Writing Ruth

Ruth Symes is a WN subscriber and successful children’s author with a varied cv.

Her latest book is Harriet Dancing, a picture book illustrated by Caroline Jayne Church and published by Chicken House. In the story Harriet the hedgehog wants to dance with the butterflies only to find that they won’t dance with her as she is not a butterly.

This is Ruth’s second book for Chicken House, the first being Sheep Fairy, a book about a Sheep who learns to fly. Ruth has also recently worked with Orion and one of these books, Mondays at Monster School, was featured on Cbeebies’ ‘bedtime story slot’. Two of her novel-lengthed titles, The Mum Trap and Frankie’s Romeo, have been optioned and developed as film scripts.

Ruth offers her services as a mentor and has worked as an Arvon tutor as well as lecturing on children’s fiction for Middlesex University’s Summer School and Leicester De Monfort University. She was a writing coach and judge on Richard and Judy’s ‘Write a Children’s Short Story Competition’.

On top of all this she’s worked as an actress and non-fiction writer and has written scripts, one of which was broadcast on radio. She puts her success down to adaptability and willingness to try different genres and recommends that other writers do the same.

‘It’s exciting to be working on a TV script one and day and a picture book the next and speaking at a festival or writer’s group the next.’

She reassures other writers that she’s also experienced her share of rejections but greatly enjoyed her job.

‘I get the variety of writing work and to travel (the Arts Council gave me a grant to travel to America, Ecuador and New Zealand in 2005 and another one to go to the LA Society of Children’s Books Conference) and meet lots of people. I do think it is the best thing to do though, at least for me.’
Website: www.ruthsymes.com