Authors Electric

  Why has a wider knowledge become so narrow? Every time I teach a new literary text to a student, I am excited to share the context of its historical period with them. Understanding the social and historical background to a text can help to bring it to life, illustrating what motivated the author, what they rebelled against or were shaped by, whether they realised it or not. It is crucially important when studying older texts, like Shakespeare or Dickens, which can seem so remote from the lives of young people today, but it is also important to remember that events which happened in the 1980’s and 90’s might as well be medieval to a 15-year-old. Studying Willy Russell’s  Blood Brothers   requires an understanding of Thatcherism and the politics that shaped the decade in which she presided over No. 10. Knowing the background not only enriches understanding, but it also helps to present the authors as real people with real lives. Furthermore, it is part of the curriculum i...

  So, it’s marking time for the Creative Writing courses I teach ie peak chocolate eating time.  In many ways I think the feedback part of any course is the most useful: the moment when students show tutors what they can do and what they have learned, and tutors discover whether our words of wisdom have made any impact. I am not going to try to take credit for the work of those with natural talent who need no help from me, but I have come to realise that there are others whose writing ‘journey’ may be shortened or eased by the right comment at the right time. I just wish it were easier to find that right comment.   It is all too easy to forget the vulnerabilities of other people, to remember that even the most confident, gifted people still need to be treated with careful consideration, that no one takes criticism easily and that making it useful and palatable is a gift that is all too rare. I am not going to lie, I  have often got it wrong.   Like so many ...

  I am really bored of the sound of my own voice. Not just my writing voice, which I’ve barely exer cised recently, more my actual physical   chatting into a camera voice. The new term is coming up and my face to face course on ‘writing for children’ has been put online.   I’ve been asked to record a series of ten lectures for online delivery: it is so much harder than I’d expected.     I don’t mind imagining an audience – I’m a writer after all and I can imagine most things – a chamber full of orcs, a classroom buzzing with sentient story telling bees, even a diverse group of adults peering into their screens from anywhere in the world (which is actually what is supposed to happen.) In my mind these virtual students, even the orcs, are attentive and impressed. We will see what happens when my fantasies come up against reality in due course.     I hope these imaginary students are less bored by my voice than I am, but then they only have to l...

Over the last few weeks I've been teaching a five-week creative writing course for adults. The main aim of the course is to wake up their muse and inspire my students to write anything creative. Whether it's a story, poem or even a song. During one of the sessions I encouraged the students to come up with things they could use to inspire their writing. The list they came up with included: Newspaper features Songs Poems An overheard snippet of conversation A photograph A found object Family history A joke When they started to  falter  I added a few more  including  gravestones and blue plaques (the ones you see on the side of buildings which contain a name, a short description of that person and dates).  Now, fast forward a week and I was walking through an old graveyard. I had plenty of time, so when a gravestone caught my eye I stopped to read it. I was  surprised  it not only gave the name and the dates of those who lay beneath ...

 I have spent most of my writing life burying my inner critic, entombing him in concrete, and consigning him to a deep and inaccessible grave.  Too much analysis, too much self consciousness can strangle a nascent idea and kill it dead.  I would never have written a word had I not managed to fool my critic into believing I was doing nothing very serious, just pIaying, lulling him into a false sense of security before sneaking up behind him and disabling him with a sharp hatchet blow to the skull. You will note that he is male. I try not to analyse that fact too closely. All this psychological aggression is primarily defensive: at  the beginning of the creative process there is nothing, just a murky kind of potential, then gradually, if you are lucky, you may get a glimmering of something, a glimpse through thick fog of a ghost of  a story seed. The last thing you should do is expose these half formed, germinating almost-nothings to the harshness of a critic...

          Have a look at this. Click on the link below, to go to the 'book.' Turn the pages by clicking the arrow at the sides, or by using the black tabs. KOKO             It's a simple little story about the famous Koko - the gorilla who learned to communicate using American Sign Language (it's claimed) and had a pet cat.           It's part of the library being developed by my friend, Alan Hess, a teacher, and myself. (Look along the toolbar at the top of Koko's page and, just to the left of the question mark and printer, you'll see a stack of books. Click on them, and you'll find the other books in the library.)           It's still a work in progress at the moment, but please bear with us. We're still knocking through and laying wiring, our hair is full of virtual plaster dust.       ...