Authors Electric

Dilston Physic Garden, scene of a new co-writing project blending botany, folklore, neuroscience. There are some activities which are more fun with two. (Or even more. Allegedly.) Activities which are also fun solo. For most writers, the solitary vice is the chosen norm, though there are writing teams who are very successful. There’s thriller writer ‘Nicci French’, aka Nicci Gerrard and Sean French (see below); while Phoef Sutton has recently teamed up with Janet Evanovich. Some forms of writing involve inevitable collaboration. I write plays, which involve directors, producers and actors, but the actual original writing is mine. I’ve collaborated with visual artists, such as in my ‘science of dying’ project This Fatal Subject which won a Wellcome Trust Arts Award. Collaboration without competition or stifling each other can be a tricky line to walk, and there are few poets and artists who maintain those kind of projects for more than a limited time. Here's a video of one of...

"Pet Therapy" - as approved by Dr Moreira Pinned to my mother's sitting room wall is a small and slightly worn piece of paper. It's headed Dr Moreira's Good Advice. Dr Moreira's title is Speciality Doctor Later Life Care Community Psychiatry and I hope she realises how invaluable she has been in helping my mother (and me) through periods of particular distress. My mother has both Alzheimer's and vascular dementia and there have been moments when I have feared that medication might be necessary. Dr Moreira asked us questions, listened to the answers and offered preliminary advice. This was the list I jotted down later: Drink water frequently Eat as healthily as you can Take exercise but don't get over-tired Avoid disorientation Have some fun Don't get ill I remember thinking that the last one must be some sort of doctorly joke. Illness is something that just happens: you get it cured and carry on. People with dementia,...

Do you remember those signs that used to crop up on office walls? “You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here / But it Helps.” I always suspected that they were the hallmarks of a rather aggressive sanity. There's a type of person too – happy to announce “Oh we're all quite mad , you know!” – when one knows quite well that they're not; they're just a bit loud and attention-seeking and probably SMUG. I almost lost my sense of humour when I noticed members of a writer's group cheerfully claiming to be “mad”. Mental illness is so un-funny and I've usually assumed that most of us write to remain sane, to make some sense of our experience of life – to try to keep the madness at bay. Dementia is (currently) an incurable mental illness which gradually takes away the ability to read, write and speak. Last year I read Naoki Higashida's autobiographical The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism  and found unexpected insight into aspects of ...

I am one of many people currently reading The Reason I Jump: one boy's voice from the silence of autism by Naoki Higashida, translated by novelist David Mitchell and his wife Keiko Yoshida. It's a unique and beautiful piece of writing from a severely autistic thirteen year old who still (he's now aged sixteen) cannot reliably control his body or hold a spoken conversation. David Mitchell wrote an article in the Guardian   explaining his personal involvement (his son is autistic) and the book was also read on Radio 4. When I mention it to friends they say, “oh yes, I think I heard that” or “I know the one you mean”. The hardback edition stands at #2 in the Amazon top 100 books and is reprinting: the kindle edition is unobtrusively available at #103. I am already thinking of friends to whom I want to give The Reason I Jump . Not because they are parents or teachers of autistic children but because it speaks about the imperfect relationship between body and mind and the i...

As I write this, just before Christmas, I'm feeling rather sorry for myself. I have a sore throat and a cough, which get much worse if I lie flat. I also have a painful back, which complains unless I spend every alternate hour or so lying flat on it! Sitting at a desk, even on my new super-dooper-bad-back-chair, is impossible for more than five minutes at a stretch. I have shopping, baking and cleaning to do, guests arriving for Christmas, a father up in Yorkshire who needs lots of help from me, his only daughter, and - urrgghhh, I won't go on... (Btw, I know, really, that I have many things to be thankful for and am much, much better off than some. But if you remind me of that, some nasty primitive reflex might be triggered and I might try to kick you, so please beware...) A kind Twitter friend just recommended that I try lying on my tummy in order to type on my laptop, placed on a stool at the end of my bed. It works, at least for a short time, and I'm very grateful for h...