Authors Electric

WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU ...   NOOOOO!!         Sherry Ashworth One of the most puzzling pieces of advice I was ever given came from an editor some years ago.   Think of the book you’d like to read, she said, and write that! Even now, as I type those words, my head spins.   What kind of books do I like to read?   Books that tell me something I didn’t know before.   Novels set in countries I’ve never been to.   Characters that have the type of personalities that I’ve never explored until now.   A set of circumstances I’ve never met, or a situation that has never occurred to me.   For example, one of my top reads recently was Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex , which ticks all of the above boxes. Also, the editor’s advice seemed to conflict with that age-old writer’s mantra – write about what you know.   If I know about something – if I know about something VERY well – I might be an authorit...

My favourite university tutor was a very talented poet, and passionate about writing both as a practitioner and a critic.  She taught me a great deal about the power of the written word.  She also once said to me – never write for a living.  Never sell your work.  And she remained true to her word.  Her poems were published, but only by a group of her friends and admirers, who paid for a subscription run.  Writing poetry was always something she did for love, not for money. Of course poets in the main don’t make a lot of money, even when their work does well.  I’m not a poet, though I consort with many, and therefore I know this to be true.  Poets are very likely to have a day job and finance their love of writing through working nine till five.  Some writers like days jobs closely connected with writing, such as teaching writing; others appreciate the creative freedom of having a job entirely unconnected with literature, composing ha...

           Should it matter what I look like? I’m a writer, and what I do is make up stories with characters in them.   My books should speak for themselves.   My physical appearance should be immaterial.           And yet.   Over and over again I am asked for photographs of me.   It might be publicity shots for events I’m involved in, local newspapers and of course there’s also the online world – it just does not look right to have a Twitter or Facebook profile without a photo.   Don’t you just hate those blank-egg shapes that Twitter bestows on those of us too shy or private to post up a mugshot?   Though I’ve chosen not to have my photo along with the cover of my e-book, Good Recipes and Bad Women , it’s there on my Amazon page.           So.   What makes a good author shot?   Ought one to look...

MITSAKES In Junior school, I was proud and precocious, and rather good at English.   When my teacher, Mr Bart, called me to his desk to tell me that I had mis-spelt ‘all right’ as alright, I was indignant.   Of COURSE it was ‘alright.’   He patiently explained that I had used an American version of the two word English expression.   I refused to believe him.   I harboured a resentment for years. I know this does not put me in a very good light.   But it was the first time I’d come up against correctness in English, and the passion it engenders in people.   A comma, or not a comma?   The moral turpitude of those who dare to end sentences with prepositions!   The ignorant misuse of apostrophes!   The English language must be defended against the invading hordes of modernity and sloppiness! Years studying English, then teaching it and then even more years of proof-reading my own novels and other writing, have given me...