Authors Electric

Yellowhammer The other day - maybe due to my advanced age, or upon hearing that I've been writing a memoir - a friend asked me how I would choose to come back in the next life, if there is one.  "As a busker," I responded. I didn't give my answer much thought, except that I've always liked street performers. "Maybe as a great orchestra conductor, like Toscanini, maybe a pianist too, or Arthur Fiedler . My mother took me to see the legendary Fiedler lead the Boston Pops at the Shell in the summer of 1941 beside the Charles River. I recall the outdoor spectacle vividly though the mists of early memories. After that, I took to conducting radio music with a yellow pencil. One of my aunts gave me a baton, real or perhaps a toy one.  Beethoven  That began my childhood busking career. Housing was scarce. For a while, my parents and I lived at the house of my paternal grandparents in the then toney, Boston district of Brighton. It was a spacious three-floor affair fo...

What did you do while you were in lockdown?  I listened to a lot of audiobooks, I went for a walk every day, and I played board games with my boyfriend. We ate and drank too much. I tried and failed to master French. My boyfriend made model aeroplanes. And I wrote my first novel.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who wrote a novel during the pandemic. In fact, I know I’m not. It was an explosive time for creativity, as we all stared into the void and wondered what was coming next. For me, my self-employed, pre-child life, and the requirement to stay home all the time, plus the fact that I had just moved to a new country and didn’t have any friends yet, made the writing process nice and easy.  Proudly wearing my Winner t-shirt. Everyone who completes it wins! I did NaNoWriMo and I took it seriously. I knew that if I missed one day I would be toast, so I got up at 7am throughout November and wrote my words, then quite often got back into bed. I planned the first 25,000 words ...

We start off with triumphant roars and finish with glorious and grateful gasps. It's middle time that lays us low and sometimes begging for mercy. Wouldn't be it cool, though, if we could triangulate, maintaining a strong, joyous spirit throughout? Joyous when we're panting and wondering how to go on? Joyous when the middle's taking months longer than we'd thought? Exactly. Marathons of any kind--a novel, a movie, a painting--are filled with strong beginnings that peter out into sputtering and desperate rushing finales. But there's no need to rush for the finish when other marathons await us.We need to be strong through whatever exhaustion or pratfalls await.                                                                         *****                ...

I first published a version of this article in the Guardian on-line, so please forgive me if parts of it sound familiar.  I left school with a burning urge to lead the life of a writer; travelling like Byron, fêted like Wilde before his fall, creating laughter like Wodehouse and crafting sentences like Nabokov. I had no professional contacts so I wrote my masterpieces speculatively and every path I went down ended with a rejection slip or total silence. The perceived wisdom then, as now, was that earning a living as a writer was about as likely as winning a lottery. Then I discovered the secret of marketing. Instead of writing things and trying to persuade people to buy them, I would find out what writing services people needed and offer to provide them. So, at the same time as begging publishers and editors for commissions, I made myself available to anyone who might want to write an article or a book but did not feel able to do it for themselves. I have ju...