ELEN CALDECOTT | INTERVIEW
As part of Cardiff Children’s Literature Festival, Bristol-based author Elen Caldecott, from Wrexham, will be talking books, writing and whipping up a storm of ideas at her Interactive Creative Writing workshop.
Your characters are mostly adventurers and do-ers – is this how you are?
I do like to try new things. I am given to wild enthusiasms, where I take up a new hobby, buy all the kit, do it for a year…and then move on to the next thing. So, I am a very bad horserider, climber, violin-player, roller-blader…I don’t know if you do need a gun-ho adventurer type to make an interesting story. Sometimes, a quieter sort of person, being forced into the limelight can have a lot of drama too.
What books did you enjoy most as a child?
I loved Enid Blyton – the school stories, the adventure stories, but above all her mystery stories. I loved trying to spot the clues and work it out! It’s been a while since I read Enid, I think her work doesn’t speak to adults in the way it does to children. There are plenty of writers for children whose work does, of course, and I read a lot of those. Favourites include Louis Sachar and Hilary McKay.
Nowadays I tend to only read books for adults when I’m on holiday. I will fill my Kindle with a crime series, or the ‘big books’ of the year and gorge on them in a sunny spot. I mostly love really beautifully written contemporary books and recently read Tornado Chasers by Ross Montgomery and Counting By 7s by Holly Sloane – both of which blew me away.
Were you always a bit of a writer?
Since primary school, yes. Though during my teenage years, it was all bad, angsty poetry that I shared with no one. I originally studied archaeology, before doing a post-grad course in writing for young people. It was that course which put me on the road to publication. Much of my youthful writing was what we would now call fanfiction (but used to be called copying.) So, I wrote a lot of ‘further adventures’: the further adventures at Malory Towers, or Sweet Valley High. I think its good training, actually, and is one of the suggestions I make to young writers.
How did you make the switch to author?
I have travelled a lot and nearly ten years ago, I used some redundancy money to travel to Australia. It was while I was there that I began writing in earnest for children. I say in earnest’, in fact it felt very light and natural. I haven’t stopped since.
What inspires you when creating characters?
I use a lot of images when creating characters – pictures from magazines, portraits, photos. I collect interesting faces. So, a lot of my characters have been based on real people, just not real people I’ve ever met!
What was it like seeing Corina Pavlova brought to life in Corain Pavlova and the Lion’s Roar at Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre two years ago?
I came to talk to a group of children at the first Cardiff Childrne’s Literature Festival two years ago. In the audience was a theatre director from the Sherman. She talked to me afterwards and it was from that meeting that the decision to write a play for children came – so it was a very enjoyable festival indeed! It was a fantastic experience working on the stage production. The Sherman Theatre were so warm and supportive. It was brilliant to work with a group of people whose expertise was so different to mine, costume design, music, stage direction and so on – all things I know nothing about. I loved it. I would happily do it again!
What can we expect from your session?
Lots of jumping around and being noisy (so not quite what you’d expect from a book-ish event). I show children how to go about constructing a story and I do that by inventing a story based on audience suggestions. There’s usually a pirate called Bob. The festival is great for meeting authors, and being entertained by them is a great way to engage readers, and create new readers. To be honest, it’s just fun!
Elen Caldecott: Interactive Creative Writing (part of Cardiff Children’s Literature Festival), City Hall, Cardiff, 2pm, Sun 29 March. Ticekts: £3. Info: www.cardiffchildrenslitfest.com