Authors Electric

For my first blog with the esteemed writers of Authors Electric, I’d like to share something about myself as a writer. I won’t bore you with my personal history, my likes and dislikes, shoe size, etc. Almost anything you want to know about me is on my website if you’re curious enough (except maybe the shoe size). I’ll address something that is not always evident about most writers, and that is … are they plotters or pantsers? Let me explain the difference. A plotter researches a book before writing it, laying out an overview with major plot points. Plotters know what will happen at the beginning, middle, and end of the book. Character sketches are usually part of the outline. R.L. Stine:   “If you do enough planning before you start to write, there's no way you can have writer's block. I do a complete chapter by chapter outline.” John Grisham:   “I've learned that the more time I spend on the outline the easier the book is to write. And if I cheat on ...

In July 2016 the Barnes family spent two weeks in Majorca, during which three of the four of us read The Shining by one Mr Stephen King. The readings were punctuated by Mrs R appearing at doorways and saying "Here's Johnny!" in her best Jack Nicholson impression, which was scary enough. Imagine our individual surprise when the "Here's Johnny!" phrase was nowhere to be found in the 2011 paperback reprint of the 1977 original novel. We resolved to watch Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film version of the story on our return to Ireland, as it was before my daughter's time and I had never managed to watch the film all the way through.   Many times re-published, this edition of the 1977 novel has a 2001 introduction by the author. The novel revolves around a very limited number of characters in an ultimately claustrophobic setting. What happens before the family of three reach the Overlook Hotel is of great significance when it comes to understanding why...

Woody Allen has said in an interview how much he had loved Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black satirical comedy, DR STRANGELOVE, and that, like many others, he then waited four expectant years for Kubrick’s next film to appear. Allen sat in the darkness of the cinema and watched all of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. He exited the cinema, just thinking “what was that?” He couldn’t make head nor tail of Kubrick’s new film and was very disappointed. A week later, says Allen, he went back to see 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. On the second viewing, Allen loved it and concluded this was one of the best films he had ever seen in his life. And so the confounding of expectations…particularly in cinema and literature, genre expectations, can go… Kubrick seemed to delight in radical shifts in subject matter from film to film: from noir to war, from satire to science fiction, from the distant past of SPARTACUS to the dystopian future of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE; from the candle-lit 18 th century picture-frame ...