William Anstee

All the thinking is done. We have practiced rhetoric, we have written to Campbell's twelve stages, we have looked at ancient story structures, we have tried dialogue, setting, time and character; now is the moment of truth. It is a strange experience, what was once an outpouring, a stream of consciousness, the tapping of the unconscious river, becomes far more reflective. Do the words do the job that Aristotle observed the words of the greats of the ancient world did? It is the ordinary world; 30 pages, about 12,000 words no more than the first of the twelve. What is there to say about the ordinary world? How can the reader become engaged? It is fascinating as well as challenging.

Let us suppose a man married with a small child has lost his job with the fallout from credit crunch. He was a highflyer in the city. He is being tempted. The first temptation is from a mater at The Financial Services Authority; so poacher turned gamekeeper. His wife encourages him, back to something with a moral streak, but also steady income wise. The other temptation is from Eve. She left the bank before the fallout, to go it alone. She could sell snow to Eskimos . What she needs is a creative mind to come up with the post crunch ideas. She might be offering our man more than just work.

With Agent Victoria flagging historical fiction and children's writing, I just wonder whether there is space to combine them? Would an historical novel aimed at 9-11 be helpful to them in their encounters with history? Elizabethan England I have studied in some depth in my Humanities Degree and so it could be a good subject. I will research further.

I keep vacillating over the direction I should follow. One pointer might be to identify strengths. One is that I seem to be able to create identifiable old people; but another is that I can create rather unpleasant secondary characters. My slight concern is whether I can place these in a children's story?

Possibly for a picture book or a read aloud book, there is the story of the boy and his two toy plastic motorbike men, Grandpa and Anthony. These two get up to all manner of adventure, but the boy is not at all sure whether or not they are actually alive. Hints are left and he wonders. His mother is certain that they are only toys, but she is a single mum who is far too busy looking after him and his grandpa, the old gentleman. As to the old gentleman, he is quite distant and it may well be that he knows more that he lets on.

There is something deeply empathetic about the relationship of young and old. Doris is a former teacher who maintains a keen interest in the school and helps with literacy. Her short term memory is starting to go and William, whom she helped with his reading, now in year six takes it upon himself to help her. They discover that they have in common imagined friends who were their companions when they were aged 6 or 7. Could it possibly be that these companions are real?