This weekend I have a ton of paperwork to get through and I've just mowed the lawn. Go figure. I just need to fix myself to a chair and do it!
I heard back from an editor at Puffin who kindly looked at One of a Kind, even though Puffin don't usually accept unsolicited manuscripts. She said she enjoyed it and kept reading as she wanted to know what happened, which is a good sign, I think. However, she didn't think it was strong enough for the small and competitive teen market.
She suggested I re-write it for a younger audience and that I change some elements of it. That novel has been redrafted too many times for me to remember and I've had a lot of conflicting suggestions regarding it, so I'm going to put it in a drawer for now.
I haven't done much writing recently as work has been really hectic. We had a twilight inset yesterday on behaviour from an educational psychologist, Rob Long, who summarised his talk into several mantras for us. Let's see if I can remember them:
Fight fire with water
Analyse the behaviour; don't personalise
The problem is the solution not the student
Every mistake is a learning opportunity
I was also contacted this week by a producer at Teachers' TV who was wanting to talk to me about perhaps helping out with a programme. As it turns out they no longer need me, but the producer said she'd keep my details on file. I've been on TV before, in 2004 when I was filmed at my then writer's group, in Westminster for an interactive part of Jeremy Vine's BBC series Page Turners.
Who knows maybe I will be hitting the screens again?!! Now, back to my marking.
I heard back from an editor at Puffin who kindly looked at One of a Kind, even though Puffin don't usually accept unsolicited manuscripts. She said she enjoyed it and kept reading as she wanted to know what happened, which is a good sign, I think. However, she didn't think it was strong enough for the small and competitive teen market.
She suggested I re-write it for a younger audience and that I change some elements of it. That novel has been redrafted too many times for me to remember and I've had a lot of conflicting suggestions regarding it, so I'm going to put it in a drawer for now.
I haven't done much writing recently as work has been really hectic. We had a twilight inset yesterday on behaviour from an educational psychologist, Rob Long, who summarised his talk into several mantras for us. Let's see if I can remember them:
Fight fire with water
Analyse the behaviour; don't personalise
The problem is the solution not the student
Every mistake is a learning opportunity
I was also contacted this week by a producer at Teachers' TV who was wanting to talk to me about perhaps helping out with a programme. As it turns out they no longer need me, but the producer said she'd keep my details on file. I've been on TV before, in 2004 when I was filmed at my then writer's group, in Westminster for an interactive part of Jeremy Vine's BBC series Page Turners.
Who knows maybe I will be hitting the screens again?!! Now, back to my marking.
