Showing posts with label Varjak Paw. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Varjak Paw. Show all posts

Saturday, 15 June 2024

The Writing of Varjak Paw

This piece was written for the British Library's Discovering Children's Books website, and will hopefully be viewable there again soon.  
=============================================


I started writing Varjak Paw in January 1997, inspired by watching my own cat's adventures as he went out into the world for the first time.  Every time I begin a new book, I make a deal with myself: no-one else will ever see my first draft.  That way, I can be completely unselfconscious, safe in the knowledge that however bad it is, only I will ever know!  This is a vital part of my working process, so the earliest document I can share is the 2nd draft of Varjak Paw.  

2nd Draft

This is the first page of the 2nd draft, written in February 1997.  I always write by hand on early drafts, as I find it flows better that way.  At this stage, I imagined an opening in which Varjak climbs a curtain at home.  The only thing that remains from this scene in the published book is a reference on page 35: "even Varjak, who could sometimes make it half way up a curtain before Mother or Father shouted him down."  But some of the description found its way into the scene of Varjak climbing the wall in Chapter Five, which is the pivotal scene of the book.  So although this opening was deleted, the work wasn't wasted; it was all part of the process.  

8th Draft

As other parts of the book developed, the opening remained focused on curtain-climbing until the 8th draft, which was the first one I sent to publishers and agents.  This is the first page of that draft, which dates from late 1997.  By this stage, I was writing the book on my computer as a Word document, which I would then read through and edit on printouts.  

9th Draft

Varjak Paw was rejected by every publisher and agent I sent it to.  However, an agent gave me some very useful feedback on the 8th draft, as a result of which I rethought it, and went back to hand-writing the 9th draft as if it was the first draft all over again, to free myself to reconceive it.  This is the first page of that draft, written in March 1998.  It's a total mess, but this is the first version where you can glimpse the outlines of the opening as it ended up in the published book, so it was a crucial draft.

11th Draft

After three drafts of rebuilding the book from the ground up, I felt confident enough to send it out again.  This is the first page of the 11th draft, which dates from Autumn 1998.  It was another crucial one, because this was the draft that was read by my agent, Celia Catchpole, who took it on and showed it to my publisher and editor, David Fickling.  It was on the basis of this draft that he offered to publish Varjak Paw, while making it clear that he thought it could be improved.  Of course, he was right!

15th Draft

This is the opening of the 15th draft, written in July 2001.  David Fickling believes that you should keep working on a book for as long as it takes to make it as good as you possibly can.  So we had worked very hard on it, and it was getting closer to its final shape, now opening with Varjak's desire to go Outside.  But big things were still changing; it's interesting to see my note to myself to change 'Mum' and 'Dad' to 'Mother' and 'Father', establishing the tone of Varjak's life at home.  

16th Draft

Finally, in October 2001, I wrote a draft that opened with the Elder Paw telling a Jalal tale, as the published book does.  It had been a long, hard process of trial and error, and many things would still change on the 17th draft – but when I wrote the words "The Elder Paw was telling a story," I think I knew it would be hard for me to find a better opening for my book.  

Published



I continued to work on Varjak Paw until October 2002, bringing the total time I spent on it to almost 5 years.  The 17th draft was the last official draft, but it continued to change even after that, as it went through galleys and proofs, and as Dave McKean worked his magic on the text, transforming my Word document into the beautifully-illustrated book that was finally published in January 2003.  Everything had changed, yet the spark at the heart of the book remained the same: the adventures of a cat going out into the world for the first time.



Friday, 2 July 2021

Varjak Paw chosen as one of the 100 best children's books of the past 100 years!

I have some amazing news! The reading charity BookTrust has put together a list of the 100 best children's books of the past 100 years – and Varjak Paw is on the list!



It's such an honour to see it included as part of a fantastic selection that combines established classics with newer, more contemporary books.  Have a look around the list in full – it includes some of my own favourite books of all time, like Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, Malorie Blackman's Noughts & Crosses, Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard Of Earthsea, Alan Garner's The Owl Service, Jamila Gavin's The Wheel Of Surya, Andy Stanton's Mr Gum, and many many more!

I think there's something for everyone here.  The selection is divided into four age groups: 0-5, 6-8, 9-11, and 12-14.  Varjak appears in the Best Books for 9-11 list.

Huge thanks to everyone who was involved in putting this list together!  I don't find writing easy – Varjak Paw took me 5 years to get right, and I'm currently 8 and a half years into work on my new book TYGER – but things like this make all the hard work worthwhile!


Thursday, 4 March 2021

World Book Day 2021

Happy World Book Day 2021!  This has been a strange World Book Day, because of the lockdown, but I've been inspired to see all the different ways that people have still found to celebrate books and reading!  It's an amazing thing for an author to see their books and characters being celebrated – so here are some of the brilliant pictures I've seen this year, with thanks to everyone who's taken the time to make these astonishing creations! 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, 15 September 2020

The Books That Change Our Lives

A version of this piece was originally written for the CBC Diversity Blog.
=========================================================

I write children's books because I believe they're the books that change our lives.  

