Home › Archive for My Books › Page 3
Blog Archives

15th May 2007: Jeopardy, pacing of revelation & how you treat characters

Posted on by Jo Walton

I was having a conversation with Zorinth on the way home on the train largely about a (really nifty) story idea of his, and one of the things we were talking about was the things novels need in order to…

Read more ›

Posted in Small Change, Writing

21st March 2007 Lovely rice pudding for dinner again (whining about proofs)

Posted on by Jo Walton

The thing I hate about proofs is — no. Among the things I hate about proofs are: the way they arrive sufficiently soon after the copyedit that I’m still sick of the sight of the book; the way I’m totally…

Read more ›

Posted in Small Change, Writing

16th February 2007: Conversation with a Pigeon

Posted on by Jo Walton

Actually, you don’t have to fly away when I come into the kitchen. It was me who put out those oat-crumbs you’re eating. I threw them out into the snow earlier, and the last time I came into the kitchen…

Read more ›

Posted in Among Others, Human culture, Whimsy

26th December 2006 Inevitability

Posted on by Jo Walton

Yesterday afternoon we watched a DVD I bought myself for Christmas. The box is all in French, but in English it seems to be called The Gathering Storm and it’s Churchill biography, or as it’s dramatized like a story, fanfiction.…

Read more ›

Posted in Human culture, Small Change

1st December 2006: Forty-two today!

Posted on by Jo Walton

Hooray, hooray, I’m forty-two today. Anyone I told I was forty-two already — I was confused, OK? When I was a child I’d never have believed I could be confused about how old I was. It’s such a central fact…

Read more ›

Posted in My Books

29th November 2006: That burned before the icecap reigned

Posted on by Jo Walton

The sun is coming through the window at an odd angle and casting the shadow of the things in my desk-tidy onto the wall in a sharp relief. There are various pens at angles, a quill, two pairs of scissors,…

Read more ›

Posted in Unfinished book stuff

25th June 2006: Tangled Web

Posted on by Jo Walton

“Your nightmares are somebody’s daydreams, Your daydreams are somebody’s lies. Lies ain’t no harder than telling the truth, The truth is the perfect disguise.” Kris Kristofferson. I’m not in HP fandom, and I’ve been reading the MsScribe kerfuffle with bemused…

Read more ›

Posted in Among Others, Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

2nd February 2006: Why fantasy is easy

Posted on by Jo Walton

When I say fantasy is easy, what I mean is that writing in a background you already know intimately is easier than figuring out every little thing about the background. It’s easiest to put this in terms of tech levels…

Read more ›

Posted in Poor Relations, Small Change, Writing

23rd September 2005: Venting about copyedit

Posted on by Jo Walton

Dear Copyeditor, Contrary to your base assumption, I am not a moron. When I use mixed metaphors — and you may note I only do it in the first person section — I am using them as a form of…

Read more ›

Posted in My Books, Small Change, Writing

21st March 2005: A snippet

Posted on by Jo Walton

This is the story of the stupid things I did the year I was seventeen, the year my mother died, and how they twisted my life entire from the straight course it was set to run in. I was born…

Read more ›

Posted in Sulien World, Writing