personal experience with cancer has been, like the hospice that looked after my grandad during the final stages of lung cancer?

4. Why not more donations? Put your money where your face is.
And while we're on that, don't just promote when you can actively support. It's preachy, but whatever your circumstances, if you're willing to put a no make-up selfie on the internet, you should be willing to make a donation - it's only £3, and it's as simple as texting BEAT to 70007 for Cancer Research, 70099 specifically for Breast Cancer.

5. But discussions on social media seem to be far more focused on ego-boosting than cancer support/awareness.
If I see one more selfie where the only thing being said in the comments is, 'You're gorgeous anyway babe!', 'Stunning' or - most infuriatingly - 'Well done!' I'm going to scream. NOT THE POINT.

6. But social media is a great tool for great causes, and should be used as such more often.
Generic irritation with Facebook commenters aside, it's nice to see Facebook being used for a good cause, and not to spread the news of what sandwich that guy you knew at school is eating for lunch today. It is profoundly unfair, for instance, to be as cynical over this as the NekNominate fad that was all over social media last month. Questionnable motives aside, it's good to see Facebook doing good.

7. Why is going make-up less such a big deal?
This is a different rant, really, but why is wearing no make-up such a sacrifice? People shave their heads, bathe in beans and jump out of planes for charity - it's a shame that this is seen as an equivalent.

8. It's a great idea, but why not make it more relevant?
Along the same lines - if you're going to post a no make-up selfie, why not make it relevant to the cause you're championing? Contemporary body image and the media's promotion of 'beauty' are both infuriating attitudes, well worth fighting against - and then at least more people would understand the point you're making. This, I understand, was actually the origin of the no make-up selfie; author Laura Lippman going barefaced to support Kim Novak, after she was criticised for her looks at the Oscars. It's hard not to be cynical when 'Cancer awareness' has just been slapped on as justification for a fad nobody quite understands the point of.

9. Cynical attitudes are as prevalent as supportive ones.
As I have clearly demonstrated, scepticism and questioning are accompanying this craze with at least as much vigour as cancer awareness / support - The Independent, the Daily Mail and God only knows how many blogs have challenged it - justifiably and understandably so. But...

10. It's obviously working.
The Telegraph reckons the no make-up selfie has raised over £1 million in 24 hours for Cancer Research - and you can't really say fairer than that.

Ultimately, there is no simple answer. I and many others can and will question the sincerity and the purpose of the no make-up selfie for cancer awareness until we're blue in the face, but you can't argue with figures. However many people miss the point, consider it a sacrifice to go make-up-less or 'forget' to post anything about the supposed cause, if money is being raised for charity then I will shut up and cave: