Authors Electric

 Short stories seem to multiply on my computers as well as in notebooks, though I often forget having written them. I embarked on an effort to tidy them up and do something useful with them some time ago, but the only visible result of these efforts was that I succeeded in unpublishing two very short collections of stories entitled Five Short Stories and Five More Short Stories. With hindsight, I think I could have made more effort with the titles! I realised only the other week, during another phase of our horrendous decluttering project, that in addition to the ones I vaguely remembered, I had a whole notebook full of hand-written short stories I had completely forgotten about. I have a feeling that forgetting them was probably the best option, and I’ve been putting off looking at them in case of embarrassment. Oddly the declutterers responsible for unearthing it, although they kept trying to talk me into getting rid of some things I definitely didn’t even want to consider gett...

 As a change from producing whole novels at a ridiculous speed, I have recently completed a month-long event run by The Literal Challenge (https://www.theliteralchallenge.com/ ), an organisation that specialises in ridiculous writing challenges. I had taken part in their screenwriting event some time last year, but that was 'only' for 14 days while this latest one was 30 days of receiving a writing prompt each day and having 36 hours to complete a short story for the latest prompt and send it in. In case anyone is interested, this event is called 'Like the Prose' and has been happening every June for the past few years. Although I had sort of thought of this as a form of relaxation after a hectic year of writing and publishing, at first I found it quite stressful. However, things became a little less fraught once I realised I was (a) writing too much each time and (b) trying to write stories that fitted into my novel schedule and told me more about existing characters. ...

                    Autotelic Experience: How meeting a deadline can be a creative spur   People often complain about deadlines. They generally don’t like them. They might have a busy schedule, they might have family responsibilities, they might even complain that they need more time for the creative element in their work to flower. I would argue, however, that deadlines can help us with that creativity, particularly in writing. I am thinking of the serial writers like Dickens and Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. An example of Dickens creativity comes in  Martin Chuzzlewit  (1843-4)). Sales of this novel were poor. There were only 20,000 of the monthly numbers being sold compared to 50,000 for  Pickwick Papers  and 60,000 for the weekly  The   Old Curiosity Shop . Under pressure from his publishers Dickens salvaged the situation by introducing the comic character of Mrs Gamp about half-way throu...

I'm  a writer who's been living on the edge of her one remaining nerve for the past couple of months. The look of panic on my face, as deadlines came screaming towards me, was something to behold. Did you note the plural nature of my word choice? Not deadline, but deadlines. Somehow, I got through them all, and was able to take a deep breath and relax. What did I learn in the process? The answer is I learned a lot, hence the reason I am able to give you this sage advice regarding deadlines.   1. Start early and give yourself time to do the task. Agreeing to write a 90,000 word novel by next week may seem like a good idea. Trust me, it aint. Full disclosure here, that's not what I did. It's an example.  2. Keep a detailed planner of when to do what. This may sound simple but setting clear blocks of time for each project will help you manage your deadlines.  3. Remember there are only 24 hours in the day. Filling up your diary with other projects or ev...

Being dyslexic is something universally recognised but frequently misunderstood. The assumption is that a dyslexic cannot read or write, or even function where the written word is concerned. The reality is very different. There are levels of dyslexia governed by many things too numerous to mention. Those of us on the upper ends of the scale can have a hard time convincing people there is a problem at all because people in general don’t understand what those problems are. I am constantly aware of the dangers in using wrong or misplaced words without my being aware of doing so. I know perfectly well which words should be used, and where, but all too often the link between eye and brain simply fails and it can take me three or four edits to spot them. The most frequent pitfalls arise from real words that are very similar in spelling and even usage: e.g. ‘to’ when it should be ‘too’, ‘of’ when it should be ‘off’.  Likewise before writing words receive or their the old rhy...

An adventure in real time... September 5, 2016: 7:30 a.m. Welcome! Welcome to the MacRath Institute's Lab for a stunning new experiment on writing a post with no subject in mind. I submit a post here on the 12th of each month while also maintaining my own blog. This week the two deadlines conflicted. Though I'd finished the AE blog early, I hadn't even started my weekend entry for my own blog. So I had to do something quickly or I was sure to lose face. Solution: I posted the AE blog onto my own, putting myself in a new pickle. Still, I had a week to write a well-crafted piece for AE. My mind turned to the subjects that interest me most: transitions and segues in writing...plain and fancier styles...time and the writer...deadlines...book titles and covers...promotional flair...expensive vs. cheap cigars...pizza dough and Chicken Parmesan...razzmatazz and personality...moondancing...Groucho Marx and Marlon Brando...tiny-waisted women...and, above all, epigr...

Tidy desk. Just to show it does sometimes happen . If you, as I do, live your life by lists - things to do today, this week, this month... ornamented with highlighted bits, thick lines, multiple underlinings, stars and other hopefully eye and attention-catching devices to indicate urgent, really urgent and THIS MUST BE DONE NOW!!!!!! then you will know just how satisfying it is each time you can cross something off. A list gives you proof that you have achieved something ... often I even create lists for the book I am currently writing, so I can feel (especially in the early stages) that I am getting somewhere with it. If I have a deadline to meet, it also gives me a realistic grasp of how much work I still have to get done, and I can work out a sensible timetable to enable me to meet that deadline. Deadlines. Quite important. Although not as important as whippet mealtimes. The problem with my lists is that they are on paper. Not a problem wit...

Watchdogs. As any fule kno, whippets are far more reliable timekeepers than any clock yet devised ...           I've written for horsey and dog magazines for many years now and as well as teaching me (amongst other things) how to write to length, I've also had to meet Deadlines.           I'm pretty good at them actually - and the tighter they are the better. I grumble, but rather than sinking beneath the pressure, I rise like a bird to meet it. I'm used to editors ringing me up and asking for an article on a certain subject and then apologetically saying that they need it in a hurry. I've had a few commissioned books come my way like that too.           No problem: I work best when under pressure.        Admittedly, it has caused a certain amount of domestic friction in the past, when I'...

A huge thank you to all the kind folk who helped me untangle the Suvi and the Sky Folk by Sandra Horn knot I made last time. I wish I were the kind of writer who sits down at a desk after breakfast and writes until lunchtime, pausing only for a swift coffee, then starts again until late afternoon. I wish I had a desk uncluttered by scribbled odds and ends. I understood novelist Alice Thomas Ellis only too well when she thought about going outside in a thunderstorm. She said she didn't REALLY want to get struck by lightning, but it might be better than going back in to try to get on with the book. Yet I love writing. It's one of the major pleasures of life. Playing blasted Solitaire on the pc isn't - so why? I wish I knew.           The odd thing is, if someone gives me a commission with a tight brief and a short deadline, I'm in there! I'm like the proverbial ferret up a drainpipe and I pause neither to eat nor sleep until it's done. ...

Newsroom and Features office Coventry Telegraph at the Corporation Street premises  When I worked as a feature writer at the Coventry Telegraph, there was always deadlines to meet. Very often there might only be a few hours to source an idea, interview, research, write it up and send it on to the sub editor to prepare it for the page. At times it was a mad rush, but when there's a deadline looming as every writer knows, you have to just knuckle down and get it written. With fiction it's usually a more relaxed (and civilised) way of writing, well normally. You have your pace that you like to write at and you stick to it.  But all that's going to change for me over the next five weeks. I'll be writing 2,000 word chapters in real time, from idea to going live to schoolchildren in just two and a half days. It's all to do with Fiction Express , an online publisher who team up with primary schools, to offer fiction that the children can contribut...