Even young readers can be trusted to make their own meaning from the stories they read

There is a difference between leaving spaces that invite the reader into the story, allowing them to make up their own minds about events and characters; and leaving gaps in the narrative.

Obviously different readers want different levels of ownership and involvement with what they read. The more imaginative they are themselves, the more they want the freedom and excitement of being invited in to be part of the story. They want to immerse themselves in the actions, the emotions and the lives of the characters without too many interruptions for extra details. They want to cut to the chase, and be trusted to either go back or pass over anything that they don’t immediately understand. Other readers want more spoon-feeding. They want everything spelled out in black and white with no room for questions, doubts, surprises. Catering for different types of readers requires a delicate balancing act on the part of the writer.

Every author and publishing house needs to sell books. And each book must have, not only a powerful story to tell, but a unique way of telling that story. To engage as many readers as possible there must be a certain amount of trust that develops between the reader and the writer. The spaces deliberately left in the text must work for as many and varied readers as possible. Those who want to enter into the story, and see at least some part of themselves reflected there, and those who would rather all the ends were tied up tight. For me it’s a tight wire act that requires, skill, restraint, passion and a good dollop of patience. The last thing I want to do is simply satisfy the expectations and conventions around stories for young people. I want my readers to finish the story with some questions still to ask, some scenes that stick in their minds, ones they puzzle over. At the end of the story I want them to ask ‘I wonder what happened next?’ That way those characters, and that story, will stay with them long after they have closed the book and put it away.

I am grappling with this at the moment, putting the finishing touches on my new book, Goldfields Girl. Wish me luck.

On our beach – the real one.

Who could imagine all the sights, sounds and physical sensations of a summers evening on Cottesloe Beach inside the Spare Parts Puppet Theatre in Short Street, Fremantle? Certainly not me.

In spite of seeing the Spare Parts creative team pull off many miracles over the twenty or so years I have been associated with them, I really struggled to visualise just how they could simulate an interactive beach experience for audiences, ranging in age from 5-95, in their latest show, On Our Beach. Having read the pre-publicity and noted that the audience would not  be seated, and that I would be asked to take off my shoes and socks, I was driving down the coast towards Fremantle with no idea how this would work. The wind was coming straight off the frozen wastes of Antarctica. Showers of squally rain were beating against my windscreen and the heating inside my car was turned up high. For the first time ever, I wasn’t looking forward to going to the Spare Parts Theatre. ‘What were they thinking?’ I was asking myself ‘Proposing a day at the beach in September when there is at least a 50/50 chance that the weather will be foul.’

An hour later I had watched the sun set over the water while resting on my beach towel, played beach volleyball, had a barbecue (inedible) and been ‘swimming’ along with about fifty other people, young and old, all totally engrossed in the shared experience. The Spare Parts team has done it again!

On Our Beach, at 1 Short Street, Fremantle until October 12th, has to be seen to be believed.

Historical fiction titles by Elaine Forrestal

As a lover of both fiction and history I am very keen for these literary siblings to live harmoniously together. But, as in all families, niggling differences of opinion get in the way of harmony and an unwillingness to compromise often prevents the insight needed to move forward. With one party insisting on hard evidence and the other side claiming that accessibility is the key needed to unlock any real understanding of that evidence, the arguments go round in ever decreasing circles.

Is it better to publish the bare facts and consign them to a life of gathering dust on a shelf somewhere? Or to tell the story, filling in the obvious gaps based on our thorough research into the character and the era in which they lived, in order that the essential truth of the story can reach a much wider audience? There are lessons to be learned from the mistakes of history, but it takes a sprinkling of fiction to bring those lessons into sharp focus and encourage a much wider spread of people to access them. In this way we can at least hope to learn those lessons and avoid, as far as possible, making the same mistakes again.

The questions posed by our past will not even be debated, let alone answered, unless history is told in a way that engages the young reader. These are the readers for whom the last century is already as remote as the Middle Ages. How will they avoid making those same mistakes again if the stories they need are trapped inside dry and dusty tomes. We must, at the very least, make them aware of the wealth of knowledge and information available in a fictional format. The same information – just in a different wrapper.

