Authors Electric

Image Credit:  All images created in Book Brush using Pixabay pictures. I’ll put my hands up and say I love editing. I’ll also confess to being an editor.   So not unbiased here, are you, Allison?  Correct.  Am not sorry.     I learned a long, long time ago (and in a galaxy far, far away) nobody writes the perfect first draft. Shakespeare didn’t. Dickens didn’t. Austen didn’t. So the chances of yours truly writing a perfect first draft are zilch to the power of ten million squared, cross out the first number you thought of etc. That’s fine. Knowing this has made me feel better about editing. Feeling better has been the first step for me getting on with the business of editing and finding this is okay. It can be creative in its own right.     What I love about editing is when you sense your draft has been “sharpened”. As a flash fiction writer, I must make every word count, which has brought on my editing skills considerably. I now know what ...

Is that idea you suddenly got in the supermarket a Ferrari, a Reliant Robin, or a penny-farthing? Knowing which form is the right one can make all the difference between staring at an empty screen until making a cup of coffee is the only constructive thing to do, or dashing downstairs first thing in the morning before anyone else is up to get onto your computer. Is it a doorstop trilogy, a standalone one off, a play, a short story, or a poem? And how do you decide? Of course, the vehicle you first choose may not be the right one. If we take a poem as being the likeliest form for a single idea, there are still a lot of forms to choose from. A limerick about the death of your first pet may not be such a good idea, and an ode to an ingrowing toenail may prove tougher than expected. There are always exceptions, of course, and I think blank verse is actually the hardest. This came from a single idea: cakes.                       ...

  As I am merely one of the contributors to, rather than the owner of, this blog, I don't usually use my own image or that of my books as the main photo. I always think that would be rather presumptuous of me. However, I thought it was appropriate for this particular post and I am hoping the admins and you, as readers of this blog, will forgive me. There is a good reason for me using this today. Often, as authors, we only display a very public persona and what people know of us is what can be seen in the images we choose. These are most often chosen to show us in our best light. Of course, that makes sense as we want readers to invest in our books. From the image above you would see me as a confident prolific author, with numerous books to her name, across a range of age groups. I have also been published in, edited and compiled numerous anthologies which are not seen in the above image. Why are you telling me this, I hear you ask. The answer - you may think that words just flow fr...

  I do love coffee, as you might know, but I noticed a few things when watching people around me having hot drinks. Especially as writers, we should think about our favoured liquid. First of all, a lot of people reach for tea in times of need. Being Dutch, coffee has a calming effect on me, so in busy stressful times, it’s coffee you need, not tea. Tea is for when you’re poorly. Mind you, that probably has something to do with the colour of the drinks as well. English tea is strong enough to be used as paint stripper. It comes with plenty of rituals and implements. Like a properly shaped teapot. It has to be just so, to let the air in as well as allow you to pour properly. Nobody likes a dripping teapot. After filling the pot with a handful of teabags and pouring boiling hot water on top (making sure the water has only boiled ONCE!), you cover the teapot with a tea cosy. Preferable one that has been hand-knitted by a great aunt or great-grandmother. Now the tea needs to stew, whi...

I couldn't have done it without James Bond: have a total knee replacement operation on 3/5...go home the following day...survive the first couple of weeks filled with level 10 pain...try to not go stir-crazy from my inability to sit or stand for longer than 10 minutes at a time...and somehow figure out a way that I could continue to write.  For the first 7 days, I had a care companion. But even after the first day, one thing became painfully clear: I needed gadgets, lots of gadgets worthy of James Bond if I was to prevail. And so...              An Illustrated GT My Dirty Decuple 1) The Magic Gadget Bed a) A bed becomes a gadget when it has as many functions as a Swiss Army knife. Long before surgery, I realized that I needed a much higher mattress than I'd been accustomed to using. For a six-foot man with a knee replacement, I wanted a height close to 30" instead of the 17" height I'd been using.  I chose a Nectar foam mattress for comfort a...

  As writers, we’re all different, and thank heavens for that. Some of us are planners, with notebooks full of plot development, story arcs and carefully researched facts, distilling each precious drop into our literary efforts. Others (and I include myself in this category, at least most of the time) are pantsers, seizing at random facts (Colchester’s Dutch Quarter is so-called because the inhabitants called anyone foreign “Dutch”, even Flemish refugees fleeing Catholic persecution).   So, let’s start with the Dutch Quarter, or at least what it represents. I’m fortunate enough to be paid for using both sides of my writer’s brain, factual and creative, spending much of my week writing for freelance clients, and the rest of it marketing my first novel and writing my second.   One of my clients is an exclusive estate agent, covering East Anglia and a little further beyond. They came up with the rather splendid wheeze of hiring a team of freelance writers (me included) t...

  This is my first blog for Authors Electric since December. A mix of winter blues and lockdown floored me for a while. I stopped writing altogether. I even left social media for a while unusual for me. I do recommend you take a break from social media from time to time, if like me, you are a regular user. I get a lot of support on social media (I mostly use Twitter) from other writers and it provides a great source of writing tips. I can read wonderful essays and flash fiction too. However social media can be a source of anxiety and anger. This anxiety is often related to measuring up against other writers. This can all too easily morph into a crippling loss of confidence and an unhealthy level of envy because – and let’s be honest about this – we all feel envy sometimes. The anger I feel isn’t related to writing but to politics. However that can also be unhealthy if it is just reacting to events and venting but doing nothing constructive. Some people seemed to have managed to m...