Nigel Hinton's Blog - Posts Tagged "nigel-hinton"

Four years ago I was doing a week of talks in schools and I was asked two questions that were different from the usual "How long does it take to write a book?" or "How much money do you make?" The first was, "Why do all writers write about families that are split up or unhappy? Why not write about a happy, normal family?" I replied that I wasn't sure what a 'normal' family was and that 'normal' for half of the population included parents who are split up or single. I then also quoted Leo Tolstoy's "All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" with the implicit suggestion that unhappiness offers more food for drama and that, somehow, happiness is rather dull.

A couple of days later, a girl asked me why I always wrote stories about and for boys. I blustered a bit, saying that all my books had girls in them but the criticism stuck and I had to accept that my books were, on the whole, male dominated stories, with only one, The Finders, having a girl as the lead character and that was a 'fantasy' book.

Those two questions stuck with me. Was I limiting myself as a writer by not trying to write from the point of view of a girl? After all, that other Hinton (S E) was a girl and had written exclusively about boys. And why couldn't a story about a 'normal, happy' family be just as dramatic and interesting as one about an unhappy family?

A short time later, I happened to read Anne of Green Gables, a book that my sisters had loved but which I had avoided because it was 'girly'. Of course, it's a marvellous book and I loved it. Not long after that I decided to read another one I had eschewed for the same reason, Little Women. I loved that, too, despite finding the language and some of the attitudes inevitably a bit dated. In both books, I liked the optimism and positivity. And I was particularly struck by how Louisa May Alcott had created a family that was functional and happy but which was having to carry on against the background of terrible fears about the father who is away in the American Civil War.

The prevailing tone of young teen books I was reading and reviewing at the time was dark and pessimistic - werewolves, zombies and dystopian futures - and I decided to buck the trend. Bit by bit, the idea grew in my mind of trying to write a story about a family of sisters set in the present day, who like the March sisters, have to get on with their daily lives while their father is in danger.

I decided to have only three girls, unlike the four in Little Women, because I wanted to try telling the story in chapters, each one of which would further the overall plot but would be seen from the point of view and concerns of one of the sisters and I thought four different perspectives might be too much. Even so, I spent much of the time worrying whether I was managing to write convincingly from the point of view of girls aged 9, 12 and 14. I consoled myself by remembering all the things I'd written about without having experienced them and telling myself that seeing the world through others' eyes was what writers try to do.

Nonetheless, I was unsure about how successful I had been, until I got a wonderful email from Jacqueline Wilson saying, among other things, "It's a great read. I think there must be a young teenage girl lurking inside you!"

Now that's what I call 'getting in touch with my feminine side'!

This article has previously been published on The School Librarian Association.