Authors Electric

 When everyone seems to have mastered the art of crying it out at the top of their lungs, and we feel deafened by the roars, what are we to do?   --They've just finished writing their new novel of the month. --Once again they've written 10K words a day. --They've just landed a 3-book, 7-figure contract. --They've lost a hundred pounds and signed on with a modeling agency. --They've landed a new job at twice their salary and half their hours. And on and on and on, until our own cry is crushing: So, with lumps in our throats, we get back to the slogs we seem trapped in: crappy sales...zero online visibility...unending rejections...a novel that threatens to need at least 5 more revisions...age discrimination... I'm no Pollyanna telling you that this is the best of all worlds for us all. But I believe we can better our chances and lives by starting now to do  two things:   1) Devise effective strategies for staying in The Zone and in fighting trim.   2) Take real pl...

What does it mean to be ‘in the zone’. You usually hear it from sportsmen such as golfers, who are either grateful that God has taken time out to accompany them on a round and make sure all their putts drop, or have succeeded because they’ve been ‘in the zone’ (hereinafter ITZ). To me, it simply means that you’re focusing on (and presumably enjoying) something so much that you don’t notice the passage of time, you’re unaware of your own self, your identity, your surroundings, or anything other than whatever the activity demands. I’m writing about it because a couple of recent experiences have reminded me of how exhilarating it is. One was a life drawing class. I’m rubbish at it but merely having to focus on minute, specific details and try to reproduce them on paper seems to switch off everything else in the brain. The other was some wood carving. I’m better at that because I’ve been doing it for several years, having started when I was researching The Figurehead , my n...

Two hours, fifty-five minutes and counting. By my reckoning I should be able to file this blog at midnight. I wrote 1200 words in 90 minutes the other evening between 9pm and 11pm. But I won’t write even 300 words now unless I can go into the bubble. The bubble is a quiet place. It’s a soothing, yet dynamic space where the ideas and words appear exactly as you need them. You don’t fight the words in the bubble. They plip into your consciousness as if by magic. Ah yes, you think, as you type the words. Of course . . . For me, the bubble appears in the evening. When the day’s busy-ness recedes, when the business of eating is complete and when I can find no other excuses – that’s when I sit down and write the words that have eluded me all day, maybe all week. It is time to write this chapter, I tell myself as I settle at my desk – and write it I will before I go to sleep tonight. And, somehow, I do. I may have faffed about all day, but around 9pm my brain s...