Authors Electric

So we sit down, wake the laptop, place coffee beside keyboard, flex knuckles, stare meaningfully at the ceiling, put on headphones... and begin.  What's going into our ears? Something pure like birdsong? Something contemplative and thoughtful for the earnest business of noveling? Not necessarily. It might just as easily be grinding guitars and ripping vocals. My blog series The Undercover Soundtrack has been going for a year now, and more than 50 writers have so far shared the music that helped them invent and hone their novels. Soundtracks Undercover Soundtracks are not the songs their characters like, or the music played at their weddings. They are writers' secret ingredients, meditative antechambers where they can study their characters’ true natures, conjure an atmosphere or examine the nature of an elusive moment. Catherine Czerkawska Among the first contributors were members of this group. Dan Holloway searched for nostalgia and directionless...

Yeast, Lasers and too many Words! I’m trying to finish a book. It has to be delivered at the end of Nov and I realised about a week ago that it wasn’t about what I thought it was. Not good. Yes, my characters will be doing roughly all the things I first thought they would but the heart of the book, the real centre is something far less dramatic than the all guns blazing sort of tale I thought I was writing. What I really want the reader to focus on is a much quieter tale about one man’s now ancient mistake and the, I suppose you’d say professional coming of age of a very young police officer. Now I’ve finally spotted this, it all makes perfect sense! – just wish I’d noticed sooner; that would have saved a whole heap of rewriting. Sometimes I get so sick of words, especially towards the end of writing a book. It feels like there’s a daily supply or a daily tolerance level over and above which I just don’t want to know. I don’t even want to read! So, displacement and replacem...

A while back I did a piece like this on my personal blog, but it was whilst babbling on for the lovely Roz Morris' undercover soundtrack series that I realised just how useful this kind of musical thinking could be for getting a handle on your characters (as I explained to Roz "I like to know what band a character would be in, and if I can’t think of one I’m probably not interested enough in the character for them to be central"). As well as fun. It's no secret I love music. Of many kinds. If I had an ounce of aptitude I'd have been a musician instead of a writer. Sadly, I don't, but I'm lucky enough to know a whole gamut of people who do, and being a writer I put together the occasional music review after going to gigs , which has got me to know a lot more bands. So whenever I put together live shows, I am in the very lucky position of being able to think what music will go best with the things we're reading. That does three things. 1. It makes for ...