Monday 9 November 2009

A bit of a gap in blogging. Nothing in the summer because nothing was happening. then too much happening and no time to blog. That's if blogging is worthwhile anyway. From the number of responses, one does wonder. A lot of my writer friends blog and twitter all the time, but are we all talking to no-one about nothing? I'll go by the comments.

I've been busy editing (or trying to edit) my new book, now called The Fool's Girl. It's got a cover, and everything, just the writing isn't finished yet. It landed on my desk just as I had go on school visits and to festivals, here and in Germany. It's all done now and I've just sent it off, so I feel I have a right to blog.

I hope I get the edits back before I head off for Yorkshire. I'm tutoring a course with Melvin Burgess at the Arvon Centre in Lumb Bank, Yorkhire, Writing for Young People, 23 -28th November, 2009. It's a bit short notice, but if you fancy it, there are a few places left. Anyone interested book through Arvon www.arvonfoundation.org

Book sent off and blog done. How virtuous am I?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I am no longer a "young adult" but I still love your books and am very glad to hear there will be a new one coming out soon! Can't wait!

claires inner world said...

Does this mean it's your turn to buy coffee?!

Re blogging/twitter - it takes a long time to build up a 'following' and involves quite a large time commitment, I would say. Just depends if there are other things you would rather be doing...

Claire

Julian Horwood said...

Hi Celia

I'm responding to your comment about no-comments! I tried blogging every day for a month last year (using Typepad) to see what I learnt... well... I got a handful of responses including some bizarrly aggressive ones from a fellow writer. It took a lot of time and, more importantly, a lot of creative time. But it served to focus the mind on things, and thoughts on things, I might have easily passed by. That was not on my own website, but as a separate blogging thing. Now my own site is about to go on-line ahead of the launch of a new series early next year, I have decided to have a blog on the site, as you have. Which is why I an surfing writers' sites to see what they do. In your own case I really like the way the blog is set out, is visually readable and is written. If one only gets an occasional reader well... every contact is valuable, whatever it's nature, but not if it comes at the cost of lost creativity. One issue is content. For my month of blogging I decided NOT to deal with my own writer issues (eg what I'm editing, have I produced enough words etc etc) because as a reader I'm not much interested in the process, more in the personality and his/her views. So I'd be more interested in your comments about writing and authorship more generally. That may just be me however! Certainly it's true that some readers are interested in the minutiae of our work processes and I guess if one reaches writerly celebrity status that kind of information in a blog is interesting for many. Thanks for raising the issue of response and making me think about it - and thanks too for your work with SoA! William