Authors Electric

                                                          What we did on our holidays What do marketing-analysts, postgraduate history scholars, Information Technology librarians, and retired teachers have in common? Answer – they don’t spend their summer holidays relaxing on a beach on the Costa Brava but go on a creative writing course in a remote and rainswept cottage at Moniack Mhor in Scotland. There they meet other writers, learn to cook for 17 people, stay up until three o’clock in the morning talking, and fall in love, with writing of course.   The course I did was run by Colette Paul and Nick Brooks, two writers with very different styles. Nick wrote novels while Collette was a writer of short stories. They are both Scottish, graduates of Glasgow University, and good friends.   On the first evening both tutors read aloud from...

Early this month I spent almost a week at Moniack Mhor. (The 'Mhor' part means 'big' but I'm unable to find out what 'Moniack' means.) The week was a Society of Authors 'retreat' organised by my friend and tireless ball of energy, Linda Strachan , who is always organising retreats and conferences and what-not while we beg her to pause for a moment and take a deep breath. The place is near Inverness and not that easy to find if you've just driven for eight hours from the West Midlands and got lost because your sat-nav died. They tried to guide me in by phone but by that time my brain was scrambled and they had to sent out a rescue party to guide me in. It was not the first time, they said. I was happy anyway. The countryside I got lost in was some of the most beautiful I'd seen for a long time. Above is the view from my little bed/writing room. The camera never captures the chromium yellow intensity of the bonny broom which bl...