Authors Electric

Crack A Story by Susan Price Lockdown. It's over now. Isn't it? Is it? What's the R number? You might still be in lockdown or partying on the beach -- I suppose it depends on how susceptible you are to brand new viruses that no one has any immunity to. Or how many susceptible people you love. Or how much you believe we're 'all in this together.' At the very end of January, to celebrate his birthday, my lodger went on an outing to Cosford Air Museum. Exactly one week later, in early February, he became quite ill: fever, headache, joint aches, tiredness and a terrible dry cough that went on and on for weeks. He doesn't remember his senses of taste and smell being affected, but he certainly lost his appetite and says that he can't remember being so ill for, well, decades. At the time, we'd barely heard of Covid-19. Even if we had, there was no effective way he could have isolated himself from me. Many members of this Tory government wi...

Not long ago, I did a writing course looking at plot - and one of the things we were told was the importance of events and feelings linking together in some sort of logical sequence. So even if you play around with time or point of view, the narrative must hold together so that the reader - at the end - feels a sense of satisfaction. It all made sense; it held together. Characters responded to events because they believed this, or felt that, or understood the other; they behaved coherently. But we live in strange times. What we are told one day, in the newspapers or on television, is contradicted the next. Taking just one example: here in the UK we were told, at the beginning of this pandemic, that wearing face masks made no difference to the risk of catching the disease, nor of passing it on. They were pointless, and might even increase the risk of us being infected if we failed to put them on or take them off correctly. Now - face masks are essential on public transport, but the...

Over the past months in lockdown, I’ve had the opportunity to chat with several writers via video. One of them also writes for Authors Electric — the lovely Bill Kirton. We’ve known each other nearly a decade through our stories and have collaborated on numerous flash fiction pieces. He’s responsible for my joining this esteemed group. This past week, we’ve been writing another story together. We boldly write in an unconventional method. It's served us well, given we've created nearly a dozen joint stories!  If you wish to know more about how we write, feel free to hop over to Bill’s website to learn more. This post, however, is not about our writing process, but about how working with Bill has contributed to my use of words. I’ve always felt that the fewer the words I need to say something, the better, that compression makes my stories more powerful for the reader.  Why tell a story in a hundred words, when I can do it in fifty? Economy of words....

What does the word ‘ Out ’ mean to you? As the nation was advised to stay home, to be ‘not allowed out’ bothered, terrified, threatened many who immediately shared that they felt imprisoned by having to stay home. And continued to refer to ‘being stuck indoors’ , even though , as far as I understood it, being outdoors in your own garden, or on your own balcony, was perfectly okay. Maybe here we misunderstood?   The weather was glorious, we and the neighbours were ‘out’ in our gardens, under a blue sky with no planes droning overhead, and no cars pumping pollution into the atmosphere. For permitted exercise, we were able to walk through the local small nature reserve   - the only problem there was the joggers, who although not permitted, took to running through, panting and puffing, ignoring social distancing and verbally abusing those who drew their attention to this prohibition. That was ‘out’ for us - but, for many, ‘out’ means meals in restaurants, visits to th...

This quote from the classic prison drama The Shawshank Redemption has been running through my head during lockdown. Even if you haven't watched the film or read the Stephen King novella it's based on, you'll probably understand why. Here's a short reminder: Of course, the majority of us have not been locked up in a high-security prison for another man's crime, merely locked down in our own homes, some of us rather more severely than others. I count myself lucky I don't appear on any of the vulnerable lists, however from that first day back in March, when I stood knee deep in the freezing sea and imagined wading out to the horizon to escape the sudden and unexpected restrictions on my freedom, I've felt a little of what I imagine an innocent prisoner like Andy Dufresne must feel. "Get busy living or get busy dying" Andy says, the night before he disappears. His best friend in prison is worried about him, thinking this means he's come t...

So here we are almost three months into lockdown. Strange times. Conspiracy theories abound. It’s 5G, Bill Gates, big Pharma, some other kind of plot I can’t be bothered with, it’s not a virus, etc. I’ve got my head well down, sieving compost, planting beans and tomatoes, re-potting lilies and begonias, baking far too much. Hauled my sewing machine out to make masks, cut out the fabric, that’s as far as it’s got. I lose track of time. Every week, we have choir via Zoom and wear something silly. It’s an hour of delightful companionship which always leaves me feeling peculiarly flat when it’s over. Writers have also been meeting via Zoom, but this week, weather and the new restrictions permitting, we plan to meet in my garden at suitable distances from each other – just about possible with five of us. I’m taking an online course on poetic forms, put on by the excellent Live Canon team, which has meant getting to grips with sonnets (Petrarchean and Shakespearean) terza rima, se...