Authors Electric

Here’s a quiz question for you.  Just about every new writer will, at some time or other, be advised to ‘murder your darlings’. By which is meant not bumping off your nearest and dearest to give you AT LAST a bit of peace and quiet to create… but exerting discipline over what you’re creating. If you have written a passage you’re particularly proud of, with elaborate, flowery images, elegant use of words – the best of fine writing, in short – then delete it. The chances are you’ve strayed into a self-conscious writerliness, in which pace and plot have been sacrificed to draw attention to your own beautiful prose, or (in my case) to set up a joke I’m desperate to squeeze into the story.  It doesn’t work. The narrative must come first. Every bit of scene setting or character depiction, every scrap of dialogue and, yes, every joke needs to further the plot. Writing should be like a clear pane of glass. Photo by Magda Ehlers: https://www.pexels.com/ photo/rustic-wooden-window-overl...

There’s a lot of advice for writers out there, some of it very Authors Electric Mari Biella good. Joshua Wolf Shenk’s “Have the courage to write badly” is essential for any writer who doesn’t want to give in to utter despair whilst reading through their first drafts. Harper Lee’s advice to aspiring writers that they would be “wise to develop a thick hide,” is more relevant than ever in the age of Amazon and Goodreads. Paul Theroux’s blunt suggestion that young would-be writers should “leave home” makes sense – your parents are unlikely to understand, still less support, your decision to become a writer and starve in a garret, so perhaps you’d do well to cut the apron strings. As for Dorothy Parker’s advice that the greatest favour one could do for wannabe writers was to shoot them while they were still happy – well, we’ve probably all felt like that at one time or another.           Certain other nuggets of advice, on the other hand...

I'm incredibly proud of this book (available, incidentally, for Kindle UK here , other areas here , and as a paperback here ). It's still hard saying things like that. I feel like Richard Gere in that scene in Pretty Woman where he says "It's taken me $10,000 of therapy to say 'I am angry with my father'". Only in my case it's taken 5 or 6 years of self-publishing to say, without a whole shockwave of trepidation "I am proud of this book." I have mostly been one of those writers who, when asked about there books, will mumble something non-committal before quickly deflecting back to "and what do you do?" At one poetry night, the wonderful poet, raconteur, and performance artist Tina Sederholm , introducing the night in question, said "poets should stop apologising for their poems before they read them" and eyeballed straight at me as she spoke. In part, this has to do with all sorts of deep-seated inadequacies that are ...

Finally, after about four years in the gestation, my book on self-publishing, which takes a very different approach from the usual guides, is here. To get the grubby stuff out of the way first, you can buy it for your Kindle for £1.88 in the UK here , and for $2.99 in the US here , and it is also available everywhere else. I wanted the book to fill the gap I've noticed in the self-publishing library - how to retain your creative integrity and direction through the whole process from the first capital letter on page one to your 20th book and beyond. Because that's the key to retaining your passion as a writer, the key to succeeding in the way that matters: on your own terms. The chapters I've included reflect that concern: 1. The Pressure to “Succeed” 2. Why Do You Write? 3. Is Self-publishing Right for You? 4. Never be afraid to be you 5. Dealing With Self-Doubt 6. Dealing With Self-Belief 7. Handling Praise 8. Producing Your Book: Picking the Right P...

Authors Electric recently dipped a toe into Triberr. This was followed by screams of anguish about the mysteries of RSS, and how to find the correct URL to enable the RSS feed. So, first of all what is RSS, and what is it needed for. Well, I’m no expert, but I’ll share what I know. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is an easy way for web sites to share headlines and stories from other sites. For the purposes of Authors Electric it is needed to ensure that the members who have signed up for Triberr, can share their blogs with all the other members and their followers. It is immensely time consuming to search for and visit each blog in turn by traditional methods using search engines, however, by using Triberr, the blogs come to the members through this portal reducing the need to go searching for them. By visiting Triberr once a day, or once a week, or whatever schedule suits, you will find all the other members blogs are gathered together in a list. This list...

Scrivener for Windows or Mac http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php      In March of this year, I wrote a post for Authors Electric called Discovering Scrivener, and in order to refresh your memory, if you click here, you can read it again.      When I started using this software program, I was in the middle of writing Missing Believed Dead , and I did wonder what effect it would have on the finished book. I’m a pantster, you see, not a plotter. I usually start with a scene and a character, then I play the what if game to see where the story goes. So, much of what I write is as big a surprise to me as it is to the reader. I like to think that if I don’t know whodunnit until I’m nearly at the end of the book, then it will be all the more difficult for the reader to guess.      Anyway my type of writing doesn’t lend itself easily to organisational tools and software, which is exactly what Scrivener is, an...

            Do your squirm in your chair at the prospect? You should.  The APE’s a beast made up of three horrific parts. Each in undiluted form is toxic—even lethal—so let’s give thanks we seldom encounter them as concentrates. Most toxic of all: the ACCOUNTANT. In the pure state the Accountant would prefer to peddle widgets than slave over troublesome word-things; he’d rather have his teeth pulled through his dick than sit and write*. He’ll sit at his computer screen and monitor his sales all day, comparing his numbers with those of his foes. At night he dreams of oracles who tell him better ways to move the units he produces.             Only a little less toxic: the PRIEST , a beast who’s obsessed with perfection. He dreams of writing books that readers must put down repeatedly—to gather a tan in the sun of his style or savor a tryst with a fo...

We come here to jam once a month with our friends in the swinging saloon called AE. Let me start off with this definition…so I don’t get in a stickier jam with those who think I mean jelly: A   jam session   is a musical event, process, or activity where musicians play (i.e. "jam") by improvising without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements. Jam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material (music), find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session . To some extent, AE’s unique structure precludes an exact parallel: 29 writers who post once each month does not precisely equal a group of six musicians who hook up every Sunday. True. But we have enough in common to pursue the metaphor. In fact, the metaphor’s enriched by another significant difference:   our ‘solos’ can continue in the Comments section to our posts…and we’re free to sound off in the Comments to our colleagues’ posts. In the...