Keeping Track
By Juliet Marillier | July 10, 2007 |
Every speculative fiction writer seems to have a personal blog these days. The better ones provoke some great discussion on writing—see, for instance, the Romance discussion on recent Andre Norton Award winner Justine Larbalestier’s blog.
Some writers’ blogs include as much about the minutiae of their health issues / crises with pets and children / coffee and chocolate consumption habits as they do about books and writing.
Unfortunately, not everyone’s life is constantly fascinating. That’s one of the main reasons I don’t keep a personal blog. Most of the time, my life would make pretty humdrum reading. On the rare occasions when it gets dramatic, the last thing I want to do is share the details with the whole online world. Another reason for not having a personal blog is that writing one would gobble up time better spent (in my case, at least) on writing books.
Of course, some writers do a great job of keeping their personal blogs lively and entertaining. Dip into this one by Australian expat fantasy writer Glenda Larke, who lives in Malaysia. Either her life is more interesting than most, or she just has a talent for writing well about it! The very readable life observations are complemented by some excellent posts on the craft of writing and illustrated with wonderful photos. If you haven’t read Glenda’s novels, try Heart of the Mirage, the first in her current series, The Mirage Makers.
Some writers use their blogs to keep a record of progress on their current wip. Fantasy writer Karen Miller’s blog currently includes a meticulous daily tally of work on her various projects. I admire Karen for putting this out in public—there is no way I would be prepared to do the same! I asked her to identify her reasons for keeping the progress report and she told me it’s a motivational tool. “It lets me keep an eye on how consistently I’m working, and what my output is like, and gives me a sense of accomplishment when the sheer enormity of the task starts to get oppressive,” she said. In addition, it helps her keep interested parties up to date with what she’s doing. Sounds like a good idea, so why couldn’t I do it too? Because I couldn’t face the public shame of reporting on those days when the word count is in the hundreds rather than the thousands, or the days on which (shock, horror) the word count is zero—I can’t believe I’m the only person who has these. Also, as with personal blogging, keeping stats on what I have or haven’t achieved would take valuable time away from actually doing the achieving.
Incidentally, Karen Miller has a new series of interviews with Australian women fantasy writers coming up on her website. I’m not advertising this just because I’m one of the interviewees—I think it will make interesting reading. Karen’s most recent novel is The Empress of Mijak, released last month and very well reviewed.
As a footnote, I should say that contributing to Writer Unboxed is a vastly different activity from maintaining a personal blog. While I am pretty sure nobody would want to read a blog made up of my observations about the challenges of living with an epileptic dog, favorite recipes for Winter Solstice, instructions for striking cuttings from a frangipani, or best ways to play ‘teddy bears go to the doctor’ with a three year old, I expect some of you do quite enjoy my writerly posts on this site. (Cue for flood of comments saying you actually hate them and would prefer the teddy bears …)
Photo credit:
Photographer: Adrian Moisei.
Agency: Dreamstime.com
Juliet Marillier has written twenty-four novels for adults and young adults and two collections of short fiction. Her works of historical fantasy have been published around the world and have won numerous awards. Juliet’s most recent series was Warrior Bards, of which the third and final book, A Song of Flight, was published in 2021. Her collection of reimagined fairy tales, Mother Thorn and Other Tales of Courage and Kindness, had its trade release in 2022. Mother Thorn is illustrated by Kathleen Jennings and published by Serenity Press.
Juliet is currently working on a two-book fantasy series. The first book in this duology, The Amber Owl, will be published by New Dawn in February 2025.
When not writing, Juliet looks after a small crew of rescue dogs.
Thanks for tips on other Australian fantasy writers, and please let us know when your interview is up at Karen Miller’s site.
While recipes for Winter Solstice does sound interesting to me (really!), I very much enjoy and appreciate your writerly posts.
Oh I don’t know, that sounds like quite an interesting list to me, there again, most of the blogs that I read are merely a form of escapism into other people’s lives.
Cheers
Juliet, I’m up for recipes (as long as no one expecte me to actually make them!) and teddy bears and whatever else you or any other good writer want to write about. A well-written blog such as that of Glenda Larke is a joy to read – although I must admit that I love posts on writing best of all.