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Naomi has created a fantastic project and we do want you to get involved. Here is a video that explains more:

If you would like to download and read [...]]]> We have invited Naomi Folb Of Forgotten Letters to write a guest blog post for us. This will be the first of many guest blogs.

Naomi has created a fantastic project and we do want you to get involved. Here is a video that explains more:

If you would like to download and read this fascinating post at your leisure click this > What we can learn from dyslexic writers (45). Otherwise read on…

It is the week leading up to the festival, the dark is still heavy, and I am awake. At my desk I read it again. The story, herstory, behind the festival of dyslexic writing. It is important to me because here, the book I have been developing for two years, will be launched.

The note which I have received in the night speaks of dyslexia as an ‘achilles heel’. Achilles was only a baby when his mother was told that his death would come from a wound in the foot. It was an act of love that led his mother to dip him by the foot in the River Styx, which was said to have curious powers. It was the heel of this foot that was later shot by a poisoned arrow and killed Achilles.  An ‘achilles heel’ has since come to mean a weakness; like kryptonite to superman. It is also speaks of destiny, and impending doom.

Dyslexia has had many names, records suggest that they run into the hundreds. One of these was word-blindness. This was coined by a doctor called Pringle-Morgan who met a boy ‘Percy F’ that he described as: ‘bright and intelligent’ and ‘quick at games’ but with ‘great difficulty reading’. His guess was that Percy F had a problem with the eyes. We now know that this is not true. Pringle-Morgan was right about something though: finding reading hard is not always a sign of intelligence. Some people who are very intelligent find reading hard. Now, people such as these prefer the term dyslexic, to word-blind.

Can dyslexia be cured? This is a question to which everyone has an answer and I am one of them: it depends on what you want to cure. Dyslexia has been researched for over a 100 years and there are a great many interpretations of what it means. There are characteristics that dyslexics share, such as being terrible spellers. The problem is dyslexia is part of me. I am not perfect, or even special, but to talk about fixing me, or even part of me, as if I was a car with a broken exhaust, is crude. You cannot take the dyslexia out of me, or my dad. I love my dad because he is dyslexic, not despite it. I love that he called ‘pheasants’, ‘peasants’. I love his passion for life and living. He is one of life’s great helpers. A great dresser. An even better mediator. A superb problem solver. I want to be like him, not ‘normal’. Whatever that means.

I think some people do suffer because of their dyslexia. I also think a lot of people suffer because dyslexia is not recognised as a difference which matters. Dyslexia is not a mental instability. People with dyslexia are not crazy. People with dyslexia do not think in circles. People with dyslexia do not have thoughts that go in their head, spin round and round and never come out again. Dyslexics do not live in la la land. Dyslexics are prone to lateral thinking. This means that they are very good at seeing the whole. Plus dyslexics are very quick to see ‘connections’ between ideas and this is what produces innovative thinking. When you take two things that have not previously been appended and you put them together, you get a new thing.

Dyslexics are good at finding solutions because they can always see alternatives. Lateral thinkers generate ideas and they are not blinded by the first thing that pops into their head. Dyslexics are thought to make up between 4-8% of the British population. Studies have suggested that the key difference between dyslexic and non-dyslexics, is that a very small minority of dyslexics cannot problem solve verbally. However, the majority of dyslexics can problem solve verbally and visually, which means they move between words and pictures. Sometimes with great difficulty. But difficulty is not a sign of a lack of ability.

Dyslexics do not compensate for a deficit. Rather dyslexics, because they tend to think visually and holistically, see connections between things that others who think verbally and lineally miss. Many dyslexics are also driven by a passion, and this may derive from their skill at spotting something that nobody else has done or thought of before (a dyslexic writing festival for example) and then committing themselves to it like ivy to a wall. As a labrador to its owner; like flour to wet hands.