My favourite book as a child was Watership Down by Richard Adams.  I've re-read it more than once as an adult, trying to understand why I loved it so much.  As a child, I saw a thrilling adventure story about rabbits trying to survive in the wild.  But now I can see that it's a story about the big questions of human life.  Who are we?  Where do we come from?  Where do we belong?  How should we live? 


I think that's why it meant so much to me.  My family's roots are in the Middle East.  My ancestors were Iraqi, Egyptian, Kurdish and Circassian Muslims.  I grew up in Britain in the 1970s, where such origins were unusual.  Negotiations around identity, difference and belonging were daily facts of my life.  

Even my name was an issue.  It's an ordinary Arabic name, but totally unpronounceable in English!  Whenever it came up, people would question it to such an extent that I ended up using initials, to make life easier for everyone.  


So when I read Watership Down and saw that the hero of the rabbits' myths was called El-Ahrairah, it struck a very deep chord.  The greatest rabbit who ever lived had an Arabic-sounding name?  That gave me what Junot Diaz has described as a feeling of seeing myself reflected; realising my background could be something more than a burden.

A children's book had given me a way to think about myself and my place in the world.  That's why I decided to put everything I have into writing children's books.  I put years and years of work into making each book the best it can possibly be; making them as thrilling as I can, but also filling them with those big questions.  Who are we?  Where do we come from?  Where do we belong?  How should we live?


In my first book, Varjak Paw, these questions are explored through cats and dogs.  Varjak is a cat who's been told that dogs are monsters, and that cats and dogs can never even communicate, let alone be friends!  Yet he transcends these prejudices to make friends with a dog, and learns that a dog can actually be the best and most loyal friend a cat could ever have. 

My most recent book, Phoenix, is set in a galaxy where humans and aliens are at war with each other.  The humans have even built a spacewall to keep the aliens out.  The main characters are a human boy and an alien girl whose lives have both been damaged by the war.  They discover that they have much more in common than they thought possible – and together, perhaps they can even save the galaxy.


I didn't write Phoenix about any specific situation in the real world.  But I did want to explore those ideas of identity, difference and belonging that I've been living with all my life, and that I think lie at the roots of so many situations all over the world.  

Things have changed a lot since my childhood.  People are on the move as never before; hundreds of millions of us now live outside our countries of origin.  One response to that is to build walls.  But another is to build bridges of understanding, as my characters must do to survive.  

Young people everywhere are hungry for stories to help them navigate this world.  My highest hope is that a book like Varjak Paw or Phoenix might help them think about the world, their experiences of it, and other people's experiences, just as Watership Down helped me.  I love the idea that children's books can be bridges connecting people, showing them that however different someone else might seem, the things that unite us are greater than those that divide us.  And that difference can be a source of richness: something to be celebrated, not mocked or feared.


Tuesday, 14 July 2020

Writing The Outlaw Varjak Paw

I never set out to write more than one Varjak Paw book.  I wrote the story of a powerless kitten who gradually comes into his power, and grows into a cat.  For me, that story ends at the end of Varjak Paw.


But writing Varjak Paw, I'd found all sorts of questions I didn't have room to answer in one book.  Take Sally Bones, boss of the meanest gang of streets cats in the city.  Varjak had made a terrible enemy there.  What was going to happen when he went back to the city and met her again?  It was clear that I was going to have to write a sequel to find out.


I have to be honest: I don't usually like sequels.  So often, they feel like a letdown, and as a reader, there's nothing I hate more than a sequel that lets me down.  There was no way I could let that happen with Varjak.  I promised myself there would only be a sequel if it was as good as the first one, if not better.  It needed to be a great book in its own right; a story that could stand alone, and take us somewhere new.


I didn't think it would be that hard.  I already had characters, situations, a world… all I had to do was find a new story.  How hard could it be?  Well, I can honestly say that writing The Outlaw Varjak Paw is the hardest thing I've ever done!  Here was my problem.  In the first book, a powerless kitten becomes a powerful cat.  That's an interesting story.  But a character who has power is just not that interesting.  He can fight his way out of any corner, so where's the story? 


I tried all kinds of things.  I explored the city, and discovered whole new areas I'd never known about.  I met some amazing new characters, like the Scratch Sisters, the Orrible Twins, and of course Buster and Bomballooloo, who I think have the best names of all my characters!  I found out a lot more about the stories of characters like Cludge.  But Varjak's own story just wasn't right.  Nothing felt as interesting as what had happened to him in the first book. 


Around draft eight, I remember losing hope.  I felt sure I'd never complete this book.  I thought I was finished as a writer.  The first book was a lucky accident, but now the truth was clear: I would never write anything else again.  I really, really wanted to give up.  These were very dark times indeed. 


