Justina Robson's Blog

I've been overdosing on other blogs, and articles and books recently.  It's been great.  I'm in awe of the great blogsters out there (Charlie Stross, Justine Larbalestier and you others...) and getting spun around by all the 'research' (ie sitting at my computer surfing idly) I've been doing into women who write SF and that whole gender deal.  One article that hit home was http://www.memdir.org/video/ben-barres-dearth-of-women-in-science.html     So my head is spinning with opinions but I keep c

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Thanks to everyone who joined in with the Clarion Write-A-Thon games.  I will make  a final count and post a check off later this week for those who successfully came up with proto-titles for the book.  In other news I didn't manage yet to include the two character suggestions, but I will.  I'll let you know when.  They'll have to appear much later in the text because I am still fighting through Chapter Three and a ton of set up material.  I didn't manage to write every day, sadly, but I post th

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I listened to this week's Beyond Belief on Radio 4.  It's a debate show, about religion and faith and their relationship to some bit of contemporary life.  This week they were talking about the internet and virtual worlds.  A range of views about the usefulness and social desirability of these things were expressed, as one might expect.  Some said how lovely to be connected and that a virtual church could provide similar emotional comfort and awe as a real one.  Others said what a waste of time

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Just a note to let any interested parties know I am still with the Write-a-thon although very glad I didn't set a better target than 'will write every day'.  Hope you others are all doing well.  Meanwhile I am dithering over a decision about what to write next as this looks as if it will be the last QG book for the time being.

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Thanks to Stephanie Burgis for lending me 'The Truth About Forever', a teen book by Sarah Dessen.  It was such fun to read and she is a great writer on relationships and that whole identity thing.  I can only envy some of her skills at getting such clarity from what was, in my personal experience, a time of great muddiness and struggle.  So, after never hearing of this person, I now find she's a bestseller.  Well, I'm not surprised really.

Meanwhile my own writing has crawled through another few

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The last couple of days have been dominated by children's party organisation, so word counts have been barely into the twenties.  Instead I spent my free minutes surfing around looking for writing I felt a connection with to try and bump my own into a slightly different kind of level. 

After a while I realised that no amount of 'research' into other writers' was going to be much of a help because they're all good in their own way and that isn't my way. Then I went back to my opening chapter, too

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I completed a version of the QG4 story so far recap yesterday, which is about 8k words although it took me a week to write and edit it.  Now I'm moving back to QG5 today.  I wrote the first chapter but it has a lot of options circling it, like vultures of the possible:  shall I do a fancy structure and tell the story backwards?  Shall I run with the undead storylines or are they too complicating?  Shall I include the vigilante thing that's waving vaguely from the back of the cast and crew or sho

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Today is the third day of the Clarion West Write-A-Thon, and of the current Clarion workshop.  I'm taking part to show some support to the hardworking guys who run the show year after year and to say thanks for the great experience I had there myself in 1996.  See http://www.clarionwest.org/ for more information, especially if you're reading this and would like to be a pro writer yourself.

I couldn't work out what the best sponsorship program would be for me this year: should I try for word count

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Argh the website...two years out of date.  How could this happen to a technophile?  Bucketloads of emotional resistance is how actually, but I apologise to anyone who has been there scratching their head and wondering how I ever managed to write a sentence involving the word 'computer'.  Can't promise a rush job but matters are In Hand.  I said that before too, but this time, no really...  I've been struggling with a mundane SF short story, caught between wanting to go with the credo for social

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Thanks to everyone for your heartening and useful comments.  Yes, once again, I have demonstrated how easily I get sidetracked by 'intellectual' problems when they never really matter much in the construction of a book.  They do function rather nicely as avoidance items though.  Of course you don't need to know what you're doing when you sit down, in fact I think it is positively bad if you do, as this will stand in the way of interesting progress.  For myself though I definitely need an emotion

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