I'd like to say a very big thank you to Amber Rao and everyone I met at Mercenfeld Primary School for the fantastic welcome they gave me when I visited last week!
I met so many brilliant readers and writers from Years 6, 5, 4 and 3. It was wonderful to see such enthusiasm for reading, to hear about everyone's favourite books, and to answer some really interesting questions about writing Varjak Paw and Phoenix.
We didn't have quite enough time to answer all the questions, so if anyone has more questions, or would like to say anything about the visit or my books, just leave me a comment below. But I was very glad to be able to sign books for everyone who wanted one – so thank you all again for a fantastic visit!
PS! Here's a lovely article from the Leicester Mercury about my visit to Mercenfeld!
This post is based on a talk I gave at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford on January 30 2105, about how my books are inspired by mythology, and by William Blake.
My first encounter with Blake was his poem The Tyger, which I remember studying when
I was at school. This poem just blew my
mind. It seemed so exciting, mysterious,
epic – full of huge, evocative images. Also, it's about a tiger, and I really like tigers! And it seemed mythic to me, and if
there's one thing I've always loved, it's mythology.
Back then, I had no idea that Blake had created an entire
mythology of his own, because the poems in which he did it are not nearly as
well known as The Tyger.But I took in all the mythology I could get. I remember at school, we had a teacher who would stop everything on a Friday afternoon, and read us Greek and Roman myths. Amazing stories about gods and goddesses, heroes, heroines and monsters – and I found these absolutely thrilling.
I went away and read retellings of myths, like the Puffin
Classics written by Roger Lancelyn Green. Not just Greek and Roman myths, but Norse,
Egyptian, and Mesopotamian myths… As
someone whose family came originally from the Middle East, I was delighted to
find that the very oldest written stories we have came from that part of the
world. So they were hugely important to
me.
I was also very interested in modern writers who used myths
in their books. Writers like Susan Cooper and Alan Garner, who in books like The Dark Is Rising and The Owl
Service took ancient British myths and folktales and brought them into the
modern world. Writers like Ursula LeGuin, who invented all kinds of amazing myths in the Earthsea books. Later on, I loved the way Neil Gaiman used
mythology in The Sandman comics; and what Philip Pullman did with it in His
Dark Materials.
These were all great examples of the kinds of stories I
wanted to write myself: stories that were truly mythic.Because I love the idea that myths might be
true in some deep way; that they might express something timeless about the eternal
questions of our lives: Who are we?Where do we come from?Where do we go?What does it all mean?How should we live?
These are the big questions that myths deal with.In our time, I think the place where that
happens is in writing for young readers: in children's and young adult fiction.So that's what I decided to write – although
to me, my books are books for everyone, that anyone can read, whoever they are,
however old they are…
So let me tell you a little about my books. Varjak Paw, my first one, is a book about
cats. These cats tell each other legends
about their great ancestor, Jalal the Paw: the greatest warrior cat who ever
lived, the mightiest hunter, who came out of Mesopotamia and travelled to the
ends of the earth…
Varjak grows up as a kitten hearing these legends, and
wishes he could have adventures like that.
Before he knows it, he has to leave home on his own to save his family;
he goes out into a dark and dangerous city all alone; but in his dreams he
meets the legendary Jalal, who begins to teach him a secret long-lost martial
art known only to cats: the Way. The
myths come to life, and teach him how to live.
Phoenix is an epic myth set in space, where humans and
aliens are fighting an apocalyptic war.
A human boy who loves the stars makes friends with an alien girl, and
together they discover that the stars are
dying. The aliens believe
the stars are alive, and can even come down from the sky to walk among us from time to time. When they do, people are dazzled by them and call them gods and
goddesses, but what they really are is stars.
They've come again and again through history, and these stars – known as the Twelve Astraeus – are the origins of all the ancient pantheons.
They were called different things in different times and places, but all cultures have known them. Above is Dave McKean's beautiful illustration of the Astraeus of Love. She's the origin of all the myths of Venus, Aphrodite, Ishtar and so on. Below is the Astraeus of the Sea, who has been known as Poseidon, Neptune, Njord, Apsu, Tiamat... So in Phoenix, we go back to the origins of all mythology, to try and find out what it really means.
