Your help wanted!

I'm compiling a frequently asked questions page! So please! Let me know what questions you think would be relevant/interesting/you are curious to ask yourself! (Preferably writerly or readerly questions.)

I am thinking of including standard things like 'where do you get your ideas?' (A: Daytime TV.), 'what advice do you give to young writers?' (A: Take up accountancy, I have enough competition already!), etc. (Obviously my actual answers will be non-sarcastic.)

I do wonder how often does a question have to be asked in order for it to count as being asked frequently? Can I blatantly lie and pretend that people frequently ask, 'how, Steph Bowe, did you get to be so awesome'? (I am not sure whether that question mark is correctly placed. There are too many punctuation marks for me to know how to use them all properly.)

I will not be including questions like 'What was your favourite cartoon character when you were ten years old?' because that's oddly specific and not frequently asked, or asked ever, but if you want to know these things, I'll answer in comments or in another post. And of course, the answer to that question is Hamtaro!

I feel like the appearance of Hamtaro has improved this blog dramatically.

So, please! Questions! For my page of Q&A! (I'm obviously feeling very self-important. I'm trying to avoid pretension. Sometimes kids want to write reports about me for school and I think a FAQ page would come in handy. How do you pronounce FAQ? What an awkward acronym.)

(If you have any topics you want my rambly blogging opinion on, I always appreciate suggestions! I have had blogger's block. Is that a thing? But I am always happy to share my opinion on something, so suggest away!)

(I overuse brackets terribly, I'm sorry.)

Steph vs. Time: On time management & writing habits

When I am invited to speak at schools (which I have done a bit of these past few days, it being Book Week, which is heaps of fun), I am usually asked how I managed to balance writing my novel/becoming an author and finishing high school. If it's a girls' school, my presentation usually then devolves into a discussion of One Direction. I'm usually blather something about prioritising school work and writing a little bit every day or some such.

And this is nonsense. I am not remotely reasonable or organised or smart about balancing various aspects of my life. I'm still working it all out. I very much long to be super profesh about everything, and maybe someday I will get there, but when I was still a student, sometimes I did prioritise writing over school work. I managed to finish a novel and start a career as a result of being incredibly, crazily stuck on the idea of becoming an author. When I give writing advice, I generally say that writing lots and writing consistently are the most important things. Mad passion is very helpful. If you are crazy about something, no matter how busy you are, you will make time for it.

I think this insane level of passion is difficult to maintain long term. I think eventually you grow up or lose your mind and then it can be difficult to get motivated, and those little bits of time you do have aren't treasured and used for writing.

There never really seems to be enough time. Everything on my to-do list seems to expand to fill the amount of time available, and then some. So writing a thousand words might have taken me half an hour last year, when I was very busy, but now, with more time on my hands, it might take all day. This is mainly because I keep thinking to myself, hey! I've got plenty of time! I'll write later! Unless one is a writer who needs large amounts of time to dedicate to writing (eight hours to myself, to write in, intimidates me), I don't think taking time off from other things to focus on one's writing is a good idea. However, in my case, 'focusing on my writing' is pretty much a euphemism for watching excessive amounts of TV and thinking about what might happen after I die and pretending like this is work.

I think the secret to it is writing every day. I don't do this. I really want to. I assumed as I got older I would become more disciplined, but that has not quite happened. I was reading about S. E. Hinton getting terrible writer's block for years after all of the success of The Outsiders, and she only managed to write her second book by writing two pages a day before she went anywhere. If you write every day, I am sure it becomes a natural and easy process. Even if it's only two hundred words or however much. 'A year from now you'll wish you started today'! I have inspirational quotes memorised for every occasion.

