Blog Tour ‘Anything For Her’ by G.J. Minett

The
publication of my first two novels meant that last Easter I was able at long
last to give up teaching and turn to writing full-time. Below is a list of the
5 main ways in which I feel all those years at the chalkface (that expression
alone shows how long I was a teacher!) gave me a useful induction into what I’m
doing now. In no particular order of significance, they are:

I’ve
no way of knowing exactly how many children I’ve taught over the years but it
has to run into the tens of thousands. Most of the kids have been fantastic, a
tiny minority less so, but all of them have been individuals with their own
particular mannerisms, characteristics, weaknesses and strengths. I’ve also
worked alongside a vast number of colleagues who encompassed a pretty wide
spectrum of human behaviour and experiences. Now, I have no formal
qualifications at all that might enable me to speak with any authority about
the human condition but I’d have to be more or less comatose not to have picked
up on certain mannerisms, speech patterns, trigger responses, anxieties etc
along the way. It’s all been there in front of me, one giant human database.

I’ve
not picked out one person and written about her/him and never will. I’ve been
asked several times whether Ellen in The Hidden Legacy or Owen in Lie In Wait was
based on a particular individual and the answer is an unequivocal no. But I
have taught several Owens, I’ve worked with and admired a lot of Ellens.
Unfortunately I’ve taught a fair few Callum Greens as well (cf Lie In Wait) but
I’ve borrowed a few attributes from each of them and then moulded them into a
sort of composite character. So if you think you recognise someone in my books,
especially yourself, I promise that’s not the case.

To
date I haven’t used a school as the setting for a novel but book 4, which I’m
planning at present, will have a number of scenes that have an 11-18 school as
a backdrop. I suspect that no matter how often I emphasise the opposite, there
will still be some people who will ask: ‘is that me?’

I’m
ready for all the defamation lawsuits to come flooding in!

In
my customary obsessive way, even though I’ve finished teaching, I still haven’t
thrown out 6th Form lists going back to the turn of the century, so I’m not
likely to be stuck for names I can use for my characters. That can however
bring its own attendant problems with which any parent will be able to
identify. When choosing names for your baby, there are some which you know you
can rule out instantly because they will forever be associated with a
particular individual you’d rather forget. I have about a dozen names I’ll
never be able to use without conjuring up memories of long hot afternoons in a
classroom, trying to get a Year 10 student to stop arguing and listen!
Fortunately there are not many of them and there are plenty of alternatives.

I
always make sure I separate out the first name and surname though. As far as
I’m aware, I’ve never taught an Owen Hall or a Callum Green and I’ll lay
whatever odds you like no Eudora Nash has ever suffered through one of my
lessons!

Teaching
is all about deadlines – it used to feel as though a school term consisted of
little more than staggering from one to the next. That’s stood me in good stead
though when it comes to the writing. Editors are understanding but clear when
it comes to deadlines. If a book is due in by a certain date, they will expect
it then unless an extension has been negotiated, but it’s a dispensation that
can’t be repeated too often without interfering with the schedules for editing
and all the other attendant decisions that have to be taken. Once you reach a
certain point, any further delay will mean the book misses its publication slot
and there may not be another available for quite some time.

I’ve
not missed a deadline yet and am sure those years in education have helped
massively in this respect.

This
ties in neatly with the previous point. I said I haven’t missed a deadline for
delivery of a novel. I didn’t say there haven’t been a few desperate panics
along the way. The first draft of Anything For Her was due in last April. That
should have been OK but I was still working at school, kick-starting the new
timetable and training my replacement. I was also writing what felt like five
thousand blogs for the blog tour for Lie In Wait, the paperback version of
which was about to appear at the end of March. At one point I found myself with
another 30,000 or so words of the new novel still to write and only three weeks
in which to produce them and that meant having to write at certain times of the
day and night, whether I felt in a creative frame of mind or not (usually
not!).

I
doubt very much whether I’d have managed it but for those late, late nights,
trying to make the timetable come together when all I wanted to do was sleep,
or writing that final batch of reports which had to be in by the following
morning.

I’ve
done a lot of travelling in the past two years, speaking to library groups,
societies, panels, book groups. The largest of these was to about 130 people in
a large hall where I was asked to speak for 45 minutes, do a reading and then
answer questions. I understand why that might present a problem to some writers
but I can honestly say I’ve never been nervous and have only used a microphone
if it was insisted upon. If you can teach French to a lower set Year 9 group
who are planning to drop the subject at the end of the year and it’s the last
lesson of a sweltering hot day when the kids are either half asleep or
fractious in the extreme, and you are painfully aware that OFSTED are in school
and you just know with an unshakable faith in sod’s law that they’re going to
come sauntering into your lesson just as Austen dives over his desk to get at
Jason . . . when you can do that and get through it, public speaking in front
of an audience who have come there because they’re interested and mean well is
an absolute pleasure.

Trust
me.