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Bernard Ashleyauthor of Johnnie's Blitz
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1 The now-rather-out-of-date Oxford Companion to Children's Literature describes you as a writer of 'PROBLEM FICTION'. You did have, in the seventies and eighties, a reputation for writing urban, socially-aware fiction. Did you consciously set out to grapple with social issues in those early novels? I never set out to grapple with social issues, only to tell a good story - but since my writing has always been set in the world I know - home, school, London - it would be a miracle if something urban and socially aware didn't emerge. 2 You have spent just about all your life in London, and for a good part of your writing career you were the headteacher of an inner London junior school. How did these two aspects of your day-to-day life—being a Londoner, and teaching children in London—feed your imaginative life as a writer. As a doctor would never betray a professional confidence, I have never put children I have taught in my books; but I have now used aspects of the lives they lead, patterns of family life, the ups and downs of being in school. A times a particular event has triggered a story (my urge to kick a football down the school corridor led to Justin and the Demon Drop Kick; and the stranger lurking in a yellow mini outside the school gates led to Your Guess Is As Good As Mine. As a busy headteacher writing for a hobby I limited my research to specific enquiries for particular stories (I enjoy doing the research) - rather than researching a whole way of life, which I'd have to do for, say, a historical novel. If I'm writing it, it must be true. I want my readers to know they can trust me when I say it's a 53 bus that runs from Woolwich to Trafalgar Square; if they can trust me factually, I hope they can trust me emotionally too. 3 Your last full-length novel, Johnnie's Blitz, drew on your own childhood experiences. When did you first become conscious that you were experiencing life in a manner which would make it possible to shape it into fiction?
We all shape our experiences into fiction, we all imagine 'what if?'; most people spend their last conscious moments of each day doing it - it's just that writers set down these thoughts and pursue them. It's fair to say that having a market for them helps, too. My first conscious awareness of the possibility of developing in experience was after I had met the elective mute child who led to my writing The Trouble With Donovan Croft. Being aware of someone for whom things have gone wrong immediately raises the question of whether things will come right - an elementary story shape is there, straight off: will he, won't he - and how? 4 Do you find it easier or more difficult to work as a writer now that you are no longer a headteacher? How DID you get the writing done when you were at school each day? Early in the morning? Late at night? In the holidays? It is faster to work as a writer now that I'm no longer a headteacher, but not necessarily easier. My writing times used to be parts of Sunday and parts of the school holiday, with extra hours put in (by getting up early) as novels worked towards their climax. It wasn't difficult to write as well as being a head - it helped. Had I not had my 'way of escape' (Graham Greene) I shouldn't have been able to do my job. I feel sorry for teachers today because the demands of their work reduce the opportunities they have for that sort of refreshment - and hence the drop-out rate. Having to leave a chapter from one week to the next did have the advantage of letting it marinate! 5 Taking a couple of your novels at random form the shelf—Break in the Sun and Running Scared (both printed in the eighties)—I am struck by the density of the page layout. Small print, lots of lines to the page. Even teenage novels now are published with oversize print. Do you ever feel that recent trends in fiction publishing for the young have had the effect of making some of your best books slightly daunting to the audience they were written for? Break In The Sun and Running Scared - and the rest of my novels up to Johnnie's Blitz - were published first by a hardback house and reprinted (reduced and on smaller pages) by a paperback house. In their larger format the original hardbacks weren't so dense. Nowadays, with most publishers doing their own paperbacking, the original hardback is going to be the same size as the paperback to follow (certainly for the trade edition); paperback needs are borne in mind from the start. Dense pages of print are off-putting. The other factor is optimum length. Children's novels are reckoned at around 40,000 words for pricing reasons. If a story runs out longer it should still fit the paper budget, so a slightly denser look might ensue. So, yes, many of our backlist titles will seem daunting - which is probably why they don't sell fast and then go off the backlist! 6 Of your early books, which one is most important to you? Is it The Trouble with Donovan Croft, your very first novel? The Trouble With Donovan Croft is still important to me. For a start, it's still in print after 24 years; and the story behind the story is a good one to tell, so I regularly use it when I visit schools. 7 Several of your books have been serialised on TV. Do you enjoy the process of adapting a written story for the visual medium of television? I believe Running Scared began life as a screenplay? Is this true of other novels? The first of my books to be serialised on television was Break In The Sub. A the time I felt unqualified to write the screenplay myself (Alan England made a good job of it). Later, I won out in creating an idea for a 'teenage soap' which was to be made by LWT. Sadly, LWT decided that a Friday evening chat show was cheaper than drama, so my series was never made. Meanwhile, John Davies at LWT had held my hand throughout the scriptwriting process - so when opportunities came later to write for television I always said 'yes'. The first serial I wrote was Running Scared. At the end of it, there was time to novelize the story before the series was shown (not a 'hack' job, I claim conceitedly - it was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal). But the other way round is more fun. Writing Dodgem as a script from my own novel gave more opportunities for invention than writing Running Scared from the sceenplay. Of my other books, Terry On The Fence is a 70 minute film scripted by its director, Frank Godwin; Justin and the Demon Drop Kick
8 Your new novel, due in August 1998, is titled Tiger Without Teeth. Will this be a recognizably Bernard Ashley story, or is it different from anything you've written before. My new novel, Tiger Without Teeth, is the first I've written as a full-time writer. I enjoyed it enormously; from the research into the world of cycle racing to the drafting, redrafting, pacing and editing. I had one of those 'moments' sitting on a Corsican beach last August when I found myself taken by surprise by the way the characters decided to end the story - which was not the way I;d thought. It's not different to anything I've written in terms of style and theme - which I hope doesn't sound too disappointing.. 9 Justin and the Demon Kick (a book which is extremely knowing and humorous about the school staff) is one of a large number of shorter books you've published during the nineties. What lay behind your move from longer fiction for older readers to shorter fiction aimed at the younger or reluctant reader? I started writing younger fiction by invitation. Julia MacRae, my publisher at the time, invited me to write for a series of shorter books which was her new 'Blackbirds' series. The first was I>Dinner Ladies Don't Count; and last week I approved a new cover for a Puffin reprint, so it hasn't done badly. It seemed natural to do more. An invitation to write a series of my own for Orchard Books was welcome (the 'Clipper Street' series), and I've since done the 'Dockside School' series and the 'City Limits' series (for older readers). Like writing for television, the shorter story is a good complement to writing the novel - it also provides the opportunity for some positive reinforcement along the way, in terms of cash and sometimes kudos. (Writing a novel must be one of the longest creative endeavors; you're a long time without feedback.) 10 As you say, many of these shorter books are published in series, and I see that a new Justin title is forthcoming in December. Can you give ACHUKA visitors any insight into the genesis of series of this type. Do the ideas for them always come from the publisher? How about agents, and packagers, and even authors? Series come from both directions - publisher and writer. There's no third way for me because I don't have an agent. Having said which, all the series I've done so far have been suggested by publishers. 'City Limits' is a good example. Orchard Books asked me in 1996 if I would like to write a new series of my own for older readers. I went away and thought of the setting, characters and some outline synopses. The 'Justin' books were my idea for a series, which Puffin liked, and I thought I was on to a winner; but changes in editors has meant that I've had no further commissions (in other words, the editor whose baby this was, with me, has left). I'm saddened because I thought 'Justin' might be a 'William Brown' of the millennium! 11 Your Graffix title, Roller Madonnas, contained a puzzling bit of repartee about pigeon poo. Can you enlighten us? I'm sorry if the pigeon poo repartee in Roller Madonnas is puzzling. It's simply a bit of 'certainly, yes!' dialogue - like 'do cats miaouw?' or 'is water wet?' I'm delighted with the Graffix series, and I've got another title coming in January - Rapid - about a school band, written in response to a request from a reader who wanted a 'Spice Girls' sort of story. Many of your novels include an Acknowledgements section in which you thank individuals for their help with research. How extensive was the work, say, for a novel such as Bad Blood, first published in 1988 but reissued in 1997? As I've said earlier, I enjoy the research. When I need a setting, I go off and seek one out, just like a locations manager for TV. One school closure day I drove off to the Essex coast to find my location for the three-sailed windmill in Bad Blood.