Often I hear about novels that were written in two days or a week or a month, that later went on to win awards and be generally brilliant. And the authors of these books seem to be these really mysterious tortured artists. When I write a whole heap of words in a short period of time, they don't tend to be particularly good. But I think it is worth getting words down on the page, even if they are terrible. I'm trying not to judge things until they are done. (Sometimes I have to, though, otherwise the plot may veer off in a ridiculous direction. I have to keep myself in check.) I think if you have that mad passion, you may manage to write a book in a few days, but setting aside days and days to write a book would be too much pressure for me. Fifteen minutes a day for a year sounds a lot more manageable, a lot easier to fit into a busy life.

So, advice: write a lot, write frequently, write daily, write every chance you get, don't judge it until it's done. When you are struck with inspiration, never ignore it! Drop everything! Let's hope your crazy passion for writing continues forever. I think a tiny bit of writing every day may be the key, but maybe you write differently. That was an accidental rhyme. I am going to stop now.

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma (and what a YA novel is)

Chloe’s older sister, Ruby, is the girl everyone looks to and longs for, who can’t be captured or caged. After a night with Ruby’s friends goes horribly wrong and Chloe discovers a dead body floating in the reservoir, Chloe is sent away—away from home, away from Ruby.

But Ruby will do anything to get her sister back, and when Chloe returns home at last, she finds a precarious and deadly balance waiting for her. As Chloe flirts with the truth that Ruby has hidden deeply away, the fragile line between life and death is redrawn by the complex bonds of sisterhood.

Imaginary Girls is a masterfully distorted vision of family with twists that beg for their secrets to be kept.


I have been thinking a lot about what differentiates a book about a teenager/teenagers that's for teenagers and a book about a teenager/teenagers that's for adults. I'm reading Norwegian Wood at the moment (I am reading about ten different books at the moment - I go through phases of intensively reading everything and then reading hardly at all), and thinking about the fact that the characters are eighteen, nineteen, and having the experiences of people at that age, but trying to figure out what makes it a book for adults.

I think it's the way in which the story is told, the perspective, the interpretation through the narrator. Even if a book is wholly about teenagers and the teenage experience, if it's being told through the eyes of an adult, twenty years on, and the events are processed as an adult would process them, then it's book for adults. I am not one hundred percent sure about this. I also recently read Never Let Me Go, and a lot of that is about when the characters are teenagers, but it's told from adult point-of-view. There's some degree of presentness to a YA novel, even if it's told in past tense. (Presentness should be a word but I don't think it is.) A YA novel is about someone in the midst of things, the story interpreted through teenage eyes.

And this is related to the novel Imaginary Girls, in that despite it not being written from the perspective of an adult looking back on things, there is a certain degree to which the protagonist is removed from the story. I think it is perhaps the fantastical, magical, illusory aspects of it. It is very much about a bond between sisters (a twisted and bizarre and disturbing bond, but a very strong one), but it did not feel like a particularly teenaged novel - it is very literary for YA, and I think it is very much a crossover novel. Imaginary Girls reminded me in a way of Haruki Murakami's other novels - Norwegian Wood is really the least weird/most boring of them - in how splendidly surreal it was. I was also reminded of Margo Lanagan's stories (I've not read any of her novels, yet).

Imaginary Girls is splendidly weird and beautifully written and full of very eerie scenes and strange relationships. I think it's very non-traditional for a YA novel, and maybe that'll disappoint people expecting a normal YA narrative (it's not big on fast-moving plot or standard YA romance). But it is terribly interesting, and I think it would engage older teenage readers and adults looking for a strange, surreal thriller-esque read.  I did not find the characters particularly likeable, the weirdness and creepiness and slow build of the novel were brilliant, and the ending delightfully strange.

• Imaginary Girls on Goodreads
• The author's website.

Steph reads the classics!

Lately I have been attempting to read older, very well-known books that everyone references a lot and most people studied at school. This is for a number of reasons:
1. So that when those '100 books you must read before you die' lists go around on Facebook, my answer is not in the single digits (oh! The Facebook shame!),
2. So I can converse with people about how much I love such-and-such dead author's work in an informed manner, when in fact I secretly believe them to be overrated (Let's not even talk about The Catcher In The Rye, guys. The Catcher In The Rye is dead to me. Kidding! I liked it.), and;
3. So I can act like I read books other than books for teenagers. Because I am a grown-up now. Apparently.

