Authors Electric

  The Curative Power of Art A Reading of  Art Cure  by Daisy Fancourt This book is proof if any were needed that an engagement with the arts is good for us. The Art that the author Daisy Fancourt refers to in it belongs to several different creative areas, such as music, dance, poetry and storytelling, and she has followed the first of these throughout her life as an accomplished piano player. In her prelude to the book, she says that behaviour connected to the arts can have a big influence on our health. For example: ‘If children engage with art workshops, choirs, book clubs, dance classes, drama groups or bands they are less likely to be lonely or develop behavioural problems…’ Nor is this book just a speculative account. Throughout it the author tells us about her engagement with specialist academic teams in areas of Psychobiology and Epidemiology, for which she is a Professor at UCL, researching how biological processes relate to human experience such as the emotions....

Over the weekend I took several train journeys and everyone around me had their heads bowed in reverence over their phone. It happens everywhere – on a train, a bus, even in a restaurant. Are they doomscrolling, catching up with social media gossip, maybe reading the news, answering work emails, sending cheeky texts to loved ones, playing a game, or checking their connection is running on time? Of course, they could be reading something more substantial – although reading a novel on a small phone screen is very taxing on the eyes. It’s far easier to read on a Kindle, because that is what it was designed for, but I much prefer a REAL book. In many ways I'm advertising the book in my hand and long for conversations with strangers about my choice of reading material. "Is that any good?" "Have you read their other novels?"  "Such a great storyteller."  "I cried at the end and the story has never left me"  Anecdotally I heard once that erotic ...

March must be the month for poetry as I see Peter Leyland posted something About Poetry on Saturday, I do hope you will allow me to add my own thoughts and memories... Poetry can take many forms from sonnets to Limericks, Haiku to Villanelle (OK I confess I’m not really sure of the structure for a Villanelle – didn’t she want to kill Eve?} I digress, and I might meander even more as I write this in a lyrical style as poems are often written Hmm I wonder what actually constitutes a poem?  I’m loathed to look up a definition, Google will undoubtedly bamboozle me. Poems can be highbrow and esoteric or about the mundane and everyday – I wrote one once about belly button fluff – more about that later… I started writing poetry early and here’s one of my early efforts from primary school. I also remember writing one at BIG school about a dolls house, I vividly recall reading it out in class, it had a repeated refrain which everyone joined in with. I was in year 7, or first ...

It’s that time of year when one usually makes their New Year’s resolutions. I’ve done so in the past (and usually, to be fair, have managed to keep to them; however, I put this down to them being reasonably small steps to take). This year, however, my resolution was not to make any resolutions. Instead of planning for the year, I’m going to try and ‘pants’ it. Pretty much like I do with most of my writing, although I have been dabbling with plotting for a while with reasonable success. That’s not to say I don’t have some ideas in mind for goals I’d like to reach – There’s a couple of pieces of Bach’s music for which I have guitar transcriptions and I’d like to learn them; there’s also a couple of pieces I’d like to master on the piano as well, for example – but I don’t want to set dates on them. I’d rather enjoy the journey of discovery as I come to learn the pieces. It’s a similar story with writing. I have a few projects that I aim to finish this year. I have a new YA...

I want to talk to you today about why we write. I’ve read that some writers can do nothing but write, the words pouring out of their mind onto the paper. Some only ever publish one book. For me, the reading came first. From an early age, I was allowed, once a week, after we had been grocery shopping, to pick a book. My family had emigrated to America when I was two years old, we returned when I was six. When I started my local primary school, I was already a year behind everyone else as my peers had already begun learning their three ‘Rs’ a year before me. However, my voracious appetite for reading had paid off and I could already write my name and read well above my chronological age when I started.  I think Enid Blyton’s Famous Five were my first loves! The adventures and camaraderie brought my imagination to life. The siblings and their cousin, with of course Timmy the dog, gave me something I didn’t have as an only child. I quickly progressed to the St Clare’s and Malory Towers...

  It’s been a funny month for me from a writing perspective. I don’t feel like I’ve done much actual writing, in terms of getting words down on paper to tell a story, but I’ve still been busy doing ‘writer-y stuff’ (as my youngest calls it). I’ve spent the bulk of my time working on research for the Rigoletto follow-up I mentioned last month – jotting down ideas for potential scenes, then researching the time period to find half of them wouldn’t be possible. I don’t mind taking a little some small liberties for the sake of the story, but I need to keep it somewhat grounded in reality. I’m aiming for a gritty crime drama, after all, and not a fantasy. I actually quite enjoy running into these problems, if I’m honest. I find they force me to find creative solutions to the problems I place my characters in. I also find tight boundaries to be, paradoxically, quite liberating. Once I know where the limits lie, I’m able to plough on with the writing without worrying too muc...

  As part of my day job, I was recently on a panel about improving diversity and during a break I was chatting with one of the delegates who mentioned writing. Of course, my ears pricked up at this, and we ended up having a chat about books in general. She asked if I’d seen the latest spat on Twitter about diversity on books. Now, I’m not really a follower of any social media – I have a FaceBook page that I suspect needs the cobwebs blowing off, and a Twitter account that I might glance at once or twice a month – as I’ve never really understand it. I know I should engage with it more, especially from a marketing perspective, but I always manage to find something better to do. (The garden won’t weed itself.) Still, this piqued my interest enough to go have a look, so that evening I logged into Twitter and did a wee search. Sure enough, there was a series of tweets along a similar theme. Almost all of them started with a photograph of a Waterstones store window, captioned with some v...

  I know, I know, I'm preaching to the converted here, but hear me out. In order to be a good writer, one must first be a voracious reader. Hands up if you agree with that. Perfect we are all on the same page then, so this will be a short post. Well, no, actually.  'What?' I hear you say. We do need to be voracious readers. Yes, you are right and before you think I am going mad, let me explain. I am a voracious reader. I've been reading since I was three years old -- I was an extremely early reader. I'd read my way through the entire children's section of the local library before I was ten and was fortunate enough to be given an adult library card. Don't ask how that happened. I think it involved sacrificing chickens and my mother spending many hours wrangling with the head librarian. To be honest, I think the librarian gave in just to get this mad woman out of her library.   Anyways, I had read my way through the following series -- Cherry Ames Nursing Boo...

Having a competitive nature, whenever a special book list is compiled, I immediately scan the list and count how many I have read. The BIG READ list in 2003 was decided by three quarters of a million votes from the British public, to determine the nation’s best loved novel. There are 200 books listed, many popular novelists feature more than once, including Pratchett, Rowling and Austen, so if you have devoured any of their writing you can score highly. I admit I have read all of the Harry Potter books and all of Jane Austen’s novels and my total for the Big Read List is approximately 50 out of the 200. I’ll say approximately because some I think I remember reading at school and might have skipped a few pages and then there are audio books – do they properly count? But even allowing for the multiple books by a single author my tally isn’t as great as I thought it would be. The BIG JUBLIEE READ of just seventy books has been drawn up with totally different criteria. There w...