A dyslexic is very loyal to their passions, but the dyslexic’s real skill is in communication. This is why the definition of dyslexia as a ‘language disorder’ is so peculiar. A paradox even. Many dyslexics have the ability to ask great questions. They are good at seeing through facade and even better at assimilating information. They are also superb at convincing other people that their ideas are interesting, and they sweep up others in their enthusiasm. Non-dyslexics may see them as bonkers because they don’t know where they get their ideas, enthusiasm and commitment from. They appear to have materialised from nowhere, like a bunny in a magicians hat.

As children, we dyslexics were constantly masking mistakes and mistakes are how we learn. Other people might notice our mistakes more often because they are obvious (writing backwards, spelling mistakes are not hard to miss, even to dyslexics it might surprise you to note!), but if we haven’t been put off by our failures, it is because we have learnt very early on that failure is the doorway. Error is possibility. We know that after we have collapsed with shame, we are going to have to do it again anyway, so might as well get it over with. For dyslexics, a mistake is all in a days work. It is not the end but the beginning. A mishap does not shake a dyslexic because to survive we had to learn the hard way: mistakes do not mean you are a dumb (although the thought may occur to you from time to time), mistakes mean you are going to do it better next time. Fingers crossed.

This is what I wrote back, in the dark, to my colleague. To my dear dyslexic friend, actress, writer, entrepreneur, Lennie Varvarides, who is the mastermind behind the dyslexic writing festival: DYS-PLA. It was a reminder, in the middle of the night: What we are doing is challenging the way in which stories can be told. We are raising the question: what can dyslexics teach us about story telling? They are after all amazing communicators. Visionaries. Passionate people who take mistakes as opportunities. People who leave you thinking: well I never thought about it like that before!

At the festival I am looking forward to launching an anthology of dyslexic writers, Forgotten Letters, which includes a wonderful poem from your very own Sally Gardener. I first learnt about Sally’s work by talking with another dyslexic writer, Rebecca Loncraine, who will be speaking at the launch along with Benedict Philips about dyslexia and writing. There will also be readings, some magic tricks and some time to ask questions and chat. It starts at 6 and it is free to get in.

The launch is part of the DYS-PLA Festival 2011, our biggest festival to date with over 40 practitioners involved and includes a mix of writers, poets, musicians, artists, actors, directors and guest speakers. Here, you won’t learn what dyslexics are, or what dyslexia is. You certainly will not find any magic potions to cure dyslexia! If you did attend however, you might just find yourself inspired, amused, entertained and surprised. Part of something a bit different. Information about the launch can be found here: http://www.r-a-s-p.co.uk/ Information about the festival here: http://www.thelittleboxoffice.co/msft/event/view/519. We hope to see you there.

Because I have somewhat given up on illustration due to the fact there are too many books I wish to write and it takes me too long to illustrate a book. I am a slower illustrator than I am a writer and a terrible perfectionist and [...]]]> 1)  Why didn’t you illustrate Lucy Willow yourself?

Because I have somewhat given up on illustration due to the fact there are too many books I wish to write and it takes me too long to illustrate a book. I am a slower illustrator than I am a writer and a terrible perfectionist and very rarely was I satisfied with the drawings I did. Whereas a writer I feel the pictures I can create with words more closely represent what I was trying to achieve with my drawings.

How do you choose an illustrator for your books?

That’s difficult to answer – you have to love their work and hope that they’re sympathetic to your writing. As I was an illustrator I am very fortunate in knowing what I’m looking for in other people’s work. A good illustration illustrates the slipstream of a story – the illustration adds or even gives where the words haven’t completed the image. The boring ones are those that are already written ie. words: horse jumps over the moon / illustration: horse jumps over the moon. The interesting illustrations would be the one before or after the horse had jumped over the moon, because that propels the story – illustrations should be an engine to take the story forward.

2)  Lucy Willow seems to have all the conventions of a fairy tale…is it?

