Authors Electric

  Political Story-Telling by Bronwen Griffiths  Humans are natural story-tellers. Politicians know this too and through the ages have used story-telling to gain and hold on to power. Just as writers have to think carefully about their titles – which title will catch the public’s eye and perhaps result in better sales? – the politician and the newspaper also want to catch our eyes with their headlines and slogans. This is nothing new but with social media it’s easier for politicians to speak directly to voters.    Pithy phrases such as ‘Make America Great Again’ or ‘Taking Back Control’ and ‘Oven Ready Deal’ (Brexit) pit one community against another. The story is that one side has been betrayed and the politician will be the saviour. It’s the old, old story of vanquishing the monster. For the right-wing the enemy is the ‘metropolitan elite,’ ‘the woolly liberals,’ the ‘woke.’ For the left it’s the rich and powerful. However, as Robert Shrimsley points out in his anal...

Most published writers crave reviews but what can we do if they are inaccurate or really quite nasty? I try to review every book I read on GoodReads. There are other platforms but I’m too lazy to change. GoodReads doesn’t allow half-star reviews so I am unable to give a book 4.5 stars and few books merit a five star review. But of course I’m wanting everyone to give me a five-star review! I haven’t ever given a book one-star although I did give one novel only two stars. It wasn’t a bad book but there were things I disliked about it and I tried to make that clear in the review. It also seemed to be a book that rather divided opinion. I felt guilty for only rating it two but in the end what matters is the content of the review not the star rating. One review of my own novel, A Bird in the House stated only that the reviewer didn’t like fiction or reading about faraway places (maybe read the book blurb?!) I read Monique Roffey’s novel, The Mermaid of Black Conch recently. I personally l...

For many years I’ve been a member of various writing groups. Most of these have involved meeting in person and then sharing work and feeding back via e-mail. Since the pandemic everything has gone on-line – for me that’s my local writing group and poetry group - and I’ve also joined a new online group where we read and feedback on work in progress. I’ve also ‘attended’ a couple of Arvon Masterclasses and ‘Novelnights.’ There are many advantages to online Zoom sessions. The cost of these sessions is usually affordable and there is no travelling - which involves both cost and time. Online sessions are also more accessible for those who are rarely, or never, able to travel. ‘Novelnights’ runs in Bristol, which is many miles from my home and would certainly not be practical for me. But I’ll be honest – I don’t really like Zoom. For one thing I find my own face distracts me and I really don’t want to look at it when I’m speaking - and more importantly I miss in-person human contact and inte...

  This is my first blog for Authors Electric since December. A mix of winter blues and lockdown floored me for a while. I stopped writing altogether. I even left social media for a while unusual for me. I do recommend you take a break from social media from time to time, if like me, you are a regular user. I get a lot of support on social media (I mostly use Twitter) from other writers and it provides a great source of writing tips. I can read wonderful essays and flash fiction too. However social media can be a source of anxiety and anger. This anxiety is often related to measuring up against other writers. This can all too easily morph into a crippling loss of confidence and an unhealthy level of envy because – and let’s be honest about this – we all feel envy sometimes. The anger I feel isn’t related to writing but to politics. However that can also be unhealthy if it is just reacting to events and venting but doing nothing constructive. Some people seemed to have managed to m...

  An event occurred recently which caused me to reflect upon intention. A story of mine that’s been up on the Black Country Arts Foundry website for two years suddenly attracted attention – and not of the sort I initially welcomed. (The link to the story follows below this article).   My story is loosely based on real life events and is told partly in the voice of a child. In the story I use the word ‘gypsy’. When I wrote the piece I was well aware that the word is now considered to be offensive. Happily it is not now in common parlance and we use the word ‘traveller’ instead. But when my brother and I were children, the word was widely used, including by my own mother, although I do not recall any particular prejudice on her part. However, my brother and I did hear from those around us, of the ‘bad’ things ‘gypsies’ did. My brother and I attended a local village school in the 1960’s. A small traveller community then lived in the village. I cannot remember exactly when it disa...

  On the whole I’m quite a cautious writer. I am afraid of causing offence. That doesn’t always extend to my other life. I have a tendency to lose my temper and shout both offline and online – not always a good trait I admit – but that’s who I am, for good or ill. Yet at the same time I can sometimes be overly apologetic and cautious. Women especially are brought up to be polite and consider others – an admirable trait unless someone is literally or metaphorically treading on your toes – but politeness and caution doesn’t always help us get places. Elfrika Deposit Photos What about caution and fearlessness in our writing lives?   I’ve written before about how fear can hold us back in our creative work. We fear we are not good enough, we fear to submit our writing to journals or publishers because rejection and criticism are hard to take. We fear to take risks with our writing, perhaps keeping to the same old paths. If you are going to be a published writer, or if you attend wr...