As I was preparing to celebrate Someone Like Me being continuously in print for 21 years with Penguin Books Australia (now Penguin Random House) I got out my Scrap Book file and started to re-read some of the letters that kids, and sometimes parents and teachers, have written to me. They are, of course, fascinating!

From quaint handwritten and illustrated ones to the more recent emails, some just a few lines long, others a page and a half, they are all precious. Some are barely legible, written in pencil with invented spelling or emailed in texting language, but I have made it a firm policy to reply to each one individually within 24 hours – if humanly possible. I value this interaction with readers. They so often have interesting things to say and sometimes give me ideas for future stories. Some of those letters have become the starting point for friendships  or mentorships that have lasted for months, even years. In one case a teacher from Victoria, who had been reading Someone Like Me to his classes each year for several years, was coming to Perth for a brief visit. He arranged to meet with me over coffee, and brought with him several copies of the book to be signed for himself and the school. He had also had requests from his students to bring back photographs, just to prove that he had actually met me and wasn’t pulling their legs.

I treasure these letters and bundles of them are now held in my personal archives at the Battye Library, where anyone can read them. But it wasn’t until last week that I became aware of just how many lives this book has touched in the last 21 years. Fingers crossed that it will continue to do so for many years to come.

Elaine Forrestal with a range of cover roughs and artwork for Someone Like Me

It’s hard to describe the feeling when you first see the cover image of your new book. You live with your own images of the characters running around in your head for so long. While you are writing, editing, re-writing, you are dreaming, imagining, seeing them in your mind’s eye as they face the dangers and carry out the tasks required for their story to be told. Then suddenly there it is – someone else’s version of the person you have got to know so intimately.

Early on in my writing career, while I was still in the ‘short stories for very young children’ phase, I made a couple of attempts at illustrating my stories. But I quickly realised that, for me, the words created the pictures. My bundle of colouring pens and aquarelles could only produce a stiff imitation of the lively, active and well rounded characters who already existed in my head. So when I saw, and fell ion love with the first cover images for my new book, Goldfields Girl, there was a mixture of pride and amazement. Someone else had seen the same dominant features in Clara as I had. There she was looking larger than life, standing in the wide Coolgardie street in 1894. Strands of hair had escaped her ‘do’ and blown across her face as she stares out at the reader with a mixture of inner strength and determination, and just a dash of sadness around her full lips. It is easy to see that she is a complex character, larger than life, but vulnerable deep down.

I can’t actually show you the roughs just yet. Marketing departments, distributors, book shops and other interested parties have still to be consulted. But stay tuned. It won’t be long now.

Elaine Forrestal with manuscript of Goldfields Girl

I’m nudging up against the deadline when my changes to the structural edit of my manuscript, Goldfields Girl, have to go back to my editor. Yes, this is the same manuscript that used to be called Life Blood, but that’s what a structural edit is all about. Going over the manuscript line by line and questioning everything, including the title.

I’m not very good at titles. I usually want them to be catchy, a little poetic, metaphorical, personal. Of course that’s not what the marketing people at publishing houses want. For them it has to be practical, easy to remember, enticing, and to tell the potential reader something about the story. Fine. I may not be good at titles, but I am good at listening to the people in the Marketing Department. They are the experts and I’m happy to hand the task over to them. In any case, I’m much more interested in what’s inside the cover than what’s on it. That’s why I love the whole editing process. I love the words, their multiple meanings, their rhythm and the way they look on the page. I’m interested in the characters and making them come to life. In Clara Saunders’ case in bringing her back to life. The catch is, once I have done that I don’t want to let her go. That’s why, for me, the serious editing phase of any book never really ends – until it has a cover. After that I know I will have to live with it. I dare not read it again for fear of regretting my final choices. But hey, a deadline is useful. It forces me to let go, to stop agonising over every thing. Without it I would go on changing things for ever, just trying to go deeper and deeper into the story and to hold on to the characters I have come to love.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates.

