Authors Electric

 A warning to those of a squeamish disposition – a fair amount of this deals with the vagaries of the alimentary canal…   I wonder whether, like me, you get most of your present-day information these days from Casualty and similar programmes? Where no member of staff has a trouble-free relationship, and they routinely find themselves involved in/with car crashes/fires/explosions or psychopaths. Or else they’re addicted to alcohol, gambling or prescription meds. And what of writing medical dramas in the past? I can remember the days when I was told to shut up and not to make a fuss in the last stages of labour, and you needed your husband’s signature to have an intrauterine device fitted. When consultants ignored you and just talked rather condescendingly to the nurse. When my mother simply didn’t believe that my female Polish relatives could be proper doctors. Call the Midwife seems a bit cosy, really. I never saw the same one twice, and always had to wait for hours to see...

As we are all still in lockdown the list of subjects available to chat about seems smaller. None of us are getting out and about - except for the allotment. Walking down to the plot recently I spotted a clump of plantain and wondered how many people now derive fun and games from the plants that grow in the hedgerows? Here are things to look for on those family walks. I doubt there are many children who have not blown the ‘clocks’of  a Dandelion,  Taraxacum officinale,  to tell the time.  Or laughed at anyone picking the yellow flowers, on the grounds that doing so would mean they would inevitably wet the bed! Of course they are also well known as a salad leaf, or as dandelion and burdock fizzy pop. Its number of country names are only exceeded by it listed medicinal properties, from liver function to heart disease via diabetes and weight loss – but to the child? It is a fun clock! Holding a  Buttercup,  Ranunculaceae,  flower beneath  some...

It’s a poser, isn’t it. If you want to write contemporary fiction, what do you do? Writing anything that is set in the here and now is impossible unless you can publish it the following day, as everything changes so quickly. So you set it slightly in the future, and imagine Covid-19 has gone and everything is back to normal. But it won’t be, will it? We don’t have a clue how the world situation will have changed. So you set it further in the future, but that’s no good as no one wants SF any more. Historical fiction is still safe, and Hilary Mantel's  The Mirror and the Light came out at exactly the right time. Nice bit of lengthy escapism into a world where the plague was an everyday hazard. Not to mention the sweating sickness, which has never been identified but was probably a Hantavirus. That one disappeared as suddenly as it arrived, so let’s hope Covid-19 behaves the same way – which would give us another sixty-five years to wait before it bows out. You could be fine at ...

We are always writing in a time of uncertainty because the truth is we can never be certain of what the next day will bring; if it will bring good news or bad, rain or sunshine, a mood of optimism or one of gloom. But today, perhaps more than ever in our lifetimes, we are living with the full knowledge that life is always uncertain. Few of us, if any, could have predicted how radically our lives would change this year. However, the very act of creation, is to work with uncertainty. “ Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can’t–and in face, you’re not supposed to–know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing.” ( Anne Lamott).   We can’t wholly control this virus. We can take steps – as we are all doing – to try and protect ourselves and others – but there is much we can’t do and much we don’t yet know. The data is incomplete. We do not entirely understand why some apparently healthy people ge...