Authors Electric

The Silly Season is upon us. Indeed, some might say it began early this year... but that’s enough about the state of the UK government.  Since the heatwave has filled my mind with thistledown, this will be a post all about trivia. Verbal trivia, that is. Specifically, some of the proverbial metaphors we pepper our speech with every day (see what I did there?).  Recently, when describing a sudden realisation I’d had to a friend, I used the phrase, ‘the scales fell from my eyes.’  I like that image. My friend knew exactly what I meant.  Fish scales. Odd to have them covering your eyes. Photo by Engin Akyurt: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ close-up-of-fish-scales-with-natural-texture-33654489/ It was only, some time later, it occurred to me to wonder… what did I mean? Scales? Eyes? Why would there be scales on my eyes in the first place, and what kind of scales? Fish scales? Piano scales? A weighing machine?  These kitchen scales would give 'heavy-eyed' a whole new ...

When I’m reading a book review or looking at notices of coming play performances, there’s one word that tells me I need read no further. I know at once that this novel or this performance is not for me.  The word is ‘reimagining’.  Instead of the writer’s creating his or her own original work of art in novel or play form, they have piggy-backed on a classic, taken over the well-defined characters (saves the effort of creating their own), invented new plotlines and generally ‘updated’ the story to add ‘freshness’ and ‘relevance’ for today. A particular favourite at the moment is to go for a minor character – Mary Bennett, say – and retell Jane Austen’s great novel from her point of view . The result is a kind of Cosy Classics in which readers are duped into thinking they’re being given a new, original story when much of it is simply borrowed finery from an infinitely greater creator.  The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. Told through the eyes of Maggie, NOT Tom Tulliver....

Doors closed on originality? Photo by burcubyzt_85: https://www.pexels.com/ photo/vintage-wooden-door-with-distinctive- handles-36306962/ I learnt something new on X the other day. (And no, it wasn’t the latest cancellations, though there’s plenty of that going on).  I can’t remember how it came up, but both Lissa Evans (a writer I greatly admire) and I were intrigued to discover the origin of the term cliché. I am rather ashamed that I never bothered to look it up before. I’d always assumed it had something to do with the French for a door closing: a boring, hackneyed phrase shutting off originality. Goodness knows where I got that notion from because it’s definitely barking up the wrong tree (an idiom, by the way, not a cliché; a nice distinction I found going down rabbit holes online… oops, there goes another).  How to describe a beautiful sunset and bring it freshly to life. Instead, the verb clicher means ‘to click’. Its use as a noun goes back as far as 1825 and originat...

The servants' view:  Longbourn by Jo Baker Look, I don’t usually bother with this sort of thing.  Yet another rewriting of Pride and Prejudice . We’ve had it from the servants’ point of view (Jo Baker’s Longbourn ), it’s infused Bridget Jones’s Diary , and been recast as a comic horror film,  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,  starring the Undead. (This last version may be a kind of backhanded compliment to Jane Austen on the deathless status of her most loved work, I couldn’t possibly say.)  And now, heaven help us, we have Mary Bennet’s story.  Suffused with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice : Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding That’s right. The hilariously tedious, pedantic, verbose, two-dimensional middle sister whose only function is for us to laugh at her. Whether or not you find her a believable character, or feel there’s a touch of cruelty in her creation, there's no escaping the fact that this is how Jane Austen wrote her.  But guess what....

I’ve been reading a number of memoirs recently, thanks to Slightly Foxed Editions, the publishing wing of Slightly Foxed magazine. Mostly this has been a sheer delight. While the writing quality may vary, what doesn’t is the fascinating glimpses of detail of peoples' lives in the past .  To War with Whitaker by Hermione Ranfurly My Grandmothers and I by  Diana Holman Hunt I was going to write ‘ordinary peoples' lives’ but that would hardly fit My Grandmothers and I , Diana Holman Hunt’s hilarious account of being brought up by her two grandmothers, one of whom was almost dangerously eccentric (guess which one). Or Countess Ranfurly’s determination to follow her husband into battle during World War 2 ( To War with Whitaker ). Other volumes in this series don’t have quite the same glamour but provide invaluable accounts of growing up in wartime London, for instance (V S Pritchett’s A Cab at the Door ). Or learning traditional farming, complete with horse-drawn implements such...

Here’s a quiz question for you.  Just about every new writer will, at some time or other, be advised to ‘murder your darlings’. By which is meant not bumping off your nearest and dearest to give you AT LAST a bit of peace and quiet to create… but exerting discipline over what you’re creating. If you have written a passage you’re particularly proud of, with elaborate, flowery images, elegant use of words – the best of fine writing, in short – then delete it. The chances are you’ve strayed into a self-conscious writerliness, in which pace and plot have been sacrificed to draw attention to your own beautiful prose, or (in my case) to set up a joke I’m desperate to squeeze into the story.  It doesn’t work. The narrative must come first. Every bit of scene setting or character depiction, every scrap of dialogue and, yes, every joke needs to further the plot. Writing should be like a clear pane of glass. Photo by Magda Ehlers: https://www.pexels.com/ photo/rustic-wooden-window-overl...

Last week I attended the Anne Frank Trust’s Annual Lunch for Holocaust Memorial Day 2026 . Candle-lighters at the Anne Frank Trust Holocaust Memorial Day lunch, 2026. If you haven’t heard of this excellent charity before, the first thing you should know is that while it’s inspired by one of the most well-known victims of the Jewish holocaust, it aims to educate and empower young people to challenge all forms of prejudice, not just antisemitism. In a moving candle-lighting ceremony, we heard the stories of a survivor of the Cambodian genocide and a young Ukrainian refugee, as well as a holocaust survivor and – perhaps most poignantly, because so immediate – the widow of one of the two men who died in the recent Manchester synagogue attack. Anne Frank photographed at school, Joods Lyceum, December 1941, six months before going into hiding with her family, July 1942. By Anonymous - http://www.annefrank.org/nl/ Anne-Frank/De-nazis-bezetten-Nederland/Naar-het-Joods-Lyceum/, Public...

Happy New Year!  And now that Christmas is over, I’m going to try something.   Here are a few lines from some of the top famous poems of all time (according to Google):  1. Shall I compare you to a summer’s day?       You are lovelier and more temperate. ( Sonnet 18 , William Shakespeare)    Autumn foliage 2. Season of mists and yellow fruitfulness,      Close friend of the maturing sun. ( Ode to Autumn, John Keats)   3. I must go back to the seas again, to the lowly seas and the sky       And all I ask is a good ship, and a star to sail her by. ( Sea Fever , John Masefield)   4. I wandered lonely as a cloud      That sails on high over dales and hills ( Daffodils,  William Wordsworth)  Notice anything?   Lovers of literature will be foaming at the mouth long before they reach No 4 (judging by myself, naturally).  Because these lines are fu...