While I was writing Phoenix, I was beginning to read William
Blake again, and to look at his later, more complicated poems. And I discovered that so many of the stories and
writers I loved had been inspired by him.
Because he was one of the first to take ancient mythologies and make
something new from them, something that spoke to his own times and the things
he cared about.
Blake loved mythical, mystical systems of knowledge. A lot of people did in the 18th century; it
was a time when people became interested in unexplained mysteries like
Stonehenge and the Druids, and the lost continent of Atlantis. Many ancient myths were being unearthed and
published for the first time – Icelandic, Germanic, Gaelic myths. For the first time, they were seen as
expressions of deep truths; not silly stories told by primitive people, but
ways of making sense of human experience, dealing with the mysteries of life,
and those big questions I mentioned earlier.
At the same time, Blake was passionately engaged with the
politics of his day, with huge earth-shaking events like the French and American Revolutions.And he was living
through massive changes in the texture of everyday life.The 18th century saw the beginnings of
industrialisation, mechanisation, mass production; the rise of science and
rationality over all things; and some people including Blake felt in response a
hunger for the spiritual, the mysterious, the mythic. In his own time, he was largely ignored, but as
those changes went further in the 19th century, Blake was rediscovered by Rosetti and pre-Raphaelite
artists, and Yeats and mystical poets.Through the 20th century, his work became
more and more relevant; and now in the digital age his reputation is bigger
than ever.
Blake explored all of these things through a mythology that
he created, which he expressed in poetry and art of incredible intensity and
beauty. I should say in all honesty: this is not easy stuff. The first time I tried to read it, I didn't get very far! But if you have patience and stick with it, keep looking at the pictures as well as the words – you do begin to enter a highly charged mythic space that is phenomenally rich and rewarding. It doesn't all make sense or tie up neatly; this is poetry and pictures, after all. But I'm going to try and talk you through some of it, to help you make sense of it, and maybe begin thinking about how you might go about making your own mythology – because I think that's something everyone can do.
If you're interested in mythology, there's a famous 20th century scholar called Joseph Campbell who analysed it in books like The Hero With A Thousand Faces. He identified many elements that are common to all mythologies, because every culture has versions of the same myths, the same stories, the same characters.
But Campbell wasn't the first to notice this. William Blake was very aware of it, and he in turn was inspired by a writer called Jacob Bryant. His 1774 book 'A New System, Or an Analysis of Ancient Mythology' was perhaps the first cross-cultural comparative mythology. Bryant argued that the Bible stories and Greek myths were inherited from an even earlier original. He believed that these stories came from a race of giants dispersed across the world, and that they were the fragments of an ancient and forgotten faith. What Blake wanted to do was to recover this lost original, through his own mythology, which drew on all the systems he knew: the Greek myths of Hesiod's Theogeny, the Roman myths of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Norse, Germanic & British myths – and of course the Bible.
Blake's own mythology begins to emerge in a poem called America: A Prophecy (1793), in which he writes about the American Revolution through his own set of mythic characters. The poem has historical figures like George III and George Washington, but behind them, there are giant mythic antagonists, who go by the names of Urizen and Orc. They represent spiritual and psychological states. Urizen stands for repressive rationality, while Orc stands for rebellious energy. He's the one who inspires Washington, Jefferson and Franklin to declare independence; he's the true revolutionary spirit. It's a bit like Homer's Iliad, where we see the Trojan War heroes, but behind the scenes, we also see how they're manipulated by the gods.
Blake then went much further in The Books of Urizen, Ahania and Los – all written in Lambeth in the last years of the 18th century. These books make up his so-called 'Bible Of Hell', in which he wrote his own versions of The Books of Genesis and Exodus. Just think about that for a moment: someone deciding to rewrite the Bible – in the 18th century. And that's not all; he also decided to rewrite science, and threw in a whole new theory of human perception and origins too!
