Lari’s Writing blog

I suspect that much of my blog will be taken up with brilliant questions from kids, because for me they are always the highlight of any event.  My favourite EVER questions are the questions Inverkip Primary sent me from the characters in my first book.  I actually got into an argument with the centaur while answering them.  You can find them in the Q&A bit of my website.

But I was asked another EXCELLENT question last week, which made me stand still and speechless in front of a hundred kids in a theatre.  I was at the Winter Words Festival in Pitlochry – the bravest book festival in Scotland, where they confidently and optimistically invite writers from all over the world to make it to Perthshire in the depths of winter.  And it works!  Though I do usually wear climbing boots and carry a rucksack to get there…

So, in keeping with the climbing boots and rucksack look, last week I spoke to a lot of P7, S1 and S2 pupils from Pitlochry High School, about my new book Mountain’s Blood.  And a girl in the second back row asked me, “Would you rather live in the real world, or in the world of your books?”  I have never been asked that before.   And I really didn’t have a pat, soundbite, easy answer.  So I probably looked a bit gobsmacked and dottled and even gormless for a wee while.

But then I gave as honest an answer as I could – I pointed out that I have two kids, and they are in the real world, so there is nowhere else I’d rather be.  BUT that the adventure books I write (the fabled beast books, with Helen and Yann) are probably set in the world I’d like to have lived in when I was about 11.  So I’m happy in the real world now, but that I’d have happily swapped it for a magical fantasy world when I was younger.

I do love being challenged by completely new questions.  It makes me think hard about how I write, and sometimes even think hard about who I am.   So if you think of any questions which can mess with my head, go for it!