Jelly by Clare Rees

Martha and her friends have been drifting on a giant killer jellyfish since sea levels rose and the world ended.
Life is gloopy, toxic and full of tentacles. It’s also really boring.
More than anything, Martha wants to escape – but what ’s waiting for her on the shore? She doesn’t know it, but life is about to get much stickier …

Chicken House

When I read the blurb for this book I thought “this sounds so ridiculous that it just has to be good”, and it was a really entertaining read. I was most taken with how convincing the teens’ reactions to everything going on were, and what they dreamed of for the future. What I didn’t realise, until I was sent this piece of writing for the blog from Clare, was just how much it was influenced by the teenagers that she works with! What an amazing way to write a book!

Writing a book alongside your intended audience is brilliant fun. But it can also have surprising consequences. Jelly started out as a teaching resource, as a way of getting my students engaged with their creative writing lessons. I wrote alongside them, but also shaped sections around their needs- so I would often start lessons by giving students extracts from my book to correct. I filled the extracts with common errors for the students to find and as they identified them we discussed how the errors could be fixed and improved. Identifying and improving those mistakes in their own work would become the lesson focus for students. When the book was published my students had a question and answer session with me. When they asked these questions none of them had read the complete book- so their questions are based entirely on the extracts used during their lessons.
My students’ questions:

1. [Asked by a student called James] Is there a character called James? If so, was it based on me? If not, why not? Yes there is! The character is not based on you, sadly. When I started writing the book I choose the name because I didn’t then teach anybody called James. Using the book in a school, it was particularly hard to find names which were appropriate for the characters in the book but which were not going to cause problems with my students. The main character, Martha, has the same name as my daughter. This is because when I was writing the book in the evenings she was very little and wanted me to sit outside her room until she fell asleep. Therefore the name, ‘Martha’, was particularly on my mind as I wrote. One of the teachers in the book, Dr Jones, is also named after one of our Biology teachers. While the character is very different from our teacher, Year 9 wanted the character to have the name of the teacher who had taught them in the lesson before mine.
2. What motivated you to try and get it published? Boredom. I did not go through the traditional publishing routes, but entered a competition [The Times/Chickenhouse competition] at the end of the Autumn term in 2017. I was sitting in a coffee shop with a cake as I finished writing the book. I didn’t really know what to do with the book, so I googled ‘competitions’, found this one, and decided I might as well enter. I didn’t bother sending the book off to any agents or publishers, so it has never actually been rejected. I am also now a firm believer in entering competitions!
3. Did you ever experience writers’ block, and if so, how did you overcome it? I don’t believe in writers’ block. I think it’s exactly the same feeling you get at the start of a big piece of homework. Nobody wants to write, and at the end of a long teaching day I definitely don’t want to sit down and do any work. But if you sit down and start, somehow it gets better and words do appear. Each evening I sat down and did some writing I always felt glad I had- however difficult it was to start.
4. Is there an event in your life which inspired you to write this? I was teaching our current Year 9s creative writing (back when they were in Year 7) and they were a bit stuck on the planning. So I decided to plan a book for them at the start of a lesson, but then I thought it looked quite interesting so I went off and wrote it. That week I had seen two interesting things:
   • A youtube clip in which a member of Donald Trump’s team said that sea levels rising wasn’t a problem, because it had already happened in the Bible and we’d been fine.
   • I was reading a Viking saga in which a kraken was described as being like an island which people could live on
5. Have you always been interested in mythical sea creatures? In no way. But I do have a phobia of shellfish, which I have received hypnotherapy for. When discussing this book, the publishers wanted to meet in a seafood restaurant because they thought it was hilarious and topical. It took me until after the main course before I told them that crab and lobster shells terrify me. Also, my editor wanted me to draw a picture of the kriks for her [my crustacean monsters]. Unfortunately I found them so disgusting that I was unable to do this. At some points while writing I needed to check what crabs and lobsters look like. Again, I was unable to look at pictures so had to
   get my son to look at them for me while I asked him questions.
6. What do the characters do when they get their periods? Yes, as in most fiction this is not mentioned (despite the fact that I know most women and teenage girls spend a significant part of their life thinking about it!). I did consider this. In the old days I understand that women often used to use rags. There are rags mentioned in the book, so I assumed that they would use these.
7. If it’s been climate change do the characters need suncream? Yes they do – although not all of the characters have white skin, so they don’t all need loads. I haven’t included this information in the book, but I had planned for the jellyfish slime to have suncream-like properties. It would also work as a moisturiser. I imagined the characters would smear it on their skin to protect themselves from the sun.
8. You changed the kriks [crustacean monsters]. Why? When I wrote them in school they were more humanoid. My editors pointed out to me that when the central characters get into battle with them, this means it’s like they’re killing humans. I hadn’t wanted to write a book about murder, so I thought I’d change the monsters!
9. Why did you let Dr Jones live? [Originally Dr Jones, the Biology teacher, was killed in the book because my students wanted the character to die] Actually I needed the character. She was so crucial to the story that when I killed her off I had to invent another, very similar character who lived until the end. My editor pointed out it would be easier if Dr Jones just lived. Plus, I have to share a staffroom with the real Biology teacher and didn’t want her to be cross with me.
10. Do you think your book could happen in reality? I hope not! Giant crustaceans would be a very, very bad thing. However, sea levels are rising and we’re not planning for climate change in the way that I think we should be. I think that is going to result in people dying, and I think it is going to change the world. We are also going to have to change the way we treat the world, as our place in it is going to be affected.

Huge thanks to Chicken House books for sending me a copy, Nina for organising the guest post, and Clare for writing it!

Jelly is out now!