Authors Electric

At the beginning of the nineties I started to receive phone calls and letters from people who wanted to write about abuses they had suffered in their childhoods. These were not people who had had the misfortune to be born in countries that were enduring brutal dictatorships, civil wars or ethnic cleansing campaigns, these were people who had been born and bought up in democratic, peacetime Britain , a country that prided itself on being civilised, with developed social welfare services. Their calls seemed to be cries for help and as I talked to them I became aware of just how much courage it had taken most of them to pick up the phone in the first place. These were people whose experiences did not lead them to expect to be listened to or believed but they had the courage to keep on trying to tell their stories. Many of the things they told me tore my heart out and I felt sure there would be a readership for them if I could just get them out into the bookshops. I ...

To borrow from the late 1970s – Out of reach is out of touch / All the way is far enough . (Ten points for the artist, song title and year please – and no cheating online!) But is it far enough? Or is it too far? They say that the best writing comes from the heart. Writing from personal experience, baring your soul, laying your innermost private thought and feelings open wide for the world to see. It’ll make for deeper, more passionate writing, yes, but is it really – well – decent ? To fictionalise a real-life experience can be cathartic. Many, many people write not for publication, not even for pleasure, but as a means of exorcising their own personal demons – the literary equivalent of self-harming, I imagine – letting out a bit of blood in a controlled manner. Or is that just pure self-indulgence? And if it is, does it matter anyway if all you are doing is making yourself feel better in the process? Sometimes, it does help and if you don’t have or want access to cou...