But somehow… those feelings gave me the key to the story.  What if Varjak felt exactly like I did?  What if he believed he'd lost his power, and was finished as a fighter?  How would he survive without the skills he'd learned in the first book?  What would he fall back on then?  The moment I had that thought, the book came to life.  The story came into focus, sharp and clear.  It didn't take long from there to finish it.


The Outlaw Varjak Paw went on to win the Blue Peter Book Of The Year Award – one of the most amazing things that has ever happened to me.  It was recently picked as one of the ten best books ever to win that award, on a list with the likes of Harry Potter, Matilda and The Gruffalo.  So all the hard work was worth it in the end.  


But the experience taught me a very big lesson.  The story is the most important thing.  You should only write a book if you know what the story is, because without that to guide you, you'll get as lost and confused as I did.  So to answer a question I'm often asked: yes, there will be a third Varjak Paw book one day – but only when I'm absolutely sure what the story is! 


Sunday, 3 May 2020

Collaborating With Dave McKean

Dave McKean is one of my all-time favourite artists.  I love the work he's done on books and comics by writers like Neil Gaiman, David Almond and Ray Bradbury, as well as the books and comics he's created himself.  It was a cat he drew in one of these, Cages, that made me feel he would be the perfect illustrator for Varjak Paw.


I can't honestly describe Varjak Paw as a collaboration, as such.  I was just stunned to be working with one of my favourite artists!  The first time we met, I was too in awe to suggest anything to Dave; I just gave him the words, and a fully illustrated text came back.  But his illustrations were so perfect, they seemed like they must have been part of the story all along.  And I was stunned to see how he used not just illustration but elements like layout, typography and white space to create the atmosphere of the book.


By the time I was writing Phoenix, Dave and I were collaborating closely in the course of our adventures in Hollywood and beyond, where we were trying to make a Varjak Paw movie.  All that time, I was telling him things like: "I'm writing a great big space epic about a human boy and an alien girl who have to save the galaxy!  It's full of stars, black holes, dark matter – and also all the gods of all the ancient mythologies, as imagined by aliens in the future.  Do you think you could draw that?"  


To my amazement and delight, he did.

Fortunately, Dave shares my love of both the most cutting-edge science of the stars, and the most ancient mythologies, which also tried to find meaning in the night sky.  So science and mythology inform the two strands of illustration that run through Phoenix. 




One of these strands is all about the stars.  All the time I was working on Phoenix, I was collecting images of stars.  I had a giant book of Hubble Space Telescope photography in front of me as I wrote Phoenix, and then I gave it to Dave, who had it in front of him as he illustrated it.  His images erupt into the text whenever the main character is dreaming of the stars or flying through them as he crosses the galaxy, using alien technology to follow the invisible dark matter connections that unite everything in the universe. 



It was Dave's idea to use fractal patterns to illustrate these connections.  What neither of us knew was that Dave's visualisation of dark matter would look astonishingly similar to the first images of a cosmic web of dark matter made by astronomers, not long after the book was published!


The other strand of illustration in Phoenix draws on mythology.  The aliens in Phoenix believe that all the mythological gods are really stars who come down from the sky to walk among us.  They take different forms in different times, but they're always the same immortal beings, returning again and again through history.  The aliens call them the Twelve Astraeus.

Originally, I wrote lots of material about the Twelve Astraeus, to explain this background.  But it was impossible to find words powerful enough to describe them.  After all, gods and stars should be mysterious and awe-inspiring beyond words! 



Then I came up with the idea of describing them through illustrations and song fragments, rather than prose.  I gave Dave a list of the Twelve Astraeus, with their names and attributes in different mythologies (Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and so on), and asked him to make a series of illustrations depicting each one in turn.

I wrote song fragments to go with the pictures, which give you little hints about them.  So when readers encounter the Astraeus of Love, for example, they can work out for themselves that she's been called Venus, Aphrodite, Ishtar, Astarte, and so on; and even if they don't, they'll feel who she is, without being told.  I find that more powerful than ordinary prose, and having seen what Dave could do on the Varjak Paw books, I designed the structure of Phoenix around this series of illustrations, which became an integral part of the narrative.



As a huge Dave McKean fan myself, it's been such a privilege to share this journey with him.  We once did an event together in London, talking about the process of collaborating to create illustrated books.  Someone in the audience asked him what his favourite work was of all the illustration he'd ever done.  Among the books he named was Phoenix!  Hearing him say that was one of the nicest things that's ever happened to me.


Friday, 6 March 2020

World Book Day 2020

Happy World Book Day 2020!  I'm in favour of anything that celebrates books & reading, whether it's dressing up as a character, making a potato, decorating a door, or any of the other activities I've seen people do with my books!  So here are some fantastic pictures I've been sent & tweeted this year: