Fact and fiction

I heard an interesting snippet on In our time on Radio 4, this morning. They were discussing anaesthetics and someone pointed out that writers, at one time at any rate, used to have their villains shoving a chloroform soaked pad over their victim’s face and then dragging him/her off in an unconscious state. He specifically mentioned John Fowles’s first novel The Collector in which the male protagonist imprisons a young girl – a very chilling tale, as I remember. At any rate, Fowles was inaccurate in this as it is impossible to do, according to the this morning’s experts.

I once got a small piece published in Writers’ News on this type of author error. William Golding was guilty of a similar one when he suggested that Piggy’s glasses could be used to start a fire in Lord of the Flies. In fact, it’s only magnifying glasses that can do that. With short sighted people, the lens doesn’t operate that way. Over a year or so, I earned £300 from Writers’ News, by sending them short pieces of this sort for ‘Nairn Notes’. Unfortunately, they now seem to do it all in house.

The last two mornings I have woken up with a bad back, so that it was agony to get into the right position for getting out of bed. As the day’s worn on, it’s gradually improved, though today, going to Sainsbury’s, followed straight away by doing tonight’s meal meant that it started playing up again. I took some aspirin in the morning, but I think taking some overnight might help me not to be so stiff in the morning. We are still waking up later than usual and haven’t adjusted to the hour’s difference properly.

I’m looking again at Tainted Tree but it’s so difficult to assess the advice given by my fellow writers. More explanation – less explanation and of course there’s all the other comment from the Writers’ News critique too. At the moment I’m having difficulty in getting down to things. Hardly anything is crossed off the list on my desk. I have to put my mind to doing one thing before I go to bed tonight and will let you know what I’ve succeeded in accomplishing tomorrow.