Karen Ball

What does a writer do when she's between deadlines? Relax, that's what! For the past six weeks I've had the rare writer privilege of a break between commitments. It's been glorious and I've had lots of fun. I've sewn, I've knitted, I've met friends, I've gone away, I've exercised and I've had my weekends free. Oh, the luxury of 48 hours in which to do nothing but please myself! 

A couple of weeks ago I went to see David Nicholls at Book Slam give his last ever reading from One Day. A few days later, I caught the train to the Cambridge Literary Festival to join fellow author, Helen Moss*, for a day of literary entertainment and thinking. (Oh, and eating. And maybe a bit of drinking.) 

This year I've had the great honour of being on the organising committee for Undiscovered Voices 2012, along with Sara O'Connor, Sara Grant and Elizabeth Galloway. The planning started long ago, way back in 2009 when we'd meet regularly to discuss how the third anthology would work. Fast forward a year to an autumnal evening and our eight judges - including editors, agents, a bookseller and a literary scout - had gathered to decide on the 2012 Undiscovered Voices long list.

Want to know what happens on an Undiscovered Voices judging evening? Well, we could be sure from the out set that not everyone would agree. To begin, there was pleasant chat over refreshments, whilst everyone probably secretly yearned to get stuck into the nitty gritty of the selection process. Finally, people settled into their chairs clutching reams of paper. Everyone present knew which extracts had made them passionate and which they could see potential in. 

Sara Grant proceeded to do a highly professional and admirable job of steering the conversation. I and others made sure people's glasses remained filled and that extracts were easily on hand should judges need to refresh their memories. 

Then I sat back and watched, whilst keeping my lip firmly buttoned. (I wasn't allowed to influence the judges' decisions.) What did I witness? Voices raised? For sure. Arms flung into  the air? Certainly. Cries of incredulity or frowns of bemusement? Sometimes. But the one thing that made a very big impact on me was the passion. Not once did I hear an agent or an editor talk cynically about 'market demands', 'list requirements' or even 'trends'. Never, ever did I hear an extract dismissed because it wasn't working hard enough. If judges were discussing a piece of writing, it was because someone in the room liked it. If the corners of a diamond were a bit rough, I heard editors enthusiastically agree about how those corners could be smoothed. 

These were professionals engaging with a writer's craft and talent and bringing their own craft and talent to the table. I lapped it up. As we locked up the building at the end of the night, and made our way home by the amber glow of street lights, I marvelled at something new that Undiscovered Voices had done. It had reminded me that in these sometimes exhausted, sometimes trying and sometimes cynical times the professionals at the heart of our industry are there because they believe in and engage with story. For one blessed night, no one present had to answer to anyone other than themselves for what they wanted to see progress. No one had to consider a marketing strategy, or author promotability (they didn't know who the authors were!) or past sales figures. They just had to think about which stories they liked - and, let me tell you, there was a lot this panel of judges liked.

I'd always known that Undiscovered Voices helped authors' careers. I hadn't realized it helped editors, agents, booksellers and literary scouts shine their brightest, too. When authors struggle to achieve publication, it's an often-heard gripe that the powers-that-be are wilfully slamming doors in their faces. On the evidence of Undiscovered Voices, that simply isn't true. Undiscovered Voices is helping careers all over again. And we haven't even got to launch night yet...

Find out if there's a librarian who can connect with your research topic. Now, you're talking! A visit is essential, if you ask me - it helps the librarian get to know you, care about you, want to help six months down the line when you email with an infuriatingly tiny detail that needs researching. A good expert librarian knows everyone in the field who knows anything about your topic. Ah, experts...

There's a really straightforward way of cutting to the nub of research: find an expert and ask them a question. I have been blown away by the number of people who are not only willing but enthusiastic to help, often providing much more crucial information than I ever asked for. This is, I'd argue, one of the most thrilling moments of research. A conversation, an answer, another simple question ... and suddenly a whole new aspect of your novel has opened up. The novelists of this world owe a huge debt of gratitude to the academics of this world. Where would we be without them?

What I've enjoyed most about this process is touching base with the academic world again for the first time since leaving university. Pursuit of knowledge. It's a marvellous, empowering, generous thing. I feel humbled in the face of it. I've also learned to stop feeling as though I don't deserve it. That A-level 'E' grade was so much nonsense that got in the way of years of enjoyment. I'm glad that writing has allowed me to rediscover the pleasure of the past.

Earlier in the week I attended the launch party for Lil Chase's debut novel, Boys For Beginners. It was held at Daunts bookshop in Holland Park. The Daunt bookshops are gorgeous. One of my first jobs was round the corner from Daunts on Marylebone High Street, and I used to wander around there, dreaming of the travel books I might one day buy for the holidays I might one day be able to afford.

I love the above photo of Lil signing copies, taken from the open doorway of the shop. It's a picture to warm the heart of any aspiring writer. This is the doorway you may one day walk through to sign copies of your debut novel beneath gently glowing lamps. I also like that Lil is slightly isolated in this captured moment. Well wishers crowded around her all evening, but the author experience can be very isolating - even in the midst of excitement like this.

Lil's story is one I know she won't mind me sharing and it's a salutary one. Boys For Beginner's has been in her life and mind ever since she wrote the first draft as a child. Some kind parent kept that draft and it still exists today. Who knew that so many years later it would become an actual, real book! Though the journey wasn't easy. Lil was lucky to have a brilliant agent, Julia Churchill of Greenhouse, on her side and to encounter an innovative publisher in Quercus.

