Authors Electric

A long-time colleague of mine recently left our team, taking up a new post. He’d been in the team for sixteen years, so a decent send-off was required. I usually get asked to write something when people leave (a short, humorous poem or sketch) – it’s become a bit of a tradition, in fact, and over the years I must have written seven or eight of these little comic vignettes, but this time was a little different – as I’m currently in charge of the department, it fell to me to do the ‘official’ leaving speech as well. I got there in the end – it was just a couple of hundred words, but took a surprising amount of time to write. It went down well, in the end – clean enough not to upset anyone, with some gentle ribbing recalling a few comic moments, and I managed to deliver it (after a few rehearsals behind a locked door) with perfect timing. So, a success. This was last Thursday morning. We’d also arranged to have a few drinks after work the next night, and during the afternoon, I began t...

  No. no, Austin Powers! I don't mean shake your booty, I mean move your butt--as in relocate from coast to coast, state to state, possibly country to country. Lord knows, I've done them all for a grand total of some 30 moves. So you can imagine my consternation, as an expert on the subject, when I found myself hamstrung and befuddled in the middle of  a move: from Seattle to Tucson, Arizona.  With just three months to go before D-Day in August, and with a strong foundation already in place, my head had started spinning from thoughts of the puzzles I couldn't complete:   --How, on a limited budget, could I afford a professional mover and a junk remover?   --How could I adapt to the changes since 2014, when I moved to Seattle with only a steamer trunk and four boxes? Amtrak will no longer handle a trunk--or allow checked luggage for relocation. Plus, in the past eight years, I've acquired a slew of possessions I value--not the least of them being new books. ...

So many blogs and facebook threads talk about plotting and planning – who does it and who doesn’t, and why…. So here’s my confession: I don’t plot. Ever. Now you’ve recovered yourselves, I can hear you all shouting: What do you mean you don’t plot? All ‘proper’ writers plot. How do you know where you’re going? Erm. I don’t. I have no idea where I am going. Maybe I’m not a proper writer then? Do I look like I care? Look, I know a lot of people who plot their novels – hell, even short stories, I expect – to the n th degree. They outline each chapter, mark the high and low points, describe the story arc and the theme and the characters. I don’t mean to sound disrespectful to these writers – I’m pleased they can work that way and I wish them every success. Sometimes I long for the comfort of a story-plan, of knowing where I am going with a plot-strand and how far this particular tale has to run. But I just can’t work like that. For me, it’s all about the journey, th...