Authors Electric

Most of us have teachers who remain in our memories for one reason or another. I have two very different ones, who both had a powerful effect on my writing.             I was an only child, and my parents were the same age as everyone else’s grandparents. We moved house several times, too, so I frequently had to try and fit into a new school with some clear disadvantages. My father was Polish, so no one could pronounce my surname, let alone spell Krzewinski. He’d been a headmaster, and so had strong views on teaching, but no idea of the British education system. In Poland, teachers were revered and their word was law. And on the whole, if they were anything like my dad, they had the interests of the child at heart. I was also left-handed, which was still viewed as a bit odd, and I was small for my age which, with a July birthday, wasn’t ideal. In addition to all this I was particularly good at art and English, and hopeless at s...

For about twenty five years from the mid seventies to the turn of the new millennium, I wrote for radio. I have more than a hundred hours of produced radio drama to my name, including many original plays, series and serials as well as dramatizations of classics like Ben Hur, Kidnapped and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Because most producers want the playwright to be there for the duration of the production – studio time is always tight, so you’re expected to do rewrites on the hoof - I’ve spent weeks in radio studios. Kidnapped and Catriona in ten hour-long episodes involved so much time in a small, stuffy Edinburgh studio with no natural light, that the producer pinned up a quote from Kidnapped on the wall: day and night were alike in that ill-smelling cavern . We knew how poor David Balfour felt. Although the hot scones sent up by the canteen at tea time were excellent! I’ve worked with some wonderful producer/directors and equally good audio technicians. I’ve seen huge changes...

"WHSmith, why hast thou forsaken me?" There is a truth universally acknowledged: s uccess in the arts has nothing to do with your actual work, or its quality, or how many hours a day you spend networking, but is neatly expressed via the formula Sales =  f + b 2 where 'f' is Your Fame and 'b' is Blind Luck. This is, as I'm sure you know, a law so entrenched it makes gravity look optional. And, of course, it isn't news. There are ancient scrolls discovered in underwater caves beneath jurassic sediment which contain fresher information.  So why bring it up now, and make writers everywhere weep quietly into their el cheapo wine? Because this is the time of year when I always read a number of blogs and articles expressing this truth as if it was some kind of sudden, horrific revelation. I blame Christmas. Writers everywhere watch the bills pile up, and their bank balance empty faster than the Greek economy, and then they switch on Radio 4 as a ...