Authors Electric

Long nights - good for the writing soul? Apologies for some writerly introspection today, but in these darker months when there should be more  time to sit down and write, it’s somehow just as hard – or even harder -  to keep at it. When I gave up full-time work and looked forward to ‘being a writer’ I envisaged a nice daily routine of, say, writing in the mornings and editing or dealing with submissions etc in the afternoons, with a reasonable number of days off /trips out for good behaviour.  I suppose for some periods of time this has worked, but somewhere along the line I discovered that creativity and routine are not happy cohabitees, at least not in my brain, and at various points my ingrained Protestant Work Ethic has driven me not to new summits of achievement but to a grinding halt. I often wonder how I have managed to write two novels and more than enough words for a third when my ‘average daily wordcount’ (not that I often think of it that way) is r...

At  Electric Authors we're a varied bunch writing  everything from crime to humour to self-help. The way we work is also as varied as the places we work. So three EA bloggers have decided to band together and share where we work on todays post.           Karen Bush - visit website   Over the years I’ve worked in all sorts of places: at our last house I actually had the luxury of an office. OK, it was only 6 by 8 foot, but it’s amazing how much you can cram in. When we moved to the current house I was in the middle of writing a book: no time to unpack – I just set up shop in the corner of the sitting/dining area, and although not originally intended, have been there ever since. My partner gritted his teeth and set up a desk unit and some cupboard units that he felt he could live with as furniture, and it’s perfect. I have a view into the front garden where I can watch the fish and frogs frolicking in the pond, s...

Kathleen Massara at Flavorwire did a series a while ago on the weird writing habits of famous authors. Truman Capote was a completely horizontal type who could only think lying down. John Cheever wrote in his underwear, a very common habit in these days of laptops in bed but perhaps not then. William Faulkner drank whisky. Definitely not for me that one, nor music or views thanks very much, though I love listening to radio plays & stories on BBC Radio 4 Listen Again when ebook formatting. The BBC International Short Story Award finalists are there for the taking at the moment. Vladimir Nabokov used index cards, a common one these days for early plotting, characters & ideas. Nabokov was one of those tool fuss-pots, his cards had to be of a particular type: “My schedule is flexible, but I am rather particular about my instruments: lined Bristol cards and well sharpened, not too hard, pencils capped with erasers.” T. S. Eliot tinting his face green to appear corpse-like is...