The central idea is very simple, but very revolutionary. Blake believes that the material world is really a prison, and a mistake. All of matter is just spirit that's been trapped. The story in these poems is how that happened.
This idea isn't original to Blake; it has roots in the Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbalah and the Gnostic Christian tradition. But the way that Blake explores it, through the characters and images of his mythology, is absolutely his own.
In his rewriting of Genesis, in his Creation myth, the world is not made from nothing; it's actually a mistakenly limited perception of the infinity of all being. Urizen, the main character, starts out as one of the Eternals, connected with everything, and part of infinity; but then he decides he wants to be a separate being. That's the big mistake that starts everything off. Remember that Urizen stands for rationality – so this is rationality deciding it's separate from everything else that makes us human.
Urizenbegins to divide up reality. There he is above, with his compasses, measuring and limiting it. This is such a famous image, and people tend to see it as God creating the world – but to Blake, this is a spirit making a catastrophic error which leads to its own downfall, and to all the separations that we live with: self from other, subject from object, mind from matter, moral from immoral, finite from infinite, time from eternity, and so on.
It's a deeply subversive image. And in the Book of Ahania, Blake creates a sequel to the story, a sort of version of Exodus that also reaches towards the New Testament, in which Urizen's son Fuzon rises up against him, and they fight – like the Titans and gods in Greek mythology. Urizen kills his son, nails the corpse to a tree – and on that tree, the corpse is resurrected and comes back to life…
These are incredibly huge dramas. The events are elemental and primal. The forms are gigantic and heroic. You can see it in the artwork. It's not exactly realist. Peter Ackroyd has compared it to modern science fantasy comics and genre fiction. Think about, say, Marvel Comics and films: Thor and Loki in The Avengers. It's a bit like that. Blake gives us superhuman heroes and gigantic villains, with fantastic weapons. Fuzon uses a huge thunder-stone that lengthens into a kind of laser beam; Urizen has a bow made of a gigantic dead serpent's ribs.
It's amazing stuff, and if you're interested in making your own mythology – as I am – it's endlessly inspiring.
In fact, I can tell you that the working title of the new
book that I'm writing right now is actually… TYGER!I can't say very much about it, because it's early
days yet and my books change a lot as I work on them. But I can tell you that
there's a huge Blake influence in this book; there's an entire new mythology;
and, of course, there is a TYGER! So I'm going to leave you back where we began: with William Blake's amazing poem,
The Tyger.
If you've read Phoenix, you may have noticed that it doesn't have an epigraph – the quote that sometimes comes at the beginning of a book. But I'm doing a series of blogs about the three epigraphs that I considered. The first one is here, and it explains why I ended up without one.
The second epigraph I considered for Phoenix comes from The Bhagavad-Gita (श्रीमद्à¤à¤—वद्गीता in Sanskrit). This is a 700-verse ancient Hindu scripture that is part of the epic Mahabhrata.
The section I considered using as an epigraph was famously quoted by the physicist J Robert Oppenheimer on the first explosion of an atomic bomb, in 1945. "If the radiance of a thousand suns Were to burst at once into the sky, That would be like the splendour of the Mighty One… I am become Death, The destroyer of Worlds."
There is one more epigraph to come. I'll make a blog about it soon!
I'm thrilled to announce that the paperback of my new book Phoenix is now available! I'd really appreciate it if you could spread this news, any way you can...
You should be able to find the Phoenix paperback in your local bookshop; if they don't have it in stock, please order it from them. Or you can click here to go to my publisher's page, where the big red 'Buy Now' button will give you lots of options of how & where to buy it, with links to Foyles, Waterstones, Blackwells, Amazon etc, as well as independent bookshops via Hive.
Phoenix is a story about a human boy who has the power of a star, and an alien girl who is the most brilliant warrior in the galaxy. I think it's my best book so far, and if you've enjoyed Varjak Paw, I hope you'll enjoy it too. It's fully and beautifully illustrated by Dave McKean, who also did the illustrations in Varjak Paw. Here's his amazing book trailer for Phoenix!
