Season changes, clocks move back ..... by Miriam Halahmy

September has always been on of my favourite times of the year. I was a teacher for 30 years and by the end of the six week break, I was ready to get back to school and get on with the job. August always seemed to be a rather tired out month to me -  a bit of a con.

This is the poem I wrote about August, published in my collection, Cutting Pomegranates :-

 Cheating on me

         © Miriam Halahmy

Here comes August

old prostitute

flowers faded in her red-dyed hair.

She struts her green stuff

along days already crisp-edged,

nights dark before ten.

All through parched June

classroom stiff with tired bodies

I dream of holiday

cheer myself hoarse at sports day

comfort the losers.

I wave my girl off to camp

then it’s my turn;

August

air laced with that carbon cocktail.

As we shave short the lawn

lock up, head for the hills

the sun angle shifts;

in see-through vest

you tease us, August,

long-limbed shadow of winter.

But September is a time to sit up, take stock and embrace the change of season. Conkers ripen on the trees, leaves are crisp and crunchy underfoot and there is a smell in the air of carbon which heralds the great annual change from the mantle of spring to the stripped bare landscape of winter. The nights are drawing in, adults start muttering about putting on the central heating and the final grass cut of the year is only a couple of weeks away.

Out on the streets the kids are walking, biking, chewing and chattering their way to school in new uniforms, massive backpacks on their shoulders.
And writers are facing their September. Back to neglected laptops and dust piled desks, mounds of books, research notes, coffee cups rimmed with stains forgotten since July. The diary is jam packed with visits, blogposts to write ( like this one) requests, demands, hundreds of emails screaming for attention, meetings, hesitant enquiries to editors/agents/reviewers/ commissioners/ returning from their holidays to mounds of similar requests and running to catch themselves before everything slides off their desks.

September is a too short month and it seems as though it flies by the seat of the pants, tumbling into October and finally there's time to breathe. The diary is set, the final warmth of summer is gone, the nights are dark and there's time to sit back, take stock, read the pile of books leftover from summer on the beach and spend some time with friends.

I need this change over to galvanise me into a winter of work. But without the fresh impetus of September after the final clocking down days of the summer, I don't think I would ever be ready to enter the long dark tunnel of winter and make good use of the time to write.

Changeover times - we all need them.

www.miriamhalahmy.com

The One Line Pitch by Miriam Halahmy

Kathryn Schultz, writer of the Guardian First Book Award for Being Wrong, Adventures in the Margin of Error, said, “One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was that I’d be ready to start writing( my novel) when I could outline it on a Post-It note.”

This was not the way I started to write my novel, HIDDEN.

I started with a thought. I was walking on the beach where my parents used to live on Hayling Island. I had been doing a lot of work with refugees and asylum seekers and had published both fiction and non-fiction on the subject. A thought came into my head. What if two teenagers rescued an asylum seeker from the sea and hid him in a hut to save him from being deported?

That was enough to get me started on my first Y.A. novel. I hadn’t even heard the term Y.A. at that time. But gradually I met other Y.A. writers, some well known – Malorie Blackman, Melvyn Burgess, Meg Rossoff, David Almond. – and many wannabees, like myself. My novel began to take shape and as I was writing a new idea began to form and then a third. But I certainly didn’t have my novel crystallised into the one-line pitch sentence so beloved of agents and editors.

For Example - Artemis Fowl, Diehard with fairies. Brilliant.

Then I met the writer, Julia Golding and attended a talk by her. I had already complete HIDDEN and was looking for an agent. I had begun the second book, ILLEGAL, and was planning the third, STUFFED. Julia told us that we absolutely must be able to describe out novels in one sentence. Impossible, I thought. You have ten minutes, she told us and then we’ll share.

Crikey! Where to start?

But it was one of the best writing exercises I ever did.

Here was my one line pitch for HIDDEN :-

Two teenagers find an illegal immigrant washed up on a beach and hide him to save him from being deported.

It was a winner from the start. I only had to say it to an agent or editor and they immediately asked to see the book.

Coming up with the one line pitch might not happen until you finish the first draft. But at some point, it is crucial that you find that one line which crystallises the entire book. It is essential for you as a writer because it clarifies the entire premise of your book. It may be the difference between completing an effective novel and coming up with a draft which weaves all over the place and never arrives anywhere.

But it is also essential for grabbing the attention of the gate-keepers. In a busy conference, where those tantalising editors and agents might be constantly surrounded by the super-confident, you might only have 30 seconds to be heard. Make sure you make the best use of that time and blow them away with your one line pitch.

Good luck and happy pitching!