Authors Electric

Not everything we write is wonderful. There, I've said it. And I think it's particularly relevant for memoir writers - including travel writers. So I'm going to give myself a bit of a kicking here, but hopefully some of it will echo in your chambers too. There are many who can write beautiful sentences. The basis of our craft is sentences. We can perfect our grammar and absorb the thesaurus and create images that leave a reader bewildered by our erudition. Yes, but is it interesting? I could describe, in glorious detail, my hotel room in Killarney (I've just got back from Ireland) but I won't because - let's be honest - who the hell cares? It was clean and comfortable, and there were no rats or cockroaches (very relevant given some of the places I visit), so what more do you need to know; I ate great food (Irish cuisine has improved hugely in recent years) and drool over the Guinness (oh the Guinness) but my readers - if any have stuck thr...

            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...

I’ve just released my second Nail Your Novel book. I’ve been promising it for about four years, but finally buckled down, sorted out my scrappy notes and made a plan.  It started as a general book about the craft, drawn from my experiences writing and critiquing. Soon, though, it was so enormous that I had to split it. And then I split it again. Anyway, the first subject that naturally came to mind was characters, and so I’m proud to present Nail Your Novel’s new brother: Bring Characters to Life .  So today I want to talk about characters, but not necessarily the ones in our books. I want to talk about us: the general character of writers. As with all professions, there are predilections and quirks that mean we suit our jobs. But they can also work against us. Writer instinct #1: Passive characters Hands up if you’ve been told off for writing passive main characters. It’s an occupational hazard. Passive main characters are people who run ...

How to make a coherent blog post out of my diverse writing-related experiences of the last few weeks - without resorting to a worn-out clich é of the kind favoured by politicians? Well, I'll try. I've just finished draft three (or is i t four ?) o f my sci-fi novel for adults and it's 'resting' (and improving, I hope, in the process...). I found it challenging to write, involving as it did an explor ation of the nature of consciousness, self, identity, cognition, coma, dreams... and the attempt to create a credible world of suitabl y advanced technologies for 2104. All that, plus a woman juggling children, separation, divorce and an academic career. Oh, and I should mention the ethics of artificial intelligence and robotics thrown in. Fun, but not particularly easy to write. Quite a relief to be able to lay it all aside for a few weeks and have a well-earned rest... Except that things never turn out that way. From nowhere, it seems, a new book has popp...

First of all, my apologies to Jeanette Winterson (who is, incidentally, one of my favourite authors) for playing with the title of her wonderful book Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (If you'd like to read my review of this book, please see my blog, Rosalie Reviews .) Why be a writer when you could be normal? Why be a writer when you could be happy? Why be happy when you could be a writer? Why be a writer...? OK, that's enough permutations for now. But all these questions are currently very much on my mind, and I'm going to try to make a few clunky stabs at answering them here. For years and years I wanted to be a writer, but was, on the whole, too busy getting on with life to do very much about it. Six years ago I took early retirement for reasons of ill-health, and since then I've been, as they say, time-rich. I started (and continued) writing because I wanted to, and because it felt as though I had at least two-thirds of a lifetime's accumulation of stu...