I'd like to say a big thank you to Louise Jones and everyone at St. George's Primary School, who I had the great pleasure of visiting this month!
It was wonderful to do creative writing workshops with the Year 4 classes who are currently studying Varjak Paw. I heard some truly fantastic ideas for stories; there was so much creativity out there, and so much brilliant storytelling!
It was then great to talk to Years 6 & 5 as well about books and writing, and to sign books for everyone. We didn't have quite enough time to answer all the questions that everyone had, so if anyone would like to ask another question, or to leave a comment about the visit or the books, this is the place to do it!
I'd like to say a very big thanks to Ashley Booth and all the fantastic readers I met at St. John's Catholic Primary School last week. I had the pleasure of talking to Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 about writing, and I was incredibly impressed to see such enthusiasm and passion for reading and books!
It was an honour to sign copies of Varjak Paw and Phoenix at the end. But one thing I didn't get to do was show the Phoenix book trailer, made by the brilliant Dave McKean – so here it is!
It was great to hear so many terrific questions during the visit, so if anyone from St. John's would like to ask me any more questions, or to share any thoughts about the visit or about books, just leave me a comment below!
I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone at Laleham C of E Primary, which I had the great pleasure of visiting last week! It was fantastic to meet so many brilliant readers in Years 6, 5, 4 and 3, and to see all the enthusiasm for books and reading out there.
There wasn't enough time to answer all the questions that everyone had, so if anyone has a question they would like to ask, this is the place to ask it! And there's a short film I wanted to show you, but didn't have time, so here it is – the brilliant Phoenix book trailer, made by Dave McKean!
Exciting news – the Phoenix paperback is now available for pre-order! Click here to go to my publisher's page, where the 'Buy Now' button will give you links to all the places you can order it: independent bookshops via Hive, as well as Foyles, Waterstones, Amazon etc. It features a stunning new cover by Dave McKean:
And a back cover with some of the most amazing reviews I've ever received! When Jacqueline Wilson says "Phoenix is brilliant – a total page-turner" and Frank Cottrell Boyce describes it as "Big, bold, beautiful. Great to read aloud. A wonder to hold in your hand" – you know you must have done something right!
I had many ideas for Phoenix epigraphs. But in the end, I wanted the universe of Phoenix to be its own universe. From the moment you opened the book, I wanted you to be deep in space, among the stars. Any epigraph felt like would take away from that feeling, so I decided not to have one.
If there had been an epigraph, though, there were three possibilities I was seriously considering. The first was a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. The poem is called That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection and you can read it in full here. The part I might have quoted for Phoenix was this:
"Man, how fast his firedint, his mark on mind, is gone! Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark Drowned. O pity and indig nation! Manshape, that shone Sheer off, disseveral, a star, death blots black out; nor mark Is any of him at all so stark But vastness blurs and time beats level. Enough! the Resurrection, A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, joyless days, dejection. Across my foundering deck shone A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash Fall to the residuary worm; world's wildfire, leave but ash: In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond."
I'll make another blog about the other two possibilities soon!
People sometimes ask me for writing tips, so I'm doing a series of them on this blog. If you want to read the previous ones, they're here. They talk about the process of getting an idea, and writing a first draft. This one is about what happens after you've finished your first draft.
The important thing now is to get distance on your story. Take some time away from it, until you can read it as if someone else had written it. Stop being the writer, and become the reader. And then, as the reader, ask yourself all the questions you ask of every other book you read. What works? What doesn't? What should there be more of? And less of? Once you can answer these questions, you'll know what to do on the second draft. You become the writer again, and do everything you can to make it more like the book you want to read.
This process has been beautifully described by Marilynne Robinson, author of Housekeeping, Gilead, Home and Lila, who teaches creative writing at the University Of Iowa. She discussed it in The Paris Review Interviews Vol. IV, and I like what she says so much that I'm going to quote it in full:
INTERVIEWER
What is the most important thing you try to teach your students?
