Alistair Mooney: Authors Live

This is the third time that the Scottish Book Trust has worked with BBC Learning Scotland to bring you a live session with some of the most famous names in writing for children, direct to your home, classroom or beyond. Alistair Mooney produces the BBC Learning Scotland homepage and does a bit of blogging over there, and has been working on the Authors Live website where you can watch the live stream outwith Glow.

Let me tell you about my sweaty armpits. I'm afraid they're the by-product of helping out on a live show going out to tens of thousands of people. There are a lot of things that can go wrong. And if it does we could be smelling something worse than sweaty armpits.

Being a good boy scout, I know it pays to be prepared. Getting in nice and early, I had the website all ready before they'd set up the cameras. The real technical folk then set up. Cables everywhere. I'm not sure exactly what they do (the people or the cables) but both look very important.

10:45am, the live stream starts. A video is played while we do all the checks to ensure it's working at our end - the feed on the website, on Glow, everywhere. Vision? Sound? Thumbs up. Phew. We do all we can but we know that some connections may have problems (don't even ask me about my broadband at home at the moment), we can only hope that technology at each ISP, local authority or school is playing nice.

So we're set. 11am. Showtime.

The main man, Michael Morpurgo  takes the stage. I must admit I was unsure about what to expect. I'd looked up videos of Michael Morpurgo on YouTube and our Learning Zone Scotland library of clips edited from BBC programmes. He seemed jolly nice but maybe he'd be a bit quiet for this event? I mean how do you follow Michael Rosen  with his incredible rhymes, rhythms and eyes popping and Julia Donaldson with Gruffalo in tow?

Quiet? Not a bit of it. In fact after bellowing "But I've got MY way" the audio suddenly dropped. We thought his microphone had fallen off. Cue anxious looks and a fumbling of headphones and faders. Someone, maybe a higher being, sorted it. Phew.

So what else kept us on our toes? Five minutes before going live, the sun decided to put its hat on. It happened on cue at the Julia Donaldson event too. Move the seats! Rush, whisk, table removed. It still caused the cameras bother and, as Neil, producer of the whole show, said, "We're really going to have to do something about the sun". Next time is with Charlie Higson in October. October? We may be alright then.

And, finally, would you believe, at a particularly touching, reflective moment from Michael, someone from the Sport department decided that would be a great time to test out a recently acquired vuvuzela. Buzz off!

Despite these moments, I relaxed, sourcing my confidence from Michael's performance. He's terrific. His assured style was really engaging. And funny. You can't really be anxious if you're laughing.

So what did I take away from the event, apart from the need of a change of t-shirt? If you want to write, just write. Don't care so much about spelling or punctuation, just get it down. There's plenty of time for tidying up afterwards. Speak the words in your head and let them flow. Edit later. Oh and definitely stop saying cool so much. Stephen Fry told me the very same in one of my nervous (do you detect a theme here?) prattling rambles. A conscious effort required.

For me it turned into a 12 hour shift, missing a day of glorious weather to boot. But worth it I think. Watch the video and do please give us feedback about the site or the events, good or bad. The more we do it, the better we'll get. Quicker and slicker. It'll be fun, it'll be challenging and if you steer us right with what works for you, it'll be excellent. No sweat.

If you missed the event with Michael Morpurgo you can now watch it here.

You can also sign up for our next Authors Live event with Charlie Higson on the 7th of October.

Other news:

It has to be the most glitzy and glamorous award in the world of fiction and it's back to reward the nation's favourite authors of teen fiction once again. The Queen of Teen award was founded in 2008 to celebrate the fantastic teen and tween authors who bring so much enjoyment to their readers, dealing with real-life issues in a way that is honest, entertaining and fun!

To place your vote click here!

The list of winners across categories for the Scottish Education Awards have been announced and can be viewed here. Claire, Paul and Philippa from Scottish Book Trust went and delivered a workshop in Bishopbriggs Academy - winner of the Enterprise and Employability Across Learning category - to kick the project off. Well done Bishopbrigg's.

Back by popular demand Leaf Books presents the Tiny Weeny Writing and Drawing Competition. They invite you to send in either writing that is no longer than 140 characters, which includes letters, spaces and punctuation, (not the title but please don’t make those more than 30 characters) or a piece of black and white art that is no bigger than half a post card. Obviously you can send both, but as separate entries.You can more infomation here!

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