Australian cover of Someone Like Me

Amidst all the excitement of Children’s Book Week, with its revelations of brand new talent and acknowledgements of familiar favourite authors, it is good to know that some of the past winners of Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards still survive and even thrive.

In the present era, when it is often said that books have the shelf-life of milk, Possum Magic by Mem Fox and Julie Vivas has recently celebrated 35 years in print since it was first published in 1983. And on the 6th September it will be acknowledged at The Literature Centre in Fremantle that Someone Like Me, my second novel, which also won a CBC Book of the Year Award and has been published in the UK and translated into Slovenian and Italian, is now regarded as an Australian Classic. It  has been continuously in print for 21 years.

Yay! Let’s have a party! And wish all of this year’s winners every success and a long career in the fascinating world of children’s books.

Miss Llewellyn-Jones and Teddy resting their feet at Subiaco Library

Love Your Book Shop Day got off the a great start when Miss Llewellyn-Jones was getting out of her car in the Subiaco Library car park. A 4yr old who happened to be passing by with his dad, asked loudly and curiously, ‘Why is she dressed up?’ That gave me (aka Miss Llewellyn-Jones) the perfect opening to have a conversation with them both about Love Our Book Shop Day and the fact that we would be telling stories and having fun with Miss L-J’s washing.

And our luck held for the rest of the morning. The sun shone, children came and went, with or without their parents who were shopping at the Subiaco Saturday Markets next-door or changing their library books. Miss Llewellyn-Jones kept telling her story and Dymocks Subiaco staff and management smoothed the way for the event, which was held in the library because the Dymocks book shop is too long and narrow for such an expansive person as Miss L-J. However the people there are full of enthusiasm and knowledge about books and the library was happy to provide a bigger venue.

Many thanks to everyone involved. We are already looking forward to next year when, hopefully, we will do it all again – with a different story.

Elaine Forrestal disguised as Miss-Llewellyn Jones

Miss Llewellyn-Jones has lost her washing again. If you see her searching for it outside Dymocks Subiaco Book Shop, or at the Subiaco Library between 10am and 11 am next Saturday, go up and talk to her. She will tell you the stories of how the wind blew, many times, and took her washing away on all sorts of unusual adventures. And if you already know the story you might be able to answer one of her questions and win a prize. She will be giving out books to anyone who can help her find her well travelled washing, and telling some of her other stories as well.

Award winning illustrator, Kelly Canby, also loves Dymocks Subiaco and will be painting a Miss-Llewellyn scene on one of the shop windows on Saturday morning. She and her son, Will, talk to Miss Llewellyn-Jones when they see her shopping in the store with her grand children, Isaac and Naomi. Although on those occasions Miss L-J is heavily disguised as Elaine Forrestal.

We hope to see you in Subiaco on Saturday morning. If not, go along to your local book shop on Love Your Book Shop Day – Saturday 10th August 2019.

The Hole, by Kelly Canby, The Happiness Box, by Mark Greenwood, Puddle Hunters, illustrated by Karen Blair, took the top three spots in the WA Premier’s Awards

Hearty congratulations to all the winners, shortlisted authors,  illustrators and everyone who entered the new, revamped  WA Premier’s Literary Awards !

‘But …,’ you are entitled to say. ‘What about YA?’ ‘What about creative non-fiction?’ ‘What about …?’ The list goes on. We all know that this year’s Awards are not perfect. But they are a new start. The judges this year were invited to make comments on things that needed to be improved. They  have raised several relevant points and made suggestions about how the competition can be improved for next year. For now, suffice it to say that there will be a ‘next year’, which is a relief after such a damaging hiatus. As Lesley Reece said to the Minister for Arts and Culture on the night, ‘We punch above our weight here in WA, with more successful writers, per capita, than any other State in Australia. We deserve support –  and more funding.’

Good on you, Lesley! You are such a trouper!