ROBINSON
I try to make writers actually see what they have written, where the strength is. Usually in fiction there's something that leaps out – an image or a moment that is strong enough to center the story. If they can see it, they can exploit it, enhance it, and build a fiction that is subtle and new. I don't try to teach technique, because frankly most technical problems go away when a writer realizes where the life of a story lies. I don't see any reason in fine-tuning something that's essentially not going anywhere anyway. What they have to do first is interact in a serious way with what they're putting on a page. When people are fully engaged with what they're writing, a striking change occurs, a discipline of language and imagination.
One of the nicest things about publishing a book is watching it travel the world. Varjak Paw has been translated into many languages; there are many editions around the world, and I've been doing a series of posts about them all. This week, I'm looking at the Finnish edition of Varjak Paw, where he's called Varjak Käpälä!
The front and back covers are very similar to the British editions, although the text is obviously in Suomi. The interiors are similar too, with all of Dave McKean's beautiful artwork retained. But I was excited to learn that The Wizard Of Oz becomes Ozin velho in Suomi!
Like Varjak Paw, The Outlaw Varjak Paw is published in Finland by Gummerus. Again, the Finnish edition retains all of Dave McKean's beautiful art.
I've had some wonderful comments on this blog from readers in Finland, and I would be really interested to hear more about the translation, and about Finnish readers' experiences of Varjak Paw. So please do leave me a comment if you've read the Finnish edition – or just say hei!
Last night, I had the absolute honour of attending Varjak Paw: The Musical, staged by the amazing Year 6 at New North Academy, and directed by the brilliant Fiona Gunn-Stokes!
I visited New North Academy earlier this year; here's the blog I wrote about it at the time. You can see from all the comments just what a fantastic group of readers and writers they are. So when they told me they were going to do a musical production of Varjak Paw as their end of year show, I couldn't wait!
It was absolutely brilliant. They did both Varjak Paw and The Outlaw Varjak Paw in one great big epic story; and they did musical numbers including Everybody Wants To Be A Cat, Love Cats, and Stray Cat Strut!
There were fantastic costumes, make-up and sets; brilliant acting, singing and dancing; terrific use of video for the dream sequences... it had everything you would want from a stage show! But for an author to see his characters brought to life like that – it was an incredible experience. I have to admit, I got quite emotional watching it... though I was definitely not the only one!
So I would like to say a massive THANK YOU to everyone involved – and good luck with everything you go on to do in your lives. I think you are absolute superstars. Keep the Way alive!
I'd like to say a big thank you to Paula Hillman, and to everyone I met at Greengate Juniors, for giving me such a warm welcome when I visited Barrow-in-Furness last week! And thanks to Steve Hillman for taking these fantastic photos, and making the visit possible by driving me all the way from Lancaster!
This was an unusual visit for me, because it was organised through Twitter, where I post as @whatSFSaid. I'd been reading amazing tweets from @GreengateJ describing all the fantastic work that Year 6 had been doing with Varjak Paw – so when Paula invited me to visit and see for myself, I couldn't say no!
It was wonderful to see all the enthusiasm for books and reading in Year 6 – and also Year 4 from Barrow Island Primary School, who joined the visit too, along with their teacher Mrs McVea-Roberts! It was a real pleasure to sign books for everyone at the end. Thank you all for your brilliant questions and stories – and keep the Way alive!
I'd like to say a very big thank you to Mel Taylor of Little Star Writing, who organised a fantastic author event for me at Nelson Primary School last week (and took all these awesome photos!) – and thank you to all the brilliant Year 6s, 5s, 4s and 3s I met, who gave me such a warm welcome!
It was wonderful to see so much enthusiasm for books and reading! In fact, there were so many brilliant questions, we didn't have time to answer them all. So if anyone out there still has any questions, either about my books or about writing in general, this is the place to ask them. Just leave me a comment below, and I'll be happy to answer!
It was then a real pleasure to join Mel and the Little Star Writers for a creative writing workshop. I heard some truly amazing stories, including one that I will never forget, written from the point of view of a pair of scissors! It was inspiring to see such creativity in action, and I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did!