13 What is your working procedure when writing a full-length novel? Do you work with pen or paper, or on computer? How do you correct work? Do you have an 'office'? A novel starts with an idea for a plot moment, for a character, or for a theme. During its writing I need all three. It's very important to have a central character I dribble writing about. A good portent is to have a theme or plot moment that I dread anyone using before my book is published - it means I think I'm on to something good. The early chapters are slow and exploratory. I don't plan much - I let the story develop, the characters start making their own decisions, so to speak. By not over-planning, each session at the desk is like sitting down and telling myself a story. (Writing the novelization of Running Scared, where it was all laid out from the TV script, was more like homework.) I work in a small office (formerly a middle bedroom in a Victorian house). I work with a dedicated word processor, not having much use for a PC, except when I'm 'on the hoof' (holidays, rail travel, good weather in the garden) when I write in a hardback ledger-style notebook, on every other line and on every other page (for clarity of redrafting). I save every chapter on three disks and keep the manuscript, printed chapter by chapter, in a steel filing cabinet in case of fire. I write from 8.30/9.00a.m. until 12.30/1.00p.m., writing, revising, writing, revising. Sometimes I have to go back to it in the afternoon - but mostly this is when I deal with correspondence or visit a school for an author talk. Every fortnight or three weeks a chapter gets printed up. At the end of the book, after a distancing period of a week or so, I revise the whole book on paper, finally transferring the revisions to disk. In the course of writing a novel, the writer changes as a person - we all do, over a year - and the style varies, the 'voice' sounds different. This all has to be pulled together. I then print the whole book again and put it away fro three weeks to a month, so that I can come back to it as a reader, not the writer. I need to have forgotten it. Now I do a final revision and reprint only the necessary pages. Then it's sent off, and I start seeing friends again! 14 Have you ever had to abandon a work in progress? What, for you, is the most difficult section of a book—the first third, the middle third, the last third? The only work I abandoned in progress (apart from a few false starts, which flourish like seeds sewn on stony ground) was Johnnie's Blitz, the firs time round. I wrote three chapters before I had to admit that my own wartime memories were not sufficient to conjure the age. I had to do more research. At the time I couldn't manage that, so I 'bottom drawered' the chapters I'd written. Four or so years later I came across this file and read it - and thought I'd written pretty well in those days... So I did the research, made myself find the time, and wrote the novel. The first third of a book takes the longest, but I'd only use the word 'difficult' for a part of a book that doesn't work, and that can happen anywhere. 15 Most of your novels contain sympathetic adult characters. Is this because you are writing for an impressionable audience, or does it simply harmonise with your view of human beings? Although I have sympathetic adult characters in most stories, they're not allsympathetic - the Bradshaws in A Kind of Wild Justice, Charlie Whitelaw and cronies in Running Scared, Eddie Green in Break In The Sun, Sally's parents in Sally Cinderella, etc., etc. I try to reflect life as it is with my adults; except that sometimes I have the chance to get under the skin of why they're the way they are. 16 Teenage or Young Adult fiction has been much debated recently, and a new type of teenage fiction has evolved since you were writing your own teenage novels in the eighties? What do you make of it? Since the eighties people have come to realise that today's teenagers have it very hard. They have to negotiate their way thorough a minefield of a world. I grew up without ever being offered a drug, I wore the standard dress for all teenage boys, I had very little money to spend on alcohol, and sex was 'safe' if you took precautions (not that there was much of that!). A recognition that times have changed has been slower to come in the publishing world than it has in advertising, but it's there now - and it's good to know that young people can see their world reflected in fiction and find themselves in books. Not to cater for this, from the publishers' end, will mean that teenagers will leapfrog books published for them and go on into adult fiction. 17 If only three of your books could be preserved, which three would they be, and why? If any of my books were to be preserved I should think it a great honour, let alone three of them. One choice would be The Trouble With Donovan Croft because not only did I relish writing against racism but it was one of the early books which was set in an ordinary school; previously, most school fiction was in 'Greyfriars' territory. Johnnie's Blitz would be another, because so far as I can judge it contains some of my best writing. The third would definitely be the one I'm working on now, since it pulls together so much of what I think I'm about. But that's cheating, so I'll go for Janey being preserved as well - if only because I'd like it to have another chance. I don't think it reached the audience it should have. 18 Finally, two questions not directly connected to your career as a children's author. Who would you like to see as the next Mayor of London and what should they try to achieve? The first Mayor of London should be a socialist leader aware of the need for integrated systems in such a large city, who understands its cultural complexities and will fight to preserve its differences - a figure who can speak for all of us. He or she should be independent of the government, not toeing its disappointing party line - which rules out Glenda Jackson, sadly. Ken Livingstone seems to have done little since the GLC died, apart from being a bit of a thorn in the flesh, so it needs someone new, and possibly younger. But who is there? Socialism needs a flag to rally round, but there doesn't seem to be one that isn't either tattered and torn or sewn up awkwardly. I'll certainly vote to keep Archer out, at any cost. 19 If you were still a Headteacher, what would be your opinion of the new emphasis on testing and target-setting? Anyone would think we never set targets before. Good schools always knew where they wanted to go in providing children with an education for fulfilment. The present testing is too narrow, and what is forgotten is the aim to educate the whole person. I often quote a poem I wrote for a Christmas concert because within it is my philosophy of primary education. If school doesn't provide certain opportunities and experiences many children will never have them. Ever. So I'll end by quoting it. I was once...I was once the Mary, a hundred years ago;
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