All my stories use fairytales. Fairytales have always fascinated me. I think they really have the soul of humanity to them, they understand our darkest secrets and do not judge us. I think for me as a writer I feel more able to deal with difficult issues if they’re once removed from the real world, although the world I write about in MC resembles ours, it’s still distant. To illustrate my idea – if you were to tell a child who was living in a towerblock, who’s mother was a single parent and a drug addict, a story about her and her life in all it’s graphic details it would give no escape, it would just confirm the locked door of her exsisnts . Whereas if you told that child the story of Rapunzel she would see in it a way out of the tower.

3) There seems to be a theme in many of your books about children being ignored or not being taken seriously especially at school. How much of this is related to your own experience at school and do you think schools still ignore the extraordinary child?

Every writer, and I don’t think I’m any exception, writes about what they know and the experiences they’ve had in their lives. I am not much interested in Autobiography, biography, or anything else to do with my mother hit me with a kipper. But I do know from my experience of education, and as a dyslexic person, that what I see today in schools is not much removed from what I experienced as a child, there is still too much pressure on academic achievement ,so that the school’s ratings may stand high in the Sunday Times. The consequences of that are that the daydreamer, the one who lives in herself, who invents stories, is often overlooked in favour of her more academic peer. Ironically, in the end the one thing our society values and needs more than gold dust is imagination and the one thing that education is set on doing is crushing imagination with tests, examinations and making the extraordinary into the ordinary of as all.

4)  You seem to place as much value on listening to stories as reading stories, does this affect your writing style? (Do you deliberately write stories that are good to be read aloud?)

Heaven help all my friends or anyone who pops in for a cup of coffee. They are forced, tied to kitchen chairs, bribed by glasses of champagne to listen to my rewrites – not once, not twice, but again and again. I see writing like music – it may well look good on the page but what does it sound like? Hence I do write my books with the view to them being read outloud. I’m a great supporter of audio books. When I was little there was no library for the blind, or not one that my parents where aware of. Because of dyslexia I didn’t read until I was 14. My fantasy was to have an actor living in my wardrobe, so that every night he could jump out to read me stories. In England today, there is no need for any child to be deprived of a good book the way I was. Unabridged listening books are wonderful – they can light the fire that will lead a child to become a life long reader. I make a big effort to support audiobooks because there’s such snobbery around it. But it isn’t a second rate activity to the reading of a book. If you’ve heard a book, you’ve read a book. Both demand a set of skills that not everybody has. For me, the spoken word becomes the written word in my head.

5) There seems to be a theme of exploitation in Lucy Willow, the Sparks exploit the school, parents and children as well as the Peppercorns and the American billionaire having no regard for tradition and exploiting the Willows.  How much of your own values do you incorporate into your books?

I don’t consciously try to give any values, especially not moral lessons. I think with writing for younger children you have to make a clear distinction between villains and heroes as it’s harder for younger readers to grasp the understanding of the grey ground in between things, the sludge that is in everyone. But I don’t feel life’s fair and I feel I’m being honest when I portray corrupt adults rather than perfect ones.

6) Some of your characters have chaotic families, others have weak parents and there is often an abandonment in your books. Lucy Willow finds it difficult to accept a new sibling. Is this an element of the fairy tale or a comment on modern families?

All fairytales, from the beginning of time, deal with dysfunctional families. They start with a once upon a time and they end with a happy ever after. In between those two lines lives the chaos. I believe the notion of ‘happy families’ only lies in pack of playing cards. The reality more often than not is that things don’t turn out quite as we expect when we say ‘I do’; and ‘happily ever after’ is only a beginning. Children are must better psychiatrists and philosophers than most adults ever give them credit for. Children understand the world in a more perceptive way. They are very quick to realise that they didn’t quite live up to the expectations of their parents, that they’ve been ousted by a sibling or they feel responsible for the breakdown of a family and in that they feel lost and abandoned. Abandonment happens in many formats, it can happen in very subtle ways. Yes, these are experiences that I grew up with, and therefore I feel able to write about them with hopefully more than a peppering of magic and humour.