1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:11,869 Abby's books are full of adventurous characters living in wild places. 2 00:00:12,669 --> 00:00:16,050 So where does she get the inspiration for her stories? 3 00:00:16,429 --> 00:00:22,949 I start every story I write by trying to come up with an idea that nobody else has stumbled across yet. 4 00:00:23,649 --> 00:00:28,170 And sometimes I find these ideas walking down the street or strolling in the park, 5 00:00:28,170 --> 00:00:34,469 never really at my desk because that's too pressurized to think of an idea but it happens 6 00:00:34,469 --> 00:00:40,109 more organically if I'm walking and daydreaming once I've come up with an idea that I believe in 7 00:00:40,109 --> 00:00:46,670 that takes a long time I then usually go on an adventure to a far-flung place because I write 8 00:00:46,670 --> 00:00:53,549 about wild settings to secure cement the setting to really grow the fictional world I want to write 9 00:00:53,549 --> 00:01:02,450 about. So I've been out to the Arctic to research this book called Skysong, which is set in a snowy 10 00:01:02,450 --> 00:01:08,590 kingdom called Urkenwald. And I went dog sledding. I watched the Northern Lights, the closest thing 11 00:01:08,590 --> 00:01:14,469 I've ever seen to watching magic unfurl in our world. And I saw hundreds of orcas, killer whales, 12 00:01:14,730 --> 00:01:21,829 feeding on tiny fish called herring under the sea. So those adventures formed the basis of this book. 13 00:01:21,829 --> 00:01:36,390 And I also like writing about tribes, people who live in the furthest corners of our world that often maybe have a story to tell, but because of where they live, the story isn't told. 14 00:01:36,810 --> 00:01:44,890 So for the heroine of Sky Song, a girl called Eska, I went out to Mongolia to live with the Kazakh eagle hunters. 15 00:01:44,890 --> 00:01:52,930 I'd seen a photograph by an Israeli photographer, Asher Svidensky, of a girl called Aishal Pan. 16 00:01:53,409 --> 00:01:57,189 And she is, well, she was 12 years old when the photo was taken. 17 00:01:57,450 --> 00:02:02,750 And she is the only eagle huntress in a tribe full of men and boys. 18 00:02:03,170 --> 00:02:05,129 And I thought that was cool, the only girl. 19 00:02:05,250 --> 00:02:08,669 So I knew I wanted to meet her to write this book. 20 00:02:09,770 --> 00:02:13,629 Abby wrote part of Sky Song while she was in hospital. 21 00:02:13,629 --> 00:02:34,490 I spent four months in hospital, a third of a year, and during the course of that time, the midwives and the doctors and my friends who came to visit me were so unfailingly kind, and I wanted to write a book, Sky Song, that celebrated this theme of kindness. 22 00:02:35,810 --> 00:02:39,569 Abby has an unusual way of planning her stories. 23 00:02:39,569 --> 00:02:47,530 so I'm dyslexic and when I started writing I was very scared that that would be a problem and that 24 00:02:47,530 --> 00:02:53,490 I wouldn't be able to be a successful writer because my ideas often are a bit confused and 25 00:02:53,490 --> 00:03:01,849 tangled but what I've realized is that dyslexic people think hugely creatively and they notice 26 00:03:01,849 --> 00:03:09,509 things other people miss so I've learned that if I doodle if I draw the world I want to write about 27 00:03:09,509 --> 00:03:18,289 as a map. So maybe I put a forest here, a mountain here, a sea, a river, a lake. Then I might have 28 00:03:18,289 --> 00:03:24,009 my characters travelling from place to place and at every place they encounter an obstacle. 29 00:03:24,750 --> 00:03:31,810 Maybe they're betrayed in one place, they're robbed in another, they discover something they 30 00:03:31,810 --> 00:03:38,050 weren't meant to see at the river. And then slowly but surely my plot starts to take shape. 31 00:03:38,050 --> 00:03:43,949 So I used to think doodling was wrong. My teachers used to say, stop doodling, start concentrating. 32 00:03:44,530 --> 00:03:50,930 But I think drawing your way into a story, especially if you're dyslexic, can be a very, very useful tool. 33 00:03:52,590 --> 00:04:03,090 Today, Abby spends a lot of time visiting schools and talking to the thousands of children who love her books and are inspired by her stories. 34 00:04:03,090 --> 00:04:08,210 I want to talk to young children about this idea of being creative. 35 00:04:08,650 --> 00:04:13,050 I'm not an obvious sort of person for being an author. 36 00:04:13,370 --> 00:04:15,389 I have dyslexia and yet I'm an author. 37 00:04:15,750 --> 00:04:18,970 I had 96 rejections before I became an author. 38 00:04:19,170 --> 00:04:25,209 So I want to tell children that the creative people are often the people who are brave enough to fail.