More than Writers

As an author, do you love social media or loathe it? Is the World Wide Web a mine of useful information? Or a time-waster? A wonderful means of communication? Or an unexploded bomb? PRE-WORLD WIDE WEB When I began working as Copyright Manager for Jubilate Hymns back in 1998, I was provided with a computer – and a fax machine! It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? But when the BBC used Jubilate hymns and music on Songs of Praise, or other programmes, they had to fax the details through to me in order to obtain a copyright licence. Not long after that, Richard Bewes, then Rector at All Souls, Langham Place, rang me in the office to register a hymn he’d been asked to write to celebrate the advent of the internet. We had a delightful conversation about the pros and cons. Then I said: ‘What worries me is that it could prove to be a Tower of Babel.’ Prophetic? Or what? NOW - POST TRUTH? Quite apart from the bullying, grooming, death threats and hacking that goes on (whi...

  HAPPY NEW YEAR! While Christmas is a time of new birth, New Year is usually perceived as a time for reflection and resolution.   And so it was that last night, at twenty-to-midnight, my husband and I sat with two good friends who had dined with us, looking back over the peaks and troughs of 2015, and voicing our aspirations for the year ahead. My eldest daughter’s sudden illness early last year, enforcing a six-month sick-leave (she’s a vicar) was of considerable concern.   As was the precarious nature of the oil business and the potential affect this might have on the lives of family members involved in the industry.   Add to this my mother’s ongoing night-time terrors following her eviction by my youngest sister, and – despite the mountain top experiences - we had to acknowledge there had been dark valleys aplenty in 2015. THE SHADOW OF THE VALLEY Perhaps the most personal to me, was the continual shutting down of my new laptop – still under ...

Apologies!  Having had considerable problems with my computer, and then had everything wiped from it, followed by a week away celebrating my sister's big birthday, I was unable to produce an original post this month.  What follows is an adaptation of one I wrote for the ezine articles blog.  Hope it might be of some interest to you. Some years ago, one of the speakers at The Hayes Summer School, a writers’ workshop held every year at Swanwick in Derbyshire, asked a question which I have always found very telling.   ‘Do you want to be a writer?’ he asked.   ‘Or do you want to write?’ He then went on to explain that many people think in terms of the fame and fortune they imagine authorship confers.   ‘I want to be a writer,’ translates in their minds to ‘I want to be a writer like J.K.Rowling.’   The fact is that the J.K.Rowlings of this world are few and far between.   I once read that the ratio is that 1% of wr...