Quercus - announced publisher of the year in 2011 - have been busy setting up a new children's list. I think that whoever commissioned Lil Chase is a very clever person indeed. New children's list in need of a quality writer of humorous fiction? Lil's your woman. She's no one hit wonder, either. A reviewer suggested that Lil might be the new Louise Rennison. I believe that with the right guiding hand from a forward-thinking publisher, this reviewer could be spot on. Lil is the type of author a publisher wants to invest in. 

I also really like that Quercus took on a humorous novel that I know would have left other commissioning editors twitching. It's funny. It has a female protagonist. It's about football. I can just HEAR some of the conversations going around some tables in some publishing houses. Girls don't do football - or that can be the dangerous concensus. Quercus were brave enough to ignore these silly rules of publishing, and they have a fabulous book and author because of it.

One last thing. I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about humorous fiction. It's often overlooked. People think it's easy. People think it's easy because they don't understand it. There are many, many crafts that can be learnt on the writing journey. How to be funny? You can either do it or you can't. It's that simple and that mysterious. I adore humour for its deep 'unknowability'. Oh, and the fact that it puts a smile on my face whilst reading. Smiling - it's not a complex emotional reaction, and I think that's another reason people can be snobs about humour. The emotion it provokes is not complex enough for people to think it's important. But where would we all be without a good laugh or friends that make us laugh? Hanging from the rafters, that's where!

So. I've claimed humour can't be learned and isn't about craft. But you can see the utter levels of discipline and craft in Lil's writing. Hers isn't the breezy first person narrative, casually tossing familiar jokes to the reader because, 'Look! I'm whacky, me!' This is an extremely carefully crafted novel. The jokes are clever and placed with precision. Lil thinks hard about her writing and it shows.

Lil didn't just make me smile. She made me think, 'I could never do this.' 

I look forward to watching the rest of her career!

The great thing about being an editor and a writer is that you get to meet all sorts of creatives in various fields of publishing. You quickly learn that there's a lot of cross pollination! When I discovered that an editor I knew had also just had her first picture book published, I was really keen to find out what goes into this most mysterious (to me) area of writing and publishing. How does a person write a picture book? What's the publication process like? I was really pleased when Rebecca, author of Enormouse! agreed to be interviewed. I hope our chat sheds light on the process for you, too.

My mum and dad were both book designers, so I was brought up in a house stacked to the rafters with visual stimulus. It would have been hard not to have been affected by that. If you ask my mum, she'll tell you I was wielding a pencil professionally at 18 months. That aside, I do remember I won a Blue Peter badge in a drawing competition aeons ago, so I suppose you could say my artistic 'trajectory' did start at a tender age. In terms of formal training, I took art at GCSE then A level, did a foundation course at Chelsea School of Art, a Fine Art/English degree at Oxford Brookes and then an MA in Sequential Design/Illustration at Brighton University.

Here are five of what I think are golden rules (not all of which I manage to stick to myself):

1. Every word counts, and your text must have cadence and rhythm.

2. Read your writing aloud over and OVER again while you're drafting and redrafting it; that's how your book will be transmitted, so that's how it must work.

3. Characters need to look consistent throughout in terms of proportions, features, colour palette, etc.

4. Don't be too arch or adult in humour. It's not good to patronise your audience, but there's a  limit to what your target age group can grasp. Of course, you can still throw in little gags to  keep your weary grown-up reader entertained; we all know the best books are the ones that appeal to adults and children.

5. Test-run everything past your target audience to see if it has the desired effect. If not, head back to the drawing board...

Erm, I'm trying to remember if I had any input from other people about the details. I know my  mum came up with the idea of the enormous mouse made of mice - not sure I should really thank her for that - but otherwise I think outside input mainly consisted of reckless encouragement to ramp up the existing detail. It took me about 5 days in total to paint a really complex spread - for example, the one with the squirrels inside the caravan - otherwise a bit less. I used Dr. Ph. Martin's Radiant Inks, coloured pencils, some gouache and a fair amount of wine. And packets of Minstrels.

This is going to sound a bit stupid, but I didn't think about how abstract the central idea is until the book was published and I started pondering how to talk about it at events. I think I'm  going to need to link the theme to children's own experiences, to anchor it in their reality. At  the same time I don't want to make it sound worthy and cheesy and adult and dull by saying something like, 'Hey, kids, do you know that every teeny tiny light you turn off around your house make a big thing like saving our world happen', so if anyone out there has any bright ideas, I'm open to suggestion! In terms of Egmont being on board from the start, as a company their focus is very much on innovation and ideas, so I think it fitted well within their ethos and was something they were happy to get behind.

Yes, it was very strange being an author/illustrator with them as well as an editor, not that any of that was their fault. It was tough being in-house and working in the industry and having all that insider knowledge of the current publishing climate, especially regarding picture books. I also struggled with feeling like a bit of a fraud, despite being a Blue-Peter-badge-winning drawer. In fact I'm still struggling with that. But then I'm also still struggling with feeling like a fraudulent editor after 12 years in the industry, so maybe I just need to get over myself.

Without wanting to sound too X-Factor, trust your writing, and don't try and being anything  other than yourself. Kids can spot artifice a mile off, a bit like dogs can smell fear. In fact, I think they can do that too. Never underestimate your audience.

Thanks so much, Rebecca! There's lots I relate to here: feeling like a fraud and a reliance on wine and chocolate being a few points we have in common.

How about you, readers? Do you have experience of the picture book industry? Do you have your own chocolate recommendations?

I don't believe that anything like this has ever been attempted before. It's an administrative, logistical and creative feat - which is why it's so exciting. 40 authors working together to raise the online profile of children's writers - what's not to like?

Make sure you join in the fun - I suspect there will be giveaways aplenty. And maybe even some virtual cake, perfect for those of us watching our waistlines...