Authors Electric

I've begun another novel. I love the idea (I'm not sharing that yet). I love the research - I've wallowed in books, taken myself off to tramp up hills and down a coal mine. My notebook overflows with lovely characters (and some not so lovely). So why is it so hard to write? I have distractions - we all have distractions. I prevaricate - thousands of us prevaricate but still get words down. I make myself sit at the computer almost every day. For the first time I've given myself word count targets. When I wrote  The Planter's Daughter  I had no need of word count targets. My head was full and the words flowed. The first draft was messy of course, but that was fine. I had something to work with. And that's what keeps me going now. I dare not reread, not yet - in case the extent of the inevitable messiness puts me off. But if I can only make myself frame this story into real words then I can settle to the months of drafting and redrafting that might make it i...

(from left to right) Orna Ross, me and Katie Fforde at the first Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival in April 2015 (Photo by Clint Randall) Writing on the penultimate day of 2017, I can't NOT think about where this year has taken me and what next year will bring.  Don't worry - I'm not going to be banging on about New Years' Resolutions . I love new beginnings and seize every opportunity for one - new school terms (I have a school-age daughter), solstices, equinoxes, birthdays, etc. But I was cured of an addiction to Resolutions a couple of years ago by my friend and mentor, the author and creativism teacher Orna Ross (you may also know her as the founder and director of the Alliance of Independent Authors ). Orna Ross made me realise that New Years' Resolutions generally focus on the negative: things to give up or bad habits to reform. Her recommendation is to state Creative Intentions instead - a more positive, constructive system which focuses on the ...

Chocolate cake and cat teacosy When I’m not writing, or reading, or walking, or being with friends and family, I like to bake. Recently I was trying out new recipes for muffins and scones. At the same time, I was finishing a final, final edit of my new novel “The Shadows on the Grass,” and it has occurred to me that there are definite similarities between baking and writing.  To write a novel you need a story and just, as a novel is targeted for a specific group, so is cake. Will it be for a children’s party, brunch, an intimate tea for two? Must it be vegan, dairy, or wheat free? Can it sit for hours in the oven, or must it be whisked up quickly for unexpected guests? Will it entail elaborate icing, or be packed into a lunch box? A novel will not only have a narrative, there will also be a theme. Just as cake might be chocolate, or lemon drizzle, a rich Dundee, or a light as air sponge, the book might be about grief, or love, or what happens when society, as we k...