Authors Electric

I read Kathleen Jones’s post earlier this month with mingled envy and anticipation. There she was in New Zealand, where we shall be for two months starting in January, in contemplative solitude, surrounded by beauty of a strangely specific nature in two isolated islands which have a different sense of time from the rest of us. Aotearoa is  an ancient land. Its essential wildness is tempered by a slow moving peace where the imperatives of Darwinism never quite seemed to work. After all, there were no predators before the humans came, so creatures could evolve in their own time with little threat to which they need adapt. Sadly, they have still not cottoned on to the fact that they must. As a result, birds which never needed to fly are close to extinction and animals who found slow and stately movement perfectly adequate and stress-free are finding too late that it is often wise to run. A new imported animal kingdom of possums, stoats and weasels is making short work of them all. ...

At my time of life I didn’t expect to find myself accepting a writing challenge utterly new to me. But that’s what has happened and I feel elated and yet, though I’ve made a start and am fairly pleased so far, I still have a nagging fear that it may not turn out well after all. In my June blog, I told how I had , with some misgivings, accepted Margaret Quon’s invitation to write the copy describing  all her products for the website for her new online shop. Copywriting was something I’d never done before. It seemed to me a specific skill which needed a special training (though, looking at what passes for persuasive prose in most advertisements, I didn’t think it could be very good). But I started it, warmed to the task and Margaret was pleased. Then came another challenge. Looking back, I can’t remember which of us first suggested it.  It suddenly stood there, a definite, cut and dried decision to do it. Margaret is starting a project to sell birthstone earrings and ...