Authors Electric

I have tried not to worry too much about AI, and even to welcome it, in its place, since one of my sons has been working with it in some capacity and I still feel it has the potential to help with scientific and medical research projects and that kind of thing. I can't imagine that Copilot, on the other hand, will be a help with anything.  I didn't intend to have to wrestle with Copilot, but it has recently invaded my Word documents exactly like a virus, and one for which there isn't any kind of antidote or vaccine. I think this has happened as an unintended consequence of an upgrade I've made to my Microsoft Office setup in order that I can experiment with their new-fangled tool for creating online databases. I did this because I've volunteered for years in various roles in a local community organisation, and some issues have arisen that I feel can only be resolved with a database, and of course Microsoft have used this moment to stop including Access in the Office...

  As I am merely one of the contributors to, rather than the owner of, this blog, I don't usually use my own image or that of my books as the main photo. I always think that would be rather presumptuous of me. However, I thought it was appropriate for this particular post and I am hoping the admins and you, as readers of this blog, will forgive me. There is a good reason for me using this today. Often, as authors, we only display a very public persona and what people know of us is what can be seen in the images we choose. These are most often chosen to show us in our best light. Of course, that makes sense as we want readers to invest in our books. From the image above you would see me as a confident prolific author, with numerous books to her name, across a range of age groups. I have also been published in, edited and compiled numerous anthologies which are not seen in the above image. Why are you telling me this, I hear you ask. The answer - you may think that words just flow fr...

I remember the old days, when I used to write everything in longhand, and then type it up on a manual typewriter with a sheet of carbon paper underneath, sometimes even two, and the Tippex at my elbow. A mistake often meant re-typing the whole of a chapter, and editing was literally a cut-and-paste job, which could get both messy and confusing. You posted something off with your heart in your mouth, as your top copy was the only one worth sending out. The photocopy shop charged by the sheet, and the expense was prohibitive.             Then along came the ZX81, with its little silver strip of printout paper, followed by the Spectrum. And then, suddenly, there were Amstrads and Amigas and a revolution had taken place. Writers had deep philosophical conversations about whether writing straight onto a computer somehow hi-jacked the creative process, and whether our work would be the worse for it. And then along came PCs and Apple ...