Lari’s Writing blog

My writing is not a solitary occupation. I do imagine and scribble and type the stories on my own. But I often do it in busy noisy sociable places. Not sitting-in-a-café-nibbling-cake or gazing-at-inspiring-art sort of places. Even though that was what I’d hoped a writer’s life was like, I never seem to have time!

No, I do lots of writing on trains and buses on the way to book festivals or school visits. And I do a lot of writing outside my kids’ afterschool classes (I was writing a story about dancing giants outside my daughter’s ballet class recently, and I swear the cute little girls in the hall were making more noise than the giants in my head). So I’m often writing surrounded by people and noise.

And I like to involve other people in my writing. I work closely with various editors, and they sometimes point out plot problems and suggest solutions. (I then come up with my own completely different solutions, just to show that I’m my own person, but I always fix the problem.)

But all writers have to work with their editors. I often involve other people too. My own kids have been involved in brainstorming titles and character names (often at bus stops.) And I sometimes read whatever I’ve been writing on the train to whatever children I’m visiting: What do you think? I’ll ask. And I will listen to what they say, often scribbling it down on the ms. But what I’m really looking for is whether they gasp at the right bits… (because then I know it’s working!)

I’ve had research help from readers too: a class in Inverkip Primary did lots of selkie research for Storm Singing.

But this year, I’ve taken involving others in my writing a bit further. This year my publishers Floris ran a competition for readers to suggest a location for the fourth and final First Aid book. (I had already used most of the bits of Scotland that I knew, and I was hoping for new and exciting ideas.) So we offered as the prize the promise that whatever location won would definitely be in the finished book.

That promise was a HUGE risk!

What if everyone had suggested impossible, boring or clichéd places? What if I’d committed myself to setting the book in a supermarket car park?

I was putting the whole future of the book into the hands of the readers.

But I needn’t have worried. We got hundreds of ideas, and they were all FANTASTIC! I could write a lifetime’s worth of adventures based on all those wonderful locations.

So what location won? I’m not telling. Not yet. We’ll announce it on Wednesday. So watch this space!