CAN YOU HELP?
INTRODUCTION

How I came to take up writing
...and why I stopped

In 1981 I was made redundant when the photographic studio and laboratory of which I was manager went out of business. There was a recession at the time, and with jobs being scarce I decided to try to achieve an ambition, to become a children's author.

I swiftly ran off 7 stories and dispatched them to publishers. I was soon in possession of my  first 7 rejection slips. I couldn't understand it They were, in my opinion, at least as good as any of the books I had read to my children.

Although not exactly undeterred, I dispatched them to other publishers. My collection of demoralising rejection slips doubled. And nobody even gave me a hint of where I was going wrong. Rejection slips, which are often not slips at all but apparently individually written letters, rarely do. They usually say something like "Your story is not quite what we are looking for at the moment" or "Thriller/Fantasy/Fairy Tale/Animal/Any-other-subject-you-can-think-of stories are not selling well at the moment".

At first you may get the impression that you have only just missed making a sale, but after you have received the same letter a few times, with just the title of the story changed, you realise that it is a standard letter that the publisher sends back with all rejected manuscripts. It was all very discouraging and it would have been very easy to give up at this point. .

It was two years, many stories and scores of rejection slips before, on Christmas Eve 1983, I received a letter from Hodder and Stoughton expressing an interest in what was to be my first published book, "Charlotte and the Breaker's Yard". The story had already been rejected without comment by six other publishers. The manuscript was not acceptable as it was, but under the guidance of my first editor at Hodder and Stoughton, Jane Osborn, I was able to lick it into shape.

In my mind the heroine of the story was an old-style split-windscreen Morris Minor, but I was asked to change her to a VW Beetle, as having a more international appeal. This led later to comments that I had copied Herbie, the movie star car. I wish I'd insisted on my original conception.

My next book, "High Street Witch" started out as a TV script, because that's where the money is. But it had been rejected by the BBC as being too similar in subject matter to the "Rent-a-Ghost" series they were running at the time, and there was little other market for children's sit-com. I converted it into book form for the same series as "Charlotte" (this particular series was 12,000 words long, for ages 6 to 10) and to my astonishment it was accepted exactly as I wrote it. About 6 weeks after it was published (which takes about 18 months) I was told that the entire edition of 2,000 copies had been sold.

"You'll be printing some more, then," I said.

But no. Hodder's way with successful books was to republish after 2 years. Not even a paper-back edition! (In general hard-back children's books are only bought by libraries; for several years I was in the top 25% for earnings from Public Lending Rights, although this only amounts to a penny or two per borrowing).

It seemed so unenterprising  But they were adamant. That was how they worked, and that was that.

By this time there was a second High Street Witch story on its way through the publishing process, and then "Hubert Ghost's Last Chance", about the misadventures of an  accident-prone trainee ghost. I wasn't making much money, (few children's writers do), but I seemed to be on my way to being a professional writer. I was, by this time, having a few magazine articles published, too, including one about me (and written by me) in "Homes and Gardens". But with my next book offering, a third High Street Witch, I was brought back to reality. My editor turned it down. I tried to meet her criticisms, to no avail.

But then I received a letter from another editor. There had been major changes at Hodder & Stoughton Children's Books, with a new managing editor and a new editor for me. She asked me to re-submit the manuscript, and this time, to my relief, it was accepted. But there were problems. The new managing editor had decided to scrap all the old series and replace them with new. He considered that children of the age that my books were aimed at were no longer capable of tackling books 12,000 words long. The new series for that age was to be 7,500 words, with more illustrations. And they wanted my title changed. I had established a common style to the titles of the High Street Witch books. That had to be changed, so that the new book would not so obviously be a continuation of the old series. Also the title, "Snakes for the High Street Witch" was considered unsuitable for young children, who might be afraid to read a story with snakes in!

And there was more. This was 2 years after the publication of "High Street Witch", and re-publication was due. But not any more. The whole series within which my previous books were published was scrapped.

Up until then I had been using a typewriter, which was a real pain when it came to alterations to the text, since it meant retyping everything until the end of the chapter. Sometimes other chapters had to be retyped, too, if the changes earlier in the manuscript affected them. But that was nothing compared to reducing 12,000 words to the required 7,500. It was time for a new approach. In 1986 I went digital.

My new word processor was a revelation, once I had worked out how to use it. No plug and play in those days. Anything other than straight text had to have arcane codes inserted, on-screen, fore and aft. Once to switch on, say, bold, and again to switch it off. Little switches on the dot-matrix printer had to be set correctly, too. No WYSIWYG, either. Each line on the green-on-black screen was 80 characters long.  Take it or leave it. The computer's total memory was 128 kilobytes, amazingly enough for the WP programme and 10,000 words. There was no hard drive and the 720K discs were £5 each.

But the benefits were enormous. Insert a bit of text and everything else shuffled up to make room for it. A typo? No problem. But while the mechanics were improved immensely, it still wasn't easy to pare the story down; whole episodes had to go, and the remaining text amended to ensure that there was still proper continuity. But at least there was no endless retyping.

Eventually the book was published under the uninspiring title "High Street Witch at the Zoo". But by the time it hit the shelves of the public libraries around the country, I had given up. The writer's life was too vulnerable to the whims and fashions of the publishing trade for me. I was back at work in photography, earning a living wage. I continued to write, but my time had passed. There were more changes in the editorial staff. I submitted another High Street Witch, but was told they didn't want any more. Nor, they said without even being asked, were they interested in any more Hubert Ghost stories. That was discouraging. I was halfway through another one at the time, set in the Tower of London. I had even gone to the Tower one evening, at the invitation of the Chief Yeoman Warder, to talk to him about the day-to-day lives of the staff who lived there.

I carried on for a while longer, trying new characters and other publishers, but without success. I had enjoyed my time as a writer, but it was time to call it a day.

Charlotte and the Breaker's Yard 1985

High Street Witch 1986

Help for the High Street Witch 1987

Hubert Ghost's Last Chance 1987
(also published in Danish by Sommer & Sorenson)

High Street Witch at the Zoo 1988

All published by Hodder & Stoughton Children's Books