I was starting to teach a course on The Short Story for my WEA students when I noticed a reference on Twitter to  Not Here Not Us , Short Stories of Syria (2018) by Bronwen Griffiths. Having an interest in the recent history of the country, and thinking I needed something to add to my usual fare of Ernest Hemingway, Katherine Mansfield, Shirley Jackson et al I sent off for a copy.  When it arrived I had just started teaching the course and I read on the cover that it was a collection of short stories, flash fiction and poems about the Syria crisis. I mentioned the book to the class, and they asked me what flash fiction was. I said that I didn’t know but that I would find out for next week. This involved reading the book and so I did. Reading can sometimes be for me an extraordinary experience, rather like a trip, and so it was with this book. The pieces with titles like ‘Sniper’, ‘Death and Survival’ and ‘Syrian Spaceman’ flowed together in one unbroken reading st...

We are always writing in a time of uncertainty because the truth is we can never be certain of what the next day will bring; if it will bring good news or bad, rain or sunshine, a mood of optimism or one of gloom. But today, perhaps more than ever in our lifetimes, we are living with the full knowledge that life is always uncertain. Few of us, if any, could have predicted how radically our lives would change this year. However, the very act of creation, is to work with uncertainty. “ Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can’t–and in face, you’re not supposed to–know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing.” ( Anne Lamott).   We can’t wholly control this virus. We can take steps – as we are all doing – to try and protect ourselves and others – but there is much we can’t do and much we don’t yet know. The data is incomplete. We do not entirely understand why some apparently healthy people ge...

  Recycling is on everyone’s tongue these days. The need to mend, recycle and use less of the earth’s resources. It got me thinking about how this links to our writing.             I am sure we all have drawers full of notes, or old notebooks, or stuff on the computer, or who knows where. Writing we have discarded. Writing that started out with a promise and ended up on the rubbish dump. But even rubbish dumps contain hidden gems – if you know where to look, if you are lucky, if you spend enough time there.             I’m not suggesting you should spend too much time rooting around the rubbish dump. It’s easy enough to get distracted these days by social media, let alone one’s own scribblings. However, when stuck for an idea or a character, you may find one lurking in an old notebook or computer file. Those scribbled notes and ideas can come in useful when you ar...

Where do we find inspiration? I’m not sure I can be categorical about this. We’re all different and no doubt we’ll find our inspiration from different sources – a newspaper article, a walk in a garden, a conversation overheard, a holiday, taking a lift in a skyscraper... Sometimes inspiration appears like a gift from the sky but we all know those times when it simply won’t come – perhaps when we are over-worked, anxious, stressed, depressed or bored. Boredom and depression often descend on me when I’m doing the same thing day in day out, and in the same place. But they are also a state of mind. I’m not talking about serious depression here -- which requires professional help and/or other interventions -- but rather those low-level depressive states.  I remember reading about a young man who could not afford to take a holiday. He decided to create the same ‘holiday’ sensation by exploring his apartment with a new sense of wonder. I think he filmed his apartment. Unfortuna...

I was talking with a fellow writer last month. It was a ‘golden’ day – not like today which has been cold and windy, with showers that hit the skin like stones. What we were talking about on that lovely autumn day was something we called ‘golden novels.’ What we meant is that sometimes the novel or story we are working on feels like slogging through mud while the novel we just have an idea for shines and beckons in the distance. But the reason this novel shines is because we haven’t tried to write it yet. It’s only an idea, a concept, even if in our minds it is perfectly formed. But we know that once we set down to work on it, our new ‘golden’ novel will lose its shine just like the one we are working on now. The hard truth is that writing is a challenging mental process. It requires a great deal of us – uncertainty, vulnerability, discipline, and play. And therein lies a problem. Because in order to write we need to get into a state of flow and in order to get into a stat...

Here, in the UK, we’re always talking about the weather. It’s part of our DNA. Almost an international joke. But we talk about the weather because it’s an important and essential part of our lives. It affects our mood and our health - and sometimes even our very survival. Weather in our writing is an essential part of the setting. It can affect the way our characters behave and feel – just as it affects us. But sometimes the weather functions in a more symbolic way – in my latest novel, Here Casts No Shadow , the falling snow at the beginning of the book presages a change in the heroine’s life. The tank sped up. I never realised a tank could move so fast. Grey smoke poured from its exhaust and the mounted gun swung round in our direction. I yanked Pearl’s arm and dragged her in the direction of the trees. Breath steamed out of our mouths. The snow was glassy underfoot where it had been trodden down and we ran and the trees were far away and how thin they were. Snow is i...

Those of us who write are always more than just writers. We are parents, children, workers, volunteers, gardeners, tree huggers, high-flyers, low-flyers, all types of flyers. I am a writer who sometimes combines writing with social activism. In 2013 I became a volunteer activist for Syria Solidarity UK.   We work with refugee and other activist groups, and we campaign against the bombing of civilians by the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian allies. The Coalition forces who bombed Raqqa to defeat IS also caused civilian deaths. As readers will no doubt be aware, the moderate opposition to the Assad regime has suffered in an appalling manner, and even now, in parts of Syria, the Islamic State and other militant factions have taken control further complicating an already complex and tragic war. I make no secret of, nor do I apologise for my partisan approach to this conflict. However, as a fiction writer it is best not to preach to readers, and is important for wri...