Authors Electric

'Write about what you know' is still common advice for beginning authors. When I heard that way back in my pre-publication days, my first thought was: 'well, that's going to make a boring book!' I was still in my 20s at the time and actually knew very little, so I plunged headfirst into the fantasy and science fiction genre, deliberately writing about what I didn't know (and really couldn't be expected to know much about) since I was inventing entire worlds and travelling to distant planets. Much easier, and less chance of getting found out with some glaring error that would make wiser readers who did know laugh behind my back... or, more likely these days, in a scathing online review. Or so I thought. I soon discovered inventing fantasy worlds is just as difficult as learning about our existing world, since even magic needs some rules otherwise the whole plot just collapses. All the same, it was rather fun creating them. After experimenting with short genr...

Resolutions. Don’t we all just hate them? It’s like we deliberately set ourselves up to fail. Start the diet. Do the exercise thing. Give up alcohol. And we start out from such an overindulged, lazy and alcoholic place that we convince ourselves it must get better and it can’t be that hard just to get clean, can it? But then we set impossible targets and beat ourselves up when we consistently fail to achieve them. January is too dark and cold and miserable to do much more than scoff all the Christmas leftovers while watching the latest must-see series on Netflix. Add to that the ever-gloomy news of pandemics and plan Bs, face-masks and lateral flow testing and it’s no wonder we’re all so bloody miserable, is it?  I don’t do dry January. I like my weekly pub quiz nights accompanied by wine. I don’t feel the need to prove to everybody that I’m not an alcoholic – I know I’m not, and I don’t actually care what other people think. Diet and exercise? Hmm. Not a resolution, no, but I do...

How does a writer get an idea for a story? I’ve read several blogs where authors got annoyed when asked this question. I don’t get annoyed, but it does make me think. It’s not an easy question to answer.  The old maxim “Write what you know” comes to mind, but what does this really mean? Does it mean the author has lived his or her characters’ lives?  I’ve written erotic fiction, psychological suspense, and mystery, and though a lot of who I am has shaped my female characters, I have certainly not lived their lives. The protagonists have been strong women who have loved deeply, travelled the world, had sex with men—sometimes multiple men at the same time.  My characters are much more interesting than I am, and that’s how I want them to be.  You can infer what you like, but I believe fiction should be more than just thinly veiled reflections of authors’ lives. As writers, we should not limit ourselves to what we know.  I can assure you I have not experienced every...

'Embarrassed dragon' (Public domain photograph - courtesy of Pixabay) ‘Truth’ is under discussion a great deal at present, for very obvious and necessary reasons. The truth about the external world is one thing, but what about truth in fiction? Why do certain novels irritate me beyond belief, by portraying a world that I do not recognise? Not one that is outside my own experience – I love to read about such worlds – but one that bears little relation to my own observations about myself and other people by presenting as ‘normal’ and ‘desirable’ some kind of ideal person I know I can never be? I appreciate that fiction meets a wide range of needs, not least of which is to escape from the real world and our own lives, but the kind of books I like to read (and try to write) do more than that – they latch on to something that I think can be called truth, whether or not we want to resort to high-sounding terms like ‘the human condition’. ‘Write what you know’ is regarde...

There’s a lot of advice for writers out there, some of it very Authors Electric Mari Biella good. Joshua Wolf Shenk’s “Have the courage to write badly” is essential for any writer who doesn’t want to give in to utter despair whilst reading through their first drafts. Harper Lee’s advice to aspiring writers that they would be “wise to develop a thick hide,” is more relevant than ever in the age of Amazon and Goodreads. Paul Theroux’s blunt suggestion that young would-be writers should “leave home” makes sense – your parents are unlikely to understand, still less support, your decision to become a writer and starve in a garret, so perhaps you’d do well to cut the apron strings. As for Dorothy Parker’s advice that the greatest favour one could do for wannabe writers was to shoot them while they were still happy – well, we’ve probably all felt like that at one time or another.           Certain other nuggets of advice, on the other hand...