So these are some books that I recently read:

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
I am going to be really incredibly honest here: I am not sure why so many modern readers are so enamored with J.D. Salinger's work. I can see how it would have been great for the time, and the writing is nice and all, and the ideas are certainly interesting... but all of the character's are insufferable. I encounter enough self-important, pseudo-spiritual people in the real world. I have no desire to read about a couple of twenty-somethings being privileged and psycho-analysing each other in the fifties. (This book feels kind of teenager-y, despite the main characters being twenty and twenty-five.)

Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it - because I did well enough. But it didn't have any sort of impact upon me, really. I think if I read it fifty years ago, it might've, but I didn't exist then. That's probably fortunate. I so want to find my one dramatic, formative, favourite-of-all-time book, but nothing is really coming anywhere near The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Please, if you love The Catcher In The Rye or Franny and Zooey with all your heart, please tell me what I am missing. Are you just socially obligated to give it five stars on Goodreads or Amazon or wherever, by virtue of the fact that it's a classic, goddam!?

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte 
(there are some funky dots above the e in Bronte but don't ask me how to put those in)

It seems I am the last person in the world to have read Jane Eyre. I keep trying to pronounce that as Jane Eye-arrr. (I think it is my brain. It only thinks of things as they are written. As a result I mispronounce words frequently.) I am still desperately confused as to why she loved Mr Rochester so much. Is this one of the books Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey (they are interchangeable) references in order to seem 'literary'? (Perhaps I am confusing it with Wuthering Heights. Which is what I am reading next!)

I did not find the romantic aspects even vaguely pleasant (I never do. Romance is gross, always), but the plotline was glorious. His crazy first wife is locked in the attic, and escapes in the night and sets fire to things? FIVE STARS. Also, the coincidences were amazing. I would've hated it, if I'd had to read it for school, though. I think studying a book intensively sucks all the joy out of it, unless you have a Dead Poets Society Robin Williams-type teacher, which no-one does. I will perhaps read it again at some point (I am being optimistic, of course. I never reread things, because there are always way too many new things to read).

I would actually watch 'The Farmer Wants a Wife' if the farmers were all previously married, and their first wives had gone crazy, and were still lurking about on the property (possibly in various attics), waiting to set fires while the potential new wives slept. I should really pitch Channel 9 with this. They could feature ominous cackling laughter on the ads.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
I've noticed I have a lot less to say about the books I really, really enjoy. Except the obvious you should read it. You know when a book is really great, but also insanely depressing, and you both hate and love it? (The fact that everything actually happened makes it infinitely more depressing.) Nothing works out well for anyone in this book. So perhaps not one to pick up if you are looking for a lightweight read? But it is terribly interesting. (I do not usually enjoy true crime, either.)

Breakfast At Tiffany's by Truman Capote
Even though it's quite true to the novel (novella? short story? It's a very thin little book), the film version was much more uplifting. I think this is one of those instances where I preferred the film to the book, as lovely and brief as it is. Audrey Hepburn makes Holly Golightly a sweeter and more agreeable character. You should read it (and it's nowhere near as dark as In Cold Blood, very much removed from that), but there's no real conclusiveness to it, as there is to the film. I don't think there's much growth on Holly Golightly's part at all. It's so short a novel it's more a snapshot than anything else, and we hardly know a thing about the narrator.

The Lady In The Looking Glass by Virginia Woolf
I read this little book of five short stories by Virginia Woolf, one of those Penguin modern classics, and it had a picture of her on the back of it. And I was just thinking how sad she looked. I mean, they're sad little stories, too. I should perhaps read Mrs Dalloway. I feel like the experience of reading all of these books and stories and whatever else would be so much purer if reading them when they were originally published, and they were different and new and the writers weren't yet renowned/dead.

Recommend old, classic-type books I must read! Please. I probably won't understand them anyway. (If you love them then that is even better.)